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Thanksgiving Day is a super important time to connect with friends and loved ones, and sometimes it can feel so lonely to be sitting solo at a big table of couples.<\/span><\/p>\n If you don’t have a romantic partner, this is an important time to start envisioning the story of partnership that you want to create, and have gratitude for him or her IN ADVANCE. NOW.<\/span><\/p>\n Gratitude is the \u201cgateway drug\u201d to love because gratitude is based on celebrating differences, vulnerability, and appreciation. Love can\u2019t live without these things. You have gratitude, it inevitably leads to love.<\/span><\/p>\n Gratitude means recognizing differences, celebrating that each person has their own unique story, their own unique differences.<\/span><\/p>\n You may see someone at the copy machine and not realize, “Wow, that person went through a really difficult journey with cancer 10 years ago.”<\/span><\/p>\n Or you might see someone that you don’t know, that their children are really struggling at school, or you might be walking down the hall, pass someone who’s a survivor of sexual trauma, and never mentioned it to you.<\/span><\/p>\n When we can slow down and appreciate differences, then this wave of understanding, thankfulness, and compassion gets unlocked.<\/span><\/p>\n If we’re going into a relationship without gratitude, without celebrating those differences, we’ll always be seeking to make our partner the same as ourselves. <\/span> Instead of being appreciative of our partner and our differences, we’ll just notice how they’re different.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a big problem with looking for what’s wrong, instead of celebrating what’s unique about them.<\/span><\/p>\n Gratitude is also a gateway to love because gratitude is really about vulnerability.<\/span><\/p>\n If you’re thinking that you can just do everything on your own, you never ask for help, you never let anyone be a part of your life, you’re just like calm, cool and collected, you’ve got it totally under control, that’s kind of awesome from the outside looking in\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n But not only is it lonely, but it’s also a place where you’re not having deep connection with others — you\u2019ve insulated yourself from receiving help. One of my clients said<\/span><\/p>\n
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