The Science behind a Gratitude Practice (It’s Not as Cliche as You Think!)
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I know you’ve heard me talk about gratitude practices before and how it’s something I prioritize daily. I know you’ve also heard everyone else talk about it, too. I know many of you probably think it’s just this fluffy practice that won’t actually help, or that it sounds great but in reality you don’t think it will actually help change they way you feel in your life. For all of you who feel this way, I have put this episode together to prove you wrong!
I’m going to dive into WHY gratitude is so powerful and why you should stop overlooking it as a daily habit you practice. I personally think my gratitude practice is just as important as nourishing my body with what it needs and honoring my body with movement.
Are you ready to find out why?
If you loved this episode, I have a short episode out from the early days of this podcast that I want to link that gives some good food for thought regarding this topic:
Episode 6: How to Take Control of Your Day and Live a More Positive Life
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real, with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast. If you've tuned into this podcast for a while, you've likely heard me talk about gratitude practices and how it is something that I do prioritize daily. You've also probably heard other people talk about gratitude. You might have seen gratitude journals. Maybe you do already practice gratitude, or maybe you think it's a fluffy practice that won't actually help. Like maybe, it sounds great, but in reality, it won't actually help you feel different in your life. And for those of you who feel this way, I wanted to shed some light on gratitude and I wanted to share like a two part of this podcast. The first part's going to be sharing all about the science behind gratitude and how gratitude itself has a literal biological response when we do practice it and how cool that is. And then the second part of this is sharing the most important thing in my life, my faith. And as Christians, thankfulness should be an integral part of our praise to God.
First let's dive into the science behind the gratitude practice. Did you know that our brain is actually wired to have a negative bias? This means that we are chemically wired to see the bad in things. We're wired to notice threats in the environment, which translates to us, always noticing things that are bad and always noticing what's wrong in our life, rather than focusing on all the good that surrounds us. The chemical wiring of our brain though, changes with experiences that we have. This means that the more that we practice gratitude, the more our brain learns to tune into the positive things that surround us in our everyday lives.
When we choose to express gratitude through feeling, we actually trigger the reward center in our brain. And when that's triggered, it releases the feel-good hormones, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. I know I'm getting more technical than I usually do in these episodes, but you guys, I think it's so cool that gratitude has a literal biological response to it on our physical bodies when we are practicing it. Also, these hormones are all associated with feelings of closeness, connection and happiness. This means that the more gratitude we have, the more connected number one, we feel with our creator. And two, we feel with the people in our lives and more joyful we'll feel in our life.
Also, the hormone serotonin that's released from that reward center in our brain is linked to sleep, which means that you could also sleep better simply because you're practicing gratitude. How cool is that? Negativity feeds negativity and positivity feeds positivity. So when you're unhappy, you're always noticing more things that will make you unhappy. We need to disrupt this cycle by actively putting in the effort to notice the positives. The more positives we pay attention to in our lives, it's likely the more positive things we will see in our lives.
On a physical level though, gratitude has also been linked to a stronger immune system, reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure, less stress and feelings of depression, and honestly the list goes on and on, which leads me to the second point of this podcast, thankfulness should be an integral part of our praise to God. And I think that it's so cool how science backs this up. God has created our bodies in such an intricate way that the literal response, our physical response has so many benefits just by being thankful.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul says, "Be joyful always. Pray continuously and give thanks in all circumstances. Remember that joys, prayers, and thankfulness should not fluctuate with your circumstances or feelings though. Obeying these three commands, being joyful always, praying continuously, and giving thanks often goes against our natural human inclinations, which is what I talked about earlier, how our brain is actually wired to see the negative bias. But when we make a conscious decision to do what God says, however, we begin to see people and situations in a new perspective. When we do God's will, we will find it easier to be joyful and thankful regardless of the circumstance that you're in.
Similar to what I mentioned above, negativity feeds negativity, dissatisfaction comes when our attention shifts from what we have to what we don't have. A perfect example of this is in Numbers 11:4-6. To give you some context, the Israelites have been led out of the Egyptian slavery and they are going into the promised land, which ends up taking them a lot longer than it should. But in this moment, in this specific passage, the people of Israel didn't seem to notice what God was doing for them. What God was for them in that moment was he was setting them free. He was making them a new nation. He was giving them new land, but because they were so wrapped up in this dissatisfaction, their shift had been focused from what all the things that were happening to only what they saw with their eyes right then. And in that moment, they could think of nothing but the delicious food that they left behind. But somehow they forgot the brutal whip of the Egyptian slavery was the cost of eating that food.
When I read this passage, I sat back and just laughed like, "Hello, Israelites, you have literally being led out of this Egyptian slavery and you're headed into the promise land. Why are you not thankful?" But before I judge them too harshly, I read this commentary of it. And it said it's helpful to think about what occupies our attention most of the time. Are we grateful for what God has given us in our life right now? Or are we always thinking about what we would like to have? We should also not allow our unfulfilled desires to cause us to forget God's basic gifts of life, food, health, work, and friends. And I thought, "Man, how true is that?"
I feel like oftentimes when I'm not focused on gratitude and thankfulness and having the attitude of gratitude, I shift my focus to dissatisfaction. And that comes when my attention shifts from what I have to what I don't have or what I want to have, like those unfulfilled desires. And so you might be in that same place, like how do we not allow our unfulfilled desires to cause us to forget God's gifts? Well, we have to change the wiring in our brain by choosing to practice gratitude daily.
In my personal story, when I was in my deepest, darkest days of unhappiness, remembering 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: be joyful always, pray continuously and give thanks in all circumstances, reminded me how important it is to be thankful for God's presence and trust in his will, that it would be accomplished ultimately. So maybe you were unsure of the practice of gratitude, but you heard the scientific aspects and biological aspects of what gratitude can do positively in our life. And then also just remembering that as humans and as Christians, we should have this attitude of thankfulness and how it should be an integral heart of our praise to God. You might be like, "I don't know how to do it though. How do I start my gratitude practice?"
A gratitude practice is not hard. It can seriously be one of the easiest habits that you can ever adopt. And then it can also start to be one of your favorite things that you do throughout the day. I don't know about you, but I just find more and more things every day to be grateful for simply because I'm actively looking for them now. And that's what God wants. He wants us to be thankful in all of our circumstances, regardless of the chaos that might be going on in our life. There is so much to be thankful for.
And so for me personally, I like to pray to God and I like to journal five things each morning that I'm thankful for. So as I'm praying, I'm also writing them down. I feel like writing them down neurologically does something different and you connect to it a lot deeper. But for some people, they do it while they're driving to work, they do it while they're brushing their teeth. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you actively start identifying five things that you're thankful for and starting there. A silly but effective way to hold yourself accountable to this is to set a grateful alarm on your phone. So this could go off first thing in the morning. It could go off on lunch. It could go off at nighttime. But reminding yourself, hey, take three minutes and say out loud or write it down or think in your mind what you're thankful for, and really allow yourself to start looking at your life through that lens.
Again, like I mentioned earlier, I truly find gratitude to be such an important aspect of my life, simply because we're called to not only as Christians, we're called to have the attitude of thankfulness towards God and everything that is bestowed upon us in our life, but also the positive benefits that it has on our life.
I hope that this episode encouraged you. I hope it gave you something and maybe you learned something new about gratitude. If you are wanting to learn a little bit more, I have a good food for thought episode that's very short and sweet. Episode six: How to Take Control of Your Day and Live a More Positive Life. I will link that in the show notes below, but I would love to know what you are grateful for today. So be sure to list off three to five things. You can either say it, you can write it down on Instagram story. Be sure to tag me, Julia Ledbetter, and the podcast account Embrace Your Real so that we can re-share and inspire more women like you to develop a gratitude practice.
Again, thank you for tuning in. I would also love to know your aha moment. So maybe you send that to me in the DM. Maybe you post it up on your Instagram story as well. Or if you have a friend or a sister in your life that you feel like would benefit from this episode, I just asked you shared out with them. You can copy the link and send it to them in a text message, but either way, thank you for tuning in. I hope that this message encourages you to start your gratitude practice, or maybe it inspires you to continue to grow deeper in your gratitude practice each day. I love you so much and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, juliealedbetter, yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcast to never miss an episode
Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.