Can Gratitude Transform Your Life? Yes. Make it a daily habit.

Is gratitude a habit you practice daily? Have you ever considered gratitude to be a health-promoting, life-transforming habit?

A couple of years ago, I was hired to create content for a series of school planners titled My Healthy Year. Each month was to focus on a healthy habit and ways to practice it.

I included the habits of hydration, eating regular meals, adequate sleep, physical activity, being screen-free, family meals, each of the food groups, and balancing work and play. For November, I selected gratitude.

I was recently interviewed by Abby Steiner, copywriter for SDI Innovations, the company that produced the planners. She was writing a blog post about this habit. In honor of Thanksgiving, I will share the interview questions and my answers, as well as a link to the resulting post.

Interview Questions and Answers:

Month of Gratitude Blog Featuring Barbara Mayfield, MS, RDN, LD, FAND

Before we jump into My Healthy Year, can you share a bit about your background as an educator and what experiences shaped your passion for student wellness and positive habit-building?

Answer: My professional title is Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, or RDN, with my primary focus being communicating about food, nutrition, and health - whether my audience is children, adults, dietetics students, or seniors. I have developed curricula for preschoolers, college students, and fellow educators with a teaching focus centered on building positive habits that lead to wellness.

What inspired you to combine wellness, gratitude, and goal-setting in a student planner? Was there a moment in your teaching or personal life when you realized how powerful these small, intentional practices can be?

Answer: As a health professional, I recognize that health is more than physical health, and practices such as gratitude can be as health-promoting as adequate sleep and handwashing. Additionally, it is the habits we practice 24/7 that determine our health; therefore, setting goals to adopt health-promoting behaviors, such as practicing gratitude, can be life-changing.

Your work blends education, nutrition, and mindfulness. How did your own experiences, either in the classroom or in health education, inform the ideas behind My Healthy Year?

Answer: The ideas for monthly themes in My Healthy Year stem from decades of research in health promotion and child nutrition. The emphasis is on positive habit formation, self-efficacy, autonomy, and a balanced view of food, activity, and health. Children are vulnerable to negativity about their bodies, abilities, and food. The goal was to help them create a positive relationship with food and health, not an obsession with counting steps or macros.

How does showing gratitude impact nutrition and health?

Answer: I answer this question in this blog post: https://www.nutritioncommunicator.com/post/did-you-know-gratitude-is-good-for-you-let-me-count-the-ways 

The impact is really quite remarkable and underappreciated.

Do you show gratitude in your everyday life? If so, can you share a personal moment when journaling or gratitude made a meaningful difference in your life or teaching?

Answer: Yes, though imperfectly. I am a firm believer in silver linings. One of my favorite Bible passages is Romans 8:28, which says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

In your view, why is cultivating gratitude in the classroom so important for students’ emotional well-being?

Answer: Since our brains cannot focus on negativity and positivity simultaneously, focusing on gratitude reframes our perspective and greatly enhances our mental well-being.

Many educators struggle to integrate SEL into a busy school day. How does the My Healthy Year planner make this easier?

Answer: Social and emotional learning should not be a struggle, because it doesn’t require its own period in the day, but should be modeled every moment by how we listen, respect others, encourage, demonstrate kindness, etc. This planner incorporates social and emotional learning on each page.

Your planner encourages students to think beyond tasks and deadlines by setting weekly goals. Can you share your approach to helping students build lasting habits, especially through the small, steady improvements you emphasize throughout the book?

Answer: We become what we repeatedly do, so creating habits is fundamental to creating lasting change in anything. The research I share about habit formation shares how we most successfully achieve this.

Do you have suggestions for creating a classroom culture of thankfulness, even outside of structured journaling time?

Answer: Make it a habit to verbally thank your students routinely. Build in opportunities for students to thank one another and others, such as leaving a note for the custodian, bringing the school secretary a paper bouquet, or writing a thank-you note to the guest speaker. Need a quick activity to fill a few minutes? Go around the room and name one thing you are thankful for.

What advice would you give teachers trying to encourage reluctant students to reflect and express gratitude regularly?

Answer: Model it! Share something from your own life that was a potentially negative experience where something amazing happened as a result. Share examples from others to inspire them.

What makes the My Healthy Year planner unique compared to other wellness tools available for schools?

Answer: As a daily planner, it allows for a focus on health that extends beyond a week-long unit and becomes a learning experience that builds gradually throughout the year, step by step.

How do you envision the long-term impact of gratitude journaling on students’ personal growth and academic success?

Answer: When gratitude becomes a way of life, it permeates everything in significant ways.

The post resulting from this interview can be found here: https://schooldatebooks.com/gratitude-student-wellness-my-healthy-year/

See these other posts about gratitude:

• Seeking happiness? Move gratitude from just an attitude to a way of life.        

• Can gratitude lead to success? How does it impact our personal and professional lives?        

• Did you know gratitude is good for you? Let me count the ways.         

• What is gratitude? A feeling, an action, or a character trait?        

• Gratitude is a choice.        

• Intentional gratitude.        

  
  

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

~ Melody Beattie

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