Feeling the holiday blues? Think about what makes you grateful, Stony Brook expert says

When a bountiful dinner table turns into a forum for political debate and kids’ simple wish lists have transformed into elaborate slideshows with online links, it may be difficult to find a sense of gratitude during the holiday season.

But that’s exactly why people need to think about it now, said Stephen Post, a professor and director of Stony Brook University’s Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics. He has spent decades researching, writing and speaking about positive psychology’s impact on health and well-being as well as the importance of empathy and compassion in the medical field and beyond. Post said these benefits have been proved in numerous scientific studies.

"To be grateful absolutely calms down anxiety and all of these negative emotions — bitterness, hostility, rumination — and people come into a better place emotionally," he said. "And that allows them to be kinder."

Post’s latest book, "Pure Unlimited Love: Science and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace," released in November, features a foreword by the Dalai Lama and explores how that goal is attainable even as chaos swirls around us.

Newsday spoke with Post about how a practice of gratitude benefits people of all ages and how to incorporate it into a regular routine.

What is gratitude?

It's not just a concept, it's a practice and it can be part of any family culture. When you get up in the morning, breathe deeply and be grateful for things in your life. Do that for five minutes in the morning and maybe sometime later in the day, if you wish. Because if you do that — and the studies are very clear about it — it lowers your stress hormone levels for the whole day. We live in an age of great anxiety, great division. People feel that the center of their value system is not holding.

How does practicing gratitude help children and teens?

The younger, the better. We have found that when kids are being mindful or meditational at the beginning of the day in school, it makes a big difference in their attitudes. They're more grateful for one another. They don't get in the kind of fights that they usually would. They even get better grades because they have more of a community. There are studies that show when adolescent males spend time, as little as a half an hour a week, writing down reflectively about the things they're most grateful for, they score better on well-being and happiness surveys. When teens write bullet points or brief reflections on the things that they are grateful for in their lives — even just once a week for 6 to 8 weeks — they score higher on happiness scales. They also do better on purpose, resilience and kindness measures. This research has been ongoing for a number of years.

How can families work together to foster a culture of gratitude during the holidays?

The core thing is to not just focus on one day, which is kind of a frenzy of materialism. Parents can create a tradition such as maybe preparing a meal or working in a soup kitchen on a day close to a holiday. And it’s not just doing the act, coming home and kids running into their rooms. It’s sitting down together as a family afterward and discussing what you felt, what you saw, what you experienced. Also, give kids a choice. Maybe some of them want to volunteer at a hospital or in a park or with an Alzheimer's chapter. Some want to do something they've never done before, or others want to do something that they feel competent about and comfortable with. You read a lot of things about the value of giving, donating, volunteering. But if it's not done with these kinds of internal dimensions and cultivated, it may not be effective at all.

What can people do to welcome the new year with gratitude?

I suggest that people get out of the virtual world. A lot of people have gotten so far away from being grateful for nature and that’s really an important factor in life. Just take the ferry from Port Jefferson to Bridgeport and come back. You don’t even have to get off but be thankful for the waves and the beauty of it all. I take that ride at least once a month. Listen gracefully to nature and to the beautiful things in your environment to get away from the constant loudness of it all. We just have to turn things off and look at one another as real human beings and continue to hope that we can recover our capacity for empathy and compassion, and forgiveness, and kindness.

By Lisa L. Colangelo

lisa.colangelo@newsday.com@lisalcolangelo

Lisa joined Newsday as a staff writer in 2019. She previously worked at amNewYork, the New York Daily News and the Asbury Park Press covering politics, government and general assignment.