Description: This episode invites educators to embrace the practice of gratitude throughout the month, offering simple, research-backed ways to incorporate gratitude into daily life and improve overall well-being during a busy time of year.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self Care for Educators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren, and this week's invitation is one that I love. It is gratitude. This episode is going to come out on November 3rd. So we are right at the start of November, which is one of my favorite months because it contains one of my favorite holidays, which is Thanksgiving. And so I love the idea of spending the whole month focused on gratitude. I know that this is a practice that many of us have. And it's a practice that many of us do for a while. And then we kind of get off track with it. And so this is your sign or your invitation to bring gratitude back into your life, especially this month.
So we're moving into a really, really, really, really, really hard time of year, what Ellen Moir would call the disillusionment phase. Things are getting busy. Things are getting crazy. The holidays are very quickly approaching. That can be hard for a number of different reasons, even in the midst of the joy of the season. And so gratitude is a research based practice that can be really, really helpful for grounding us this month.
There's no one right way to practice gratitude. There's lots of things you can do. So maybe it's just speaking gratitude out loud. Maybe with your professional learning team, you spend time each day thinking about and saying out loud what you are particularly grateful for. Maybe you write down what you're grateful for. So I do this in my journal. I spend time journaling each morning, and one of the things that I do is I write down five unique things that I am grateful for within the past 24 hours. There's something really small about that that I love, so I think of kind of those teeny tiny moments that, oh, I'm really, really thankful for, and I get to record those. You could do that in the morning. You can do that in the evening. You can do it at any time. I happen to do five things. You could do one thing. You could do ten things. Make that feel good to you.
Another thing that I do is I take a gratitude photo every single day. Um, just something that crosses my path during the day that I feel grateful for and I just snap a photo of it. Um, that can feel really good to people, especially if you're not necessarily a journaler or writing it down doesn't appeal to you as much. What if you just commit to this month or even just this week that you take one gratitude photo each day and see what happens. As I said, there's really no wrong way to do this. It's just whatever feels good to you. Maybe you write a thank you note every day this week. Or maybe you just write one thank you note this week.
Here's what we know is that when we are tapping into this strategy, we're working at those top levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In fact, this would put us all the way at the top to that transcendence level or that connection to something greater than ourselves. It's just the reminder that man, good is all around us. This is similar to the invitation we had a few weeks ago where I asked us to start a list of good things that are always- with the title being good things are always happening to me and keeping a list of those good things. This is just a twist on that, a little variation. So maybe you start. a new gratitude list or you just keep going with your list that you already started around good things are always happening to me.
Here's what it does is what we know about our brain is our brain can't hold on to negative thinking and gratitude at the same time. So if we're thoughtful and purposeful about pausing to recognize the good that's going on around us, even if it's a particularly horrific day, or a terrible week, or just things just don't seem to be going our way, or we're in a really hard season, there's something really powerful about this reframing. Reframing is a really, really essential and helpful tool that we have. that doesn't mean ignoring the hard stuff or pushing the hard stuff away. We know when it comes to our emotional wellness, we need to have an awareness of what we're feeling, understand where that's coming from, and be able to really think about those strong emotions that we have and be able to have a thoughtful response rather than a quick reaction.
And to me, gratitude can be a feeling unto itself. And when I pause and force myself to be aware of a feeling of gratitude and understand what are some things that I'm grateful for, even in the hardest moments, it just helps me have a more mindful response to things that happen for the rest of the day. It really doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take any money, but it is something that the benefits of are tenfold. There's tons of research that supports the power of having this gratitude practice.
And so that's what I want you to play around with this week. What does it look like for you? And maybe you experiment with a few different things. Maybe you try a gratitude list one day, see what you think. Maybe you try it in the morning and the next day you try a gratitude list in the evening and you play around. Does three things feel like enough? Does one thing feel like enough? Does 10 things feel like enough?
Maybe you play around with the idea of the gratitude photo. Maybe you take more than one gratitude photo each day. Maybe you share those photos with your family, with friends, maybe you start a text chain where you're all sharing things that you are grateful for in this text chain. I know a long time ago I worked with a school that, um, would send out an email to the whole staff and the subject line would be gratitude or you could make it whatever you want where they share pictures of things that they're grateful for in their classroom. I think that's such a powerful way to spread gratitude in terms of the whole culture and climate of the building.
I just want you to play around with it and pay attention, pay careful attention to what this does for your mental state, for your emotional wellness, for how you feel. Does it even loop back into your physical wellness? Do you feel better physically when you engage in a gratitude practice? Just get real curious and real purposeful and intentional and see what happens this week. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the same.
I'm cheering so hard for you. As always, we are so stinking grateful for you, Adrienne. Grateful, grateful, grateful, grateful. I'm also so grateful for Solution Tree and Marzano Resources that allows me to do this job that I love so much. And my goodness, my gratitude for all of you is so immense. I can't even put it into words. I get teary every time I just think about this incredible community. I am so stinking grateful for each and every one of you. And I want you to feel my hand on your back as you move through this week and know I am so grateful for each and every one of you. You are amazing. I love you.
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