Encourage Your Brain: How to Find Gratitude When You've Experienced Loss

The Thanksgiving season is upon us, and with it lots and lots of wishes for gratitude and things that we are grateful for. If I think about the categories that my gratitudes often fall into, it would be things like relationships and resources. So relationships, certainly the people that I have as family, as friends, as coworkers, colleagues, the people in my world that I get to love and live and play with. And then certainly resources. I'm super grateful for the abundance, the provision that allows for not just roofs over my head, but places to go, health, resources to go and do the things that I want to do in this world. When I think about the opposite side of gratitude, oftentimes I think about loss. And I just want to go into this season recognizing that there are losses for many of us. It can be a big loss like the loss of a loved one, perhaps the loss of a job or a relationship. It can be more subtle things that we might lose as well, things like autonomy or choice around where we want to be or where we want to live or where we want to work. It can be a loss of a sense of confidence or a loss of some piece of our reputation or identity that might be shifting. So whatever it is, regardless of the loss, one thing that we can never lose is the intention with which we want to navigate those circumstances. Viktor Frankl said it beautifully when he talked about that everything can be taken away from us except that one last human dignity and freedom, and that is the ability to choose the intention or the choice or the attitude that we want to have around those circumstances. So my wish for you, regardless of what you're navigating, is that you would be grateful for the intentions that you can set as you walk through not just this season, but the months ahead in the holidays, as well as the year ahead and all that it offers. So my best wishes to you for a rich and full and grateful and intentional Thanksgiving season.