Gratitude has physical and emotional benefits, particularly when it’s practiced regularly. In this episode we discuss some of these benefits, how gratitude creates them, how gratitude isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you can cultivate, and some fresh ideas about how to cultivate gratitude.
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Gratitude has physical and emotional benefits, particularly when it’s practiced regularly. In this episode we discuss some of these benefits, how gratitude creates them, how gratitude isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you can cultivate, and some fresh ideas about how to cultivate gratitude.
Free Mini-Coaching Session
Sign-up for a free coaching session.
Schedule
One-Minute Wisdom
Each week I carefully craft a short perspective shift or tool that you can read in about a minute or two. You can sign up here.
Follow me on Instagram: @theexpatmomcoach or on Facebook: @theexpatmomcoach
Mooncakes, Candles, Homegrown Tomatoes & The Science of Gratitude
Harvest festivals
Happy Thanksgiving! This is one of my favorite times of the year…gorgeous fall colors, family, and yummy food and a focus on gratitude.
As we have lived around the world, one of the things I’ve enjoyed is learning about and seeing different country’s harvest festivals. In the past, we were so much more connected to the earth and it’s seasons when we were growing our own food. Harvest time was a time of abundance, where people literally reaped the reward for their long months of work. And, they could collect their food in abundance to prepare for the coming winter—which was traditionally a time of more scarcity when things didn’t grow as well.
In China, they celebrate the mid-autumn festival;—sometimes called the full moon festival. They eat moon shaped cakes, gather with friends for abundant dinner, and make paper lanterns. In Ecuador among many of the indigenous people in the Andes they celebrate an old Incan harvest festival called Inti Raymi. They wear colorful costumes and have dances and parades with music and dancing. In ancient Hawaii they celebrated Makahiki. It was a time to celebrate and give thanks for their abundance after the growing season. They stopped farming and enjoyed competitive games and the chiefs helped re-distribute resources so everyone could have enough. And then, of course there is my own home country’s tradition of Thanksgiving, a celebration of gratitude and abundance.
Growing up we had our own little harvest celebrations in the early fall. My Dad loved to garden, and he put all of his daughters to work planting, weeding and watering each summer. Frankly, I thought it was hot and boring a lot of the time; I tried to avoid it whenever I could. One of the pay-offs of our hard work though was the delicious homemade pesto my dad would make from the basil, or the tender, rich acidic flavor of red home-grown tomatoes that we picked on summer nights and ate for dinner.
One summer, I remember my siblings and I were particularly lazy about watering. all summer. Colorado summers are hot and sunny with very little rain or cloud cover. The garden’s fate was sealed by a family vacation where it didn’t get any water…we retuned to find the garden sparse and mostly dried up. We were all disappointed. No strawberries, no spinach, no raspberries. I remember my sister running into the house sobbing because it meant there would also be no home-grown tomatoes that year.
A garden’s yield is directly correlated to the effort put into it. That is the law of the harvest. We reap what we sew. This law of the harvest is something that was obvious to people 100 years ago because they were out plowing, planting, watering, weeding, picking, reaping so many of their days. But it’s easy to forget this important law of the harvest as we get farther from the earth with our lifestyles. The law of the harvest does not only apply to plants. It also applies to our physical, emotional, and mental health.
Mental gardening
Just as with physical gardening, we plant seeds in our minds constantly. By that I mean we have thoughts. Sometimes we choose them, other times we don’t. However, whether a seed or a thought flourishes depends entirely on how we care for it. Our thoughts create our feelings. So the way we think about something that happens and how much we review it and dwell on it impacts how we feel, much more than the fact that it happened. A productive yield of happiness requires both planting and nourishing gratitude and abundance as well as weeding and pruning dissatisfaction and lack.
One of my favorite quotes has to do with gratitude and gardening. It hung on my refrigerator for several years to remind me that the law of the harvest applies to my mind.
Laura Ban Breathnach wrote:
“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”
I love the concept that at any time, there are two mental gardens existing at the same time. In any situation, relationship, or even with our own self-image, there is always abundance and there are always things lacking. It’s easy to feel that our external situation is the cause of our lack. However, ANY situation has abundance and lack simultaneously. The abundance we feel is directly correlated to how diligent we are in tending the abundant thoughts and allowing the gardens of lack to shrivel up and die.
Today on the podcast we’re going to talk about some of the incredible mental health benefits of gratidue, the science of how gratitude creates these changes and how to develop the skill of gratitude in your life.
One-Minute Wisdom
The first episode I ever listened to was the one about re-writing your manual and here's why it was useful to me: we had an extended family member move in with us who had a lot of struggles—including a terminal illness. This family member was incredibly critical of me, even to friends and family. This had a toxic effect on our family. A friend referred me to your podcast. Hearing your wisdom about manuals, was a pivotal moment which gave me tools to separate my response from her behavior, ultimately opening a path to express compassion and kindness to her, despite her behavior.
I’m so thankful to this listener for sharing how she is applying these tools to her life and her relationships. This can be challenging work, it takes humility and I’m so inspired by this listeners ability and willingness to see her situation differently and operate differently. I’m so inspired hearing about the impact of the changes she implemented.
If you resonate with what you’re hearing on the podcast or have experiences applying the principles—I would love to hear your experiences. And, it helps other listeners as they work to apply them too. You can email me through my website theexpatmom.com, or you can DM me on instagram @theexpatmomcoach or on Facebook @theexpatmomcoach.
Also, every week I distill down one tool or idea to something that can be read in about 1 minute. It’s free and it comes straight to your inbox for you to try with your family that week to improve yours and your family’s mental and emotional health.
Let’s jump into our topic for the day!
Benefits of Gratitude
Studies show that people who practice gratitude have significant physical and emotional benefits (Study of all benefits)
Over the past ten years, studies have repeatedly shown how gratitude improves both physical and emotional health. Dr. Robert Emmons, the leading expert on gratitude and author of the book, THANKS! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, lists a number of specific physical health benefits he has observed in grateful people. They enjoy lower blood pressure, less pain, more energy, better sleep, stronger immune systems, and even a longer life.
Studies also show emotional health benefits….grateful people are happier, experience less depression, higher self-esteem, feel less lonely, and are more likely to help others—which helps them feel more connected socially (one of the strongest predictors of happiness.
How Does Gratitude Make Us Happier and Healthier?
Knowing that gratitude makes us healthier and happier is helpful because it may motivate us to be more grateful. However understanding HOW gratitude helps us be happier and healthier can be even more motivating. This will be a behind-the-scenes look at what science shows us happens to our brains when we are grateful.
Gratitude Changes the Chemistry of the Brain
Our thoughts actually stimulate various neurotransmitters in the brain which in turn create our feelings. When we change what we are thinking, we can often change our feelings. Studies show that grateful thoughts cause the brain to produce more neurotransmitters of serotonin and dopamine. Seratonin is known as the “happy” hormone. Lower levels of seratonin are associated with depression. Anti-depressants help the body access more seratonin. Gratitude is not in any way a substitute for anti-depressants, however, I think it’s fascinating to see that we can generate some of this neurotransmitter that increases mood simply by the way we choose to think! Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is responsible for causing us to seek out rewards…to eat, to connect with others etc. The more dopamine we have the more likely we are to do things that create happiness in our lives. It’s powerful to realize that simply by deliberately placing thoughts in our brain about what we are thankful for, we can change our neurochemistry and shift it to happiness.
Dr. Robert Emmons, a psychologist at UC Davis, did a study with individuals demonstrating this effect of regular gratitude. He asked 1/3 of them to write down daily what they were thankful for. He asked 1/3 to write down things that irritated them. And, the last 1/3 could write down whatever they wanted each day. After 8 weeks, he found that those who wrote down things they were thankful for were significantly happier. Those who wrote down things that irritated them were less happy than those who wrote down whatever they wanted. Those who wrote whatever they wanted didn’t show a significant change in happiness.
Gratitude is a Skill
Some of us tend to think of gratitude as an emotion that happens to us when we get something we want or when something good happens to us. But I would like to suggest that gratitude is a skill. It’s something you can learn, practice and cultivate. We don’t have to wait for it to happen to us. In other words there’s a difference between being thankful FOR something, and being thankful. It’s possible to be thankful even when we don’t like our circumstances. We don’t have to be thankful for the things we don’t like, but there are almost always two gardens at any one time—a garden of abundance and a garden of lack. We choose to be grateful when we cultivate our garden of abundance.
Shawn Achor a positive psychologist teaches that there are 11 million bits of information available to us at any one time. However, we can only take in about 40 bits at a time. Since the brain can’t take in everything, it tends to prioritize the most urgent, threatening, or novel or things. This can be good as it can help and others around us survive. However, it also means we don’t always experience some of the wonderful abundance in our lives because gratitude isn’t always urgent, threatening, or novel!
During your morning routine, you’re most likely to be focusing on what needs to happen next in order to get out the door, not necessarily focusing on how darling your children are while they are playing. If you are driving and you see an accident, you’re likely to look over to see what happened instead of thinking about the abundance you enjoy owning a car. If you are sitting around a campfire and see that a child is about to accidentally poke another child in the eye with the marshmallow roasting stick, you will likely immediately filter out conversations, physical sensations, thoughts of plans for tomorrow, and focus on how to address the dangerous situation!
In addition we tend to take people and things that really mean a lot to us for granted since we may see them frequently. Here is a simple example. A few years ago, I got a new watch. I was so excited to open the box when it arrived! It was even more beautiful in person than I had imagined looking at it on-line. I was excited to put it on the next day. Every time I looked at it, it made me happy. I felt grateful for the new watch. But each day I noticed the watch a little bit less—it was a bit less novel to me and eventually it was just something I put on. It didn’t bring me the same joy each time I looked at it.
Studies show that the deliberate choice to practice gratitude can re-create some of the same thoughts and feelings we had when things were more novel or urgent. So I made a deliberate effort each time I’ve looked at my watch to think about how grateful I am for it. This simple act made me smile several times.
Gratitude is the art of simply bringing our awareness of these important things back to the surface. Thinking about them increases our happiness because it magnifies an authentic feeling we have shelved for efficiency’s sake.
Shawn Achor explains that in addition to feeling more happiness in the moment when we are grateful, the more we practice deliberate gratitude, it re-wires our brain to keep looking for positive things and things we are grateful for. Gratitude is the gift that keeps on giving.
Grateful For/Grateful First
Shawn Achor says, that most of us have the order of gratitude and happiness mixed up with success. We think success comes first, THEN we feel grateful and happy. But actually the opposite is true. We need to create happiness FIRST, and from happiness we create success. Interestingly gratitude turns on all the learning centers in our brains and literally increases our ability to be more creative, to be productive, to connect socially. And, not surprisingly, the best way to cultivate happiness was a simply practice of gratitude. Based on a study done where participants practiced gratitude and felt an increase in happiness, participants showed 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, 3x greater creativity and 23% fewer fatigue symptoms. Happy people are also up to 10x more engaged, 40% more likely to receive a promotion, and 39% more likely to live to age 94.”
Achor explains, “I find that we…make happiness seem too hard, thinking we need to go on an 80-day vacation around the world, when really, thinking of three things you’re grateful while you brush your teeth, or smiling at a stranger in a hallway, can not only boost your happiness but help you to make that choice over and over again.”
In other words, not only does gratitude allow us to SEE more of the good in our lives, gratitude helps us to CREATE more good in our lives. It isn’t just the rose we enjoy, it is also the sun and water and rich soil that helps the rose thrive.
How to Cultivate the Skill of Gratitude
So how do we cultivate the skill of gratitude in our lives? How do we grow our garden of abundance even amidst all the lack in our lives?
Create Regular Routines to Be Grateful Throughout the Day
Because gratitude isn’t the most natural thought pattern, it can be easy to simply forget to be grateful. Linking a practice of gratitude to a habit we already have, can help us incorporate regular gratitude in our lives.
Before bed we gather as a family and say a prayer. At one point, we were having an issue with people whining about prayer, not wanting to be the one to say, poking each other etc. A few months ago, our family started a new evening tradition. When we gather together we all take just a minute to mention something we’re grateful for about the person who says the prayer. It can be a quality we admire, or something we noticed or appreciated that week.
This simple practice has transformed our family gathering. There is no more whining about who says the prayer. We don’t have much poking or rolling around anymore. Everyone perks up when it’s time to pray–probably because it’s created a positive feeling each night when it’s time to share things we love about each other.
Each of us look forward to our day to say the prayer when we are “emotionally flooded” with appreciation. It’s a moment we feel loved by the people we love most and we feel more connected to them. We feel differently about ourselves. When others notice good things in us, it’s easier to see them ourselves.
Even better, it has made a difference in the way we feel about each other. I love getting a chance to verbalize what I appreciate about my husband and my kids. Expressing it out loud makes me feel more love for them.
Other clients have done this in a variety of ways, through personal prayer, but thinking of something they are thankful for each time they come to a stoplight, by thinking of something they are grateful for at meals, or thinking of something they are grateful for each time they take go to the bathroom. If you have been listening for a while, you’ve heard me talk about nightly gratitude journaling and how powerful that can be.
Find sacred in the mundane
Remember we talked about that the brain loves novelty? One way to increase your gratitude when you do something mundane, is to focus in on sensory details. For example, when I wash the dishes in the winter, sometimes I just focus in on the temperature of the water and how heavenly it is to feel the warmth of the water. It helps me feel gratitude even when I’m not that excited about doing the dishes!
Try to think of some of the most mundane tasks you have to do—taking the garbage out, replacing the toilet paper roll, vacuuming. What is interesting, sensory or novel about the experience? What would your life be like without that item?
One of my favorite ways to cultivate gratitude through the mundane is to compare my life to if I didn’t have this item or this experience. I sometimes reflect on situations of others around the world or in history and their experiences in contrast. For example, when I get a class of water, sometimes I think about watching the women in Africa who had no running water, walk down to the dirty stream with buckets. Then they came back and had to boil and filter their water—and that was often on fire or a single burner. Or, I think about a couple hundred years ago when running water wasn’t available, and we had to get it from a well. Suddenly, the glass of water feels precious and amazing. All of this was created in just a moment from reflecting on the abundance that’s present.
Shawn Achor mentions a couple of other ideas that can help cultivate gratitude:
Express Gratitude to Others
He suggests that we take 1-2 min. A day and send an email or text to someone thanking them for something. For example it might be a text to friend you enjoyed being with, a note left in the bathroom for your spouse sharing something you appreciate about them, a verbal expression to your child out of the blue about what you appreciate. Or, it could be emailing an old teacher who has impacted you, or calling a friend or family member you don’t talk to often. Studies showed that even just thinking grateful thoughts about others or writing them down helped increase happiness, however expressing gratitude to others verbally was a transformative experience for those in the study.
The Doubler
Another tool Shawn offers is The Doubler. He suggests that you take one positive experience from the past 24 hours and spend two minutes writing down every detail of that experience. As you remember it, you brain is able to better cement it in your memory and deepen the imprint of that experience.
Conclusion
This year as you celebrate Thanksgiving, consider using this as an opportunity to cultivate a habit of gratitude rather than just a momentary note of thankfulness here and there. There are tremendous benefits to gratitude including for your physical and emotional health. In fact, a regular practice of gratitude changes our brain chemistry to be happier. And, this same brain chemistry allows us to be more creative, productive and connected to others. While most of us may initially think of gratitude as something that happens to us, it is empowering to know that gratitude is a skill we can cultivate. There are simple ways we can cultivate it including:
1. Set a Regular Routine for Gratitude
2. Find Sacred in the Mundane
3. Express Gratitude to Others
4. Take wonderful moments and build on them by thinking deeply about them
A few years ago, I visited India while they were celebrating their fall festival called Diwali—it is called the Festival of Lights. It celebrates the abundance and light that conquer scarcity and darkness. Indians light oil lamps and candles to symbolize the light and abundance. They also exchange gifts, buy new clothes and light lanterns. They pray for abundance for the following year. I love this image of how gratitude and abundance light our lives and conquer darkness. As we cultivate our gardens of abundance, our gardens of lack become dimmer and less prominent in our lives.
Exit Strategy
Consider thinking of something you do regularly each day or several times a day that you could use as a habit hook to create more gratitude in your life. Then decide how you want to express your gratitude. You can use one of the suggestions on the podcast or think of your own. Try out this experiment for 8 weeks (till the end of Jan.) and see if you happiness improves.
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