How To Be Grateful For The Year 2020

As I sit in my parent’s living room I can feel this prompt I chose on my screen staring back at me: How To Be Grateful For The Year 2020. It feels like an oxymoron doesn’t it? It feels like a joke in so many ways. Thanksgiving is in just a few days and this time of year usually involves traveling and preparing, cooking and spending time with family and loved ones. But the holidays this year look quite different for so many people in this country and around the world. The years that felt redundant suddenly have come to a halt and we’re left figuring out what to make of this time of year and wondering how we’ll get through. 

How To Be Grateful For The Year 2020 might feel like a loaded statement, but it’s a lens we should all try to look through even if only for a glimpse. This year really shook things up for so many people and I do not want to paint a picture as though everything was fine and manageable and we should all just be thankful for it because I know that is far from the truth.

This year was filled with loss and heartache, loneliness and emptiness, uncertainty and unprecedented times. This year felt so different that the past few years almost feel unrecognizable. What did we even used to do with our time? Was traveling harder or easier then? Did we really stand around in crowded bars surrounded by people? Do we actually like masks now? Are they here to stay because sometimes I don’t hate covering my face when I go to the grocery store...

But part of being grateful means actually reflecting on how the year went and that can be a deep dive into feelings and emotions that can be painful to look back on and sort through. But we have to face the hardest times in order to embrace the best times. We have to fight through the lows in order to appreciate the highs. As you look back on 2020 and figure out how the hell you can be grateful for a year as crazy as this, here is a little exercise that I hope helps shine some light on these past 11 months. The good, the bad and the ugly of it all. 

How To Be Grateful For 2020, you can do it! 

Take out a pen and piece of paper. You can also do this on your phone or the computer. Write down each month of the year starting with January all the way through November. Next to each month, I want you to think of one of the biggest positives from that month and one of the biggest challenges. Be honest with yourself. Meet yourself exactly where you are now and try to remember exactly where you were then as you went through these last few months trying to figure out what to do and how to be safe and how to take care of your loved ones.

Now I want you to look at where you were in the beginning of 2020 and where you are now. This might be the hardest part of the exercise so please take this one slow. So many of us in the beginning of the year made all of these crazy promises and resolutions and I’m sure this year can feel even more defeating when so many of us feel like we’ve taken ten steps back. 

Write down how you felt in January 2020. What were you doing? What were you planning to do this year? What were your goals?

Write down how you feel now. Let your pen flow. It doesn’t have to sound pretty or fancy, be totally and completely honest. The more honest you can get with yourself the easier it will be to figure out where to go from here.

Now write down how you want to feel. Not when the pandemic is over, just in general, write down how you want to feel. Do you want to feel safe? Do you want to feel financially secure? Do you want to feel free? Do you want to feel ready to do something big in your life? Do you want to feel proud? Do you want to feel loved? 

When you look at where you were back in January verse where you are now, I want you to look for moments of growth. It doesn’t have to be big triumphs of victory. It should be small acts that helped you along the way. Ultimately when you look at the positives and the challenges over these past months and when you truly reflect on how you want to feel you can then get intentional about these next few months and how you want to spend them. By recognizing where you’ve been you can figure out where you want to go.

So why do we do an exercise like this? How does it actually help us to be grateful for this seemingly crap year? Well for one, it should at the very least remind you that you are alive. It should remind you that you made it through these last few months, as hard and as dark and as uncertain as they were. You are here now and you made it through. 

look for the silver linings.
usE your voice to raise awareness for the people & the causes that need it most. BE of service to those who have less than you.
Keep kindness alive in everything that you do, say, post, & share. 

It also should be a reminder of how far you’ve come. This year was filled with ups and downs for everyone. But actually looking at each month and recognizing that there was good and bad can help us to remember that life won’t give us anything we can’t handle. There is always a rainbow at the end of every rainstorm. 

If nothing else, I hope this exercise reminds you that you’ve grown over this past year. You are not the person you were back in January and you will continue to grow and evolve in this life as each year passes. You’ve handled days and weeks and months that you weren’t sure you could get through and that is worth recognizing and saying thank you to yourself for. You did that. Sure you may have had help along the way, we all do, but you got you where you needed to be and that in itself is a victory. 

So how can we be grateful for the year 2020 and this new normal as we know it? Keep looking for the silver linings, the signs of love and peace and unity and togetherness even while we are apart. Keep using your voice to raise awareness for the people and the causes that need it most. Keep being of service to those who have less than you. Keep kindness alive in everything that you do, say, post, and share. 

When you look back at all the other Thanksgiving’s you have had with family and friends, I assure you this one will stand out from all the rest. And even though you might not be able to spend this holiday how you normally would or how you would have liked to, then at the very least you can be grateful for all the years when things did feel normal, even if at the time they did feel routine or mundane. We can be grateful for 2020, if nothing else, because we got through it together.