Joe Dentzer’s smile spreads across his face when he talked about the upcoming vacation to Italy he and his wife are taking and the debt of gratitude he owes to his grandfather for making the trip possible.
“We will leave on October 15 and return on October 30,” Dentzer explains. They will be visiting Italian sites like Rome, Florence, Venice and Lake Como.
Dentzer co-owns a successful Chicago-based plumbing business with his cousin.
His grandfather founded the company and it was taken over by his father and his uncle when the grandfather retired.
Dentzer and his cousin are third-generation owners. “I’m grateful that my grandfather started this business because without it I wouldn’t be able to travel to Italy,” he says.
In 2011, Randy Boston nearly lost everything after he was laid off from his job at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Lurie Cancer Center. He suffered a marked depression, was unable to care for himself for a time and eventually became homeless, losing his apartment and most of his personal possessions.
But his friends came to his rescue.
“I’m absolutely grateful,” 54-year-old Boston says. “They gave me money and took me to lunch. Another friend took him in after several of his friends volunteered to help him move.
Both Dentzer and Boston show the power of being grateful and appreciating all the good things and people you have in your life—something that’s especially important to keep in mind as the holidays close in on us.
Thanksgiving is the nation’s annual holiday in which gratitude is celebrated, says Robert A. Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis.
Emmons, who has authored several books on the subject of gratitude, including “Gratitude Works! A Twenty-One-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity,” “THANKS! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier” and “The Psychology of Gratitude.”
“Most of us, however, associate Thanksgiving with food,” says Diana Winston, director of Mindfulness Education, Mindful Awareness Research Center at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
“One could argue that people are more prone to depression during the holidays and that the practice of gratitude would be very helpful during this time. Of course most of us think of it as a holiday that centers around food. The healthiest people do not only practice gratitude at the holidays, but all times of the year! “
So what is gratitude and why do we need to practice it?
Harvard Medical School reported in a news release that gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness or gratefulness.
“It can be defined as the quality of being thankful, a readiness to show appreciation and notice the goodness around us,” Winston says. “Also it motivates us to return kindness.”
Gratitude is as simple as telling someone thank you when they hold open the door so you can walk through.
“It can also involve a movement of your heart to recognize and appreciate goodness in the some form or another,” Winston adds. “You might just feel it inside yourself without specifically acting upon it.”
Gratitude however, has until recently been ignored because it is such a simple, benign gesture despite its obvious physical and mental health benefits, according to the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Davis.
“Yes, saying ‘thank you’ is an essential, everyday part of family dinners, trips to the store, business deals, and political negotiations. That might be why many people have dismissed gratitude as simple, obvious and unworthy of serious attention,” says Greater Good: The Science of Meaningful Life, the newsletter of the Greater Good Science Center, which studies the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being.
“The Science of a Meaningful Life” says gratitude promotes a strong immune system, lowers blood pressure, leads to higher levels of positive emotions, including joy, optimism and happiness. Acting with greater generosity and compassion can ease feelings of loneliness and isolation.
In the book, “Self Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind To Yourself,” by Kristin Neff, an associate professor of Human Development at the University of Texas, the psychologist Emmons is quoted as saying gratitude recognizes gifts that are given by other people, God or life itself.
Gratitude also involves mindfulness, an intentional state of consciousness in which a person lives as fully as possible in the present moment rather than ruminating over the past or worrying about the future.
In “The Science of a Meaningful Life” Emmons suggests you keep a gratitude journal, a record of the things for which you’re grateful.
An active practice of gratitude can include counting your blessings everyday or putting money every day in a gratitude jar. When the jar is full, you can give the money to a person in need. It also could include meditating and visiting and thanking a person who had a positive influence on your life.
Boston is now working part-time as a cashier at a Target store in Chicago and at other odd jobs to make ends meet. He is actively seeking full-time employment and hopes to secure a position in an academic setting.
He is an example of a person living fully in the moment despite significant challenges he has faced and had to overcome over many years. And that, according to Winston, is the key to health and happiness.
“When we live more in the moment, fully inhabiting our lives instead of lost in the past or obsessing about the future, people frequently report feelings of gratitude that arise—appreciation of life, including simple things present in each moment,” Winston says.