Ep #127: Up-Level Your Life with Gratitude

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #127. Gratitude is not fuzzy. And in fact, it’s good for your health. Let’s talk about it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? We are going to talk about gratitude today.

Here, in the U.S., it’s nearly Thanksgiving, and we are about to head full-on into the holiday season. I also realized that I have yet to talk about gratitude on the podcast, so I decided that this would be a great week to bring this to you.

Let me say from the outset, gratitude is not fuzzy. This is not mushy squishy. You are not too tough for gratitude. Okay? You are not too sarcastic or hardened to have gratitude. I promise. And this is coming from someone who most definitely thought she was way too sarcastic and hardened to practice gratitude.

And, similar to self-compassion, gratitude is essential. No one is above it. No one is beyond gratitude. In fact, it’s an important piece of your overall wellness. I want to put it out in the open and make gratitude actionable for you.

I want to take a concept that at first go, to me anyway, seemed kind of nebulous and fluffy and make it tangible and real and usable for you. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about gratitude and get clear on what it actually means. Then we’re going to talk about “why bother?” I’m going to answer your question, why bother practicing gratitude?

We’ll talk about the different ways that you can do this. And of course, we’ll get into the benefits. And to do that, I’m going to pull in some science. Because there’s most definitely science to back up the utility of practicing gratitude. So I’m going to pull all of this together for you today, so you can consider how to start incorporating gratitude into your own life. Because this is just another key tool to add to your toolbox for wellness. Okay? So let’s go.

Alright, first, let’s get really clear on what gratitude actually is. I’ll admit, even for me, when I was first introduced to this concept, I had a hard time understanding it. I thought at its most basic level that practicing gratitude just meant saying “thank you.” I really was clueless about gratitude anywhere beyond that.

But then I kept hearing about it from other coaches, and reading about it in books, and coming across it in meditation and self-help literature, and finally, I decided that gratitude warranted a deeper dive. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that I was especially good at gratitude.

To be fair, I’m still not very good at it, but I’m working on it. And in full transparency, I spent a lot of my life being the opposite of grateful in many ways. I have talked about my childhood plenty of times on this podcast. And I will be honest, I felt incredibly ungrateful about it.

In fact, I can even take it farther — I felt cheated. I felt jealous of all the people around me who seemed to have it so much better than I did. And when I say that I felt other people had it better, I mean in every way. We grew up without a lot of money. Money, or really lack of money, was a constant topic of conversation in my house. And it was the source of many, many arguments between my parents. I heard far too many of those arguments.

But beyond that, beyond the money and material things and the objects that I did not grow up with, I also did not grow up with much emotional support. I was on my own a lot. If I had a problem with friends or with school, I couldn’t really turn around and talk with my parents about it. They were dealing with their own issues, and they were big, nasty, ugly issues. They were simply not emotionally available to be present for me.

So when I grew up and became an adult, and was able to see my childhood in hindsight, see what I did with my own life despite not having the support I thought I needed, I could have chosen to have gratitude. I could have.

Now, many years later, looking in the rear-view mirror of where I came from and what I have chosen to do with my life, I see that I had an opportunity to have gratitude for my past but I didn’t. Instead, I spent years, or really, let’s be honest, I spent decades being extremely bitter. I was bitter at everything and everyone.

My friends who did not have it the way I did growing up. My friends who had loving, doting parents who were there for them and supported them. I was bitter. I had a serious, legit chip on my shoulder. And I think, now that I look back on it, I spent so much of my time being bitter about what I didn’t have that I failed to appreciate what I did have.

But now, with a whole lot of work, and admittedly, both coaching and therapy, I have a different perspective. I will be the first to admit that this is not always easy for me, but I really have made it a point to practice gratitude for what I do have in my life.

So I can tie this all together for you using some of the tools that I’ve shared before on this podcast. I used to say it all the time, “I came from broken.” Admittedly, sometimes I still catch myself saying that. But I’m getting a lot better at it. Suffice it to say, my story was, “I am broken. I came from broken, so therefore I am broken.”

But remember what we know about words. Your words create your world. And your world creates your words. And your words are your filter. So imagine what it would be like going through your life with the story, “I am broken.” Well, that was my story for God knows how long, and it really wasn’t working for me.

It was leaving me bitter and completely blind to any of the good that was happening in my life beyond my childhood. I was too busy being broken and living broken, that I was unable to see any evidence of the good in my life. But all of those years being bitter and thankless and ungrateful were really exhausting. I got tired of it.

Really, there was no “aha” moment. There was no wake-up call. I really did just get tired of it. I felt heavy all the time. I felt weighed down and bitter, so angry. And if you’ve ever carried those feelings around with you for any length of time, you know what it feels like. It feels like carrying a two-ton boulder on your back. It’s no good.

So now I make a very conscientious effort to see things differently. I live out my life differently. And I was reminded of that progress just recently, when I saw a large group of my family, including my dad, at my aunt’s funeral. I had not seen many of these family members in years.

And while I was there at my aunt’s funeral, I could feel it rising. I could feel that heaviness starting to settle in on my back. I could feel everything within me slowing down under the weight of bitterness. I could feel the familiarity of it.

But I stopped. I acknowledged what was happening. I could feel it and I told myself, “Not this time. I’m not going to be bitter. I’m done being bitter. I’m done being ungrateful.” And do you know what I did instead? I reminded myself of how far I’ve come.

I reminded myself of how different I am now. I reminded myself of the work that I’ve done. Not just in my career, but also the work I’ve done on myself as a human growing up in a messed-up home with other messy humans who were and still are trying to figure their lives out.

While I was at that funeral, I reminded myself of what I was coming home to, and how I absolutely could not wait to get home to my husband and my kids and my life and my amazing clients and my work. I reminded myself of all the things that I do have in my life. On my drive home, I kept thinking of all those things that I had in my life. And how full my life is now with good people and good work and good experiences. And that weight lifted. That heaviness went away.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would be where I am now if I didn’t have the childhood and upbringing I had. And so here’s where I put my money where my mouth is and use my own tools to help me move forward. I used to tell anyone who asked that my childhood stunk. And if you wanted to know why, I could tell you loads and loads of yucky stories about things that happened in my home growing up. I could give you all kinds of evidence for why “my childhood stunk.” That was my story and it most certainly did not evoke a drop of gratitude within me. In fact, it just fueled the ungratefulness and bitterness. It was not pretty.

But instead, I don’t tell myself that anymore. I don’t tell other people that story anymore. Instead, I can confidently declare that my childhood made me the woman I am today. I am the person I am today because of where I came from. And that feels a whole lot different than “my childhood stunk.” That is a very different filter compared to “my childhood stunk.”

And here’s the thing. I didn’t find what I was looking for within my own family growing up, and I can’t change that. It’s done. It’s over. I can choose to spend the rest of my life being bitter about it or I can choose to turn my eyes forward. I can choose to look at what my life is now, here in the present, and see what I do have.

I have a really great partner who is funny and understanding, insanely patient with me, who’s super cute, and who likes me even when I burn his dinner; more often than not. I have two sons who are funny and smart and so completely different from each other. Each has such great gifts. I am so thrilled to see them grow up and watch them become who they are going to be in this world.

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to create a different story for my own family now that I am an adult. I have serious gratitude for that. I am so thankful for this family that I helped build. And we are far from perfect. We have our bad days and bad stretches. But at the heart of it, I know that I have something real and true. I have created the family that I didn’t have growing up. I stopped repeating history. I broke the cycle. And for that, I am beyond grateful.

So while I know that was a long example of gratitude in my own life, I share all of this to illustrate this did not happen overnight. For me, gratitude was a learned behavior. It did not come naturally to me at all. However, I have found that it’s absolutely worthwhile to see my life, especially some of the uglier parts of my life, through a filter of gratitude. It really does feel different. It feels lighter, and it feels better.

To make it very clear, very simply, gratitude is this: It is the act of recognizing and acknowledging the good things that happen, resulting in a state of appreciation. I dug through a number of articles, with loads of definitions and big words, all describing gratitude. And honestly, this is the one I landed on that made the most sense and was the easiest to understand. What I liked about this definition was that it explained gratitude as having two distinct parts.

First, there’s the recognition or acknowledgement of the good in your life. I think of that as observing it, you name it, and call out what is good in your life. And that could be anything. You have a good job. You have a loving family. You have friends. You have food on the table. You woke up today. You have clean socks to stick on your feet.

It doesn’t matter how big or small it is, the first part of gratitude is simply acknowledging that you have something good in your life. That’s it. You are giving it attention. And that means coming off autopilot and calling it out. You are naming and observing whatever it is that’s good in your life.

And second, by acknowledging or calling out whatever it is that’s good in your life, you take it a step further and lean into the feeling of thankfulness or a state of appreciation towards it. You generate a feeling of gratitude. And I know, stay with me here, because this is where it might sound a little woo.

But this is where I want to blow it all out of the water. When I think of gratitude, I think of coming off autopilot to take the time and the brain space to create a feeling of appreciation. Okay, I know I talk about being on autopilot often, but it’s only because I’ve been there. So many of my clients have been there, and it’s really not a fun place to be.

You know this already. It is no fun going through life numb. Okay? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a machine anymore. I don’t want to be on autopilot. I don’t want to be oblivious to the things and the people and the good around me, because I don’t want to miss out.

I don’t want to be a machine grinding along on the hamster wheel, not taking the time to stop and feel. I did that for years, and it really broke me. I don’t want to live that way anymore, and I don’t recommend it. So in order to truly practice gratitude, you have to feel into it. You have to let yourself feel. Okay? Honestly, that’s it.

You have to slow down enough, pay attention, be intentional, and give yourself permission and space to feel gratitude. It could be as simple as telling yourself, “I am so grateful for this right now.” Honestly, that’s how I started doing this. I did not get an app. I didn’t buy a journal. I didn’t hire another coach. I just started saying to myself, “I am grateful for this.” I do it often while I’m working out.

So you know I don’t always feel like getting up at 4:45 in the morning to work out before my workday starts, but I do it anyway. And to be honest, some of my best workouts are the ones when I start out feeling really salty about it.

Like even today, I knew I had planned to go for a run. It was pitch black. It was kind of spitting rain. Not a downpour, but spitty enough that I knew I was going to come home soggy. And it was cold so I had to add on another layer and put on an ear band and gloves. I really didn’t want to do any of it, but I did it anyway. It was only four miles, not a big deal.

When I finished and did my short, little cool-down walk on the way back to my house, I let myself feel gratitude. I let myself feel the value of what I just did. I appreciated the thing I did and remembered that there are many people who don’t or who can’t do what I just did; I will be grateful. And I just felt better.

I also practice gratitude with my kids. When I’m in my office running client sessions, and I look out my office window and see them in our yard running around with tons of other kids playing football or basketball, or when they all take off on their bikes or scooters together, I practice appreciating it. I am so grateful that we are able to give them that experience.

And while it is nothing more than front-yard football, I hope that 20 years from now, they can look back on their childhood and remember all the fun times they had going outside and playing with kids in the neighborhood. I feel grateful. I take that brief second to just appreciate it. That’s it.

So gratitude, like many of the things that I talk about on this podcast, is not fancy. Okay? There are two parts to it. Acknowledging what is good, and taking it beyond acknowledgement and appreciating it. That means slowing down and feeling it. You knew it was going to come back to your feelings, right? So here it is.

You have to practice feeling gratitude. And that might feel foreign to you, like it did for me. So I made it very conscientious. I’m a fairly literal person. I like to spell things out. I like to be deliberate and I like clarity. So I practice telling myself, “I am grateful for this,” and then I go inside and ask myself what that actually feels like. And it just feels good. I’m not going to say it feels warm and fuzzy, but it feels full and light.

In contrast to the boulder on my back that I was carrying for decades, gratitude feels full, but light. At least it does for me. And so you get to find out what it feels like for you. You can try this out.

That leads me to the next question, the one I was not sure of for myself, how do you actually practice gratitude? And while I recognize that’s a bit of a big question, the good news is that there is no one right way to do this. It is like exercise and nutrition, there is just no one right way to go about it.

So here’s something to consider. Gratitude is both a state of being and a state of doing. Okay? You can make gratitude something that you practice within yourself, similar to what I was just describing. And this is where you slow down, call out what it is that you feel grateful for, and practice generating the feeling of thankfulness for yourself. That is one way of doing it.

And you can also make gratitude a state of doing by expressing your gratitude to another person. This is taking your gratitude outside yourself and sharing your appreciation in some way with someone else.

So here are some examples to give you some real, actionable ways to practice this. First would be to start a gratitude journal. This is probably one of the simplest, easiest, and most accessible ways to get started. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be a notebook. It can be a journal. It can be the notes app in your phone.

The point here is to write it down, or type it if you prefer. You can choose to do more than just think it, okay? Remember that there is a difference when you write something out as opposed to just trying to remember it. I talked about it a few weeks ago, it’s called “encoding”. When you write it down, your brain stores that information differently than if you were to just think it to yourself.

And your brain is more likely to hold onto and remember something that you write yourself; something that you generate actively versus something that you think about passively. Okay?

One of my friends from medical school did this with her kids. I visited her, and she had a whiteboard in her kitchen. At the top of the whiteboard, she wrote, “Today I am grateful for…” and all of her kids wrote, in various dry erase markers, what they were grateful for that day.

I thought that was really cool. The point here is that it does not have to be a big ordeal, and it does not have to be fancy to count as gratitude. It all counts.

And something similar to this, which may work for other people who are more visual in nature, is to start a gratitude map. You can think of it as a vision board where you post or add pictures, magazine cutouts, letters, quotes, etc. of all the things that you’re grateful for. It’s like a mood board, but dedicated to the things and people in your life that make you feel grateful.

Okay, another thing that you can do is commit to sharing gratitude with people in your life regularly. That could be writing a short letter or a note to someone that you feel grateful for. And if that is not your style, how about a text? I know that we all do a lot of texting, and there are pros and cons to it, but imagine what it would be like to write a text to a friend that you haven’t spoken with in a while and you just send a short message to say, “Hey, I’m thinking of you. I’m grateful for you. I’m glad that you’re in my life”?

It does not have to be any more involved than that. But if you haven’t done it, I challenge you to try this out. In fact, as I was working on this podcast, I put my money where my mouth is. I stopped for a break and sent a quick message to one of my coach friends in Canada. Because, for whatever reason, she was on my brain.

It felt good to think about her and let her know it. And I hope it made her feel good. But, selfishly, at the same time it made me feel good. This person is a super cool woman. She’s another one of the awesome coach friends that I’ve made since transitioning careers, and I wanted to let her know that. And so I hope it made her smile. It made me smile too, to think about this person in my life that I’m grateful to have in my circle.

It took maybe one minute to do. And you can do this too. You can do the same thing. Okay? Another way to incorporate gratitude into your life is through meditation. So if you’re someone who meditates … and as a side note, the more I read, the more I think we could all stand to meditate … But if you’re someone who already meditates, you can add gratitude into your meditation practice. You can practice meditating about the things that you’re grateful for.

When I think of meditation, I think of creating a space of focus and clarity. And in that space, you can choose to focus on the things in your life for which you are grateful. If you’re someone like me who thinks that meditation is hard, that’s okay. There’s a reason they call it a meditation “practice”, right? It’s something you keep working towards. But you can use your meditation as a time to incorporate gratitude.

And then, one other method I want to share in regard to gratitude, is the practice of engaging in something called “mental subtraction”. This is really interesting to me. When I learned about it, I started using it quite frequently and it really has added a very different perspective for me on my life.

This one really landed and I want to share it. So mental subtraction is a practice where you imagine what your life would be like without a positive event that you experienced. You think about what your life might be like had the event not happened. You imagine what the impact of that would be. And then you refocus on the present, where that positive experience did happen.

I think this is really interesting and such a unique and different way of approaching gratitude. I do this often when I think about going to medical school. Since becoming a life coach, I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked if I regret going to medical school. I honestly cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had not gone to medical school.

I would not have met some of the really cool friends that I have. I would not have met my husband. I probably would not have become a life coach. I could go on and on. And when I really come at it this way, it totally reframes medical school for me. It gives me a tremendous feeling of gratitude. Not everyone has the opportunity to go to medical school, but I got it. I had the opportunity and I took it. I’m very grateful for that important part of my life because it ultimately helped me land where I am now in my life.

So try this for yourself. Think of something positive in your life. That could be a person, an event, a trip, a place, an achievement. It really doesn’t matter what it is. But consider that positive part of your life and try to imagine for one moment what your life would be like without it.

What would your life be like without that person or that place or that experience? How is your life different because of it? What does that make you feel towards that person or that experience? How does that evoke gratitude for the life that you have now? You can use that tool anytime. I really love this one. For me, of all the ways I’ve incorporated gratitude in my life, which I’m still working on, this is one of my favorites.

All right, we’ve talked about what gratitude is, and we’ve talked about some of the ways to do it. So now let’s talk about, why bother? What is the point? Why bother practicing gratitude? Well, the cool part about it is that there are multiple benefits to practicing gratitude.

There is a study that is cited often by the psychologist Robert Evans, who really is considered to be an authority on gratitude. And his study really turned the spotlight on the positive impact of gratitude. In the study, he concluded that a conscious focus on gratitude may have both emotional and interpersonal benefits. The most noticeable of which was on your personal affect.

Very simply, in plain English, practicing gratitude was shown to improve your wellbeing. This study was considered the landmark study that started a trend and spawned a number of other studies that looked at the impacts of practicing gratitude.

So with this interest in gratitude, there are now other studies suggesting that practicing gratitude reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression, increases self-esteem, and improves overall life satisfaction. I will say that these results are variable, and this is not a complete slam dunk. But the overall body of evidence is supportive of practicing gratitude.

In addition to the mental health benefits of practicing gratitude, we’re starting to see some of the physical health benefits too. There are studies that show that gratitude journaling can improve biomarkers related to heart failure morbidity, like reduced inflammation.

To be clear, this is a small study, but it highlights the need for larger scale studies to really dive in and look at the potential impact of practicing gratitude on patients with heart failure. And this may translate to other chronic conditions too. There are other health benefits of practicing gratitude, like improved sleep and improved immunity. It can improve your pain tolerance. It can lower your blood pressure and improve your heart rate variability.

And here’s another cool benefit. There are small studies showing that people who practice gratitude are more inclined to eat healthy and move their bodies more. So practicing gratitude can help you eat and move better. And that’s huge.

This is not woo, okay? Gratitude is not woo. There are science-backed mental and physical benefits to making this part of your routine. And I think this is just the beginning.

So, while I just went over the benefits that you might experience for yourself when you practice gratitude, I don’t want to skip over the benefits that gratitude has for your relationships. There are studies that show when couples practice gratitude toward each other, they not only feel more positive toward their partner but they also feel more comfortable bringing up their concerns within their relationship. And that is a big win.

Practicing gratitude has also been shown to improve connection and overall relationship satisfaction. So couples who express gratitude towards each other have been found to spend more time together. And it can also improve their affection towards each other.

So there’s clearly something to this. Gratitude is good for you, but it’s also good for the other important relationships in your life. My hope is that by sharing this, you’re seeing that there are a wide range of benefits to practicing gratitude, for both your physical and mental health and for your relationships.

And if you’re wondering, like I was, there is no mutually agreed upon dose of gratitude. It’s just like protein, there is no universal consensus as to how much is appropriate. The studies do not come out and agree on a standard practice of something like five minutes, three times a day, for example.

They do not prescribe a certain amount of days or time to practice gratitude. So that makes it a little harder to come out with any specific numeric recommendations. But many of the articles I found suggested making gratitude a daily practice.

And regardless, however you practice it, the science supporting gratitude looks very much positive. I imagine we’re going to continue seeing much more about the science of this in the future. So if you want to start this, start small. It’s like any habit, start small, okay?

Take a second, right now, as you’re listening to this podcast and think of something you are grateful for. What is it? Is it a smooth drive to work while you’re listening to this? Is it sunny where you are? Do you have a mug of coffee in front of you that smells good? Did you have a good conversation with one of your kids this morning? Do you have your favorite shirt on right now?

Find something, recognize it, acknowledge it, and then keep thinking about it. And let yourself feel grateful. What does it feel like to feel grateful for whatever it is you’re thinking about? I said it before, but for me, it feels light, but also full. What does it feel like for you? Tap into that. You don’t need to announce it. You don’t need to make a big show of it. You don’t need to put it on a t-shirt.

In fact, you don’t have to do anything on the outside. All you’re doing is accessing a feeling within you, on purpose, by generating it with your thoughts. Do you see that? This is the connection between your thoughts and feelings right here, and it is so cool. You think of something on purpose, for which you are grateful, and then you feel it. I will be so bold as to promise you that thinking about and feeling gratitude will help you feel better.

And as we head into Thanksgiving tomorrow, here in the U.S., I will just take this as an opportunity to express my gratitude to you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this podcast. Thank you for your feedback. I am grateful for you. So have a great holiday, for those celebrating.

If you want to talk more about this, let’s go. When you coach with me, you’ll learn how to generate feelings on purpose, like gratitude. And you’ll see how it impacts your life for the better. Check out my website. Send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching will change the way you think in order to change the way you feel. All right?

Thank you for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week. Hey, if you’re looking for your next great read, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/books and download my list of most favorite reads. I’ve got two collections waiting for you. One is all about work-life balance. The other is a collection of books that have changed my life.

I’ve referenced many of these books in the podcast, and now you can access those titles all in one place.

Again, that’s CarrieHollandMD.com/books. Check it out and find your next great read. Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.