Are you ready for a life-altering journey towards positivity? Join us in this powerful episode as we unravel the transformative power of gratitude. Tune in, sit back and prepare to reshape your understanding of your brain’s circuitry through the lens of gratitude. We tap into fascinating research that demonstrates how gratitude practices not only shift our focus from negative to positive but also lead to physiological and emotional benefits. We promise you, this episode will change the way you perceive the world around you.
We'll also delve into a unique gratitude practice that requires us to recall and relive the emotions experienced when someone expressed gratitude towards us. Discover how this practice can rewire your brain, influencing your happiness, motivation, and anxiety levels for the better. But the journey doesn’t stop there! We also discuss the spiritual aspect of gratitude. Learn how turning to the Lord and incorporating gratitude in our everyday lives can transform any day into a day of thanksgiving. Embark on this journey with us, and together, let's unlock the power of gratitude and return to love.
Are you ready for a life-altering journey towards positivity? Join us in this powerful episode as we unravel the transformative power of gratitude. Tune in, sit back and prepare to reshape your understanding of your brain’s circuitry through the lens of gratitude. We tap into fascinating research that demonstrates how gratitude practices not only shift our focus from negative to positive but also lead to physiological and emotional benefits. We promise you, this episode will change the way you perceive the world around you.
We'll also delve into a unique gratitude practice that requires us to recall and relive the emotions experienced when someone expressed gratitude towards us. Discover how this practice can rewire your brain, influencing your happiness, motivation, and anxiety levels for the better. But the journey doesn’t stop there! We also discuss the spiritual aspect of gratitude. Learn how turning to the Lord and incorporating gratitude in our everyday lives can transform any day into a day of thanksgiving. Embark on this journey with us, and together, let's unlock the power of gratitude and return to love.
Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope that your hearts were full of gratitude.
Speaker 1:As I've been doing research about gratitude, I found some really fascinating things and I can't wait to share them with you. If you ask most people what they want more than anything, they will say they want to be happy. What is the one thing that will transform us to feel happy? Gratitude will transform everything. Cicero said that gratitude is more than the greatest virtue. It is also the mother of all remaining virtues. When we develop gratitude practices or habits, it helps us to be happy. You might wonder what is our gratitude practice or habit need to look like to help us to be happy, and the question that has driven my research is how does gratitude actually help us to feel happy, while being grateful helps us to be more positive?
Speaker 1:Most people can attest to the fact that it's easier to think negative thoughts than positive thoughts. According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 60,000 thoughts per day, and a whopping 80% of those are negative. That means that on average, we think 48,000 negative thoughts a day. And why is that? It helps to understand that our brain's number one job is to keep us safe. Studies have shown that through the years, one of the primary negative emotions we default to is fear, which has served us well to protect us. Our ancestors who survived were particularly adept at paying attention to signs of danger and were able to detect and predict threats and then act to stay safe. It makes sense that, genetically, anxiety has been passed down as a way of keeping us from harm. Even though most of us don't have to stay alert for predators or warring neighborhood tribes, our brains are still wired to look for any indication of impending peril. In fact, we are wired to default to the negative.
Speaker 1:Our brain not only searches for physical danger in our surroundings, but also scans for emotional threats in relationships. Interestingly, our brain interprets emotional threats to be just as dangerous as physical hazards to our life. As an example of looking for an emotional threat when we join a new gathering of strangers, most of us feel some anxiety about how we will be received, if the gathering will be warm and welcoming or if we will fit in. As we enter, we quickly scan the room with our eyes, looking into the expressions of people there. Our neuroperception, also called neuroception, picks up on what we visually see and also on the vibes that we feel. If we don't feel welcome or don't get a sense that we're safe, we don't usually stay long and we remove ourselves.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when we scan for emotional dangers, we misinterpret things we observe. For example, we may see a person who has a scowling expression and we may misinterpret that to mean the person doesn't like us, when in reality they're scowling because they're thinking of a previous negative interaction they had in traffic and their eyes are narrow and their eyebrows are furrowed. The reason we default to the negative is that if we are aware of a danger, we can take measures to address the danger and we can protect ourselves. As a result, we don't focus on the positive, we focus on the negative. Giving a person or a situation the benefit of the doubt, such as when we see that furrowed brow, is not natural for us and it takes incredible skill to override our automatic default to the negative. So what is our brain defaulting to the negative have to do with gratitude.
Speaker 1:Gratitude has the power to help us be more conscious of the positive aspects of our life. Although the science of gratitude and how it impacts our brain and the rest of our body is fairly new, there are studies which show many physiological benefits of gratitude on our body, such as improving our health by reducing our heart rate, slowing our breathing, lowering our blood pressure, reducing inflammation, strengthening our immune system and relaxing our body. In addition, studies also describe the emotional benefits of practicing gratitude, such as counting our blessings in our thoughts, in a gratitude journal or by expressing gratitude to others verbally or in writing. These powerful activities help us focus on the good, think more positively and feel happy. Several researchers, including Kelly McGonigal, a researcher at Stanford University, have all shown that when you write things you are grateful for and send someone a text or a letter expressing gratitude, you shift both your brain chemistry and their brain chemistry and you activate pro-social wiring.
Speaker 1:The journal Frontiers in Psychology reported on the impact of gratitude on the pro-social circuitry in our brain. Within a study entitled Gratitude on the Pro-Social Circuitry in our brain. Researchers Fox, kaplan, demasio and Demasio used functional magnetic resonance imaging on the brains of the subjects to see what areas of the brain are activated during certain activities. They found that when someone communicates to us that they are grateful for us, it increases our brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the area of the brain involved in emotions, mood regulation, reward, anticipation and empathy, among other things. Another area of the brain that is stimulated when someone is thankful for us is the medial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for cognitive processes, regulation of emotion, motivation and sociability, among other things.
Speaker 1:Being appreciated also strengthens our serotonin circuitry, which makes us feel good inside. It feels so warm and cozy to get a message when someone appreciates us. However, when we desire this good feeling, it's not very efficient to wait around and hope for someone to write us a letter of gratitude in order to gain this benefit of having our pro-social and serotonin circuitry enhanced in our mind. And what if you don't have anyone that writes gratitude to you? Is there another way to get this benefit?
Speaker 1:The researchers in this study went a step further, to see what would happen in the brain in subjects who listened to stories of others who were grateful. They had people listen to stories of Holocaust survivors who told their story about the horrible conditions they lived through and they expressed deep gratitude for people who helped them survive. As humans, we love to tell and hear stories. We organize information in our brain in the form of stories, which allows us to share details with each other in a way that creates an emotional bond and helps us understand each other. Because we form an emotional connection, we have a deeper understanding of each other and we remember the information better. The researchers of this study found that, even though the listeners hadn't gone through the same experiences which brought the victims the feelings of gratitude, each listener's own neural circuitry was activated as if they had the experience firsthand. When the subjects in the study listened to the Holocaust victims express gratitude, in their story, the participants identified with the victim and parts of their story resonated with them. Additionally, the listeners received gratitude vicariously through hearing the stories of these Holocaust victims. When the person related with the victim and felt grateful as if they had had the experience themselves, they put themselves into the mindset of the other person. This activated and amplified the pro-social and serotonin-linked circuitry, which could also be called the gratitude circuitry in the brain.
Speaker 1:Just as the researchers showed, even if you don't receive expressions of gratitude from someone else, you can still receive the benefits. You just need to find a story that actually inspires you, in which someone expresses gratitude for something. When you can deeply imagine these feelings of gratitude that the other person felt when someone helped them in the narrative, you engage in neural plasticity, or in other words, you rewire your brain. That's exactly what the hero within does. Our inspiring podcast provides uplifting stories which elevate consciousness. When you picture yourself as the hero in the story, you can imagine feeling grateful just as the hero does. This activates pro-social neural pathways of the listeners. On other days, you can visualize a time that someone was deeply grateful for you and ponder how did they feel and how did you feel Then?
Speaker 1:I read another study about neural plasticity that was totally fascinating. It was published in the Scientific Journal Nature entitled Effects of Gratitude Meditation on Neural Network Functional Connectivity and Brain Heart Coupling. Researchers Kim Kim Kim and Kim also used functional magnetic resonance imaging to see where the brain led up when subjects experienced the emotions of gratitude versus feeling resentment, and what happens in their brain afterwards. This study was performed at Yonsei University in Seoul, south Korea, and found that a specific, repeated gratitude practice can literally change the functional conductivity in our brain, which, in common language, means that we can rewire our brain. The habit of repeated gratitude can stimulate neural pathways related to pro-social emotions circuitry, which decreases the activity of anxiety and fear circuits and significantly boosts the function of emotional well-being and motivation circuits.
Speaker 1:You may think well, that all sounds good, but I don't have time for a new habit and, truthfully, it's tricky for most of us to get motivated and to stay motivated when developing a new habit. Many of us know some very motivated and productive people. Interestingly, many of the most highly motivated people also suffer with anxiety and fear. They feel like a crummy trade-off. So how can we be happy, more motivated and yet also lessen our anxiety? Science shows us that a repeated gratitude practice gives us a triple benefit. Not only does it increase our feelings of happiness and well-being and decrease our feelings of anxiety and depression, but it also increases our motivation. I'm going to teach you the components of this repeated specific gratitude practice that stimulates the serotonin circuitry, which creates similar results to taking an SSRI antidepressant. This practice also causes this positive emotion circuitry to dominate inactivity over the circuitry response possible for anxiety and depression, and it amplifies the brain circuits related to motivation and pursuit.
Speaker 1:Who doesn't want to feel less anxiety and depression In our very stressful world. We are all seeking ways to feel better. As we discussed, in every single person, our brain defaults to negative thinking and when we feel uncomfortable emotions, it's common to choose to turn to other negative coping behaviors to numb us, such as using drugs, alcohol, porn, tv, food spending, etc. The problem is, these behaviors only numb us for a short time and can lead to addictions. What if there was something we could do that could literally change the brain and have long lasting effects to help us feel happy? What if it only took five minutes or less with a specific gratitude practice? Would it be worth it to you? It sure got my attention. Let me tell you more.
Speaker 1:Researchers found that the ideal gratitude practice which has the greatest benefit rewiring our brain to enhance the serotonin and gratitude circuitry and to diminish the anxiety, depression and resentment circuitry is one in which we are remembering how we felt when we received gratitude. What an ironic twist to gratitude. I had to read this study over and over. In fact, several days after reading it, as I was preparing for this podcast, I thought I must have misunderstood that study. Every other study I read had examined the effects of expressing gratitude. As I reflected on the conclusion of this study, I thought I must have read the words wrong. I had to go read the study yet again and sure enough, this study showed the most powerful impact on our brains is when we receive gratitude.
Speaker 1:When someone thanks you and expresses their gratitude to you for your help or kindness, your brain lights up in the serotonin circuitry. The researchers found that your gratitude practice, of remembering when you receive gratitude, can be very brief and you can go back to the same story each time you practice gratitude. Furthermore, you don't have to read the whole story each time. You just need to have heard the story in its entirety at least once. You can then create bullet points at the main points of the story. Each time you do this gratitude practice, read the bullet points, but don't just read the words. Read the words and use your imagination to feel the same emotions you felt originally.
Speaker 1:The most vital piece of this gratitude practice to rewire your brain is that you imagine and feel the feelings of someone being grateful for you. You might wonder how often do you need to do this gratitude practice and when do you need to do it to make it most effective? The second most important element is that you repeat it daily. The more you repeat the practice of feeling the gratitude emotions, the more the positive neural pathway is reinforced, similar to the way continual use deepens our blood in a row. Ideally, do this gratitude practice upon waking up and before going to bed, or do it at any time you can fit it in to benefit your brain, since the brain and heart communicate with each other.
Speaker 1:Some people also intentionally add breath work and calming practices to prepare to use their imagination around the story of gratitude. But this is still part of the full five minutes. Many people already have a morning and evening ritual for prayer that includes gratitude to God. It can be easy to piggyback a prayer gratitude practice with remembering the feelings of when someone was grateful for you. Another way to incorporate this neural gratitude practice is before meals. Some people habitually express gratitude each time they bless their food, and it can be easy to add your neural gratitude practice of remembering when someone was thankful for you. The first few times you do this gratitude practice, you may have a hard time remembering who was grateful for you in the past, but with practice memories will come to your mind, or you can listen to a story about someone who was grateful, such as an edifying episode on the Hero Within podcast, and you can imagine. You are the hero feeling grateful. If you still struggle, do something kind or express gratitude for someone and imagine their gratitude for you, for your kindness. Then create and review the bullet points of this story and feel the grateful feelings as we repeat this one five-minute gratitude practice each day. It strengthens the activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in empathy, emotion, precision making, motivation and altruistic helping behaviors. The serotonin circuitry is not only activated, but the anxious, depressed and resentment circuitry is also diminished.
Speaker 1:As I researched how gratitude changes our brain, I was absolutely intrigued at how this quick gratitude practice rewires our brain and helps us feel happy, and the positive gratitude circuitry dominates over the anxious, depressed and resentful circuitry, so that these results last for weeks afterward. Some studies show benefits for over 12 weeks after the last gratitude practice. I have had a gratitude practice of writing a letter to God each evening, along with saying my prayers, and I did thank God for people who are grateful for me. I also listened to inspiring stories and, as the host of the Hero Within podcast, I get to hear uplifting stories from each guest. I noticed how these gratitude practices changed my brain long term. But until reading this research I never knew the science behind the process. I was never aware of how the science of remembering when someone else was grateful for me, but to rewire my brain by amplifying my positive emotions, lancen my anxiety and motivate me. But it totally makes sense.
Speaker 1:Paul understood this and wrote in Philippians 4, 4-7, rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, please send your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Paul knew that prayer combined with gratitude results in peace and reduces our anxiety. This peace is beyond our comprehension and it will guard our hearts and minds as the positive neural circuitry dominates over the negative. It is truly a miracle from the Lord and this is one of the reasons why he advises us to be grateful in every situation.
Speaker 1:My greatest wish for you is that you will turn to the Lord and feel joy in his great blessings in your lives and that you will ask him to help you be grateful, so you will feel him lessen your anxiety as you rejoice in feeling the gratitude of others for you. Remember that the Lord is grateful for you and he loves you. He will send his peace and he will protect your heart. Keep turning to him and keep focusing on gratitude. As you repeat this gratitude practice, you can turn any day into thanksgiving. Thanks for listening. I know you're busy. Did you know that you help spread the love by leaving your review and following? This helps increase our visibility so people can find us online. I really appreciate your help. I'm wishing you lots of love in your own hero's journey.