Pandemic Positivity

The unusual circumstances of the last months has made us all think more about gratitude. Now it's time to take some of those lessons into a hopefully brighter future.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Gratitude Diaries, a production of My Heart Radio.
Hi I'm Janie Kaplan. Thanks for joining me for another
episode and another chance to think more gratefully. Today's tip.
If you have found some new reason to be grateful
these last months, see if you can turn that feeling

(00:24):
into a regular habit. I was talking to a friend
the other day about all the virtual talks I've given
in the last several months. I've spoken to a lot
of big groups about my new book, The Genius of Women,
but I've also noticed a huge surge of interest in gratitude.
My friend thought about that and she asked, do you
think the pandemic has made people more grateful or less?

(00:48):
It was a great question, and it's stymied me for
a moment, but I think I do have the answer.
People are not necessarily feeling grateful for their circumstances right now,
but the unusual situations of the last months have made
us all think more about gratitude and it's profound meaning
and resonance. We realize that we need gratitude more to

(01:10):
get us through when we can't see friends or go
out to theater or movies. We're missing our usual sources
of daily distractions and satisfactions. So we turn to gratitude
because we somehow implicitly understand that gratitude isn't about momentary
and superficial happiness. It has a much deeper resonance. It

(01:32):
allows us to think more about the greater purpose of life,
what we care about, and who we can depend on.
By those measures, many people have become much more grateful.
One man emailed me recently to say that he lives
in the country on a hill near a beautiful forest.
He's sad for what's going on, but he said the

(01:55):
times have changed him. You don't always think to be
grateful just for serve bival, and now he is grateful
for that every day. He said that the pandemic has
made him think more about how he'd like to live
the rest of his life and what really matters. He
and his wife are grateful to be together, and he
said that when he steps outside his home now into

(02:16):
that lovely forest, he has learned to literally and metaphorically
smell the flowers. One busy mom told me she started
thinking about gratitude in a different way during this pandemic.
Her young children are lucky enough to be at a
school that hasn't closed and is still operating. In person,

(02:37):
she said that as she waits outside to pick up
her second grader every day, she thinks how grateful she
is to the teachers and faculty who are inside, and
when her child comes out, she reminds herself to take
a moment to be grateful that she's there and healthy
and happy. The gratitude moment puts her in a much
better frame of mind for whatever happens in the long

(03:00):
hours after school. I heard another lovely story out of Brainred, Minnesota,
where a man pulled into the drive through window at
a Dairy Queen at lunchtime and he told the cashier,
I'll pay for the car behind me too, whatever they order.
I got it. When the next person pulled up and
heard what the man had done, she said, well, I'll

(03:20):
pay for the person behind me. Now. We've all heard
these pay it forward stories before they've happened, and they're
always fun and inspiring to hear about. But this one
didn't end after a couple of dozen rounds as they
usually do. Once it had hit nearly fifty cars, the
general manager posted about it on the Dairy Queen Facebook page.

(03:41):
She updated it when it hit a hundred fifty cars
and again at two se Now it wasn't just happenstance.
People actually wanted to be a part of this chain
of gratitude and giving. Cars started lining up. People talked
about how they wanted this to be a statement of
kindness at a time i'm, as one woman put it,

(04:01):
when there's a lot of anger, anxiety, and selfishness going on,
quite the opposite feeling did permeate that dairy Queen and
the gratitude chain of people paying for each other went
on for nine hundred cars over the course of two
and a half days. The last person each of those
two nights volunteered to pay it forward to the first

(04:23):
car of the next day. In recent months, we've all
come flat up against realizing how much we can lose,
and that makes us appreciate what we have and what
we can give. I'll bet you've done something in recent
months to get you through. You've been more aware of
reasons to be grateful. You've tried to be kinder in
a difficult time. Now, as a new administration takes over

(04:46):
in Washington and vaccines against COVID nineteen are rolling out
across the country. There is some hope that we may
be turning a corner, but rather than right off as
a complete loss, think about how the limits of the
year helped you be more grateful and take that with
you into the hopefully better months ahead. Thanks for joining me.

(05:10):
I'll be back with more ideas on how to add
gratitude to your life and make every day a little brighter.
Have a great day. The Gratitude Diaries is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your favorite shows.