Transcription:

John Carlson: Hello, my name's John Carlson. I'm a spiritual care volunteer at San Juan Regional Medical Center, and this podcast is titled, healing Through Gratitude. So, Let's take a look at this. I'd like to divide it into four parts. The first are the challenges facing the hospital facing San Juan Regional Medical Center and the staff. The second part will be what is gratitude? The third ways to cultivate gratitude and, will end with some quotes, about gratitude. So that's what we want to do today. I want to, acknowledge the incredible work that the hospital and its staff have done particularly over the last three years.

There have been many, many difficulties that the hospital community has faced. particularly with Covid.

And so I want to acknowledge that these are difficult times and this is a difficult situation. So I want to say thank you and give a shout out to everyone who's stayed with this, and, continued to carry on through these difficult times.

So, what is gratitude? Well, I'd like to quote, a article by Harvard Medical Schools, dated August 14th, 2021. And gratitude is a word that comes from Latin, from gratia. It means grace or graciousness or gratefulness. And in some ways, gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. It's a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether that's tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives, in the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside of themselves.

And as a result, being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals, whether that's to other people to nature or higher power, for instance. And we know that. The holiday season, and into the winter, these can be really difficult times for patients and staff, because there's a lot of sadness, anxiety, depression, that are related to these times. And so gratitude can make a difference to those who are feeling lost or down at these times of the year. And one of the things that's important is in positive psychology, which is, the study of all those factors that help us build strength and resiliency.

And positive psychology. Gratitude is strongly and consistently associate with greater happiness. And I think everybody wants more of that. And gratitude helps people to feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, in a better way, and build strong relationships. And one of the amazing things is that people feel and express gratitude multiple. And they can apply it to their past, for instance, reliving positive memories. I'm being thankful perhaps for elements of their childhood or past blessings in the present for not taking good fortune for granted as it comes and also into the future.

Maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude and all of these things, in each of them can really be helpful. And so there's, quite a bit of research out there now about the positive impacts and the helpful benefits of being grateful. So one of those things is that, a study that was done, the participants who wrote things they were grateful for during a given week found that after 10 weeks, they were more optimistic, they felt better about their lives. And surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians, then those who focused on, for instance, sources of aggravation. So this is also connected to what's called CBT.

Cognitive behavioral therapy. And so that's an approach to psychological counseling where people change their thoughts. And so if you want to change your behavior, you change your thinking. If you want to change your thinking, you change your behavior. And CBT helps us to push aside negative thoughts and bring into the more positive thoughts that can help us move forward. And of course, studies can't prove connections or relationships, but they can show correlations. And so one of the things too is that when asked to write down personal and deliver a personal message of gratitude to someone who has never been properly thanked for his or her kindness and, the impact they made in our lives.

When asked to do this, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores once they wrote and delivered those messages of gratitude. And this impact was greater than any other form of intervention with the benefits lasting for over a month. And other studies have looked at how being grateful can improve relationships. For example, a study of couples found that individuals who took time, and again, I'm quoting from the Harvard article, took time to express gratitude for their partner. Not only felt more positive towards the other person, but also felt more comfortable expressing concerns in their relationship.

We can extrapolate that this can also be beneficial in working relationships if we are grateful for our coworkers and express that either verbally or in writing, it can make a huge difference. And this is an interesting point that managers who remembered to say thank you to their employees, found that their employees appreciated those messages and worked harder. So the benefits of gratitude are multi-layered and they can be helpful at any level of the hospital. So the third thing I'd like to do is look at ways to cultivate gratitude. So it helps people refocus on what they have instead of what they lack. And one of my favorite quotes is gratitude turns what we have into enough.

And so when we look at, what we have, rather than focusing on what we don't have, if we focus on having enough instead of scarcity, it benefits us in amazing ways, and the optimism can be expressed and felt. So one of the things you can do to cultivate gratitude is to write a thank you note as mentioned before to someone that you appreciate whether a coworker, a friend, a family member, but particularly coworkers. That's great. Thank someone mentally, if you don't have time to write, we can do this in our mind. Also, keeping a gratitude journal, writing down, or sharing with a loved one or a coworker, what we appreciate about them.

Another way is to count your blessing. And, sometimes keeping a gratitude journal either daily or weekly can be very helpful. A fifth way to cultivate gratitude is prayer. People who are religious can use prayer to cultivate gratitude. For instance, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do, is say, thank you, God for another day of living, loving and learning. And I start my day out with gratitude, and I find that that makes all the difference. And finally, a sixth way to cultivate gratitude is to meditate. And mindfulness meditation can be extremely helpful. And finally today I'd like to read a few gratitude quotes and leave you with some positive messages.

I love this one by Melody Beatty. She is a pillar in the 12 Step Recovery Al-Anon recovery. And from, relationships with alcoholic people, she says gratitude makes sense of our past, brings Peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It's the spark that lights the fire of joy in your soul. That's by Anne Collette, and I love this one by Willie Nelson. When I started counting my blessings, my whole world turned around. and Willie Nelson is 90, I believe. Here's one by Albert Schweitzer. At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. Mary Davis says, the more grateful I am, the more beauty I see. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, you cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon will be too late. I'd like to leave all of you with this message. I want to thank you for listening, and I appreciate you and I hope you enjoy your day. Remember, gratitude can make all the difference. Thank you.