Real, Brave & Unstoppable

Ep 28: How to Practice Gratitude and Why it Works

November 23, 2020 Kortney Rivard Episode 28
Real, Brave & Unstoppable
Ep 28: How to Practice Gratitude and Why it Works
Show Notes Transcript

This episode is all about gratitude.  Why it works, and how to practice it. 

I always tell the story about how my mom gave me a gratitude journal a long time ago when I was going through a hard time.  The journal had a space to write down five things I was grateful for each day.

At the time, I rolled my eyes and thought there was no way that simply writing down a few things I was thankful for would help me feel better. I did it, albeit half-assed, now and again when I was feeling down, wishing things were better. 

I didn't really notice a difference because I didn't stick with it.

When I was going through my divorce, I turned to gratitude out of desperation.  I started to focus my attention on the good I could find in my life, and sometimes it was hard to find even one thing. I always had my kids, so I always had one thing, but sometimes the other two things were hard for me to find.  But I kept at it.  And one day, I thought about it and realized that my default mindset was really one of gratitude.   It WORKED!

Today, I credit my happiness in part to gratitude.  Listen to this episode to learn some ways to practice gratitude and why it works.

Resources

Unf*@! Your Stuck: 21 Days to Turn Your I Can'ts into I CANs
Holiday gift alert! This intro program for new clients is a perfect holiday gift!  When you join this awesome program, you'll create a vision for your life and start taking action to reach your goals and dreams.  You'll get some quick wins and gain confidence in your ability to keep taking action.  You'll learn to be unstoppable!

Free Mini Sessions
If you have something coming up for you that you're not sure how to solve, you NEED to take advantage of this free service I offer.  During this free 20-minute session, you'll tell me your issue and I'll help you gain some perspective and shift your mindset so that you can tackle your issue with ease.  And it's free. 

Support the show

Want more?
For more information about the podcast, visit www.realbraveunstoppable.com. To learn more about your host, Kortney Rivard, visit www.kortneyrivard.com

Follow Kortney on Social media:
Instagram
Facebook

Well, hello friends and welcome back to real Brave and unstoppable. This is episode number 28. And here we are. It's Thanksgiving week. We're about to enter the, I always say the onslaught of the holiday season. 

[00:00:46] This can be such a stressful time of the year. And especially this year with the pandemic going on and social distancing and family gathering guidelines being changed. 

[00:00:58] And I'm also really worried about businesses who are already really hanging on by a thread this time of year.  It's such a crucial time for so many businesses in terms of, you know, being profitable. And so, if you're in that boat, my best positive vibes go out to you. And I am planning to try to support local as best as I can whenever I can. And I hope anyone listening can do the same thing. 

[00:01:21] But yeah, this time of year can be definitely pretty stressful. And in case you missed it last week, I hosted a webinar on managing holiday stress. And it was really great. I coached some folks through their own specific sticky points and also talked about how to approach this holiday season from a place of knowing what's important to you. It was really a great workshop. So, if you're interested in listening to a replay for that hit me up at kortney@kortneyrivard.com and I can send you a link. 

[00:01:48] So normally I release my podcast episodes on Thursdays, but this week I wanted to release a little early, so that you have a chance to listen to this episode, which is on gratitude before Turkey day. I'm going to tell my own story about how practicing gratitude changed my life. So, if you've heard this before, because I tell it all the time, bear with me. There are a lot of people who haven't heard it yet. A lot of new faces around social media that have been following me and stuff like that. So, I'm just going to tell it again. 

[00:02:19] A lot of years ago when I was going through a hard time or I just, I wasn't feeling particularly happy. My mom gave me this gratitude journal and when she gave it to me, I know she's probably listening right now, so she's hearing this story for probably the 20 millionth time. Hi mom. But, when she gave it to me, I kind of was like, okay, whatever this, I kind of rolled my eyes about it. Like, okay. Yeah. Me writing down three things in here are actually the journal she gave me was five things. 

[00:02:50] Is really going to help me. Okay, whatever. 

[00:02:54] And it's kind of funny because I went looking for the journal the other day and it had been kind of stuck at the bottom of a pile of books for a while. And I talk about how I practice gratitude all the time. Like I really do, but this particular journal only has like, you know, a few pages filled out in it. 

[00:03:14] But I revisited some of those entries. And I, it looks like when I first started. Writing in, it was. I believe when I moved to California back in. Oh 1999 or so. No, no, no. It was 2001. And I really didn't want to move there, and it was kind of miserable. And I was really focusing on all of the miserable things in my life. 

[00:03:42] In fact, I remember being back in Minnesota over Christmas that year, or maybe it was even just for a visit. And I remember we were leaving a house in Savannah that I loved...

[00:03:53] It was, it was a house that I had kind of dreamed of having. So, when we were moving to California, I was really focused on how ugly the houses were out there. Sorry, if you love California architecture, but I was going from Savannah where everything was very, Southern, you know, obviously Southern looking, and just, I just love that style - moving to LA, where everything was very stucco and very kind of dry and brown looking, and the houses were very close together. So, you know, it just, I didn't want to move there. So, I was focusing on all of the negative things about it. And I remember riding in the car with my mom and my sister just complaining about like how ugly houses with the garages on the front of the house looked like. I think it probably really bothered my sister because I think she probably had a house with a garage on the front of the house, which, you know, and looking back, it's like, oh my God, how, how stupid was that for me to focus on things like that, you know, it really didn't matter. And at the end of the day, when we moved to California, we bought a house eventually and we loved that house and it was fine, but you know, it did have a garage that face the front of the house and it was, it was great. 

[00:05:06] But my point being like that was a time where I think that's when my mom gave me the journal and I was focusing on some pretty stupid things that seemed to, you know, be, be a big deal to me in my life. I've come a long way since then. And some of the other entries in it, it's very clear that when I made entries in that journal, that it was always when I was going through a hard time. 

[00:05:29] And looking back it’s, you know, I can see that part of the problem was that is that with that, is that you need to really think about what's positive in your life, even when you are in a positive place, to really help gratitude, to kind of stick, you know.

[00:05:44] But anyway, getting back on track. When my mom gave me that journal, I was like, that's stupid. Like how cliche I'm going to write down things that I am grateful for. And it's just going to boom. Make me feel better. Well, I want to draw special attention to the part where I said, I didn't think it would work. 

[00:06:03] But it really did. And I didn't really buy into this process right away. It was really not until, you know, I would pick it up when things would feel bad to me. And then I forget about it. And when it really started to change my life was when I started going through my divorce about six years ago. 

[00:06:22] Maybe a little bit before then, but really at that time and you know, how did it work? Well, it didn't feel like it was working when I started it, but by focusing on what I was appreciative of in my life, it really helped me to shift my focus from all of these bad things, all these bad feelings to what was actually good in my life. 

[00:06:44] It really helped pull me out of some negative thought spirals. Self-pity. It helped disconnect me from like the shitty negative emotions that I was having or the ruminating I was doing. And it shifted my attention away from those things a little bit. It didn't mean that everything magically felt all better, but it kind of started shifting things a little bit. 

[00:07:07] There’s a ton of research on how gratitude helps people. Martin Seligman is one of the best-known researchers in this area. And I think he's at Penn state or the University of Pennsylvania, I think maybe it is. But he said that when we take time to notice things that go right, it means we're getting a lot of little rewards throughout the day. 

[00:07:31] You know, to put it in a little more technical terms and I am not a neuroscientist, but I know a little bit about this. We're getting these little dopamine hits and dopamine is one of the feel-good neurotransmitters along with serotonin. And by getting these little dopamine hits, our brain makes this connection between the behavior, which is practicing gratitude and feeling good. So, we're forming these new neural connections.  If you're a client of mine, we talk about neuroplasticity a lot. And how, if you have the habit of thinking negatively, you have these pathways in your brain that are very well worn, and it's a matter of kind of, you know, planting grass seed over those deep paths. And forging a new path and it just takes some time to go over and over the new path before that becomes kind of your default or your new well-worn path. 

[00:08:22] We’re also regulating stress hormones when we practice gratitude. Like cortisol, which will reduce fear and anxiety. Obviously, it feels better not to feel fearful or anxious. This is, this is all evoking, a more positive way of thinking, which starts to happen on like a restructuring level in the brain. 

[00:08:42] So when I tell people that a gratitude practice works, I feel like I'm sounding a little cliche and it probably is based on my own reaction to it. When my mom. Suggested that for me. 

[00:08:54] And if you feel like you've been there done that gratitude doesn't work for me. It's possible that you've been doing it wrong. So, like what gratitude, how can you do gratitude? Wrong? 

[00:09:05] As I mentioned, there are a ton of research studies out there that support how gratitude can improve mental health and just our sense of wellbeing.  Another one of the leading researchers in this area is Dr. Robert Emmons at UC Davis.  He's written books, he's done a bunch of studies, but one of them that I was really intrigued by was a study where they took three groups of people. 

[00:09:28] Group one, they wrote down, they're instructed to write down five general things that they're grateful for. The second group, they were instructed to write down one specific thing they are grateful for but write five sentences about it. And then the third group was instructed to write down all of the ways that they were better off than other people. 

[00:09:48] So, what they found is that the people that were in the second group, and that was the group that got very specific, they wrote the one specific thing and the five sentences, their ability to feel happy and excited, even like elated experience, more joy was improved. And they also felt less tired, less negative overall. 

[00:10:07] So basically their findings were that the power of practicing gratitude is really in the details of being specific. So, if you're experiencing gratitude fatigue, I challenge you to rethink and see if maybe you can change up your practice a little bit. And how can you make it work for you? 

[00:10:26] What works for Sally? Sue may not work for. Gertrude. You know, so some people really connect well with words on a page with writing. Some people are really verbal and need to say things. Some people connect with gratitude through art or in some through movement like walking or dancing. So, there are all these different ways to work on gratitude. And I really invite you to just play around and see what resonates for you. 

[00:10:55] So I had my own ideas, but as I was researching for this episode, I found a lot of other ones that really are...  I'm going to try some of these. But the first one is just the standard. What we all think of gratitude, journaling, where we write down three things or five things or whatever it is. 

[00:11:13] That we're grateful for every day. And that can work really well for some people. I was talking to someone the other day that said, well, you know, I can write those things down, but I don't feel like I'm really feeling it. So, what I heard from her was that she's not really connecting with that method. 

[00:11:30] So, you know, maybe instead of just writing down the three things, maybe it's helpful to actually journal on the people, things, situations, or whatever it is for which you're grateful.  You know, get specific. Why are you thankful for those things? And then also, I think it's a little harder to do, but consider the negative things too. 

[00:11:50] The example that I always use with this is I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. And some people just hate when I say that. So, I'm sorry if you're one of those people, but I've always been able to look back after a difficult situation and be able to kind of connect the dots. You know, like Steve jobs always said, you can connect, when you look back, you can connect the dots and see how they got you to where you are. You can never connect the dots moving forward, because you don't know where they're landing. But I've always been able to do that. And even like, when I was going through my divorce, I was in a very dark, dark, dark place. And.I now though can I can find gratitude for that time, because there are a lot of things that helped me grow. There's there are a lot of things I learned about myself. 

[00:12:40] And I would have never had those opportunities had I not had that experience. So, it's a very different way of looking at things, but if you can start to find gratitude for parts of difficult times, it doesn't mean you love the time, you know, it doesn't mean that you are fine with feeling like shit. 

[00:13:00] It means that you're looking for just a little silver lining. It just helps shift your, your, your, your mindset to a different place that helps you get through it. A gratitude jar is another one that I think is really cool idea. I liked the idea of having a jar out like all year and having people put, you know, slips of paper in there every day or every week or whatever it is. 

[00:13:24] And then at the end of the year, or even at the end of the week, just kind of going through and talking about them. I think that's a really cool idea.  One thing somebody said to me that they do is for their Thanksgiving gathering, they will actually have a gratitude jar when people come in the door and people will write down something on a slip of paper. And then at mealtime, they'll kind of go through those. And it's kind of a neat way to practice gratitude together. 

[00:13:51] A gratitude tree is a cool idea that I think I'm going to try that this week, actually. And so basically what you do is, I mean, you can get a little, if you want to get a little actual tree, you can do that. Like little bushes of rosemary that they do these times at this time of year. Or I think what I'm going to do is go out and find some, you know, twigs that are not giant, but you know, like big enough to put in a vase and then put little, maybe cut out little leaves and write things that we're thankful for and put them on the tree. And I'm going to make both of my kids and my boyfriend do these things. My 18-year-old son will complain about it. And my boyfriend probably will too, but I think it's a really cool idea. If you have younger kids doing like the paper chains that you do at Christmas time or holiday time, paper chains with things that you're grateful for. That's kind of a cute idea. Or I've seen like when my kids were younger, they did the handprint, cut out their hand and write something they're thankful for on each finger. 

[00:14:53] There’s a lot of good kid crafts related to this and I'm sure like Pinterest probably has 50 bazillion of them. So, you can check that out. 

[00:15:02] Another great idea is writing thank you notes. Not a lot of people actually hand write thank you notes anymore. And I think it's so neat. Like I know for myself, if I receive a thank you note it's just a really nice thing. It feels really good. But I think it also feels really good to go through the process of writing it. 

[00:15:21] Taking the time to actually putting in, put in an envelope. Address it, find a stamp. Like, do we even have stamps anymore?  I still do have quite a few stamps, but I hardly ever mail things. So, it's kind of a, it's just a step of going out of your normal routine. And I think that's part of it too. It's like you feel the gratitude a little bit more by doing that. 

[00:15:44] Smiling or saying thank you to people, you know, when you're out and about this holiday season can feel really good for you and for the person that you're thinking or smiling at. Just focusing on the good that other people have done for you too, is practicing gratitude for those acts that have probably made you feel good. 

[00:16:06] Meditation. If you are a meditator. Even if you're not. You know, it really doesn't take a lot of time to meditate. People get kind of turned off because they think it is going to take too much time or they have a hard time sitting still, or they're worried that they won't be able to shut off their thoughts. Like that's not really the point of it. The point is just to kind of take that time to be intentional about feeling the things that you're grateful for. 

[00:16:33] If you need like a guided meditation checkout insight timer. There are tons of guided meditations. And I, I know for a fact there are several gratitude meditations. And you can even search by the time, the length of the meditation.  If you want a three-minute meditation, you can filter by that, which is pretty cool. 

[00:16:57] If you're a spiritual person, praying can be a very good way to tap into gratitude.  

[00:17:03] Using your senses to really tap into your five senses, you know, sight, smell, touch. hearing. Taste. How does each one of your senses enhance your life? Like what smells are you thankful for? What touches are you thankful for it? Like, I can think of my like comfy blanket that I snuggle up with in the morning with my coffee. 

[00:17:25] That's a nice way to bring things up to your attention that you're grateful for. 

[00:17:32] A gratitude walk can be really great if you just go out on a morning walk or something like that. If you just walk with the intention of noticing everything around, you. You know, maybe it's the birds. You're thankful for the birds because you like the sound of them, or maybe it's the way if you're walking on a path, the crunch of the pebbles beneath your shoes or, you know, in the fall when leaves are falling, the crunch of the fall leaves. It's just little things like that, or you're, you're appreciating the little things. 

[00:18:04] One idea that I read about is a gratitude rock, and I love this idea. Because some of us need like a touch point to remember to do these things. And so, the idea here is that you find a rock that's pretty, or a crystal or a stone. 

[00:18:22] And make a point of holding the rock. When you touch the rock, you think of something that you're grateful for.  For some people having that touch point is really helpful. Back when I was going through a really hard time, a friend of mine, she gave me this super amazing, just really thoughtful gift. And it was this little heart shaped stone that said courage on the top. And I'm not sure if she knows what an impact that had on me, but, that stone, I still have it in my coat pocket actually. And I probably needed to tell her this. 

[00:18:56] I probably need to practice gratitude and thank her for that because it was really something special for me. And it really helped me a lot. But when I was going through a really hard time, I would carry that rock with me and my pocket everywhere I went, and I could put my hand in the pocket, and it was this touch point to remember. 

[00:19:14] Something that I was either grateful for or, you know, to that everything was going to be okay or, you know, whatever it was that day that, that wreck that's stone helped me think of. But just like I said, having that touch point is sometimes really helpful for people. 

[00:19:29] Getting back to journaling. Sometimes, the gratitude journaling is also fun, or people connect with it more If they have something a little deeper to like dig into with what they're thankful for. So, if you can find some gratitude journal prompts - Pinterest is a great place to look for that kind of stuff. 

[00:19:47] And finally, and I left this one for the last, because I think this is such a cool idea and I'm totally going to use this idea. This holiday season is a gratitude box. 

[00:19:56] So basically you take a box and, you know, decorate it or whatever you want to do with it. And you put like pieces of paper or, whatever it is that makes sense to you in the box that has something that you're grateful for about that person on it.

[00:20:13] Like, you know, I love this about you, or I'm thankful to have you in my life because of this, or, you know, just stuff like that. And then you get the box to that person for whatever holiday it is that you're giving at this time of the year. Christmas Hanukkah, whatever you celebrate. 

[00:20:30] So, those are just some good ideas. 

[00:20:33] So it wouldn't really be a complete podcast about this topic. If I didn't address like the other side of gratitude. I just want to be really clear that practicing gratitude does not mean that you can't ever feel negative or you're not supposed to feel negative or bad or sad, angry, frustrated, whatever about the situation that you're in. 

[00:20:52] It does not mean that things always have to feel positive or that you're always positive. It's just a means of shifting your focus. From what's hard or negative to something that is like positive. You know, you still need to be able to feel those feelings that don't feel good. Right. You don't need to push them away or bottle them up. 

[00:21:13] It's just a way of, kind of shifting to find a silver lining or, you know, to, to kind of shift to that place of life is a gift. Life is full of gifts and sometimes the gifts can be found in the hard times. It doesn't mean that you can't want things to change and be grateful for what you have in your life. Cause you can do those things at the same time. 

[00:21:37] You know, you can, like I said before, you can even be grateful for the lessons that are really tough situation as teaching you. I mentioned my, my example before I've just being in a really dark place, but, you know, being able to really have gratitude for that struggle. Cause it brought me to where I am now. It brought me to the person that I am today. It helped me find the person that I am today that I'm meant to be. 

[00:22:04] So, where does gratitude not work? I was reading about this a little bit, and one of the researchers that I mentioned earlier,  Dr. Emmons from UC Davis talks about, ingratitude. And how somebody in a place of ingratitude is really not going to be able to focus on gratitude. 

[00:22:25] The traits of someone who is in, ingratitude all the time are:  having an excessive sense of self-importance, being self-absorbed, arrogant, vanity, an "unquenchable" need for admiration and approval. A sense of entitlement, like life owes me something. People owe me something. I deserve this. So, like counting your blessings or finding those things that you are grateful for are going to be kind of ineffective because what you're mad about, or your grievances are always going to outnumber the gifts, you know, and then you won't feel grateful when you do receive what you think you have coming because, well, you've had it coming, so it's not like it's something that you should necessarily be thankful for, because you should have had it anyway. 

[00:23:10] So, if you can't get out of that, self-important self-absorbed mindset. The entitlement mindset. You're probably going to have a hard time connecting with gratitude. 

[00:23:22] And again, I want to stress the practicing gratitude is not some fluffy, like new age thing. That's supposed to just make the bad stuff in life, go away. It's something that you practice because it helps you focus on the gifts. It helps you see that everything in life is a gift. And while some of it may not be easy or even desirable. 

[00:23:43] If you focus on those positives, you're going to be happier. And I think we all want to be happy in life. I'm just guessing, but I think that's probably. You know, most of us have that goal. 

[00:23:56] So I'm wondering, and I would love it if you comment on it or shoot me an email or whatever it is. I'd love this discussion to be out there this week, this gratitude party this week.  How are you going to practice gratitude this week? Or even just over this holiday season? 

[00:24:12] I'm planning to keep up my usual gratitude practice every day. I do write three things that I'm grateful for. But I'm also going to take it a step further and really try to explain why I'm grateful for that. Or for those things. And like I mentioned, I'm also going to plan to do a gratitude tree this week. I'll rope my daughter into helping me with that. 

[00:24:33] And then have everyone in my household, decorate it with paper leaves, with the things that they're thankful for too. And I'm also planning to take a moment before Thanksgiving dinner and go around the table and list some specific things that we're thankful for. And why we're thankful for them.  I already know my 18-year-old son is going to roll his eyes and come up with something like really ridiculous, but whatever. 

[00:24:58] And I also really, really liked the gratitude box idea as a gift. So, I'm going to make a point of doing some of those for Christmas gifts. So that's my plan. 

[00:25:08] And I hope that you have enjoyed this episode today on gratitude. , There’s a lot of really cool ways to put this into practice. And like I said, not everybody connects with the same way. So, play around with it. Just, you know, give things a try. 

[00:25:22] It's really helpful. I promise. I used to think it was stupid. And I now realize now that shift in perspective. Is, you know, it's small at first, but it compounds, you start doing it. You might not notice a difference right away, but the more you do it, I promise you, it kind of makes that mindset shift a default. It will happen if you keep doing it. So. 

[00:25:43] If you have any questions, hit me up.  I'd love a review and a rating. If you have a minute.

[00:25:49] And before I go, I also want to remind you about my intro program for new clients. It's called Unf*@! Your Stuck. It's a great gift idea. It's super affordable. I will help you, or the person that you're gifting it to, get out of there stuck spot and really take action towards achieving a goal or a dream, or just loving their life in general, or feeling happier, feeling more spark in their life. It's really an awesome program. And it really works. People do really get some quick wins, people that have gone through it have been able to just take some quick action and start building some confidence that they can actually take further action. So, it's been, it's been amazing for the people who've been through it. 

[00:26:30] And it's only 149 and it's perfect for a gift the season!

[00:26:34] So please go check it out at kortneyrivard.com. You can just click on Work With Me and it will bring you to all the details. Or you can click the link in the show notes.  

[00:26:42] So with that, you guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving practice, some gratitude. 

[00:26:47] And I will be back next week.