Grateful for Gratitude

how shifting my internal language changed my life

Goood morning and happy Wednesday! I am currently sipping on my warm frothy matcha latte, which I look forward to every morning. Literally go to bed thinking about it. 

This is a topic I am really passionate about, so I wanted to dive into it a little deeper because it is something that has truly changed my life for the better.

What We’re Chatting About:

• What is Gratitude

• The Science of Gratitude

• How-to Implement Gratitude

• How-to Shift Internal Language

• A lil Gratitude Challenge + Surprise

When it comes to health and overall wellness, I think the first thing that people like to hyper-fixate on is external factors. What we’re eating, supplementing, consuming, how we’re moving. All of this is important. Consumption of food, beauty products, cleaning chemicals, and the environment are all a factor in our health. However, something we often skip over is evaluating what’s happening internally. 

Our mindset, our nervous system, our stress. All of this has a huge impact on our health. A leading factor for bringing that back to equilibrium is our internal language, thoughts, and within that - gratitude. 

Gratitude, by definition, is ‘the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness’. Gratitude is more than just writing down in your journal you are grateful for family. It is actively expressing appreciation and admiration to the people and things around you. Noticing positivities in others and pointing them out. Slowing down and giving attention to the people and things around you, actively listening, being present.

Gratitude doesn’t mean you are blindly seeing life in rose-colored-glasses. You still notice hardships and struggles, but instead of complaining and becoming the victim in your own story, it’s shifting that narrative to find gratitude even in the face of those challenges and using that to fuel you forward.

People who actively practice gratitude receive not only mental, but physical benefits to their health: Increased mood and confidence, more energy, decreased stress, less pain, higher resilience, greater quality of sleep, stronger immune systems, healthier relationships, and overall better quality of life*. 

So how can gratitude lead to a better life, in all aspects? How can gratitude not only make me feel better internally, but lead to better academics, relationships, and livelihood? 

The Science of Gratitude

When you start actively practicing gratitude, not only your mindset shifts, but your actual brain can experience changes*.

How Gratitude May Impact our Brain

1. Decreased depression & anxiety. Expressing gratitude boosts our brain’s production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine*, which are known to promote joy-fullness, contentment and overall well-being.

2. Increased mental function and development. People who actively practice gratitude are directly linked to having more gray matter in their brain*!

3. Better sleep, balanced nervous system and well-being. Gratitude can directly activate the hypothalamus*, which is the part of our brain that controls our bodies homeostasis and equilibrium, and is directly connected with the nervous system.

4. Increased resilience. People who practice gratitude, kindness and appreciation also can experience lower levels of the main stress hormone, cortisol*.

All of these positive benefits over time can compound to create a long-lasting permanent feeling of joy and positivity.

These benefits too can domino effect into supporting things like digestion, skin health, hormones, etc…because all of these systems are directly connected and communicate within our body. By bringing into balance and positively benefiting one, the others benefit as well.

So to answer the question I posed in the beginning, I believe that practicing gratitude shifts our minds to think more positively, therefore the positive thoughts manifest into a more positive livelihood.

On the other hand, when we are actively practicing negative emotions: victim complex, complaint, anger, frustration, envy and guilt, these cause feelings of depression and anxiety, which manifest into a less positive livelihood.

The energy you give is the energy you will get back. BUT - there is hope. Practicing gratitude consistently will weed out those toxic negative emotions, and eventually replace them.

And like I said before, this is not blind optimism. It is still okay and healthy to feel sadness, frustration, anger, but be aware of it. Feel it, understand it, be curious about it, and let it go. Find gratitude and move forward with positivity and empathy.

How-to Practice Gratitude

1. Slowing down…and smelling the roses

Practicing gratitude has allowed me to live a life more present, and vis versa, living a life more present and slowing down has allowed me to be more grateful. Something I will do to practice this is intentionally give myself moments to move slow.

I am a hustler at heart, I thrive on stimulants, high cortisol and stress. But I have had to train myself to realize that my output and productivity is not directly related to my value as a person. It is easier said than done, like most things.

Slow moments have been something I now look forward to. Whether this be a slow morning, where I give myself a couple hours in the morning just to move slow (no work, no technology) to do whatever I want to do and intentionally appreciate and show gratitude for each moment. Or going out on a walk in nature, doing a creative activity (again no work, no technology) just breathing and appreciating. Letting go of the overwhelming stress looming and guilt for “not being productive”, and just being.

2. Appreciating the small pleasures

It is easy to just go through the day, alarm in the morning, a blur and rush of work, then scroll on our devices and crash in bed just to start all over again. When life feels like this, we tend to feel more anxious, overwhelmed and depressed.

But begin again… What if we start our morning when our alarm goes off being grateful that we are alive. Being grateful that we can move our toes and fingers, that we can inhale a deep breath of clean air. That we are sleeping in a cozy bed with blankets and sheets, a roof over our head. That we can see the clouds and sun outside, the colors in the trees. That we can stretch our bodies, shower with clean water and soap. That we can take a sip of clean water and delicious warm coffee. That we can go into our fridge that is full of food and enjoy a breakfast to fuel our bodies.

How different does that snapshot of the morning look like when we slow down and show gratitude for the things that we often take for granted. Life could be a lot worse.

Appreciating the small pleasures for me has allowed me to take on a whole new perspective of life, and experience stronger feelings of positivity, abundance and gratitude.

3. Seeing failure as a way of learning

Everything we have gone through in the past has led up to who we are today. This includes hardships and failures. Every one in life has their hardships, their challenges, but what truly separates people is how they choose to deal with them.

There are a couple different ways to experience challenges in life.

First, you become the victim in your own story. You complain, expect pity, believe that the world is coming for you, life is awful, and you are the only person that deals with negativity. Or second, you view this failure as an opportunity. An opportunity to learn, grow, and eventually flourish and succeed even more than you would’ve in the first place. You appreciate the imperfect progress, the beauty of the journey. Instead of comparing your journey to someone else’s, you work on yourself.

Comparison is truly the thief of joy, and by noticing, admiring and appreciating other’s successes, you too will experience more joy and success.

4. Showing appreciation

Gratitude is more than just being grateful for the moments in our own lives, it is also expressing gratitude and kindness to the people we surround ourselves with.

With every human interaction I encounter, I make an effort to intentionally see the other person, appreciate them, and thank them.

It is so important to slow down and take the time to talk to people, to actively listen to them in a calm and caring manner, be present and attentive.

To give respect and notice their accomplishments. When someone does something, offer them admiration, tell them you are proud, compliment them on what they are doing - big or small. Expressing our gratitude in this way, passing it along through kindness, and observing people receiving this gratitude is life-changing**.

5. Shifting internal language

A lot of us are trained to complain. I noticed this especially in college, everyone going back and forth complaining about what they all had to do. No one actually listening to each other, just going back and forth. A pile of negativity and pity and comparison.

Look - sometimes we need to vent. That is okay. But making it a consistent habit only negatively affects our livelihood. Something that has really helped me make the shift from complaint to gratitude is shifting my internal language.

For example, instead of “Ughhh I have to go workout.” we change that to saying, “Wow I get to move my body, and I am so grateful for that.” — this of course is just an example but it applies to all aspects of life. I get to, versus I have to, helps us realize that we are really fortunate to be living the lives we are living to do these things. It creates a life of abundance versus scarcity. I talk more on that here:

Re-Wire Your Brain 🧠

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Overall, these feelings, practices and expressions of gratitude allow us to be more present in life and manifest a more positive, well-being livelihood. They also are contagious to others. By expressing gratitude outwardly in this manner, we create positivity in other’s lives, and that keeps on flowing.

So I have a challenge for us this week. Every day we are going to do these things:

1. Give ourselves at least 15 minutes of slow-time.

2. Notice and express gratitude for 3 things throughout the day.

3. Express your gratitude to at least 1 person.

4. When you feel negative emotions, notice it, understand it, be curious about it, actively shift the language and then let it go.

I encourage you to journal your experiences with this and see how you feel. Please like + comment on this post what your experience is, and in a week I will come back to read them and randomly select someone to win a lil prize. Really excited to do this with you all!!!!

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I hope you have an amazing rest of your week. Please share this with a friend or family member if you enjoyed it (an opportunity to express some gratitude to that person that you thought of!) and I will talk to you on Sunday! GRATEFUL FOR YOU. XO - Ella

Sources

*https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/#neuroscience

**https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-science-of-gratitude-and-how-to-build-a-gratitude-practice