Guest Blog and Video by Whitney Cole

Whitney Cole is a teacher who is utilizing gratitude in a powerful way in her classroom. For years, I have been using the video of her on You Tube to show everyone how gratitude can spread from the classroom out into the community. Please watch her video and then read her Guest Blog.

Whitney's Video 

Five years ago, the bell would ring and the students left discouraged and exhausted from a long day of struggle. In a neighborhood where daily life was full of uncertainty for most families, the anxiety only continued in school with rigorous academics, navigating social complexities, and worrying about family hardships. As a teacher, it was heartbreaking to see them leave so defeated from the day. It was then that my grade level decided to explicitly teach gratitude and begin a gratitude journal, a way to end the day on a softer, happier note.

In a community that didn’t have a lot of material blessings, we wanted to focus on the world, opportunities, people, and simple acts of kindness. We wanted gratitude to go beyond robotically saying thank you and appreciating the “things” of life. The journals had three segments and were completed in the last 15 minutes of every day. Students were expected to write a detailed reflection, three things that they appreciated from the day, and an act of kindness that they either participated in or planned to do later. Afterward, every child shared at least one gratitude while the rest of the class listened. It was a sweet and hopeful way to end the day, and the benefits were astounding.

Academically, gratitude fostered a stronger relationship with school. It allowed me as their teacher to hear what works and what doesn’t in our lessons. Since students were leaving school feeling better and more connected to what they were learning, parents were more willing to support staff and see us as part of their team. By widening the students’ support network, children were naturally more successful and engaged. Plus, even if students struggled academically during the day, that didn’t negate success in the gratitude journal. Having a spot in the day to feel valued and heard imprinted on a child’s willingness to put forth effort throughout the day.

Socially, the journals connected students to each other without them even realizing it. Despite different social cliques or interests on the playground, students were connecting to each other across peer groups. They began inquiring about each others’ lives and asking follow up questions to what they shared during gratitudes. In turn, this decreased the amount of in-class behaviors and instead, kids were being more supportive and softer with each other. Knowing that their fellow students had their backs allowed for a family feel and a safe place for learning. Students were more willing to be risk takers academically and more eager to collaborate in group work.

Emotionally, the gratitudes started at the surface level. It took weeks, even months, for the students to show vulnerability. Over time, students became more secure in their place in the classroom community, and trust was built, allowing them to be unharnessed. With patience, their gratitudes became less commerce-centered, and more value-centered, exposing who they truly were as people. Sometimes in darkness it is easier to see the light, and they began to reveal family struggles, personal hardships, or social speed bumps. If a parent was struggling with illness, a child’s gratitude might reflect their happiness for them feeling better. As a teacher, it gave me an avenue to hear about their lives both in and out of the classroom. Relationships were strengthened, and students understood that they were not seen as one-dimensional, but as multifaceted people with a myriad of strengths and weaknesses.

I now teach at a more affluent school, and the hierarchy of needs is much different. I doubted the effectiveness of the gratitude journal with a population that doesn’t have to look so hard to find the wonder of the world. But I was wrong. Gratitude brings perspective, drives empathy, and all demographics benefit from that. Just as it was important to soften the edges of those from rougher backgrounds, it is equally important to instill a well-rounded, global context for those with fewer worries in life. The gratitude journals provide a chance to discuss all aspects of life and that their blessings and opportunities should not be taken for granted. After all, we are all interdependent, and by understanding society’s greater landscape, students are more inclined to show appreciation and treat others with dignity.

At its core, gratitude is about being aware of who or what makes the good parts of life possible and acknowledging that contribution. By practicing this daily, students will become more balanced and less self-centered. They can instead focus on the juicy bits of life, and learn to recognize and empathize the needs of others, resulting in a happier, more caring world.

Guest Blog - What You Didn’t Realize About Gratitude

What You Didn’t Realize About Gratitude

By: Ari Banayan

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 
― Epicurus

The very simple truth is that it feels much better to feel grateful and happy for what we have than it does to long and desire for what we don’t.

It’s remarkable how much time we spend in negativity- suspicion, anxiety, longing, loneliness, anger, frustration, etc. If anybody was asked whether they enjoy their own negative thoughts or corresponding feelings, the obvious answer is of course not.

The question then is, why are our psyches constantly bathing in what doesn’t feel good?

One of the ways in which we can grow out of our usual negative associative thinking is through replacing it with gratitude.

If we take a look at the way we live, we can clearly see that we generally only feel grateful when good things happen to us (and limited situations like Holidays or hearing about other people’s difficulties). We take everything we currently have for granted because we’ve grown accustomed to having it.

I have a very simple exercise for you:

Take a moment to connect with your arms and think about how much work they do throughout the course of a day. Have you ever thought about how much more difficult it would be to turn off your alarm, open a door, brush your teeth, put on your shoes, drink water, or change your child’s diaper would be without arms?

What you’re hopefully feeling now by just connecting with how valuable your arms and hands are is gratitude.

When we take steps to begin replacing our usual associative thinking with thoughts about all that we have to be grateful for, the quality of our lives begins to change. The positivity that results can quite literally penetrate our entire psyche and outlook on the world.

When we look at any given situation and see either an ‘opportunity’ or an ‘obstacle,’ a ‘problem’ or merely something that has to be dealt with, something to be grateful for or negative about, we’re making a decision at that moment about what our reality will consist of. As we continue to see the situations we’re presented with in the same manner over and over, we start to believe that what we think is the absolute truth.

If we can begin to stop listening to our initial automatic response to what life presents us with, we can learn to choose how to view and feel about the circumstances of our lives.

We all know that gratitude ‘feels good.’ We all long to have a life that we can be grateful for, but the truth is that the circumstances of our lives will never make us grateful. No matter what amazing things happen in our lives, we will eventually take for granted everything that this beautiful world gives us the same way we take for granted all that we currently have.

Unless we start realizing what we have to be grateful for, right now, in this moment, we will never enjoy gratitude on a consistent basis. This requires effort – making a practice of thinking differently every single day.

But the reward is beyond measure.

Ari Banayan is an attorney and healthy lifestyle entrepreneur focused on fundamentally changing the way we approach personal development. He's a co-founder of Habit Nest, a company that creates products and content intended to help anyone take action to create positive change. He also co-founded the Morning Sidekick Journal - a journal that can help anyone become a morning person and create the perfect morning routine to start the day.

How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain 

(from Greater Good Science Center's Website: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/)

By: Joel Wong and Joshua Brown 

 

With the rise of managed health care, which emphasizes cost-efficiency and brevity, mental health professionals have had to confront this burning question: How can they help clients derive the greatest possible benefit from treatment in the shortest amount of time?

Recent evidence suggests that a promising approach is to complement psychological counseling with additional activities that are not too taxing for clients but yield high results. In our own research, we have zeroed in on one such activity: the practice of gratitude. Indeed, many studies over the past decade have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.  

The problem is that most research studies on gratitude have been conducted with college students or other well-functioning people. Is gratitude beneficial for people who struggle with mental health concerns? And, if so, how?

We set out to address these questions in a recent research study involving nearly 300 adults, mostly college students, who were seeking mental health counseling at a university. We recruited these participants just before they began their first session of counseling, and, on average, they reported clinically low levels of mental health at the time. The majority of people seeking counseling services at this university in general struggled with issues related to depression and anxiety.

We randomly assigned our study participants into three groups. Although all three groups received counseling services, the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.

What did we find? Compared with the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended. This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns. In fact, it seems, practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is brief. 

And that’s not all. When we dug deeper into our results, we found indications of how gratitude might actually work on our minds and bodies. While not definitive, here are four insights from our research suggesting what might be behind gratitude’s psychological benefits.

1. Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions

First, by analyzing the words used by participants in each of the two writing groups, we were able to understand the mechanisms behind the mental health benefits of gratitude letter writing. We compared the percentage of positive emotion words, negative emotion words, and “we” words (first-person plural words) that participants used in their writing. Not surprisingly, those in the gratitude writing group used a higher percentage of positive emotion words and “we” words, and a lower proportion of negative emotion words, than those in the other writing group.

However, people who used more positive emotion words and more “we” words in their gratitude letters didn’t necessarily have better mental health later. It was only when people used fewer negative emotion words in their letters that they were significantly more likely to report better mental health. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.

Perhaps this suggests that gratitude letter writing produces better mental health by shifting one’s attention away from toxic emotions, such as resentment and envy. When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences.

2. Gratitude helps even if you don’t share it

We told participants who were assigned to write gratitude letters that they weren’t required to send their letters to their intended recipient. In fact, only 23 percent of participants who wrote gratitude letters sent them. But those who didn’t send their letters enjoyed the benefits of experiencing gratitude nonetheless. (Because the number of people who sent their letters was so small, it was hard for us to determine whether this group’s mental health was better than those who didn’t send their letter.)

This suggests that the mental health benefits of writing gratitude letters are not entirely dependent on actually communicating that gratitude to another person.

So if you’re thinking of writing a letter of gratitude to someone, but you’re unsure whether you want that person to read the letter, we encourage you to write it anyway. You can decide later whether to send it (and we think it’s often a good idea to do so). But the mere act of writing the letter can help you appreciate the people in your life and shift your focus away from negative feelings and thoughts.

3. Gratitude’s benefits take time

It’s important to note that the mental health benefits of gratitude writing in our study did not emerge immediately, but gradually accrued over time. Although the different groups in our study did not differ in mental health levels one week after the end of the writing activities, individuals in the gratitude group reported better mental health than the others four weeks after the writing activities, and this difference in mental health became even larger 12 weeks after the writing activities.

These results are encouraging because many other studies suggest that the mental health benefits of positive activities often decrease rather than increase over time afterward. We don’t really know why this positive snowball effect occurred in our study. Perhaps the gratitude letter writers discussed what they wrote in their letters with their counselors or with others. These conversations may have reinforced the psychological benefits derived from the gratitude writing itself.

For now, the bottom line is this: If you participate in a gratitude writing activity, don’t be too surprised if you don’t feel dramatically better immediately after the writing. Be patient and remember that the benefits of gratitude might take time to kick in.

4. Gratitude has lasting effects on the brain

About three months after the psychotherapy sessions began, we took some of the people who wrote gratitude letters and compared them with those who didn’t do any writing. We wanted to know if their brains were processing information differently.

We used an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity while people from each group did a “pay it forward” task. In that task, the individuals were regularly given a small amount of money by a nice person, called the “benefactor.” This benefactor only asked that they pass the money on to someone if they felt grateful. Our participants then decided how much of the money, if any, to pass on to a worthy cause (and we did in fact donate that money to a local charity).

We wanted to distinguish donations motivated by gratitude from donations driven by other motivations, like feelings of guilt or obligation. So we asked the participants to rate how grateful they felt toward the benefactor, and how much they wanted to help each charitable cause, as well as how guilty they would feel if they didn’t help. We also gave them questionnaires to measure how grateful they are in their lives in general.

We found that across the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity was distinct from brain activity related to guilt and the desire to help a cause. More specifically, we found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. This suggests that people who are more grateful are also more attentive to how they express gratitude.

Most interestingly, when we compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding suggests that practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time. 

Though these are just the first steps in what should be a longer research journey, our research so far not only suggests that writing gratitude letters may be helpful for people seeking counseling services but also explains what’s behind gratitude’s psychological benefits. At a time when many mental health professionals are feeling crunched, we hope that this research can point them—and their clients—toward an effective and beneficial tool.

Regardless of whether you’re facing serious psychological challenges, if you have never written a gratitude letter before, we encourage you to try it. Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things we currently don’t have. Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things we do.

How to Help Your Teen Deal With Stress

By: Christine Carter

“Are your kids totally happy and squared away?” a reporter recently asked me earnestly during an interview. Gah. I really hate that question.

My kids are awesome. Easy to raise. Fun to be around. But they aren’t perfect, and, ironically, I worry that they will be as anxious as I was for the first 40 years of my life.

I come from a long line of anxious women, on both sides of my family. My grandmother, whom I’m supposedly the spitting image of, was reportedly prone to “nervous breakdowns,” which seems like a genetic heritage worth worrying about. And now, two of my kids would probably tell you that they’re pretty anxious (especially the one who looks just like me).

Fortunately, even at their most anxious, my children seem positively laid back compared to how I was as a teenager. And, over the last decade, I’ve really come a long way toward dialing down the stress in my own life.

But, generally speaking, Americans’ stress levels only seem to be increasing. The American Psychological Association recently released its 2017 Stress in America survey, and for the first time in the decade since the annual survey began, the average stress level of Americans has risen significantly. More Americans say they’re experiencing physical and emotional symptoms related to stress than ever before.

What’s more, another annual survey – this one from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors – suggests that our kids are not growing up to be more chill than we were. Colleges and universities continue to add mental health services staff to meet the needs of students, and on campuses nationwide increasing focus is being placed on helping students manage stress. It’s no surprise that anxiety continues to be the most predominant concern among college students, with 51 percent of the students who seek counseling doing so for anxiety.

This calls for action, folks. So here are three things we can do to raise kids who aren’t so anxious:

1. Stop doing things that stress you out. This goes even for those stressful tasks you take on because you think you’re doing what’s best for your kids. Psychology researchers Robert Epstein and Shannon Fox compared the effectiveness of 10 important parenting practices, including how well parents support their children’s education and to what extent they provide educational opportunities for them. Not surprisingly, they found the most important thing for a kid’s health and happiness is to be loving and affectionate – to support and accept the child, be physically affectionate, and spend quality one-on-one time together.

But the next most important “parenting competency” – as reported by Epstein in the magazine Scientific American Mind – in terms of its influence on kids’ health, happiness, school success, and the quality of the parent’s relationship with their children, did surprise me. It’s how well parents manage their own stress. Parents who take steps to reduce stress for themselves, practice relaxation techniques and promote a positive interpretation of events have happier, healthier and more successful kids.

If you’ve ever needed permission to take care of yourself first, this is it. Skip the stressful parenting stuff you’re doing just because you think you should. Really. For example, I skip morning PTA meetings because they make me feel too pressed for time. I’ve backed down on my rigid health food rules at dinner so that I can enjoy a little conflict-free time with my kids. And I let myself go to bed before my older teens usually do, even though part of me feels like I should stay up and make sure that they are in bed on time. Why? Because these things are not as key for my children’s health, happiness or school success as for my own ability to cope.

If you’ve ever needed permission to take care of yourself first, this is it.

2. Curb the family’s technology use. The latest Stress in America report makes the relationship between technology and stress clear. A stunning 86 percent of Americans constantly or often check their emails, texts and social media accounts, and these “constant checkers” are far more stressed than those who do not engage with technology as frequently. Millennials and younger Americans report the highest stress levels related to technology.
Reduce kids’ stress by creating structural solutions that curb constant device checking for your entire family. After all, technology is designed to be addictive. Here are a few suggestions of places where you should put technology aside:

• In the car: Put phones in the trunk. Seriously.
• At mealtimes: No devices allowed in the dining room, ever. Even silenced ones.
• Bathrooms: Nothing good comes from derailed morning and bedtime routines or emails sent from the toilet.
• Homework time: Have kids work from a family computer that doesn’t have social media or email apps loaded on it.

Don’t make exceptions once you create these parameters, either. Otherwise, you may find yourself becoming a (possibly ineffective) technology nag, which is no fun.


3. Let kids be uncomfortable. Odds are, if you take your kids’ phones away in certain times and places – especially the car – they will be bored. They will want you to think that this boredom is a form of pain.

As parents, we naturally want to protect our kids from pain. This means that we step in and try to shield them from it, even in its minor forms, such as discomfort, disappointment and boredom.
But there is an enormous difference between discomfort – which is fine – and a full-blown stress response, which can actually damage our health.

The truth is that life can be difficult. Sometimes it’s just uncomfortable. At other times, we experience outright pain. Our kids need to know how to deal with both. More than that, it’s critical that they learn not to let discomfort become stress.

When parents shield kids from discomfort, it can lead to a downward spiral where smaller and smaller stressors cause a greater and greater stress response. This hypersensitivity to stress does not make kids stronger; it makes them fragile and reactive basket cases. It also makes them more likely to avoid the challenges that will help them grow intellectually and emotionally.

The way to prevent this downward spiral is to allow kids to be uncomfortable, rather than letting them numb discomfort with distractions, such as video games or social media. This means we let them deal with their boredom when faced with a long wait and nothing to do. We let them feel the deep disappointment that comes with not getting a part in the play or not making a team, instead of taking them out for ice cream “to cheer them up.” We acknowledge that their mistake was pretty embarrassing, instead of blaming someone else or denying that there is anything wrong.

As in all things parenting, we’ll best help our kids by helping ourselves, first. Feeling a little stressed? Please take this as permission to turn off your phone and leave your family to make their own dinner tonight, while you go to yoga and exhale.

Originally posted on US News & World Report, May 2017

Gratitude and Growth: Positively Impacting Learning Environments

Research-based Gratitude activities help educators and students succeed and thrive.

·        Gratitude Journal - Use this prompt that encourages students and teachers to look more deeply into why they are grateful: “Thank you for _____because________________.”

 

Change Educators/Students Gratitude Routines - To avoid “Gratitude Fatigue,” keep activities fun and novel. For example:

·        Have educators and students write gratitude statements to each other on sticky notes.

·        Make a Gratitude Facebook page for students, teachers, and the entire school community.

·        Turn a “Gripe into a Gratitude.” Have students and teachers turn complaints into statements of Gratitude. For example, “I hate doing my homework” can be flipped into “I am grateful I get to learn by doing my homework. It will help me get a good job someday.”

·        Let student and teachers create their own Gratitude activities for class, using their strengths and interests.

Incorporate Gratitude Activities into Induction and Mentoring Programs. New teachers will:

·        Write and deliver a “Gratitude Letter” to someone who helped them become an educator. Research shows this helps both giver and receiver.

·        Incorporate a few moments into their daily routine to pause and keep a “Grateful” perspective.

Incorporate Gratitude Activities into existing curriculum to make it easier to use. Students will

·        Have students compose a “Gratitude Letter” to someone they are grateful for as a part of an English writing assignment. (If possible, have them deliver the letter and read it to them.)

·        Research a historical figure that had a positive impact on the world and write about why they are grateful for them as part of a Social Studies assignment.

·        Incorporate Gratitude into art, music, science or technology projects.

Points to Consider:

·        Gratitude improves teachers’ and students’ social ties to each other, families, and the school community, building a positive learning community and encouraging radical collaboration.

·        Gratitude can be used to help educators and students build resilience to survive and thrive through the challenges of a school year by re-framing how they view challenges. 

·        Educators should practice Gratitude activities personally before they give it to their students so they can tell their students of the potential benefits.

·        Gratitude is much more than a pleasant emotion; it is a conscious choice, a way of seeing and interacting with the world. 

·        Gratitude is a powerful tool that can help reshape education and promote a positive culture in any classroom or school.

References: Gratitude: A Way of Teaching, Owen M.Griffith, Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.