Science

Bev Meyer was standing at the bedside of her dying father when she felt an emotion she hadn’t anticipated: gratitude. Broken from years of heavy drinking and felled by a massive stroke, her father lay motionless, unable to communicate. As their troubled relationship drew to an inevitable close, Bev hung her head and cried, grieving as much for the relationship that had eluded them as for his impending death. Then, inexplicably, the man who couldn’t speak and could barely move reached up and gently touched her cheek. It was a final act of love and comfort that bridged a rocky history, and Bev was filled with an overwhelming outpouring of gratitude and relief. “I had many years of not feeling that love, so I carry that with me,” says Bev, of Oregon, Wisconsin. “I was so grateful that I was there for his last breath and could have that moment. Without that gratitude, I don’t know how I could ever get through my grief.” Although both gratitude and grief are common emotions, we don’t necessarily think of them as going hand in hand. However, gratitude can provide a powerful source of healing during the grieving process. “Gratitude reminds us that we can find happiness even when life is painful and messy, as it often is,” says Kingsley Gallup, MA, LPC and author of Project Personal Freedom. Presenting at the International Positive Psychology Association’s Fourth World Congress in 2015, she explained, “With gratitude, we can embrace our grief and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Regardless of the source of our grief—whether it’s a recent loss or a long-standing injury—Kingsley says that practicing gratitude is an effective way to reinstate joy in our lives. “For anyone who’s grieving, isn’t that what we want? To feel joyful again?” she asks. “Gratitude heals. I see it in my clients all the time, and it has healed me in my own journey.” Going Against the Grain Practicing gratitude while suffering with grief doesn’t feel instinctual or natural, she acknowledges, and many clients tell her that practicing gratitude “seems unrealistic.” Kingsley says that even though we are not hard-wired to feel thankful while suffering, adopting a gratitude practice can help us move through the grief process more purposefully. “Grief is part of the human condition,” she says, noting that grief comes from many types of losses. It can be the “loss of dreams, time, self esteem, enthusiasm, relationships and loved ones.” While the inevitability of grief is universal, each loss has its own nuances: losing a parent is different from losing a child; sudden, unexpected loss from a traumatic event will affect us differently than a death that was expected. Kingsley says making the decision to heal, and then taking action, is a key step. With the loss of a loved one, actions such as writing a letter of gratitude and acknowledging all the things you loved and appreciated about the person—and also what you learned and how they changed you—can be a powerful tool for healing and transformation. “There’s something unique about the deliberate act of writing that letter,” Kingsley says. “Then share it with a trusted individual or during a service or ritual; it’s very healing.” Regardless of the magnitude and depth of grief, Kingsley says, gratitude can close the gap between pain and peace, between grief and joy. “We grieve because we so deeply appreciated our loved one,” she says. “Gratitude bridges the past, present and future; it allows us to retrieve the positive from the past, and connects us with the present, and we embrace our good fortune.” And, ultimately, it delivers the future as we begin moving forward with optimism. When Holidays Hurt Grief is often magnified during the holiday season, and Kingsley believes the power of gratitude is also heightened during this time. She says using “the immeasurable power of gratitude” is a powerful tool that can help us cope with the emotions that accompany the holidays. “We can count blessings. We can count them daily—and deliberately,” she says. “Perhaps we will create a holiday tradition around blessings. Perhaps we will give gifts of gratitude. With gratitude, we can find beauty in our holiday sadness.” However, it’s equally important to acknowledge the grief as it arises. “We can lean into our grief as opposed to trying to avoid or outrun it,” she says. “Leaning into grief is about going within. By leaning into it, we actually move through it.” And, to help move through the complicated and challenging emotions that accompany the journey of grief, she says the holidays can provide the kind of reminders we need to celebrate what we have even as we acknowledge what’s been lost. “With gratitude, we focus on what is present,” Kingsley says. “We focus on the here and now. We allow ourselves to feel the pain, knowing that we wouldn’t hurt so much if we didn’t care so much.”             She said thinking of the relationship as ongoing through memories provides a profound healing energy. “Grief may never end, per se, but it will change shape,” she says. “And we can do much to change its shape. Gratitude is acceptance. It allows us to embrace a chapter of life we hadn’t envisioned. When we can find the blessings, we are better able to let go.”

The association of nature and its positive impact on well-being has been widely researched in recent history. The largest study on natural spaces and wellness recently released suggests that living in areas without enough access to nature can contribute to premature death. Whether it’s to get nourishment, physical activity or serenity, being in nature can make us happier. According to the biophilia hypothesis, we have an innate connection with green and blue spaces and having more of it in our lives can do wonders for our well-being. A Walk in the Park Spending just 20 minutes in a city park can make you happier and you don’t even have to exercise, according to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research. The reason for this, researchers explain, is that urban parks provide opportunities for people to connect with nature as well as with each other. Nearly 100 participants filled out questionnaires regarding their subjective well-being before and after their park visits. Results show a “significant improvement” in subjective well-being after the visit, with the highest improvement in life satisfaction by 64 percent. In a separate study from the University of Vermont, researchers found that spending time in parks lifted moods equivalent to the same kind of feelings people felt of Christmas. Stop and Smell the Roses It’s not just immersing yourself in nature that gives you an emotional boost, just noticing small doses of it can have positive benefits too. In a two-week nature-based well-being intervention, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada found that participants who took note of their feelings every time they encountered nature throughout the day, for example, a small flower, a sprawling tree or a beam of sunlight through a window, reported elevated levels of well-being over those who noticed “human-built objects.” In addition to feeling more connected to nature, respondents also reported feeling more connected with people and with life in general. That’s for the Birds It seems that nature not only makes us happier but could help stave off depression and anxiety too. A study from the University of Exeter, the British Trust for Ornithology and the University of Queensland in the United Kingdom suggests people who live in areas with a higher concentration of birds have a more positive state of mental well-being. It doesn’t matter what type of birds are observed, just listening to their songs or watching from a window can lower stress. These findings, researchers contend, suggest nature can be used as a form of preventative health care. Not So Blue Anymore Living near a body of water may contribute to your well-being by alleviating symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression, according to a study in the journal Health & Place. It seems that living near blue spaces, including rivers, lakes and oceans, has been associated with more exercise, reduction of stress and an increase in relaxation. While the research is still new into blue spaces, living near water may be a cost-effective way to alleviate medical inequalities in lower-income areas.   So, if you are looking for a holistic way to reduce your stress and anxiety and potentially increase your happiness, try taking in more nature.

Reader’s Digest used to tell us each month that “laughter is the best medicine.” Drawing on folk wisdom, the Digest was reminding us that laughter could help us through the ordinary, daily unhappiness that might come into our lives. In 1976, Norman Cousins, the revered editor of the Saturday Review, wrote a piece that signaled the arrival of laughter in the precincts of science. It was called “Anatomy of an Illness (as Perceived by the Patient)” and appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the United States’ most prestigious medical publication. When the best conventional care failed to improve his ankylosing spondylitis—a crippling autoimmune spinal arthritis—Cousins took matters into his own hands. He checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel, took megadoses of anti-inflammatory vitamin C, and watched long hours of Marx Brothers movies and TV sitcoms. He laughed and kept on laughing. He noticed that as he did, his pain diminished. He felt stronger and better. As good an observer as any of his first-rate doctors, he developed his own dose-response curve: ten minutes of belly laughter gave him two hours of pain-free sleep. Soon enough, he became more mobile. Once the healing power of laughter was on the medical map, researchers began to systematically explore its stress-reducing, health-promoting, pain-relieving potential. Laughter has now been shown to decrease stress levels and improve mood in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, to decrease hostility in patients in mental hospitals, and to lower heart rate and blood pressure and enhance mood and performance in generally healthy IT professionals. In numerous experiments, people with every imaginable diagnosis have reduced their pain by laughing. Laughter stimulates the dome-shaped diaphragmatic muscle that separates our chest from our abdomen, as well as our abdominal, back, leg and facial muscles. After we laugh for a few minutes, these muscles relax. Then our blood pressure and stress hormone levels decrease; pain-relieving and mood-elevating endorphins increase, as do levels of calming serotonin and energizing dopamine. Our immune functioning—probably a factor in Cousins’s eventual recovery—improves. If we are diabetic, our blood sugar goes down. Laughter is good exercise. It’s definitely healthy. And it’s first-rate for relieving stress. Laughter also has a transforming power that transcends physiological enhancement and stress reduction. Laughter can break the spell of the fixed, counterproductive, self-condemning thinking that is so pervasive and so devastating to us after we’ve been traumatized. It can free us from the feelings of victimization that may shadow our lives and blind us to each moment’s pleasures and the future’s possibilities. The wisdom traditions of the East extend laughter’s lessons. Zen Buddhism surprises us with thunderclaps of laughter to wake us from mental habits that have brought unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering. Sufi stories do the same job but more slyly. Over the years, I watched as my acupuncture and meditation teacher Shyam, himself a consummate joker, punctured the self-protectiveness, pomposities and posturing that kept his patients and students—including, of course, me—from being at ease and natural, joyous in each moment of our lives. The stories he told from India, China and the Middle East brought the point home: seriousness is a disease. Sorrow is real and to be honored, but obsessively dwelling on losses and pain only adds to our sickness. Laughter at ourselves and all our circumstances is our healing birthright. A story I first heard from Shyam about the Three Laughing Monks is apropos. It is said that long ago, there were three monks who walked the length and breadth of China, laughing great, belly-shaking laughs as they went. They brought joy to each village they visited, laughing as they entered, laughing for the hours or days they stayed and laughing as they left. No words. And it’s said that after a while everyone in the villages—the poorest and most put-upon and also the most privileged and pompous—got the message. They, too, lost their pained seriousness, laughed with the monks and found relief and joy. One day, after many years, one of the monks died. The two remaining monks continued to laugh. This time when villagers asked why, they responded, “We are laughing because we have always wondered who would die first, and he did and therefore he won. We’re laughing at his victory and our defeat, and with memories of all the good times we have had together.” Still, the villagers were sad for their loss. Then came the funeral. The dead monk had asked that he not be bathed, as was customary, or have his clothes changed. He had told his brother monks that he was never unclean, because laughter had kept all impurities from him. They respected his wishes, put his still-clothed, unwashed body on a pile of wood, and lit it. As the flames rose, there were sudden loud, banging noises. The living monks realized that their brother, knowing he was going to die, had hidden fireworks in his clothes. They laughed and laughed and laughed. “You have defeated us a second time and made a joke even of death.” Now they laughed even louder. And it is said that the whole village began to laugh with them. This is the laughter that shakes off all concerns, all worries, all holding on to anything that troubles our mind or heart, anything that keeps us from fully living in the present moment. Researchers and clinicians may lack the total commitment to laughter of the three monks, but they are beginning to explore and make use of its power. Working together in various institutions, they’ve developed a variety of therapeutic protocols that may include interactions with clowns and instruction in performing stand-up comedy. “Laughter yoga,” which has most often been studied, combines inspirational talks, hand clapping, arm swinging, chanting “ho, ho” and “ha, ha,” deep breathing, and brief periods of intentional laughter; it often concludes with positive statements about happiness. I agree that funny movies and jokes and games of all kinds can be useful tools to pry us loose from crippling seriousness. Still, I prefer to begin with a simple, direct approach: three to five minutes of straight-out,straight-ahead, intentional belly laughter. It’s very easy to learn and easy to practice. I’ll teach it to you. I do it with patients individually or in groups, when the atmosphere is thick with smothering self-importance or self-defeating, progress-impeding self-pity. It’s not a panacea, a cure-all. But, again and again, I’ve seen it get energetic juices flowing, rebalance agitation-driven minds, melt trauma-frozen bodies, dispel clouds of doubt and doom, and let in the light of hope. This laughter needs to begin with effort. It must force its way through forests of self-consciousness and self-pity, crack physical and emotional walls erected by remembered hurt and present pain. Once you decide to do it, the process is simple. You stand with your knees slightly bent, arms loose, and begin, forcing the laughter up from your belly, feeling it contract, pushing out the sounds—barks, chuckles, giggles. You keep going, summoning the will and energy to churn sound up and out. Start with three or four minutes and increase when you feel more is needed. You can laugh anytime you feel yourself tightening up with tension, pumping yourself up with self-importance or freezing with fear. And the more intense those feelings are, the more shut-down and self-righteous, the more pained and lost and hopeless you are, the more important laughter is. Then laughter may even be lifesaving. After a few minutes of forced laughter, effort may dissolve, and the laughter itself may take charge. Now each unwilled, involuntary, body-shaking, belly-aching jolt provokes the next in a waterfall of laughter. Laughter can be contagious. Other people will want to laugh with you. And after laughing, as you become relaxed and less serious, you may find that people relate to you differently. Sensing the change in you, they may greet you or smile at you on the street. And you may find that you’re happy to see them and that you enjoy the warmth of this new connection. Don’t take my word for any of this. Do the experiment with daily laughter and see. Excerpted from The Transformation by James S. Gordon, MD. Reprinted with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2019.

If you ask any parent what they most want for their children growing up, chances are they’ll answer something like, “I want them to be happy.” Which parent wouldn’t want that? So, if this is the aspiration that most parents want for their children, shouldn’t teaching children how to lead well-rounded and happy lives be a big focus for schools, too? I believe there are many reasons why the emotional well-being of our children should be central to a good education. Curbing a Mental Health Crisis The most recent evidence certainly points towards there being a mental health crisis amongst our young people. According to research shared by the mental health charity Young Minds: 1 in 10 children have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Half of all mental ill health manifests by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 18. These statistics don’t have to be the inevitable future of our young people. Schools can put programs in place and create cultures where the emotional well-being of students and staff is placed at the center of their communities. A Path to Future Happiness A key reason why we should be investing more in our children’s wellbeing is because it is the strongest predictor of their future happiness. In his book, The Origins of Happiness, Professor Richard Layard and his colleagues have drawn from an extensive range of longitudinal data from across the globe to establish the key factors that affect human wellbeing. Richard’s team wanted to be able to answer the question, ‘In childhood, what best predicts happiness in later life?’ They concluded that, ‘If we go back to childhood…the best predictor of an enjoyable adult life…is the child’s emotional health, which…is significantly more important than all the qualifications the person ever obtains.’ It appears that investing in our children’s well-being pays dividends for the future! Schools and Teachers Make a Difference It may sound obvious that happy children grow up to be happy adults. What can anyone other than parents do about that? Well, it turns out quite a lot. In Richard’s book, his team dug down into the data and traced which schools and even which teachers some of the respondents had in childhood, along with their academic attainment. The book found that, ‘primary school teachers have more impact on the emotional health of the children than on the children’s performance in maths.’ The chapter on schooling ends with the encouraging conclusion, ‘Primary and secondary schools have major effects on the emotional well-being of their children.’ It shows that schools and teachers are crucial to developing and nurturing children’s well-being. We play a crucial role in raising healthy and happy children. A Case of Teaching Happiness Positive psychologist, Alejandro Adler, Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania, researched teaching a well-being curriculum to more than 700,000 students in Bhutan, Mexico and Peru. In all three studies, students in the intervention schools reported significantly higher well-being and they performed significantly better on standardized national exams at the end of a 15-month intervention. This suggests that schools can teach happiness and that, in doing so, students learn better. Schools must prioritize the happiness and well-being of their students and staff. This means having well-being on the curriculum, it means making positive relationships a key facet of children’s education, it means making physical exercise a core part of the daily routines, it means having structures and resources in place (like counseling services) for students that need extra support. Whether you believe the focus of schools should be teaching knowledge, or teaching happiness, when schools place well-being at the center of their curriculum, everyone wins.

We’ve all met people who we think of as resilient or those who have overcome tremendous adversity and gone on to achieve great things. We can also think about people who are agile, adaptable and always looking for the next big opportunity. Being resilient and being agile may seem like very different traits. But it turns out they are “states” not traits, and together they provide a superpower against stress, burnout and anxiety. High agility in combination with high resilience is a key factor in preventing employee burnout, depression and anxiety, which is one of the key findings from a national research study conducted by meQuilibrium. The study of 2,000 full-time employed adults found that 40 percent of those surveyed with high agility and low resilience show signs of moderate to severe anxiety and depression, while those with high agility and high resilience had very low anxiety and depression rates, with only 2 percent at risk of these mental health issues. This study is the first to look at the implications of agility (the ability to quickly react and adapt to changes), and resilience (the ability to rebound productively in challenging situations), in the context of crucial burnout and work-related performance consequences. Resilience combined with agility enhance and reinforce one another to such a degree that they multiply the effect of each. The research investigated the interaction between resilience and agility and their impact on absenteeism, burnout, engagement and intent to quit, along with stress, anxiety and depression. The study revealed that resilience and agility have a dynamic relationship; resilience combined with agility enhance and reinforce one another to such a degree that they multiply the effect of each. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently recognized burnout as a syndrome caused by workplace-related stress and one of the best ways to protect workers from experiencing burnout is for organizations to take steps to improve both resilience and agility among their employees. Here’s what we learned: Beware low resilience, especially with highly agile people. The study also discovered that building agility alone can produce unanticipated negative consequences. Findings revealed that highly agile employees who possessed low resilience had an increased risk of anxiety (+54 percent) and an increased risk of depression (+27percent). In addition, these agile, yet low resilience employees had an increased absenteeism rate of 5.7 days per year. TIP: Build resilience, especially in people who are considered agile. Low resilience plus low agility equals high burnout risk. For those with low agility and low resilience, burnout can be a common problem. meQuilibrium’s research found that 44 percent of those with low resilience and low agility are at risk of burnout, compared with 6 percent of highly resilient and highly agile employees. TIP: Watch for burnout, and see if low resilience is to blame. Resilience plus agility means employees are less likely to quit. The positive impact of resilience and agility extends beyond burnout prevention and high performance to turnover intent. The study revealed that resilience and agility work together to double work engagement. Employees who are both highly resilient and highly agile are about half as likely as those with low resilience and low agility to leave their job in the next six months. TIP: If you’re experiencing a turnover problem, look to see if low resilience and low agility may be to blame. Resilience and agility signals openness to learning. The study found that people with a combination of high resilience and high agility are 78 percent more likely to seek out a new skill and keep up with relevant innovations and upskilling, compared to only one percent of low resilient/low agility employees. In addition, highly resilient people are 28 percent more able to adapt to changing circumstances, possess 30 percent higher creativity and a greater capability to work well with different kinds of people, which is critical for optimal performance. TIP: In today’s dynamic business environment, being open to new skills is critical for success. Foster opportunities for learning, and encourage employees who take the initiative to learn skills beyond their current roles.

Maintaining proper sleep health is vital to our well-being. Countless studies and years of research have determined that many health problems, both mental and physical, stem from poor sleeping habits. While the National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep per night, according to Gallup, almost half of Americans say they fall short of that goal. Gallup also found that people who did fall below the seven-hour threshold also reported significantly lower well-being. Sleep Friendly Seven to nine hours of a good slumber can benefit your physical health, improving your immune system, lowering your blood pressure and help you maintain a proper weight, but did you know it can also help your social life, too? Published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that people with poor sleeping habits were more likely to develop social anxiety, which can lead to social isolation. Because we are social animals, when feelings of loneliness set in, negative feelings compound and act as a “social repellant.” Getting adequate quality sleep can have the opposite effect, giving you the energy and confidence you need to be a friendlier person. What are the Odds? Getting the right kind of sleep may make you feel like a million bucks. A study from the University in Warwick reports that the quality of our sleep is just as important, if not more important than the amount of hours we log. Researchers found that the mental and physical boosts we get from better sleep are comparable to those same good feelings of someone who just on a financial jackpot. Over time, these sleep improvements led to an increase in well-being and a decrease in sleep medication. Head of the Class Sleep deficiencies aren’t just limited to adults. Poor sleeping habits and daytime drowsiness can lead to adverse health problems in children and adolescents as well. Conversely, children who practice good sleep habits and take 30 to 60 minute naps at least three times a week were found to be happier, more resilient and had fewer behavior and self-control issues, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania. The study, published in the journal SLEEP, also shows that kids who took more naps also performed better academically by more than seven percent and had higher IQs than their sleepier counterparts. Bathtime Bliss If you spend most of your nights tossing and turning, then you may want to consider a warm bath before bed. Biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have found that bathing or showering in warm to hot water one to two hours before bed can result in better sleep quality. Their findings, published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, suggest the water temperatures between 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit helps get the body’s circadian rhythm process in line by reducing our core heat so we can fall asleep faster and get a more restful slumber.