Hi AWG Team!
My mind has been fixed on Gratitude lately, not because it is Thanksgiving month, but because I found myself in a negative thinking spiral. As I have studied gratitude and begun to make some changes in my own thinking toward being more grateful for my many blessings, I have noticed a difference. Turns out it is not just in my head either. haha! Below are some excerpts from an article I read.
How can you create more gratitude in your life and how can we help our clients be more thankful? I love that it can start as simply as saying thank you! Ask your client who or what they are thankful for, encourage them to tell someone they are thankful.
I am thankful for each of you, AWG Caregivers, you hear Tanna and I say it often but you need to know that it is sincere and we cannot express it enough how grateful we are for your stellar care and incredibly good hearts. I am thankful for Tanna and her dedication and faith for AWG, her care for each of us on the AWG team. I am thankful for Tonia and her attention to detail with schedules, her kind communication with clients and each of you, and her faith. One other thing that lifts my spirits is recognizing how grateful I am for this beautiful world we live in, water, trees, flowers, mountains!
THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE
Today, my mother still has cancer, but she’s thriving. She doesn’t look or feel sick. She exercises daily, babysits her five granddaughters, and has a social life that rivals mine. She has also doubled down on her gratitude practice. She starts her mornings with meditation and prayer and looks for small moments throughout her day to pause and give thanks. (My mother would literally talk to her chemotherapy pills every morning, thanking them for doing their job.) And she never misses an opportunity to tell her oncologist how very grateful she is for him and that she plans to be his patient into her 90s (she’s 72 now).Her oncologist said
“I see patients on the precipice of life and death, and it’s those who have a sense of gratitude, purpose, and positivity about their life that get through things,” says Anuradha Lala-Trindade, MD, a cardiologist who specializes in heart function, failure, and transplantation at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. “It allows them to focus on the journey rather than the problem, and on what’s working in their body rather than what’s not. Studies show that kind of outlook can impact the biology of your cells and how you respond to illness.”
Psychologists and other researchers have been doing research to gauge exactly how gratitude benefits us both emotionally and biophysically. “From imaging scans, we know that gratitude turns off neurological pathways in the brain that are associated with bitterness, indignation, hostility, and the like,” says Stephen G. Post, PhD, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University. When those pathways are turned on for a significant length of time, they can negatively impact physical health.
How? Over time, elevated stress hormones such as cortisol can lead to more fatty acids in the blood, increasing the risk of inflammation and cardiac problems. High cortisol levels are also linked to slower wound healing and a shrinkage of the hippocampus, a classic hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. “So if you can move someone into gratitude and turn off some of those neurological pathways associated with negative emotions, you can do them a lot of good,” says Post.
In fact, the American Heart Association recently issued a statement in the journal Circulation suggesting that positive psychological health, which includes optimism and gratitude, can lead to improvements in risk factors for heart disease and stroke, such as less inflammation and lower cholesterol. The group also encouraged physicians to promote interventions that might improve a patient’s outlook.
But you don’t have to have an illness to benefit from a gratitude practice: Studies have linked it to some significant preventative health effects, too. According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, grateful people tend to have lower blood pressure than those without an active gratitude practice. Gratefulness may also lower levels of hemoglobin A1c, a glucose marker that, when high, indicates diabetes. Still other studies have found it can help lower stress, improve mental focus, and lead to greater well-being and happiness.
How do you cultivate gratitude? It can start with a simple thank-you—or three. “At the end of each day, think of three things that you’re thankful for.
Studies have shown that even as little as two to four weeks of a gratitude practice can lead to health benefits: One published in the Journal of Health Psychology pointed to a decrease in blood pressure and improvement in sleep quality in women, while another found that gratitude letter writing led to healthier eating habits in young adults.
Watching my optimistic, thankful mother thrive with her disease is all the proof I need that the simple act of giving thanks can make us strong enough—both mentally and physically—to handle the good fight. For that, I am grateful.
The Lord has promised, “He who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious.” Gratitude is an uplifting, exalting attitude. People are generally happier when they have gratitude in their hearts. We cannot be bitter, resentful, or mean-spirited when we are grateful. (Churchofjesuschrist.org Gratitude overview)
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
With sincere gratitude,
Wendy