Somehow we all have this most unusual Thanksgiving behind us. I hope you were able to have some moments of joy and gratitude amidst so much despair around us all. My thoughts are with each of you who felt loneliness, grief and/or despair during this holiday.
During so many difficulties, it can feel quite challenging to have hope and frankly, having any hope in the midst of such despair can feel like believing in something impossible. The polarity of hope and despair does not mean we have to choose one or the other. They can both exist at the same time.
“How?” you might ask.
Training ourselves to have big, bold, bright, belief takes seeing the big picture and having new emotional awareness of things we have not been able to see up to this point. So, how do we do that?
Finding hope amidst great despair can be helped by; choosing to see the big picture, understanding our own world view and discerning meaning from what is happening. If those options seem too daunting, what are other perspectives?
Here are 5 things that help me when I’m stuck in a perspective that doesn’t serve me: 
- Laughing, it’s always a tool that is available
- Curiosity
- Hoping for something better
- Expanding the possibilities
- Learning in general
It can help to explore; what we believe, what is possible. What if we held hope for the thing that is possible?
If you’re feeling challenged in shifting your perspective, feel free to check out the Facebook Live that Jennifer Gorman of Eden Treatment Center and I did together on Thanksgiving. You can see the FB Live here.
The next several weeks and maybe months sound like they’ll be some of the roughest of this pandemic. So please consider ramping up your self-care plan and utilizing some of these tools so that you can hang on to a bit of hope. This too shall pass.
