Happy Thanksgiving from Heartland Intervention, LLC.! 

While holidays can be tough for a variety of reasons, I’ve always believed that Thanksgiving is a holiday tailor-made to folks in recovery.  Being thankful is fundamentally about gratitude which is a cornerstone of a successful recovery program and good mental health advice for us all.  There are two little skills or exercises that can benefit us all.

Make a Gratitude List

By making a gratitude list, we come face to face with the good stuff in our life.  To be grateful demands some measure of humility and has a way of “right-sizing” our ego.  Once the list is made, we are able to pray through the list, expressing not only our gratitude but our desire for each person, place or situation on the list to receive the blessing of God.

Where’s the Focus?

Thanksgiving offers each of us an opportunity to focus on what’s going well.  It’s easy for many of us to fall into the trap of being negative.  When we are thankful, we are necessarily focusing on the positive.  As the old saying goes, “Focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger; focus on the solution, the solution gets bigger.”.

I am grateful that I have a front row seat to watch people’s lives turn around every week.  To be sure, there is heartache from time to time.  But the thanksgiving for those that will celebrate this Thanksgiving clean or sober is both overwhelming and humbling.  Happy Thanksgiving!