20: The Power of a Gratitude Practice

Welcome to the Women's Success Coach Podcast. A podcast created to inspire growth and to help you learn, achieve, and evolve in your life ongoing regardless of your age. I'm your host, certified coach, and licensed therapist Karen Vincent, and I'm here to guide you and provide you with concrete tips and strategies you can implement in your life. I'm also here to inspire you, challenge you, and cheer you on so that you can create the life of your dreams and beyond. In today's Shorty podcast episode, I'm talking about gratitude, which can feel like a buzzword at times. I've had many clients ask me what having a gratitude practice means and wonder why it's even helpful for them. In this episode, I'm going to break down what it isn't, what it is, why it's important, and I'm gonna give you a little spoil alert here(it can actually help you literally rewire your brain), and then I'll walk you through a step-by-step process for how to get started with your own gratitude practice. So let's get to it. Well, hello my friend. Since I'm talking about gratitude in this episode of the Women's Success Coach Podcast, I want to let you know that I'm grateful that you're here listening to my podcast. It really means a lot to me, and I work hard to make sure I give you valuable information and actionable items in each and every episode. If you do like what you hear, please hit the subscribe button so that you're notified each week when a new episode is released. Okay, now let's just get to all things gratitude. Now, I think sometimes there's some confusion about what the purpose of a gratitude practice is or even how to do it. Let me start by telling you what it's not. It's not toxic positivity. It's not about pretending something's fine when it's truly not, and it's not about pretending you're happy when you're feeling sad, angry, or frustrated, and it's not about pretending you like something that someone said or did when you don't. So if it's not all those things, well, what the heck is it? In my opinion, practicing gratitude is a way of not allowing your mind and default thinking patterns to get the best of you. Your brain, my brain, all of our brains are wired with a negativity bias. This means that your brain will always search for negative things or potential danger, before it will look for and hold onto good things. And because you only have so much storage capacity in your brain, your brain has to pick and choose what it hangs onto and what it allows to pass on by. So with this negativity bias, if unguided and unchecked, your brain will focus on what's not going well, what it thinks you don't like, and on the things that result in negative feelings. So this is where a gratitude practice comes in. Even on the most stressful, hard, disorganized, frustrating, and or dark days, there are still good things around you. The problem, as I mentioned, is that good things will get drowned out by the bad things if it's up to your brain and only your brain. When you practice gratitude, you'll rewire your brain so that you see more of the good things, even on the hard days. Science has shown that we have the ability to rewire our brains, which I think is just fascinating. We have the ability to decide what we want our brains to focus on, and once we give it our directive, it will go to work for us. And as I mentioned, it's not about toxic positivity. It doesn't mean ignoring that there are challenges or things you don't like. What it means is that you look at life with a more balanced perspective instead of only, or mostly seeing challenges. The way your brain works is that it will hold onto the things that are either repeated the most or that have the strongest emotions tied to them. Because of this, it stores your negative experiences into your long-term memory, and it doesn't store the smaller positive experiences you have. These positive experiences are literally forgotten within days, and certainly within weeks, because your brain doesn't think that they're important. This is why you could get 10 instances of positive feedback and one piece of constructive criticism about your work in a given week and the only thing you remember, and replay over and over in your mind, is the one piece of constructive criticism. It's also why you forget the 10 ways your partner showed you that they care, and you latch onto the one time they were insensitive to your needs. Your brain wants to highlight the negative or uncomfortable experiences because it thinks that somehow it will either protect you from them happening again, or that it will help you brace yourself for them and not be taken by surprise by them if they actually happen. The problem with this is that without intention, you have a brain that will overly focus on negative things and challenges, which will create negative and challenging feelings and you'll miss out on the good things that could also be happening at the same time. Life is not either or, it's both and. I want you to consider that again. Life is both and. You can have a bad day at work, and also have an amazing evening after work with your family. You can have a challenging medical situation, and also have a job that allows you support and flexibility with your schedule. You can be single and lonely at times, and also be appreciative of being independent and financially secure. Do you see how this works? It is making sure that the lens on your brain gives equal attention to the good things as well as to the challenges. When you practice gratitude, you put positive moments and experiences on repeat, so your brain starts to understand that you think they're important, and in doing this, it starts to look for more of them and highlight them for you. Part of practicing gratitude involves reflecting on the positive emotions these experiences create so that the combination of taking time to notice positive things, and the emotions that they create, helps them get stored into your long-term memory. This is incredibly helpful on hard days when your brain wants to tell you that nothing ever goes well. You now have stored evidence to prove this is not true, and you'll be able to pull out of a negative emotional state and regroup much faster. Now that you hopefully understand how this works and why it makes a difference, I want you to take some action so that you can create your own gratitude practice, and it only takes a few minutes a day. The key is consistency, so that you change that wiring in your brain and get it working for you. So let's take some action and create your very own gratitude practice. All of this information will also be in the show notes, so you can go reference it there. First, identify where you'll write down what you're grateful for. I always highly recommend using pen and paper and going old school. There's something different that happens in your brain and in your body when you're physically writing things out. But if you do prefer, you can certainly create a document online or use the Notes app on your phone. What I want you to do is create an ongoing list, so just think about what's going to work for you to do that. Next, if possible, identify a time of the day and specific location where you can sit undistracted for just a few minutes. Many people find that first thing in the morning or right before bed works. But if this is new to you, play around with it and you can even set a reminder on your phone for a certain time each day until it becomes a habit. Finally, you want to sit down undistracted and ask yourself,"What is one thing from the last 24 hours that I'm grateful for"? Now this is important. This isn't about checking a box to say you did your gratitude practice. When you do this, you really want to take a moment to pause and reflect and notice how you feel. This is what will start to change the wiring of your brain. So there you have it. Pretty simple, right? So, Practicing gratitude is a really important part of my morning routine, and I hope you either already have your own gratitude practice, or after listening to this, that you consider starting one. And again, I'm grateful you listened to this episode and I'm grateful for you. That's a wrap. You should be proud of yourself for investing time in you, which is so critical for success and for overall life fulfillment. I look forward to having you join me for my next episode. And in the meantime, go click that subscribe button so you'll know when it's released, and you can also follow me on Instagram at Best Boss Lady Life that's at Best Boss Lady Life on Instagram. Also, remember that whatever it is that you're working on, you've got this and I'm here cheering you on.