Vim & Vigor - Fall 2020 - GMC - 14

14

Gratitude Takes Practice: Try This Trick
Picture this moment:
Your kid is crying. The
spaghetti you're cooking is boiling over. Your
partner walks in, angry
about a parking ticket.
The dog is barking, and
you look around and
see that the house is a
mess, dinner is probably ruined and everything is terrible.
But is it, really?
Reframing a frustrating moment with an
eye toward thankfulness can make all
the difference, says
Nikeisha Whatley-León,
director of Behavioral
Health Services at
Northside Hospital.
"Our brains are working to protect us. In
moments of household
fury, we have to put our
anxieties to work in our
favor," she says. "Sure,
everything is chaotic
in this second, but you
have shelter, there's

food and you have your
partner and your child
home safely with you."
Learning to reframe
your thoughts by
acknowledging they're
real can assist with
your ability to handle
stressors as they arise,
Whatley-León says.
"As this becomes more
familiar, get into a routine of going through
your gratitude list," she
says. "So when things
come up, you're aware
of them, but you're
also reminded of what
you're thankful for.
It's a good way to help
level out the stress
by putting things
into perspective.
"I recommend not
only having your own
gratitude list, but to
share and express
your gratefulness to
those around you,"
she continues.
"This means you're

expressing your appreciation and how thankful you are for them.
It's also infectious, so,
hopefully, the next person will pass it along.
After all, we all could
use some recognition
and thankfulness from
time to time."
The practice works
best, she says, when
you explain what a
person did, acknowledge his or her effort
and describe how it
helped you. Doing so
with mindfulness and
kindness is an act of
self-care.

So how is a person supposed to
find time for self-care when her
to-do list already has her sprinting
from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.?
To start, be gentle with yourself.
Note all the things you are already
doing. Be your own cheerleader, the
way you would cheer on a friend.
That practice, of encouraging the
voice in your head to be friendly
rather than critical, of talking
to yourself the way you would
talk to another person, is called
self-compassion. It is one of the
most fundamental acts of self-care
a person can do, says Emiliana
Simon-Thomas, science director of
the Greater Good Science Center
at the University of California,
Berkeley, which searches for scientific answers to how people can live
more meaningful lives.
Managing that critical voice can
set you up for success in other areas
of your life.
"That idea of self-compassion is
tied to better mental health, advantages to physical health and better
performance in a wide variety of
domains," Simon-Thomas says.
"And it's a pretty simple idea. It
involves treating yourself the way
you might treat a good friend."
So if you didn't get that promotion
at work, don't tell yourself you are
just not good enough or didn't
work hard enough. That might be
tempting, because people tend to

Change How
You See Stress

Coping with stress is not always
easy. Here are four tips that will help
you find much-needed relief. Visit
everydaywellness.org/stressors.

FALL 2020 VIM & VIGOR
http://www.everydaywellness.org/stressors
Vim & Vigor - Fall 2020 - GMC

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