Giving Thanks with Nina Kosubevsky

Well folks, it’s November, and you know what that means: It’s time to get ready for the Holidays! Just kidding…often times after Halloween, people get into the mindset of preparing for Christmas or Chanukah and forget to take a moment and enjoy the important season of gratitude available to us as we prepare for Thanksgiving. Here at Cornerstone, we have often shared our insights on how to find opportunities to be grateful or to think about things with a thankful attitude and heart. This year is no different. As such, to continue our Thanksgiving series on gratefulness, our very own Nina Kosubevsky shares her strategies for finding opportunities to seek gratefulness as a tool to help improve your life.
Lastly, before I turn things over to Nina, I want to take a moment to wish all of you a blessed, happy, healthy, and enjoyable Thanksgiving! We at Cornerstone want to extend our deepest thanks and appreciation for all of you, and we pray that the holiday season and the new year ahead brings you joy, peace, and contentment.
Seeking Gratefulness to Improve Your Life
by Nina Kosubevsky
A difficulty that I hear about often from my clients who may be struggling with anxiety or depression is how they feel like they have nothing to be grateful for, like everything is hopeless, or they feel caught in a loop of despair. I can absolutely sympathize with this and understand where you’re coming from if this describes you. After all, particularly at this time of year, it can be hard to remain positive when memories of happier times come flooding back. The holiday season may act as a negative trigger for you and many others. When that happens, you might even feel stuck. Good news, there are solutions though and below are my suggestions for overcoming it.
Accentuate the Opposite
If you know what triggers are, you’re halfway there in the process of resolving those issues. If you want to counteract a trigger, identify the opposite of that trigger. The opposite of your triggers are going to be things that make you smile.
If getting stuck behind a train ruins your day, then try to take a moment and be grateful for every time you don’t get stuck at the train tracks. Same thing for every red-light you don’t get stuck at. To further that example, think about when you’re about to slow down because of a light and it suddenly changes for you so you don’t have to stop. These little moments add up, and if you take a moment during each one of these little instances to appreciate and be grateful for them, you’ll find that eventually your mindset shifts to focus on the positives instead of the negatives.
Another example of something that might frustrate you could be stopping through the Dunkin Donuts drive-through and as you leave you realize they got your order wrong. If that’s something that you find triggers you, start taking a moment each time you stop for a coffee to be thankful and grateful that they got it right! Opportunities to be grateful are all around us; we just need to shift our mindset to see them.
Accentuate the Positive
Another thing that can help reframe your mindset from negative to positive is by finding 3 things to be positive/grateful for about a day. And for this, I’m not talking about basic things like your five-year old great dane, but deeper things. Perhaps you shared coffee with a good friend who you haven’t seen for some time and enjoyed each other’s laughter and company. This is something you might not do on the day-to-day. So, take some time and be grateful for the experience. Reflect on it and let it sit with you. How many times have you or others said something like ‘this made my day!’ but didn’t actually take the time to live in it and feel it? By accentuating the positive, and making it a daily habit, your mindset can dramatically change.
By looking for and accentuating the opposite of our triggers and taking stock of our day to identify positive moments to be grateful for, you can not only change your life, but also those around you. As we enter into the Thanksgiving season, I hope you take the time to be grateful and seek positivity.
If you feel like this method of therapy is helpful and you vibe with it, reach out to our Intake Coordinator to set up an appointment today.