World Gratitude Day is September 21st, and so instead of a month in review, here’s a different kind of round-up: a look back at what this blog has had to say about gratitude and #threegoodthings.

Where the #ThreeGoodThings habit started. Sam’s version of the daily practice goes back to a rough November, when she wrote about making a conscious effort to acknowledge gratitude, sharing personal examples alongside research on what noticing good things actually does for mental and physical health. A few weeks later, Catherine turned the same impulse into a group project, inviting the blog’s contributors to rewrite a Julie Andrews classic verse by verse in these are a few of our favorite things — proof that gratitude doesn’t have to be solemn or serious.

Why bother, and does it work? Cate took the research question seriously in her post is there a relationship between gratitude and health?, digging into the evidence that a regular practice does something measurable, partly through motivation and partly through the social connection it builds. Elan comes at gratitude sideways, through appreciation for other people and other things: Elan’s in praise of rec sports volunteers is a thank-you to the unpaid labour that makes community sport possible, and her later post on grace and gratitude in mindful eating reworks the old habit of saying grace before a meal into something more reflective and less doctrinal.

#ThreeGoodThings, the practice itself. By 2022, Sam had folded the daily habit into her recovery from knee replacement surgery in three good things: the fit feminist edition, using it to notice weekly milestones instead of daily ones and to push back against the seasonal slump. The following November brought happy Planksgiving, which links gratitude season to the blog’s long-running plank challenge and confirms the #ThreeGoodThings habit was, by then, just part of how Sam moves through the fall. A year after that, she made the case for spreading it further in share your #3GoodThings: join the movement, noting that the habit had stuck for years and had already caught on with friends and fellow bloggers.

Bringing it up to now. Last summer, gratitude got tested rather than celebrated: gremlins? Sam’s weekend with six weirdly small, bad things catalogues a run of minor technical disasters and still lands on “there were also lots of good things too” — a good demonstration that the practice can hold both at once. Then, on the day itself last year, Sam marked Happy World Gratitude Day with a version of the daily list — a song that gets stuck in her head every September 21st, a bike ride with friends, a walk through Rockwood Conservation with her daughter and the dog. And Sam’s three good things, the coccoon edition finds three good things in a restorative yoga pose, a hard trip to Montreal, and a Duolingo streak — which is to say, in the small stuff, same as always.

The practice, explained. Most recently, Elan turned interviewer for positive is practice: Sam’s 3 good things, asking Sam directly why she’s kept posting daily good things for six years running. Sam traces it back to that same 2020 November post, describes how it went from a seasonal habit to a year-round one, and Elan connects it to a Hidden Brain episode on negativity bias and “gain-framing” — the idea that we’re wired to dwell on what went wrong and have to work at noticing what went right. Sam is candid about the limits of the practice, too: she also posts bad news and rejections, worries about seeming like it’s “all good things all the time,” and admits she’s skipped days when things were too bleak. But mostly, the good things are just simple and still real: light on the water on a canoe trip, a hummingbird, loons, hot tea and cookies. As she puts it, “the world is a beautiful place.”

So: Happy World Gratitude Day. What are your three good things today?

This round-up was assembled by Claude with prompts from Sam and edited by Sam. If you spot any errors, let us know.

So I have a new Garmin watch.

It’s purple!

It’s a vivoactive 5 and does things my previous watch, the 4, didn’t. I’m finding the sleep reports useful, but there are other measures I’m not so sure what to make of.

One of those is heart rate variability, or HRV.

What the heck is heart rate variability? Heart rate variability, according to Garmin, is the tiny, constantly shifting gap between one heartbeat and the next. Counterintuitively, more variability is generally the healthy sign: it means your autonomic nervous system is flexible, shifting easily between “go” mode and “rest and digest” mode. Less variability — a heart ticking along too metronomically — tends to show up when you’re fatigued, stressed, sick, or under-recovered.

Mostly mine is balanced which means that my recent average is within my normal range — and my body’s handling its mix of training stress and recovery well. Occasionally, it comes out as unbalanced. Garmin says that means my average has drifted just outside my usual range, which can mean anything from a hard training block to poor sleep, a stressful week, or the start of getting sick. It could also read “low,” but mine hasn’t done that yet. And that’s supposed to be worse than unbalanced.

Balanced is the boring-but-good outcome: it means my body is absorbing whatever training and life stress I’m putting on it and bouncing back. Yay! What factors send it into the unbalanced range? Not enough sleep, working out too hard without enough recovery, too much stress, and for others, but not me, too much alcohol.

I guess it’s useful as a tool for managing sleep, stress, and workout recovery. I’m also guessing I will largely ignore it! You?

Sources:

• Understanding the HRV Status on Your Garmin Smartwatch
• How to use Garmin’s HRV Status to master your readiness

The end of August is a busy time of year! It’s the blog’s birthday. It’s my birthday. And it’s also my left knee’s birthday. I tend to forger that one but these photos showed up as memories in my social media newsfeeds.

I underwent a total knee replacement of my left knee on August 29 in 2022. My right knee was replaced about 8 months after that.

I keep admiring how well it’s healed and how well it works. It also looks pretty good, I think.

Here is my left knee, elevated for physio. I still do lots of leg and knee-specific exercises. But I also walk lots, ride my bike lots, squat and deadlift at the gym, walk Cheddar and climb up and downstairs in our house about a dozen times a day. (I know because my Garmin watch tracks it.)

Now that’s a cheery blog post title!

What I read: The Vicious Cycle of Subtle Physical Withdrawal | Psychology Today

Why I’m interested: I’ve always been fascinated by the question of declining fitness with age and how much of it is in our control. I wrote Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice? way back in 2012. Yes, older people tend to be slower but older people also train less. Lots of research says older people get the same fitness gains from training as younger people. The problem is they/we don’t do it. We train less. We don’t push ourselves. My question: how much of this decline is psychological? Further question,  even if the decline is our heads not the rest of our body,  does that mean it’s any easier to change?

What the article is about:  The role of the brain and novelty in physical decline.  It’s not about speed,  strength or training.  Instead the focus is on the way we gradually limit our range of motion and stop doing novel physical things. As a result, we have less confidence and narrow the range of things we’ll try. It’s a vicious cycle. The idea is that subtle behavioural changes can lead to a loss of physical confidence and even greater physical withdrawal.

Quote from the article: “Physical Novelty Is Part of How You Stay Resilient

“Everyone reaches a point of physical limitations, but we reach it sooner if we shy away from physical tasks and don’t challenge our brain to regularly encounter unfamiliar motor patterns. If we stick to only a restricted set of movement patterns, our brain gets accustomed to firing our muscles only in a narrow range of ways. When we give ourselves new challenges, within reason, we adapt to them on a variety of mental and physical levels.”

This can be simple things like not climbing on ladders to get things off high shelves, or not putting on socks and shoes while standing up.

What are some examples from my life? I think of things like getting in the canoe without getting my feet wet. Since I’m in the bow, that means stepping through the boat with balance,  and then sitting down.  These days I tend to wear flip-flops and say, whatever, and step through the water instead.

Maybe I should challenge myself more often to do it the hard way.

Sarah does it the hard way but she also does the portages in hiking boots.

Or the different ways of getting off my bike.

See Getting on and off your road bike with grace!.

I’m trying not to get too much in the habit of dropping the frame to the ground and stepping over it.

How about you?

And how is this for new and unfamiliar movements?

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