Top 10 Therapy Takeaways- Gratitude Rewiring Your Brain to Notice the Good

Hey y'all, hey, and welcome back to 10 Minute Tidbits. Or if this is your first time, welcome in. I'm excited to have you here with me. And for those of you who have been joining me along the route, my gosh, can you believe that we're like six episodes in? This is so cool. I'm super excited. We are still in our first series of top 10 therapy takeaways. And today we're gonna talk about one I love. We are going to talk about gratitude, more specifically, we're going to  talk about having a gratitude practice. So I've touched on this in a couple of other episodes just because I do think it's so important, and I believe it is life-changing. Our brains are surrounded by negativity. This is the culture we live in, and we are inundated with it. It is very easy for that to be the go-to for our brains. They go to the negative. Part of that's from a place of survival, right? When the caveman many years ago walked out of his cave, he might see a beautiful flower and he might see a hungry lion. And while that beautiful flower sounds like a really nice thing to go pay attention to, that one's not going to keep him alive. He better be paying attention to the scary, mean, hungry lion so that he can be not dead.

That's where our amygdala gets involved. We've talked about that in that fight, flight, freeze. But again, that's all about survival. So we're a little beyond that, and we aren't just surviving, although some days it feels like it. But we need to rewire our brain. And to me, the best way we can do that is with a gratitude practice. It helps you rewire all those little interactions in your brain, it strengthens the pathways for gratitude, and it helps your brain start to find those positive things. So, because my brain is used to looking for the negative, that's what it's gonna find first. But when I start a gratitude practice, I am training my brain to look for those things. I am telling my brain, I need you to find these things that I can be truly grateful for.

And it's true, we often get confused in being thankful, being grateful, and I don't really want to go in too deep to that right now. But really more on the practice itself. I'm going to tell you to push yourself to have 10 things you are grateful for every day. But if you decide you're gonna start with five, I think that's fantastic. Sometimes we just need to start somewhere.

 I'm gonna tell you that the best way to do this is to physically write it down. And we will talk a little bit more. I have a whole other episode on writing things down, but I do feel this has more power. There is connection and writing to the brain. We know that. Scientifically, we know that. I think that that gives it its most power. However, if you want to put it in your phone, if you need to type it on your computer, that's fine. That's the next best thing. But do put it down somewhere. Don't just think it. Our brains are not actually designed to hold on to things all the time. It needs help. So find a place to put that down.

 And I'm going to tell you, you need to do it for at least two weeks. And for those two weeks, I want you to aim to have no repeats on your list. I know I'm making it more difficult here. But we all have the things we start out with. I'm grateful that I have a house to live in. I'm grateful my family is here. And that's fine. You get to do those on the first two days. But then we're gonna go a little deeper. However, I think sometimes we get bogged down in this, because we're looking for big things. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. One of your things on your list may be that you had 10 extra minutes this morning to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee, and the weather wasn't a hundred degrees and your kids weren't awake yet, and you had those minutes to yourself. That's awesome. And we need to be grateful for those moments. You can put that on your list. It can be the little things. But if you will do that, if you get the big ones out of the way. We always say like the children's church answers, Jesus, God, Bible Church, get those on your list first and then let's move on.

We need to do this every day. Try not to miss for two weeks. Keep it somewhere you're gonna see it. Set a reminder on your phone. Whatever's gonna get you to doing it. I want you to do it every day. Now as much as I'm gonna push you to do it every day for two weeks, I'm also gonna tell you that if you miss a day, don't throw in the towel, just start again. It matters. It matters because we are strengthening those pathways that we've talked about in our brain. We are beginning the process to re-wire our brain to start to look for those positive things, to notice them. They're actually already there. We just aren't paying attention to them because we're running in that survival mode sometimes. We're only watching out for the negative things that may hurt us. We're not taking in all the positivity. And we need to be. I think it's Brian Tracy has four A's: awareness, appreciation, attention, and maybe action. I need to double check that. which I think is good. That awareness part and appreciation, really important.

there's also a cool website that I stumbled upon called happierhuman.com, and it talked about all the benefits of gratitude, and I think we miss those a lot. Like, there is so much that it benefits for us, it lowers our stress, it improves our sleep. We have better relationships, our mental health is better. There is just so much that it is so powerful. and it can really have a profound effect on your life, right? It's not just saying thank you, it's not just the little things there.

I often make this a challenge when I'm working with clients, especially those that are struggling with depression and anxiety. This is a great tool in your toolbox to help with those things. Because if I'm struggling with depression, I'm having a real hard time seeing those positives. So if I am forcing myself to look for those, they are more a part of my daily intake as far as what's coming at me.

If I have a whole lot of things going on or I'm faced with a lot of negativity right now, then this is even more important because I really need that to change. I can tell you, I used to recommend this kind of lightheartedly, like I knew it was good to do a gratitude practice, and I would tell my clients they should start one, and but I had never really been consistent with my own. And so I got consistent with mine and at a

About that two-week mark, I really started noticing the difference. One day I was at my workout that I do at the time. I was one of those go-getters that got up super early out in the parking lot at 5 a.m., which also means I was one of those crazy people out in the parking lot at 5 a.m. But that's okay. I had a great group of people with me that were pushing me, and it was like August, and it was hot, and even though it was 5 a.m. and dark, it was still just heavy humidity and awful, and I'm pretty sure my trainer was trying to kill me. Yes, Pam, that's you. I love you, you're amazing. But she also is tough, right? And we were working out, and really my focus a lot of that time is I'm gonna die. but there was like this puff of air that just kind of came through, and I remember vividly just stopping and noticing that puff of air and thinking, I am so grateful for that breeze, right? I don't know that if I hadn't been doing that gratitude practice, that I would have noticed that puff of air? It would have just happened, or I might have been madder that it came and went, more frustrated that it didn't stick around because it was so gross outside. But instead, I noticed it, and I noticed that I noticed it. I was thought, “Oh  I can write that down in my gratitude journal”. That's awesome. So it really does start to make a difference in your brain if you're willing to give it a go. Do it for two weeks every day, five to ten. Really push yourself, finding the little things. you know, your gratitude journal can be some cute journal you pick up at the store, or it can be a spiral notebook, or it can be whatever papers you staple together. It does not matter, it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be functional. And again, I encourage you to physically write it down.

 I truly, truly, truly believe in this, and I hope that you guys actually try it, and I hope you see the difference it makes in your life. And there you go. So that's gratitude, our gratitude practice for today and our 10-minute tidbit. So I hope you enjoyed this.

 I also want to remind you that this is not therapy. If you are struggling, please reach out to a therapist. If you're local and you're not my buddy, you can reach out to me.

*Blog text AI generated from podcast, mistakes and all.