A memorable line from the incomparable classic The Great Gatsby reads,
quote, let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead, unquote.
Which highlights one of the themes of the novel that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald drives home
about the shallowness of the wealthy society who doesn't bother to appreciate Gatsby before or after his death.
When less than a handful of people attend Gatsby's funeral after hundreds ironically swarmed to his house for his lavish parties,
Fitzgerald offers his critique of a society where people are often self-serving and insincere in their connections with others,
illustrating the fleeting nature of loyalty and human connection in a materialistic society.
What Fitzgerald saw lacking in humans in general was true gratitude.
And gratitude is our central topic for today's special holiday episode of Life's Next Lesson Plan podcast.
Gratitude amplifies the joy of Christmas, bringing deeper connections and meaningful celebrations,
which is the feeling we should celebrate all days of the year, not just during the holidays.
Today we're going to learn the health benefits of gratitude,
and I'm going to share one of the most meaningful gifts I've ever received,
and how you too can create and share this impactful gift with others.
This episode will dig into the science of gratitude and offer special holiday activities and projects
you can do either in your classroom or at home with your family.
Hello and welcome back to Life's Next Lesson Plan podcast,
and thank you for joining me for this special holiday episode.
Today's lesson plan is called The Gift of Gratitude.
The purpose of today's lesson is to learn how gratitude, especially during the Christmas season,
but really all days of the year, can boost our happiness, improve relationships,
and bring deeper meaning to our celebrations.
The definition of gratitude is the act of recognizing and appreciating what we have,
both tangible and intangible.
At Christmas time, this often aligns with the joy of giving, receiving, and celebrating togetherness.
To start off our lesson today, let's dig into the scientific benefits of gratitude.
A 2018 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that gratitude practices reduce symptoms of depression
and increase overall happiness.
Writing gratitude letters or doing a gratitude journal can create long-lasting emotional benefits.
Expressing gratitude strengthens your relationships.
This can help on an everyday basis or make holiday gatherings more meaningful,
according to a study at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2021.
Gratitude shifts focus from getting to appreciating,
which should counter commercialized holiday stress, according to the Personality and Social Psychology bulletin published in 2017.
Sometimes this gets lost in the holiday shuffle of trying to find the best Black Friday deals
and trying to fill the tree with oodles of presents.
This should not become the focus of the holiday season.
Research published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2017 revealed that people who practice gratitude
report fewer aches and pains, better sleep quality, and greater energy.
Gratitude can enhance your physical and your mental health.
Gratitude definitely fosters social bonds.
A 2021 study at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that expressing gratitude strengthens trust and connection in relationships.
The activities that I have for you after the lesson today will help you incorporate some of these scientific benefits into your life.
If you're looking for a message you can enjoy personally or in your classroom, there is a TED talk called Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful,
where brother David Steindl Rast explores the profound connection between gratitude and happiness.
He emphasizes that happiness does not lead to gratitude. Instead, gratitude fosters happiness.
Steindl Rast encourages us to view each moment as a gift, something unearned and precious, and to recognize the opportunities within it.
I have to say that in the last three weeks, connecting with many people who I used to teach with early in my education career,
who are now retired and I'm connecting with to be guests on my podcast,
this is the number one message that they have shared to appreciate every day, to appreciate the small moments of happiness,
and to not take any days for granted.
To help with this, Steindl Rast offers a practical three-step method for cultivating gratitude.
First, stop. Take time to pause and recognize and appreciate the present moment.
This can be just sitting, eyes closed, appreciating the small things in life. This can also involve journaling or just deep breathing.
Second, look. Look around you. Try to engage your senses and notice the richness of what life offers.
Enjoy the beauty of the color of the leaves, the falling snow, the lights on the Christmas tree, the small joys that bring you pleasure.
And third, go. Act on the opportunities presented by the moment, embracing them fully.
Wrap up in a warm blanket, smile, put on some soothing music, just appreciate and be present in the moment.
Steindl Rast clarifies that while we can't be grateful for everything, particularly in situations involving suffering or injustice,
we can be grateful in every moment by finding opportunities for growth and response.
This perspective can transform difficult experiences into meaningful lessons.
The broader impact of gratitude according to Steindl Rast extends beyond personal well-being.
A grateful mindset reduces fear and violence, fosters a sense of abundance, and promotes sharing and generosity, creating a more joyful and harmonious world.
I will be sure to include a link to this TED Talk in the show notes.
So now we can move to the part of the lesson that includes our reflection and activity.
The first option is what a lot of people already are familiar with, or perhaps you already practice, and that is a gratitude journal.
If you'd like to start on a small scale and practice this right now, you can simply pause the audio and write down three things you're grateful for in the moment.
Research by Greater Good Science Center indicates that this small exercise immediately boosts your positivity and reduces stress.
A second option is to take time to write a gratitude letter.
Whether you send it or not doesn't matter.
It is the action of writing to someone who has made a positive impact on your life, and this act of writing increases happiness.
Again, you may pause now if you're feeling compelled in the moment to compose a letter, or you can add this to your list to do at another time.
The last activity you can engage in for today's lesson is to get outside and take a mindfulness gratitude walk.
Taking a walk and noticing what you're thankful for in the environment such as fresh air, nature, or simply having the ability to move immediately shows benefits.
The wiring in your brain changes after just a 10 minute walk outside.
This is a practice as well that can serve you each day, whether you do it in the morning, in the middle of a work day to take a break, or at the end of a day to decompress.
This is probably a great time in the episode to remind any educators who are listening that you can receive a free Headspace account to assist you with your mindfulness activities.
There are so many options in the Headspace app as far as guided meditations or sleep meditations to help you increase both your gratitude practice and just your everyday mindfulness.
And just like that, we've come to the homework or action step portion of today's episode.
And this is where I want to share with you a little story about one of the best gifts I've ever received.
So right before the winter break during the school year, we would have an exchange in my journalism classroom called Secret December Friends.
Because not everybody in our district celebrates Christmas, so we were keeping it PC.
So we would exchange names kind of the week or two before and put a small $10 limit typically on exchanging gifts.
And everybody would create a little wish list and we would shop for each other and wrap it up and then bring food and kind of have a celebration the last day before break.
And that became kind of a funny tongue-in-cheek team bonding sort of activity.
One year, probably three or four years back now, the staff gifted me a little mason jar.
And in the mason jar had a bunch of colorful slips of paper and on the top lid of the mason jar, I'll post some videos and pictures of it on social media.
There was a little Sharpie drawing that just said, heart to you exclamation point.
And when you opened it up, there were a bunch of slips of paper with students favorite memories of me or slips of gratitude, memories that they had written to me.
And the editors who put this gift together had gone back years prior and reached out to former editors who had shared their moments of gratitude about being in my class and just how I had impacted their lives.
And truly, it wouldn't matter what the gift cost or when I received it. But again, it was one of one of the most meaningful and impactful gifts that I've ever received.
And I've kind of recreated this idea a little bit and created my own gratitude jars. I give these as gifts from time to time.
Again, I'll post some information about how I created the jars and what they look like.
But they're really meant to be used 365 days a year kind of going back to the opening quote in this podcast that we should celebrate people or life on a daily basis, not just at the end of the year.
So the jar asks you to put a slip of paper or a receipt or whatever you have near you to jot down any small or large thing that you are grateful for that day.
And then at the end of the year or in the new year, you can open the jar either alone or as a family and read all of the amazing moments that you were grateful for in the previous year.
I just think that this is such an amazing practice, both the gratitude jar that was gifted to me as a personal gift where the messages were written about me.
I think that that would be such a wonderful gift for a family member, a neighbor, a close friend.
You can ask others to contribute to it. That's one just amazing touching gift that you could give or to create a 365 day gratitude jar.
It starts empty and then your children or again yourself, your significant other, you can write down your moments of gratitude each day and then read them at the end of the year, empty it out and start over.
So I will post some pictures and videos of those jars on social media.
A couple other activities for homework that you could do either in your classroom or at home with your own children is that you could hand out like red on green printer paper.
You could even have some Christmas themed templates to have children or students create a gratitude map.
And so here they could just kind of do like a word cloud and you can encourage them to write down things that they are grateful for.
You could also do this at Thanksgiving time, things that they're thankful for and encourage them to take simple concepts like family or my pets and to have them be a little bit more specific about it.
Like my sister helping me with homework or when my dad drives me to school each day, things like that.
These can just be hung up in the classroom or at home or these can be decorated as gifts as well.
And then the last idea that I had was to create gratitude ornaments.
So again, you could provide paper or I know craft stores have like small blank wooden ornaments and you could ask students or your own children to write or draw something that they're thankful for.
And you could gift these or you could also hang them in the classroom.
I know we have a yearbook tree, but you could create a little gratitude tree or these would be wonderful ornaments to put on your Christmas tree at home.
I want to thank you again for joining me for this special holiday episode. I know everybody's holiday season is so busy and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and spend a little bit of time thinking about gratitude.
I hope you enjoyed today's lesson that blended scientific insights with practical tools for keeping what's most important at the center of the holiday season.
Remember that gratitude can amplify the joy of Christmas, bringing deeper connections and meaningful celebrations.
In the end, it's not about how many presents are under the tree. It is about the meaning in our lives, the strength of our relationships and how we can be sure those who mean the most to us know how much their presence impacts our lives, especially while we can still share that with them.
I can't express enough how grateful I feel that you have decided to take time to listen to my messages each week.
Your feedback has me on cloud nine and it has been an honor to share this new journey with you.
However big or small your holiday celebration is, I want you to know that I am celebrating with you and I am thankful for the gift of your presence in my life, however near or far.
Until next week, if you'd like to subscribe to our email list for special offers, send us your email at nextlessonplanatgmail.com.
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In the meantime, have a blessed holiday and we'll see you in 2025.