Make Gratitude Your Practice Every Day, with Tabitha Burrill

Can gratitude improve your health?

Research suggests it can. Daily gratitude has been associated with:

• Better emotional well-being 
• Less stress and anxiety 
• Greater life satisfaction 
• Improved physical health 

In this episode, explore the science behind gratitude and simple habits you can start today. 

Gratitude isn't about ignoring life's challenges. It's about noticing the good that exists alongside them.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Intro: Why You Should Practice Gratitude Every Day
• 01:31 - What Are You Grateful For? Charlie and Marianne Answer
• 04:45 - Gratitude Dip - Recipe of the Week
• 05:20 - Practicing Gratitude - Rebalancing our Attention on What is Safe, Kind, and Beautiful Around Us
• 08:51 - Interview with Tabitha Burrill (Tabitha’s Glass Emporium) About Her Gratitude Practice
• 24:30 - "A Gift" - Katheryn Starbuck
• 25:15 - Outro with Words from Epicurus

Listen in to learn more about how practicing daily gratitude can improve mental and physical health, reduce stress, and increase well-being with simple, research-based habits. https://bit.ly/45p9ZWS

#Gratitude #MentalHealth #WellBeing #Mindfulness #HealthyHabits #Resilience #EveryDayIsAGift

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies. Relax and settle in for the podcast about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Because even though everyone dies, no one must face it unprepared.

This week we explore how gratitude is good for our health. There is scientific evidence that regularly practicing gratitude can improve well-being, reduce stress and anxiety, lower depressive symptoms, and support physical health markers such as blood pressure, and inflammation. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 48 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life.

And I'm Charlie Navarrette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We're both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions. Remember, this podcast does not provide medical or legal advice.

Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. In the first half, Charlie has information about practicing gratitude and our recipe of the week. In the second half, I have an interview with Tabitha Burrell as we talk about the practice of gratitude.

And in our third half, Charlie has a poem. Charles, how are you? Um, overall fine. I can't complain.

I still do, but I really have no reason to complain. Okay, so to answer your question, yes, I'm fine. So what are you grateful for today? Um, the people in my life.

Yeah, you know, the people in my life, and that as I continue to get older, um, I'm not completely falling apart. It just takes, uh. Just one, just one limited time.

Yeah, yeah. Just nothing but a scratch. Yes.

I'm fine. Um, I would, I would say those two things. Yeah.

And then there's still, um, as I've complained before, New York ain't the New York of my youth. But, um, you know, I'm still very grateful for the little niches I know. And that I don't share with people.

I mean, my friends know, but, um, yeah, if I, if I run into people who are not from New York and want to know, oh, so, so where's some great little place? I stopped telling them these great little places because they go, put it on social media and, and no, no, no. Thank you for asking. How about you? Uh, what am I grateful for? Yes.

What are you grateful for? I'm grateful for you, Charlie. Really? You, you, you need to get out more. I'm grateful for knowing you since I was what, 21? A cute little whippersnapper living in Ann Arbor.

That was me, not you. Right. Just to be clear.

That's it? Oh, oh, you wanted more? Um, I'm grateful for my, for my lovely daughters. Yes. And my handsome husband, handsome and healthy husband, and that we get to travel.

We got back from Croatia and Serbia, and it was really a very nice break and vacation and gorgeous part of the world and good people. And, um, it was just really nice. So I, I feel I have a lot to be grateful for and feel quite happy.

Excellent. Yeah. I mean, you know, we could complain and focus on the negative, but really what's the point? Exactly.

What's the point? We're here. We might as well be happy. In our first half, our recipe this week is for gratitude dip.

Your funeral lunch contribution will be extra special with the addition of a creamy brie wheel topped with a sweet and tart cranberry concoction and a sprinkle of toasted pecans. Pecans. You say tomato and I say tomato.

You'll be grateful for gratitude dip for many reasons. Bone appetite. Daily gratitude is a habit that can benefit all of us.

Practicing gratitude means regularly pausing to notice and appreciate what is going well in your life, even when things are hard. Brief gratitude habits can meaningfully improve health and wellbeing. Gratitude reminds us that things shouldn't be taken for granted and that being grateful for what we have is an essential part of a healthy mindset.

Practicing gratitude means we intentionally set aside time, daily if possible, to focus on things we appreciate. People, moments, abilities, surroundings. It does not mean denying pain, loss, or illness.

It means holding both the difficult and the good at the same time. Showing your gratitude can make you a more mindful and compassionate person. When you understand the things you're grateful for, the things that make a difference in your life, it's far easier to empathize with someone else's suffering.

It helps to remind us that not everyone has the same privileges, opportunities, or resources as you do. There is research data suggesting that regular gratitude practice may improve overall well-being and life satisfaction, reduce stress and anxiety, lower the chance of depression, decrease physical symptoms, improve blood pressure, and reduce inflammatory markers. Humans are wired to notice danger first.

Better safe than sorry. But in modern life, this can mean we dwell on minor problems. Gratitude helps rebalance attention, so we also see what is safe, kind, or beautiful around us.

Practical ways to practice gratitude. Keep a gratitude journal and write down what you are thankful for each day. When you are feeling down, you can go back and read it to remind yourself of the good things in your life.

Spend two to five minutes sitting quietly, thinking of a few things you are grateful for. People, moments, abilities, small comforts. Take a short walk outside, intentionally noticing and appreciating specific things.

Light, air, trees, sounds, a kind interaction. Consider taking time out of each day to look around and be grateful. Your health will thank you for it.

Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe of Gratitude Dip and additional resources for this program. This is the part where we ask for your financial support. Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone.

You can donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies. Or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. Marianne? Thanks, Charlie.

I'm pleased this week to bring you an interview with Tabitha Burrell, who is the owner and genius behind Tabitha's Glass Emporium, a fused glass company in Croatia. Her company is the largest producer of vitrograph marini glass in the world. Using special techniques, her team creates layered glass creations as well as inclusions that artists use in their own pieces.

I had the pleasure of taking classes with Tabitha this summer, and she was kind enough to share her thoughts about gratitude with Everyone Dies. I am sitting here with Tabitha Burrell, who is from Tabitha's Glass Emporium, which I'm going to give you her links and everything about her in our show notes. So you can go and check out her artwork and also all of the marini that she makes.

But Tabitha is also interesting for other reasons. In addition to being a mother and a business owner in Croatia, she also has a gratitude practice that she has been talking with us about here in Croatia. And I asked her if she'd talk a little bit about that with us.

Thank you so much for having me here. So a few years back, my family and me, I felt that we were always doing the poor me, like, poor me. And there's always a competition of who was having the worst time.

You know, it was like, I'm having the worst time. Now I'm having the worst time. And it was a competition of who was having the worst time.

And I don't know what the turning point was, but at some point I went, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be the, you know, I don't want this to be the narration of my life, the story of my life. And I started to say, no, I'm going to concentrate instead on what's good in my life.

And that evolved over time and eventually. And now, every morning, I start my day with a gratitude practice. And I do 10 things.

I mean, I always do 10 things I feel grateful for. And it can be as simple as I'm grateful to my toes. But, you know, I normally, you know, the standard ones I have, I'm grateful for my strength.

I'm grateful for my connection to the universe. I'm grateful to my, you know, to having two great kids in my life. I'm grateful for my business.

I'm grateful for, or it can be very specific, you know, we're here together. And I've been really grateful this week for being in the community and being able to share my ideas with the community and talk with the community and try and bring some of what I feel makes my life better and give it to other people. And so I've been really grateful to being given that opportunity to have a voice and have a space to do that.

And through the practice of gratitude, you're concentrating on things that are good. And it's scientifically proven. It's not mumbo-jumbo.

You know, there are people out there in certified doctors who say, concentrating on what you're happy about, what's good in your life brings more good things to you. And it's just, you're kind of being different. People talk about it in different ways.

The spiritual teacher I have is a woman called Gabby Bernstein. I follow her. I have her app.

And she talks about vibration and kind of low vibration, high vibration. And you can sort of feel it inside yourself. And there are times when all, you know, in life feels not great.

There are times when it's tough. Mariana knows that my father just died. And that could take over the whole dialogue of everything right now.

I could be in grief and processing and all of that. And it's there. But it's not all-consuming.

It's not everything. Because, you know, knowing that he had a long life, he's been grateful that, you know, he didn't have a terrible illness and he didn't die in pain. So it's just always trying to remember what's good in life, even if it's the smallest things.

Because it makes it better. You know, you know, it's been a tough year. It's been, you know, I have moments where I go, my God, it's been a tough year.

And I go, no. I start counting off the bad things. That's concentrating on the bad things.

I've also had some amazing, amazing things happen this year, which have been joyful and great and extraordinary and brilliant. And, you know, meeting these brilliant people like you and David and hearing other people's stories. I love seeing what other people are doing and hearing about what's going on in their lives, too.

How is gratitude different? You know, people say, oh, that's just so Pollyanna. You know, because life isn't perfect. There's grief and there's illness and there's death.

And so how does it, how do you reconcile those? Well, I think it's not, you know, gratitude, I would say, for anyone who's, you know, sort of the spiritual breed, gratitude is a way for non-spiritual people, people who maybe don't even believe in a deity, to pray. So it's, you know, dear Lord, I'm grateful for the food on my table. It's, you know, I'm so grateful that I have food.

I mean, there are really simple things we can be grateful for. It's, you know, it's like, quite what you've done, sort of, for Alan Carr, very inappropriate, and his humour is not a lot of people's cup of tea. But he, I heard him talking, he said he'd be grateful about having a shower.

Until recently, showers were not something that were available. And now we get to walk in and have hot water on our heads. And it's, you know, life is good.

Like, you know, if you see, you know, see things, and yeah, I know there are people who have depression, and it's very hard for them to see light, you know, through rose-tinted glasses. But even if you have depression, if you could find three things in a day that you could go, okay, yeah, I feel terrible, but I'm going to say, okay, today, I'm grateful that the sun is shining, that I have some toast that I like to eat, and that a friend said something nice to me. It's enough.

It's recognising the good things. It's concentrating on the good things, even if they're tiny and minute. There's a scale of feelings that I can't remember who wrote it.

There's a scale of emotions, and there was an interesting thing where I heard someone who went, we're all striving, we're all striving for happiness, and we strive for contentment. And I was like, oh, I quite like that, you know, striving. Just being content, that could be okay.

And then I was really surprised in this sort of scale of, you know, feeling the worst, feeling the best. Contentment's pretty mediocre. I was like, okay, I'd like a bit more than mediocre.

And Gary Bernstein talks about, so, you know, you take your temperature now, I'm feeling right now, I'm feeling, oh, I'm feeling a little bit tired, a bit lacklustred. You can't go from there to being super exuberantly happy. There's just no way to go from that to that.

But it's just going, okay, what can I do to make myself, okay, feel a bit motivated? That might be going and doing some exercise. That might be eating something good. It might be going for a walk in the sunshine.

Might be putting your shoes on. Putting your shoes on. Yeah, go into a wood and let the trees, you know, there's a thing about, have you had tree bathing? I've heard of that, yes.

You go into woods and kind of commune with the trees. You keep your clothes on. You keep your clothes on.

Although I did see someone, I probably shouldn't do it. I'll tell you after. You know, just going and being in nature.

You don't have to do anything with it. You don't even have to walk through it. You can just find a patch of earth, find a park bench and sit in nature.

Do one thing that could take you from that to the next one. So I think it's not striving too far. It's just going, I want to go from this one to the next one.

And then when you've got that next one, go, okay, how do I get to the next one? How do I get to the next one? And work your way up the scale of emotions. And yeah, and then there's always going to be knockbacks. There are days, you know, there are days where I think, God, this is going to be it.

I like this. This is brilliant. And then I'll have a day and I'm like, oh my God, I don't like this at all.

So it's not a, you know, it's not a straight line. And it's not always there. Gratitude doesn't always make life shiny and sparkly.

But I definitely feel that it's a really simple practice that doesn't take any effort at all. I write it down. Some people journal, you know, master, master journal.

Gabby Bernstein's app has a place you can put it inside, put it in that. Even if you do it in your head. And my kids and I, so we do, we do a separate one where we do mantra.

I am loved. I'm lovable. And the difference between that is I think that for me is quite important.

I am loved. People love me and I'm lovable. The other people will love me in that I'm, you know, I'm a lovable human being.

I'm healthy. And even though my one daughter's ADHD, one daughter has epilepsy, I still like talking about being healthy. It's fundamental.

They are, they have legs that work. They have arms that work. They're healthy.

I'm healthy. I'm strong because being strong and I'm powerful because if you're powerful, you can make change. And I want my kids to always feel that they can change things that don't work for them.

And then we try and do three things that we're grateful for. And I try and always get them to really feel into it. For a while, it got like, it was, you know, I'm grateful for mommy.

I'm grateful for Coco the dog. I'm grateful for dad. I was like, come on.

Think of things you actually feel it with. You know, I feel great, you know, whether it's I'm grateful that I'm going to, you know, to play robots. Yeah, I can carry that.

Yeah. Yeah. Take a moment.

So yeah, try and choose things you actually feel the gratitude for. Because again, if you just do it by, you know, I'm grateful mom will stop this if I answer the questions. Exactly.

I think because it's hard and maybe they don't get it now. But I hope that it instills into them later in life, when they maybe do need it to go, okay, I'm going to do that gratitude practice that mom always did, because maybe it'll work. And maybe it'll make it better.

Or maybe, you know, feel my mom's love and power and strength. And that'll help me through whatever this is. Exactly.

And then it's just, you know, there's lots of help out there. There's lots of people, you know, things or someone, one of the other guests was saying, you know, he loved this thing about, you know, you're great, you're, you know, there was a another speaker's mantra, and it's someone else's mantra can help you feel better about life. You know, my affirmations, I say to myself, aren't mine.

I heard them someone else say, say them. And I was like, Oh, I really like those. I mean, just use them because they're great.

It doesn't have to be your own. Like you say, well, this person maybe is embodying the, the attributes that I want. And can maybe be a little bit more like that, or emulate that.

Maybe I'll feel better. This is the thing with grief is that it's not linear, you're gonna feel like maybe crap one minute good the next minute. And having something like gratitude practice that you can fall back on it when you're in a deep, bad feeling, you can tell yourself, you know, yes, something bad happened to me, I had a loss of breathing.

But I have also this reserve. No, I mean, I think grief, grief for me is, I lost my mom. And that was, that was, you know, earth shattering.

And I felt that that was I put on a different pair of glasses, and I had to get used to looking at the world through those glasses. And for me, for grief for that it was, you know, you're swimming in it, and then it slowly dissipates. And then it's like an enormous bubble of just, and it just, and you're like, Oh, my God, and you do, you know, always happens when you never expect it.

And it just, it still happens to me now for my mom, and my dad is a very different way. It's, it's not, it's different. And I think it will be longer, and it will be brewing and it will be different.

And that's the extraordinary thing about grief is it's not, you know, I wrote, there was a friend of mine who's lost a child, a baby. And I wrote a poem about, you know, my grief being not being the same as yours, you know, that all grief is different. It's a lonely road.

It's a lonely road, because it's no one's is the same, no one's is alike, and you have to travel it alone. And you have to get, at the same time, you can, you know, there are people who can shine some light on that road, and give you some warmth on that road, and give you some food on that road. And support you on that journey.

Support you on it. Yeah, but it's, man, it's But it's still your journey. And it's also, I always remember, you know, grief is a hard thing for those who are not traveling it.

So if you lose a parent, and your husband, you know, they weren't his mother, and they want you to be over the grief, not because, because they hate seeing you hurt. And it takes time. It's, you know, it takes time.

And that hurt, a lot of times, we don't really talk about that, that hurt stays with you forever. Yeah, man. People think, oh, well, when will it go away? And it's like, it'll never go away.

I mean, it won't hurt as bad, but it will never go away. You're living life in a different way. You're living life with, as I feel, a different pair of glasses, and you have to get used to, used to those glasses, and they pinch.

Sometimes more than others, really, depending on, you know, on, you know, what's going on. So yeah, I mean, I just think, yeah, whatever you can do, find in life, things to help you through. There are, you know, there are two things we can't avoid in life, death and taxes.

And you can't avoid death, you know, people are going to die, it's natural. I've always, I'm interested when people, you know, losing your mum when your mum was 60 or 70 is, it's tragic, and it's tough, because she could have lived to 80 or 90. My dad was 95.

He had lived an amazing long life. It was his time. It was his time.

And I will grieve it. And it was very different when I lost my mum, who could have lived another, you know, 10, 15 years. It's a very different thing.

And how you lost them. You know, dad's in hospice. That's one journey.

Mum has a serious accident. That's a whole other journey. But I also, you know, having seen people lose parents in between, who have got to sit by their parents and do it.

I don't know, it's all pretty tough one way or another. You know, I don't, I wouldn't say, I always think, you know, if you're like, oh, yours, you're, you know, it's again comparing or, you know, the poor me thing. It's like, it's all tough.

It's all, everyone's is tough. But again, going back to the poor me, that I just think this can be a really, you know, toxic thing. Focusing on what's, and, you know, feeling sorry for yourself.

I mean, we all have tough times, but actually trying to find a bit of, you know, find the light is always a good thing. And on that note, be sure to continue to turn in, tune in to Everyone Dies and check out our podcast at www.everyonedies.org and look in the show notes to learn more about Tabitha and her incredibly gorgeous glass. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. Thank you, Marianne and Tabitha. We are closing our show with a poem by Catherine Starbuck entitled A Gift.

Who is that creature and who does he want? Me I trust. I do not attempt to call out his name for fear he will tread on me. What do you believe, he asks.

That we all want to be alone, I reply. Except when we do not. That the world was open to my sorrow and ate most of it.

That today is a gift and I am ready to receive you. And that ends this week's episode. Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies and thank you for listening.

You can find more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Follow and subscribe to the show. Share it with someone today.

This is Charlie Navarette and from ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, while we exist, death is not present. And when death is present, we no longer exist. And I'm Marianne Matzo and we'll see you next week.

Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice. All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

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