Choosing Gratitude, Over and Over Again

The past few weeks have been overwhelming for me in several ways. From dealing with the grief of losing a parental figure, to the loss of a beloved school community for students that I care for and myself, it has been a heavy lift. I can say with conviction that the practice of gratitude has helped me balance my mood, strengthen my relationships with others, improve my sleep, become more resilient in challenging times, and be more present in both physical and emotional spaces. These ideas have been researched thoroughly, and you can find some extraordinary evidence in Summer Allen’s white paper “The Science of Gratitude”, written in 2018. I have wrestled for months over when and how I would write a story that would capture all of the amazing benefits of gratitude. I sat down a few times with countless outlines, landing in the same space: not enough time to write, and a heavy dose of fear that I will not say the important things the way I want to say them. The events of the past few weeks have provided the motivation to sit down and share a story.

I was recently relistening to a two part conversation on Simon Sinek’s A Bit of Optimism podcast with three of my favorite thought leaders: Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, and Brené Brown. The conversation was called Thinking About Thinking (Part One and Part Two). As I was listening intently to their conversation, I was immensely grateful to be able to listen to these amazing humans share their superpowers and friendships with such ease. I thought out loud, “These are my people, and I feel like I am hanging out with them right now.” Then, within about two minutes I was thinking about something I needed to do and the gratitude I was just feeling was lost. My thoughts changed to what I needed to do for my son the next day. Boom! It hit me. I know what I want to do with my article about gratitude. Gratitude is something that needs to be expressed and felt to experience it. Like most things in life, once it is experienced, it is fleeting and soon lost in the shuffle of life.

I originally planned to write this story right after I had a deep emotional experience with gratitude in my life. It was the perfect example of how gratitude positively influenced my mood, strengthened my relationships, and helped my physical health. It was shortly after the close of the annual Gratitude Museum, a fitting culmination of a social-emotional learning unit on gratitude I helped to construct in the Lower School at Sandy Spring Friends School, a small independent school in Sandy Spring, MD where I work. The Gratitude Museum is opened to families on the final day of school before students head home for Winter Break. It is always an awe inspiring emotional event for many families as they see what gratitude means through the eyes of their children. Families are also able to see the impact their gratitude has on school faculty. I ate dinner with my mother on the evening that the families visited The Gratitude Museum and shared how much I love this community of students, families, and faculty. After sharing a few stories from the day, I convinced my mother to join me to visit The Gratitude Museum the following day. 

After seeing all of the artistic expressions of gratitude in the exhibits from PK to 5th Grade, my mother turned to me and said, “Joel, you are truly an artist!” I had a moment of genuine appreciation for being able to teach students about gratitude and help them design ways to express those ideas through art. This moment of gratitude was even more special for me as I was able to see the beauty of everything through my mother’s eyes. This moment of love between my mother and me was special, and I quickly shared it with one of my closest friends. This friend is somewhat of an expert on gratitude and gratitude practice, and they said to me, “Joel, you are great at teaching gratitude to others, but are you taking the time to practice gratitude yourself?” 

This idea hit me hard. Yes, I know and have experienced the benefits of gratitude that were mentioned earlier. I also hadn’t been taking a consistent approach to finding and expressing gratitude for the various aspects of my life. It would be beneficial for me to establish a regular practice of gratitude, enabling me to reap the benefits that gratitude has to offer. But, when, and how? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin told NPR, “You can’t meditate your way out of a 40-hour work week with no childcare, without health insurance, without access to actual, real, systemic support that is going to take care of the fact that our world is pretty much constantly on fire.” This quote and the message in her book, Real Self-Care: Bubble Baths, Cleanses, and Crystals Not Included, highlight the challenges and complications of truly engaging with self-care practices, such as gratitude practices. The brilliance of this message lies in the fact that the world has many different systems that make it nearly impossible for humans, especially those with intentionally or unintentionally marginalized identities. When one is unable to make or find time to engage in gratitude practices, guilt and shame can arise, which is the opposite of what we would hope for.

Now I was called to action; it was time to practice gratitude and see what happened. I consulted an early article on gratitude research from 2000 by Robert Emmons, one of the leading experts in gratitude research, and Cheryl R. Crumpler, an expert in physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, to define gratitude before I began. Emmons and Crumpler state, “Gratitude has been conceptualized as an emotion, a virtue, a moral sentiment, a motive, a coping response, a skill, and an attitude. It is all of these and more.” I then thought of my good friend Stuart Shanker, founder of The MEHRIT Centre and creator of the Self-Reg framework, and his quote, “resilience is a state, not a trait.” Yes! Gratitude can be viewed as a state, not a trait. Gratitude ebbs and flows based on one’s experiences and other confounding factors. My experience of gratitude will depend on my level of stress in each of the five domains of the Self-Reg framework.

I began to make a phone call and a text each day of my Winter Break to tell someone how much I cared for them and what they meant to my life. This active expression of love and gratitude had me feeling stronger emotions of happiness, joy, and contentment. The expressions deepened and renewed bonds of relationships. I noticed that my body was coming back to balance within four days. I was sleeping without waking up with worry or concern in the middle of the night. I called my friend, who had challenged me to let them know that I was enjoying the benefits of gratitude, to express my gratitude for helping me return to this relaxed state. I shared this news with many friends, colleagues, and parents that I work with to pass along the gift that had been given to me.

I would like to say that the story ends there, and we live happily ever after. That is not life. The world continued, and I live the busy life of a dad with two sons who are travel athletes in basketball and baseball. A social worker with a private practice and an administrator at an elementary school. I submitted proposals to speak at conferences about The Gratitude Museum. I looked forward to sharing the story of how I work hard to teach young people to practice gratitude and how it has had a profound impact on my life. Those proposals were accepted. I was excited with the news and went about living my busy life. No consistent gratitude practice. I looked at the gratitude journal my close friend gave me at least once a week, and sometimes I felt guilty or ashamed; I would then think, with good intention, that I would write in it later that day. Trigger warning: sad news coming. I was balancing all the things, and my stepfather had a rapid health decline and lost his battle with Parkinson’s.

This was difficult news, and it altered my priorities for how I spent my time. I found myself making time for gratitude practice, and I discovered that it was helping me build resilience in stressful moments. I shared these experiences when I spoke about the Gratitude Museum at the Maryland State Counselors Association Conference in Cambridge, MD, and at the ResearchED Conference in New York City. I was grateful for this experience, and that gratitude deepened more this past week.

On Monday, April 14, 2025, our Sandy Spring Friends School Community learned that we would be closing our school at the end of the school year. This news rocked our community, sending families scrambling to find new schools for next year and faculty searching for employment. I made a conscious decision to try to find gratitude every day, bringing balance to my stress and the Prosocial Stress that empathy for others creates.To put this gratitude into action. I made sure to genuinely connect, on a personal level, with at least one person who wrote (still have more to connect with!) me to express my love and gratitude for their message. This process has been more straightforward for me to manage, as I receive at least five emails a day from families expressing their gratitude for the work I have done to help their children and/or family. Words will never be able to express how much these messages of gratitude have done for me to balance my stress, to continue to be the best I can be for those who need my support. I have passed on the message daily to others to help find the gratitude in their lives when they can, to build resilience for tough moments of stress. Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury’s 2019 blog article The Neuroscience of Gratitude Effects on the Brain suggests this, and other ways, to use gratitude effectively to support resilience and mental health.
Life is complicated and difficult. Anyone reading this could echo this statement with a number of layers depending on their life circumstances, location, and identity. Gratitude is not the be all, end all in dealing with all of the challenges life has to offer. It is, however, a good tool to utilize to help us, at times, to surf the waves of life with resilience and balance. Most of us are looking for moments to improve our mood, strengthen our relationships, bolster our physical health, and foster ways to support mental health. Exploring and experimenting different ways to practice for yourself or sharing them with those we look after, may help us through some difficult times with hope and purpose. Sending everyone love and grace to be your best self in these times.