{"id":1023,"date":"2019-11-08T11:46:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T16:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2019-11-08T11:46:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T16:46:14","slug":"in-their-own-words-on-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/2019\/11\/08\/in-their-own-words-on-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"In Their Own Words: On Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The research is clear:  expressing gratitude is a key component to being a happier person.  According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.health.harvard.edu\/healthbeat\/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier\">Harvard Health<\/a>, &#8220;Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.&#8221; (par. 3)  Why is it, that we struggle with following through on the simple habit of being grateful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One student offers this as their response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I&#8217;ve always felt that gratitude doesn&#8217;t come easy to those who have what they need. As a young child I was always fully fed, clothed, and overall well taken care of. When I was younger I also didn&#8217;t really know what it meant to be grateful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Of course I was taught &#8220;please&#8221; and &#8220;I love you&#8221; as responses to receiving something, but those words were always hollow shells of what they were supposed to mean. They became an automatic response, a mindless task, nothing. And then my two best friends were introduced into my life. Coming from much less than me L and P (names not used for privacy reasons) were completely different from what I knew. Sure, we all liked the color pink and we all read the same books and watched the same shows, but we were completely different fundamentally. After spending almost every day with them, I had started to notice just how estatic the two of them were when they received something. I also noticed how they didn&#8217;t even have to use words to show their gratitude, their actions alone proved it. Slowly I began to catch on and started copying their mannerisms. However, these new practices were not enough for me to fully grasp what gratitude was, and I still didn&#8217;t for a couple years.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Then my two best friends, the people I considered sisters, lost it all. Their house was gone, their father disappeared, and their stepmom became a, for lack of better words, complete jerk. It wasn&#8217;t until I looked around at my stable home, two loving parents, and the comfort I received everyday that I realized what gratitude truly is.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Gratitude means different things to everyone. For some it&#8217;s simply to be thankful, for others the sentiment is more complex. At the end of the day it doesn&#8217;t matter what your exact definition is, only that you have a definition that makes sense to you and that you express gratitude whenever and wherever you possibly can.\u00a0  &#8211; H.C. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The research is clear: expressing gratitude is a key component to being a happier person. According to Harvard Health, &#8220;Gratitude helps people feel more positive&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/2019\/11\/08\/in-their-own-words-on-gratitude\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In Their Own Words: On Gratitude<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1798,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1798"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/sabbaghela\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}