Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Episode 64: Attitude of Gratitude: How Gratitude Can Help Ourselves and Others
Lowered blood pressure, improved immune function, more efficient sleep, and reduced risk for depression and anxiety. All these benefits and more flow from practicing gratitude. It’s that time of year where we practice giving thanks. But, as CSD’s Student Wellness Services Administrator B.J. Weller believes, it’s something we can and should practice year-round for others and for ourselves. “In any person’s life, if they want to feel more happy, have better mental health, have heathy relationships, better self-esteem, that’s all based partly in expressing gratitude and finding ways to show and feel gratitude and appreciation.” Learn how in this latest episode.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyons School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us.
Speaker 2:With Thanksgiving coming up, many of us are turning our thoughts to the things we are grateful for. Social media is full of gratitude posts, but an attitude of gratitude is a powerful tool year-long. A lot of research has gone into how gratitude changes one's outlook. Harvard Health found in a positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health and deal with adversity and build strong relationships. So how do we help our children and ourselves to cultivate gratitude? Joining us today is BJ Weller, program Administrator with Student Wellness Services. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Gratitude is something that it seems like we only focused on around Thanksgiving. Like I said, you see a ton of Facebook posts about it, but how does it really help us year-round?
Speaker 3:I love this question, one of the, I would say, most important things in any person's life If they want to feel more happy, if they want to have better mental health, if they want to sleep better, if they want to have healthy relationships with individuals, if they want to have a better self-esteem. That's all based partly in expressing gratitude and finding ways to show gratitude, feel gratitude and it's contagious. You know, when you start talking about the things that you're grateful for, other people around you automatically start thinking about things that they are grateful for. But it also brings to us a sense of connection and a sense of purpose, because when you are feeling depressed or anxious and you start thinking about the things that you're grateful for, all of a sudden your body has a physical reaction, chemical reaction from your brain, and you naturally feel better. When you're depressed and you do something to help somebody else, like the service part of gratitude you naturally start feeling better. Is that crazy?
Speaker 2:It is crazy. I remember having a particularly negative day and I was at a grocery store and the bagger was just the most positive guy. I was like, oh crap, do I have to deal with this? I just don't want to deal with this. Today. He asked me in line what was the best part of your day, what was the thing that you were grateful for. Usually I'm a pretty talkative person, but I was just like, really, do I have to deal with this? But I'm also a people pleaser. So I was like, okay, I'm going to come up with something for this kid, because I can't let him down. I sat there for a second and I thought of something and by the end of that interaction, I walked out to the parking lot and I was like wait a minute. That completely changed my perspective of the day. It's an incredibly powerful tool to just take that moment. It completely refocuses your mind, which it feels hokey to say, but it is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3:And it's free. You don't have to pay for it. You can do it anytime, anywhere.
Speaker 2:So how do you cultivate that in your children without sounding like positive poly or a little too, you know? Sometimes it can come across as apparent that you're, you know, over the top with giving them advice. How do you cultivate an attitude of gratitude, particularly amongst cranky teenagers?
Speaker 3:One of the things that we often suggest to anybody is when you are together, think about the routines that you have. What are your bedtime routines? What are you getting ready for school or work routines? What are your meal time routines? And we would recommend that you add asking one thing or identifying one thing that you were grateful for that day into a routine. So many people will do that when they eat dinner together, many people might do that as part of their bedtime routine, as they're getting ready for bed and maybe there's a family council or they're just reading a book together, or maybe it's in the car on their way to something. That's one thing that we would say is to incorporate it into routine.
Speaker 3:Also, if you are engaged in competitive sports or extracurricular activities music, dance, art, whatever it is there are going to be times when you are frustrated. You think somebody is doing something that you don't agree with. You wish they would do it differently. And in those moments of frustration, if you can help deescalate that individual partially by asking them, you know, identify some of the things that are going well. What are the things that you have to be grateful for, like, for example, I'm driving you to this practice right now you could be walking, you could be riding your bike. Thank you is what you meant to say. You know, when there are those kind of situations In our family, we often will say that when somebody is being ungrateful for something, that we have maybe gone over the top or above and beyond to help them do something, and then they're not happy for it Thank you is what you meant to say, and it immediately deescalates and we can laugh about it and it reminds them yeah, you actually do a lot for me. It kind of balances out the entitlement.
Speaker 2:I read a study from two psychologists, dr Robert A Emmons from the University of California and Dr Michael E McWheel and from the University of Miami, and I found it really fascinating. They had three different groups. They had one group that they would have write something they were grateful for once a week, and then another group that they would write things that they were irritated with or displeased with, and another group that they would just write just events for. And they did this for 10 weeks and they found that the people that wrote the gratitude post or the optimistic things that they felt better about their lives in general and they were surprisingly they found that they exercised more, they had fewer visits to the physicians, that they also focused less on all the things in their life that they were aggravated with were the other groups. Of course, the people who wrote their irritations were more irritated. So it's kind of like one of those the wolf you feed is the wolf that survives.
Speaker 3:So there is a saying you get what you pay attention to. If you want to pay attention to all the negative things in the world, you're going to find a lot of negative things and you're not going to feel very good and your body is going to respond that way. There's a lot of research, like you're saying, that show that people who are negative have poor health, poor mental health right, fewer healthy relationships, and those who do practice expressing gratitude and finding ways to incorporate that into their lives, they're more healthy Again. They sleep better, which is critical for all health right and the relationships, the connections, you are going to be more healthy.
Speaker 3:And if I don't know if I can share a personal experience, but many people in Canyon's district know that I was diagnosed with brain cancer in August of 2023, the first week of school, and I went through some extensive surgeries and treatment and really experienced the most pain in my life. It's hard to think about it and not feel some trauma a little bit. However, one of the things I was able to do was find ways every day to be thankful for something and to try to be positive, and it's amazing how much that helped me through that trial in my life and I know everybody is going through something. Everybody has a trial that they're experiencing in their life, and I think that finding ways to show gratitude in spite of those challenges will ultimately help all of these individuals work through that challenge in a much more healthy way and maintain relationships. Because, again, you're gonna go through the challenge either way and you can either do it in a way that's pessimistic or I don't know the right words right now, but no, I completely understand.
Speaker 2:Gilda Radner, when she went through cancer, talked about one of the best ways of healing was through laughter.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And there was no denying that it still was an incredibly difficult situation to go through, like you can't just put it off and say, yeah, I'd sign up for that again. But if you can reframe and find things during the process, it really helps you get through the trial, whereas when you can't do it it gets so much darker Cause it's funny around the same time I had a stroke.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I found the same thing where the times when I was able to look at my situation and go, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful for the people in my life that this is an opportunity for me to see the tribe that's supporting me. Or this is an opportunity for me to assess the things in my life that are working and I'm so grateful for the medical help that I'm getting, cause I'm in a situation where I have insurance. Or I'm grateful that I get this time with my family at home and I get to have these conversations that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Those times were great. It was when I started going why me? And got into those holes.
Speaker 2:But it's really hard to stop that spiral when you're in the. The negative spirals are often hard. So what would you recommend, having had a really difficult trial? How do you stop the negative spiral with the gratitude? How do you pull yourself out of it? Cause sometimes it really is. It is hard to find something to be grateful when you're having a hard time, Cause there are times when it just seems like life is just kicking you in the gut and keeps kicking and it's like, well, am I grateful for this? Cause? Dang it, this is hard.
Speaker 3:Those are dark moments for sure, and you and I have talked about our personal experiences and connected in that, because not many people have gone through those things and in any dark moment. I think one of the best things that we can do and this might take a lot of energy and effort and psychological energy and I don't want to sound cliche, but a gratitude journal getting in the habit of identifying two or three things every day that you are grateful for. Our brains are not fixed, they're very. There's a lot of neuroplasticity right, and our brains we can learn, our brain can grow, it can create new pathways and we can train our brains to more easily identify things to be grateful for when we do it regularly. And so it's not about just doing something, it's about becoming somebody who more quickly can identify things to be grateful for, and it's almost second nature.
Speaker 2:Isn't it funny both of us are coming back from brain injuries and so neuroplasticity is something that I'm fascinated with, because I keep thinking if you can relearn the things that you have to from those sort of things like relearning balance or relearning speech all those things.
Speaker 2:what other things can you relearn in your life to bring happiness? Because there's so many things, and I think learning to be grateful in times of diversity is definitely something that is a skill and that you can work at, just like you can work at being better at balance, being better at your speech, being better at it's the same sort of muscle.
Speaker 3:Right. Life is all about living to our fullest potential and becoming the best version of ourselves, and gratitude is a major, major part of helping us in that journey. We wanna be happy. Well, if you wanna be happy, you need to find ways to express gratitude regularly.
Speaker 2:I also found that writing thank you cards, sitting down and taking the moments to write thank you cards to people, really brought me out of dark times. Every time that I was feeling really dark, I would be like, okay, I'm gonna sit for a second and think of somebody I wanna write a thank you card to, just random as it, even if it's a teacher that I had in the past or a neighbor that I have currently, that I kinda do it for a selfish reason. I do it because I'm gonna pull myself out of something, but I will sit down and write a thank you card just because I need the gratitude high.
Speaker 3:So, even though it might be selfish for you, it's a great way to make connections with people and be pro-social, and all of that helps healthy relationships, healthy mindset. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:It's a fantastic thing to do so what would be a couple other things that you would recommend as far as helping set this attitude, because I think it sounds easy and a lot of the really hard things in life sound easy, but they're not. They're not always easy. So what were a couple of the other things from your own experience that you found really worked, besides the gratitude journal?
Speaker 3:So, besides the gratitude journal and thinking more broadly, you have to have balance in your life, in the sense of you have to be eating well, you have to be exercising right, you have to be getting good sleep. If you're not taking care of all of those other things in your life, you are sabotaging your own potential happiness and you know that fulfillment of life right, and so do all of those other things. Eat healthy, drink lots of water, move, exercise, get good sleep and regularly find ways to be grateful. It's like maybe you're on a walk or on the block and like, oh, that's really cool, I like how they did that in their yard. Or that park is really cool. Or, wow, I'm so grateful for this tree. Or wow, look at this crack in the sidewalk and there's a little flower grown out of it. Whatever it is, you're just training your brain to identify things to be grateful for. Wow, I'm really grateful for these shoes that I have. You know, just whatever it is, just training yourself regularly doing something and your brain will love it.
Speaker 2:It's true. Is there anything else that you'd wanna say about how to add gratitude in your life or how to help your children have gratitude?
Speaker 3:I would just say if you're not being purposeful with incorporating gratitude in your life, not only recognizing it for yourself, but finding ways to let other people know how grateful you are for the things that they are doing. Like you mentioned earlier, a simple thank you card is amazing, but to help our families be healthy, excuse me to avoid the entitlement to have healthier relationships, find ways to incorporate gratitude Again. Journaling a specific part of your daily routine could be in the car after a tough situation. Use gratitude. You get what you pay attention to.
Speaker 2:It's true, and thank you for coming in. Thank you for listening to Connect Canyons. If you have any ideas for future podcasts, please drop us a line at communications, at canyonsdistrictorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at canyonsdistrict, or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
