How Gratitude Impacts Wellness

Hi, I'm so grateful that you're here. I'm grateful that you're taking this time for yourself. And before we really get started, and I tell you the topic for today, let's just take a really big exhale. Been through a lot. The weather's still all over the place. There's less sunshine where I'm at. It's more windy.

We've had a lot going on with the holidays, with things in the world, things within our family, things at work. It's a lot and we have just come through a really long month of January and next it's talking about love and sometimes. That idea comes with the stipulation that we needed to show everyone around us that we love them, and it just gets shoved down our throat.

So just whew. Exhale. Okay.

Today we are talking about gratitude

Welcome to Wellness. In every season, we talk all things wellness, to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself if you are listening for the first time. Welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here, and let's get started in the rest of the podcast.

this is something that I am pretty sure. Looking back, I've had every one of my clients, I've talked to them about it and have given them some type of homework around it, and it's something that I come back to within my own wellness practices and I share with my children.

It's when things get hard, it's the first thing to throw out the window and when. Things get hard. That's when we start going, okay, whatever version of God we believe in or the whatever universe, why me? Why do bad things happen? We go through that whole spiral and we forget that when our flight is delayed, when we miss the bus, the train, when we are stuck in a traffic jam because of somebody else's car accident. To be grateful that, for one thing, it wasn't us in that car accident. So it's not, we're affected now, not for the rest of our lives. We forget that things happen for a reason, and things that can seem awful in this moment can work out for our good.

And that we, I'll go back to, I think I said it the last time I had a solo episode that I grew up with this saying in my house, and it is that life is 80% of what we do about it. 20% happens to us. 80% is what we choose. And if we use that thinking and science could have proven us wrong. At this point, I'm not going to Google it and double check.

No. The point is the numbers don't really matter as much as we are more in control than we think we are. And the best way to remember our focus is to remember to do gratitude.

So one thing that I have given, I'm pretty sure every one of my clients and myself, and we even do it with our kids, is what are you grateful for?

What are you grateful for right now in this moment? It can be something stupid. I don't care. Start wherever you want. For me, coming out, coming through everything Health challenge related, and I know I'm not the only one. There are so many people around that have had different health challenges and we can go into astrological why it is.

And we can look at the weather like so many things, and we are so dependent on the weather, which is so interesting because we are living lifestyles where we are inside more than we're outside, and we're still very dependent on the weather. Have you noticed the barometric pressure changes? How much pressure you feel in your head?

There's so much there, but remembering that. The days are now getting longer again. Yay. I'm a sunshine girl, as well as I'm sure most of you are, whether you realize it or not. So you can start by being grateful that the days are getting longer. I do not like getting up in the dark. During the summer, it's also weird to go to bed when it's still light out.

So I, like that happy medium. I don't know that I would ever. Thrive long term living in Alaska, but it is definitely on my bucket list to visit. So what's the second thing you're grateful for? Now that I'm done with that tangent,

what is something that you have complained about in the past that you are now grateful for? For me. I have had challenges within my marriage in the past, and I'm so grateful for them. I am so grateful for those first few years of marriage that were just so hard, and it's amazing to look back and realize how much of it was because I was trying to relive the patterns of my mom and stepdad.

Of my dad and really coming to terms with what I want my marriage to be like, not their relationships and like their examples. And getting further away from other toxic people who were becoming too involved in our marriage made such a difference for us. And. I am grateful for the trials that we had then because we learned how to communicate.

I am grateful that it sounds so weird that I had fertility issues because it made me have extra time to prepare to be the mom that I am now and to be even more grateful for being a mom and for my kids. And it's something that I can look back on days where I just wanna shake each of my children and say, what was I thinking?

I decided to become a mom. Remembering how hard that was, that period of life, I am grateful that I was in a car accident. I won't always say that. I won't always feel that way. It depends on the moment of the day. But it gave me that opportunity to really dig my heels in and really practice more of what I am coaching other people through.

And to uplevel my own self-care and wellness. I have discovered more of what works and what doesn't, which I'll be sharing a lot more during these solo episodes about that. I am grateful for you guys that you guys have stuck with me through all the different things that I've tried and failed at with podcasting, and it's actually been a lot of fun trying different things and seeing what works best for you guys and getting feedback.

So what else? I've given you several of my own, but what else has. Been difficult for you in your past that you are now grateful for? Maybe it's the career path that you're on now. Maybe it's where you're living now. You could have told me when I was growing up and I would've laughed in your face if you had told me I would live on the East Coast and love it.

I absolutely love living on the East Coast. It's so fun. It met. My personality, which apparently was not personality, it was trauma response. So it's been interesting to learn how to slow down and now I stand out in this go go, world. That is the east coast. There are parts of the West coast that like that too.

I know this, but let me talk to you about, especially, you've probably fallen off on some of your New Year's resolutions. Fine, normal. It goes with the stages of change that are right behind my head. You need to fall off several times to, and then get back up and keep falling off. And it's also that opportunity when you're falling off of why do I even have this as a, something that I wanna change in my life, A habit that I wanna create, or a habit that I wanna break why?

And dig into that. But gratitude goes along with this because when you. Are in that space. You're not as judgmental on yourself, you're not as judgmental with other people, and you get that really good like we did at the very beginning, that really good exhale of where you really settle into yourself. I was in the sauna this morning and there is a woman there who is just starting out her gym membership here at my gym.

And we were chatting about the reasons why sauna's good for you. And she reminded me that it's really good somatically because when you are in that type of environment with the hot air and it smells good in there, which is weird 'cause everyone's sweating, but the wood really helps a lot for this. But it helps you have that exhale that we did and just.

Get outta that fight, flight, freeze fawn, and just become centered with yourself. Gratitude can be another part of this, so that's why we're talking about this, and you can put it into daily practices. I add it in with my journaling time. I don't do journaling, like paragraph form essay, like here's all these pages of journaling.

For me, it's lines, a line at a time. They're little sentences, sometimes not even a full sentence because it's for me, it's not for other people to read. And that's where I log my sleep. That's where I log. Have I done my morning routine the way that I want it done? I have my affirmations in there. I have my prayer for the day in there.

And I have my things that I'm grateful for in there. And sometimes I do all of those things in the journal. Sometimes I don't. It depends on where I'm at in life because I notice that with me being more of a workaholic, I try to shove everything in together and then I feel overwhelmed. So for me, it.

It's what feels right in this moment, and gratitude always feels right. It's that chance to pause and let go of the things that I'm complaining about in my head that's cluttering things up. Just get that out and really what went right, what's going right? What have I taken for granted that's right here in front of me.

Especially, we still have viruses going around. Maybe the first thing you should be grateful for is your health, or if you're sick, and I've done this of, oh, this is a great reminder that I'm so grateful for the way my health has been. We tend to be going so fast and doing all these things that we don't remember how well and how smooth things are going.

Until things aren't as smooth. And there is scientific data out there. I love science that shows us that we keep the things in our head that are like bad reviews. We, how about this? What is the last place that you ate at or the last meal that you ate that you didn't like? I'm sure that pops up a lot faster than what was the favorite meal that you had or what did you have yesterday for dinner?

Or what was that new restaurant that you tried out that you really liked? Do you remember that name? Without looking at Google Maps.

Isn't it funny how much I mentioned Google when I have an iPhone? Anyway, the things that we don't like stick in our brain. That's why when we spend the time to show gratitude, to write it down, to speak it out loud, especially to share something that you're grateful for that somebody else has done. It rewires your brain.

It somatically does so many good things for you inside your body. And if you are giving somebody else, this is what I'm grateful for. About them. It's that affirmation. You might just be speaking their love language. And when you are sharing gratitude, you might just be speaking your own love language.

That reminds me and that correlates with something that I had a conversation I had with somebody today about love languages and how some love languages that you speak. Naturally or do to other people might not be the way that you receive love. And the first time I heard that, I was like, hold on. I need to pause and think about this more.

It's so true. There are so many people in my life that I've met that are like that and I'm like that too. The things that I naturally do to show other people love, it's if people repeat it back to me, it's not the way I receive love, but. Sharing gratitude might just be that person's love language. And when you start doing that more often to people, it's that great way of paying it forward.

Have you ever had someone do this amazing act of kindness for you? Might just be even smiling out of nowhere in traffic and just lightens your day, and then you find yourself smiling and sharing that with somebody else. Gratitude can do that. And it will lighten your day. Let's just put it that way.

Try it out. So what's the third thing you're grateful for while we're talking about it?

For, me,

I am grateful. That I have indoor plants. I enjoy 'em during the summer, but I'm more grateful for them during the winter when I am indoors more because it's cold and windy, because it brings that nature in with me. I got a lot more into indoor plants when my kids were younger and I was stuck indoors with them more with naps and everything else.

And it's a lot of fun to have nature around me, and I remember the days when my kids were very small and I try and have 'em outside, even in a pack and play, where they were a little more contained when they were that little and trying to do yard work right alongside them. It did not work very well. So my fourth thing that I'm grateful for is that my kids are older.

It makes it a lot more fun that I'm not needed as much and I'm getting more glimmers into what they're going to be like as adults, and I'm so excited to have them be part of this world to making it better and that. I get to have a relationship with these amazing creatures that are mine and some days they're more like creatures than humans.

There's really so much to be grateful for and it can take a while to get used to sharing gratitude. I know for several clients that I can think of off the top of my head. It took a while. And then the next homework assignment that I did for one in particular, because it was such a struggle and it, was like, I'm gonna uplevel you.

This is gonna be worse, is if you're really good about gratitude and you wanna try the next thing, you stand in front of a mirror and you look at yourself in the eye and you start telling yourself the things that you are grateful for about yourself. It is hard, especially if you do not grow up in a household where you had parents or parental figures sharing with you that kind of love.

And let's be honest, it is so much easier to parent where you're correcting all the time. I, catch myself doing it all the time and not sharing the things that you see that kids are doing right. And chances are pretty high that you probably also grew up in a household like that, so you did not have enough of those affirmations.

So if you're already doing gratitude, you got that handled. The next thing is in front of the mirror every day, and at the end of saying the things that you're grateful for, the things that you're really showing up for, look yourself in the eye and really just zero in on yourself. And say, I love you. It feels so weird.

And you're saying all of this out loud too. So make sure that you're either telling your family what you're doing or make sure they're not around. Could be interesting if they walk in on it. But try that out. You're already done with the gratitude or you wanna just try it out.

Either way. Try gratitude for a week and then come back to me and let's, talk, let's see how things are going.

Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed, and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for as part of the legal language.

I am a certified life coach with a Bachelor's in Applied Health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice. Take it as such. See you in the next episode.