Building Up Your Psychological Immune System
This year a special class of high school seniors is graduating. These young adults have watched the entire world respond to an extreme, life-altering event, right at the time when they are forming their understanding of how life works.
In his final words to this year's senior class, William Egan, Principal of New Canaan High School, imparted this advice: "Carry gratitude with you each day in your heart. It will help you through the difficult times and help you appreciate the wonderful everyday moments and extraordinary ones, too."
His speech so eloquently laid out the case for "developing gratitude like a muscle" that we asked permission to excerpt it here. It is with immense gratitude that we share it with you : )
"Life is a journey full of circumstances, situations, and experiences. We all experience a mix of joy and sorrow, elation and disappointment, and good and bad, the expected and unexpected (2020).
This unexpected experience won’t be the last one in our lifetime. We’ve all heard the cliche, “Tough times don’t last, tough people, do.” But what does that even mean? How do we get through the tough times and come out on the other side? And why do some people seem to weather the storms of life better than others?
Fortunately for us, this topic has been studied by experts. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, has dedicated his professional life to this research.
His research shows that we have one essential tool we can use to help us through the tough times. That tool is gratitude. He makes the point that feeling grateful isn’t always easy. We all have bad days, bad moments, times we struggle to possess the will to feel grateful.
But Emmons stresses there is a difference between feeling grateful in a moment and being grateful as a way of life. We’ve all seen people who seem to have so little or who are going through something so unimaginable that we don’t know how they hold their head up each day- yet these are some of the most extraordinary people we know. Whether it is global inspirations like Aaron Phipps, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as a double amputee in a wheelchair, or Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot in the head for wanting to go to school- and then became a global activist for women and education, or even a local inspiration doing smaller things- like Roberto, a student I had in Norwalk years ago. I will never forget the day he brought in cans of food to homeroom to donate to a food drive for those less fortunate- and then later on when I looked at the cans of food, I realized they had been donated to his family via the local food bank. And it struck me- HIS family were some of the people we were collecting cans for,
Author Melodie Beattie wrote “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to 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”
Roberto had gratitude and turned into enough and shared the little he had with others. It is a moment that I will never forget and made me even more grateful to be an educator.
Seniors, being grateful is a choice - it isn’t something that necessarily comes naturally. We need to develop gratitude like a muscle. It can be something as simple as thankfulness for the sun shining over your head, enjoying the smell of fresh-cut grass after a long cold winter, or something as amazing and life-changing as celebrating your graduation day with your loved ones.
Ironically, gratitude helps us in times that you might least expect. Emmons found that “....crisis can make us more grateful—but research says gratitude also helps us cope with the crisis. Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall. There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals.” Think about that. You can develop resilience to stress whether small or large, just by being grateful each day.
Carry gratitude with you each day in your heart. It will help you through the difficult times and help you appreciate the wonderful everyday moments and the extraordinary ones too.
Congratulations and best wishes to the class of 2021."
If you're reading this and are curious about how to build your gratitude muscle, you can click on the discussion and practice at the bottom of this email. We also highly recommend Dr. Rick Hanson's book, Hard Wiring Happiness.
Thank you Principal Egan, all of the New Canaan Public Schools faculty and staff and all educators everywhere for the wisdom, skill and kindness you impart each day and especially for your heroic efforts over the past 15 months!
May all beings everywhere feel resourced and whole,
Your CMP Family
