Eyes That See the Good in Things - February 5, 2018

A pediatric cancer ward is hardly the place you’d think magical birthday parties happen, but magic did happen there one day, at a four-year-old girl’s surprise birthday party. She squealed when her favorite Disney character, Elsa, from the movie, Frozen arrived. The little girl and Elsa broke into song and were jubilantly singing, Let It Go, when they were joined by four other Disney princesses. Elsa’s sister Anna, Ariel, Jasmine and Snow White all arrived to make a magical moment created by volunteer college students, whose mission is to lift the spirits of children.

The idea was sparked when college sophomore Kyle McGrane was watching Frozen. She was looking for a new community service project working with kids. After raising $2,000 on a GoFundMe page to pay for costumes and travel expenses, they arranged their first visit to a hospital.

They dressed as Elsa and Anna from Frozen and spent nearly three hours singing songs, taking pictures and visiting with 50 children that day. McGrane said the experience was life-changing, and they started recruiting their friends to join them. And they recruited their friends. Their nonprofit, A Moment of Magic, now has 400 volunteers from 11 colleges around the country and a “growing kingdom” of grateful children and parents.

You know this is the kind of story that I love to share, but it also reminds me of an article I recently read called, How Gratitude Improves Your Health. The article focused on the science behind the natural high of thankfulness.

The author experienced her own gratitude moment after she found her partner unconscious on the floor and called 911. Emergency personnel arrived within minutes; a police car came first, followed by an ambulance of medical personnel, who administered emergency care and transported him to the hospital. There, he received the critical care he needed. A week later, she wrote thank you notes and dropped them off with batches of “still warm brownies” for the emergency responders at their own departments, and drove away feeling light and happy.

She later discovered that the natural high she felt, is becoming more understood by health professionals to be a benefit of gratitude. She felt good, both because of her good deed and because she had been touched by people, whose very jobs put them in positions where they perform selfless acts and expect nothing in return.

“Gratitude is among the top five predictors of happiness,” says Willibald Ruch, a psychology professor who researches how gratitude affects perception. Canadian research confirms that performing acts of kindness, sharing thankful thoughts and expressing gratitude lowers blood pressure, reduces pain, decreases depression levels and improves sleep and human relationships.

“When you feel thankful for things you’ve received or something that’s happened, that’s gratitude,” Ruch says. “Gratitude is how you relate to others, when you see yourself in connection with things larger than yourself.”

When you live a life of gratitude, others can catch it from you; it’s contagious. People who have been helped are more likely to help others. One study found that when someone is thanked, it more than doubles his or her chances of being helpful again. There’s a trickle-down effect.

We can also train our brains to be grateful; if we aren’t particularly grateful now, we can learn to be. People who write down three positive things that happen to them each day, cultivate health-inducing thankfulness. People might have difficulty recognizing the good things that occur. “If you write them down, you experience those things more intensively,” Ruch says. “Gradually, your brain gets trained into a more appreciative mode.”

Ruch instructs patients to keep a gratitude journal and says they often choose to keep it up later. A man who kept a gratitude journal through a battle with lymphoma, said gratitude training helped him through some really dark times. Yes, he got cancer, but what he chose to focus on daily was that he got to be with his family more, got to know them in deeper ways than he ever had before, and they all gained a greater appreciation for life.

When we express gratefulness, we make ourselves happier. When we share it directly with the person we feel grateful to, the benefits accumulate. Researchers found that people who write thank-you notes to those they haven’t already properly thanked, may improve interpersonal relationships for up to six months.

John Kralik, an attorney from California, experienced this firsthand. As a result of two divorces, he wasn’t as close with his children as he wanted to be. His law practice also wasn’t making money, despite the grueling hours he devoted to working. At a particularly low moment, he remembered his grandfather telling him decades earlier about the importance of gratitude. He decided to write a thank you note every day; 365 thank-you notes over 365 days, hoping for a positive change.

Kralik said he immediately noticed that his attitude and his fortunes improved. At the end of the year, he wrote a book about his experience, A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life.

“I don’t need a scientific study to know that if you are grateful to people and if you learn how to accept gratitude well from other people, your life will be enriched,” Kralik says. “The first effects are that you realize you have a much better life than you thought.”

We would love to share local stories about the good things your eyes are seeing.

Stop in to share your stories with us, give us a call at 947-2417 or e-mail us at [email protected]. Or send a letter to Eyes That See the Good in Things, c/o Allison Lindgren, The Transcript, 6 8th St N., New Rockford, ND 58356.