00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 79, "Gratitude." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Well, hey there, and welcome to the podcast today. Happy to have you with me. Let's see. Hope you had a great Christmas. Christmas was just last week, and mine was great. My kids were with their dad, but then they got to come to my house, so we've been hanging out. I have a son up from college, and he has been hanging out, and I love having him home. It's fun. 

00:42 

Let's see. Okay, a couple of things right up front. If you have not signed up yet for my "weekend win" email, get on my website, tanyahale.com, scroll all the way down to the bottom, and do that. On Friday mornings, I send an email. It is meant to be read in one minute or less, just a little piece of life coaching to help you look at things a little bit differently and see things differently, and they're great, and I want to invite you to do that. 

01:09 

Also, one of the favorite things that I do this time of year is an end of year review, and I have created one that I love. I've gotten some really, really great feedback from it from other people who have used it as well, and it basically just gives you a chance to go back and look at your year, and you look at all the things that you've accomplished, all the things that you've done. It is such a valuable tool. I know last year when I did it, I walked away just going, "man, I had a better year than I thought," and was very impressed with all the things that I had accomplished. But one of the greatest benefits of doing that was that it helped me to be very clear of where I really wanted to go. I'll be honest, I'm not a big New Year's Eve resolution kind of person. Just because I feel like I'm always working on things, I'm always trying to get a little bit better, to understand things better, to understand myself better, to get myself in a better place emotionally and mentally. So the New Year's resolutions? Not big for me. 

02:11 

But what I do love about this is this is such a natural time of year for us to look back and see how it's gone. And just because it's the end and the beginning and to see what I've done and where I'm going. So really, really good. You can get that on my website as well. Again, just go to tanyahale.com and then it should just be on a pop-up window. I'm going to keep that pop-up window on there until the end of January. So you'll be able to download it any time until the end of January. And it's free and it's fabulous and I think you'll really, really like it. It does take a couple of hours to do, but two or so hours really, really well worth your time. I promise you that. 

02:57 

Let's move on. We're talking about gratitude today. And I just thought this was such a great topic being it's the end of one year and the beginning of a new year. And it is a really natural time for us to look back and to get a sense for how it feels. And I keep seeing on Facebook, so many people saying how happy they are that 2019 is over and what a horrible year it was for them. But I also see a lot of people expressing a lot of gratitude for 2019 and for the amazing things that have happened to them. And this is the thing, every single one of us has had our own unique experience this past year. Some people have lost jobs and some have gotten new jobs. Some have lost relationships while others have found them. Some people have strengthened relationships while others have weakened them. Some have experienced overwhelming health problems while others have had an incredibly healthy year. All of us have had our own path to travel and all of us have things to experience and lessons to learn from them. And no doubt, life can be a little overwhelming sometimes with the circumstances that we're faced with. 

04:01 

And if you remember the model, circumstances are the one thing in life that we don't have any control over. But circumstances are also neutral. They are not good or bad and they are not positive or negative. Circumstances are just circumstances. The more we learn to separate out our circumstances from our thoughts about the circumstances, the more empowered we become. Because when we really start to realize how much control we actually have over our lives, the more we step into emotional adulthood, the more we can start to create what we really want to create. 

04:38 

So if you're thinking that it was a crappy year, I'm gonna tell you, my friends, that's your thoughts. The year was neutral. Every experience that happened to you in the course of the year was neutral. If you're thinking that it was an amazing year, again, that's your thoughts creating whatever it was. Now some of you may just say, "oh but this and this and this and this happened." Well good. Okay, so they happened but those are neutral. Every circumstance is neutral. It's how you think about it that makes it positive or negative. 

05:11 

So along those lines I've been doing some work on gratitude lately and I've learned some really amazing things that I want to share with you today because gratitude is one of those great things that we can incorporate into our lives that will help even the most difficult of circumstances have a silver lining. But this doesn't mean that we become Pollyanna-ishy and never acknowledge the difficulties or the discomforts of life. But it does mean that we can take any circumstance and create what we want to with it. 

05:45 

So let's start by taking a look at the thought model. Alright, we've covered this before but if you're new, here we go, I'm gonna review it. Where would gratitude fit in the thought model? We remember that the model has five parts. The first is circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. Okay, so where would gratitude fit? Okay, if you said feelings, you are right. Gratitude is a feeling, it's an emotion. So we would start off by putting it in the feeling line. And what creates our feelings? Our thoughts, right? Because thoughts are right above feelings in the thought model. What we choose to think about any particular circumstance then makes us feel what we feel about it. It all starts with our thoughts. So those people saying, "I've had a horrible 2019, I'm glad it's over, good riddance," your thoughts are creating that feeling of relief or that feeling of frustration or whatever it is that you're feeling about that. 

06:48 

Okay, now again, we do not have control over the circumstances, but we always have control over every other piece of the model. Our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and our results. And this is something that is so amazing and liberating about our lives. We can choose to create whatever we want to create in every one of those areas. So why would we want to choose to create feelings of gratitude? For some of you, gratitude may come very easy. For some of you, it may be very, very difficult, especially if you've had a tough year and you've had a rough time seeing the positive in it. 

07:27 

Why take the time to adjust our thoughts so that we can create the feeling of gratitude? One reason is, did you know that feelings of gratitude can be a great tool for overcoming feelings of depression and anxiety? Now there are people who struggle with depression or anxiety that is caused by a chemical imbalance, and that is different than the depression that may be situationally caused. But both of these reasons for depression, whether it's chemical imbalance or situational, can be impacted for the positive with thoughts and feelings of gratitude. Studies have shown increases in overcoming depression and anxiety with gratitude regardless of what the reasons for the depression is. 

08:16 

Another reason we may want to adjust our thoughts and feelings toward gratitude is that feelings of gratitude are associated with more contentment and happiness in life. Many research studies have confirmed this over and over. Feeling gratitude has also been connected to, get this, greater mental clarity and ability to include better decision making. Okay, is that so cool? Our brains work better when we are grateful? What? Okay, so many benefits to being grateful. 

08:56 

So let's look and explore gratitude a little bit more. So here's some definitions I found in my Merriam-Webster dictionary on my phone. I love that. First of all, "thankful." Also "appreciative of benefits received." And another one, "pleasing by reason of comfort supplied or discomfort alleviated." Alright. So generally we will feel gratitude for things in our lives: our homes, the food we have to eat, maybe clean drinking water, our education. We can also feel gratitude for acts of service like a gift given to us or someone helping us with a difficult task, someone listening to us discuss a difficult situation or someone letting our car in during heavy traffic. Right? We also feel gratitude for people. Gratitude for our parents, our spouses, children, friends, co-workers. All of these are people that we can feel grateful to for various reasons. 

09:57 

What about feelings of gratitude to God? Recognizing that all we have and are is because of Him. Not only our temporal blessings, but our lives, our minds, our talents, our strengths, our weaknesses, recognizing that they are because of Him can help us to feel gratitude toward God. I know that when I have sat down to really start listing all of the things I'm grateful for, I can find myself identifying things that on a day-to-day basis, I often overlook. When missionaries come home from third world countries, they often find themselves very overwhelmed by things the rest of us are just not seeing. Clean drinking water out of the faucet. Electricity at the touch of our fingers. Decent clothing and shoes. The ability to read. This shows us that gratitude is often based off of perception. If we've never known a hungry day in our lives, we may tend to take for granted the abundance of food we have to eat. If we've never had to walk 10 miles to church or to school, we don't have the same appreciation for the close proximity of these things or the transportation that makes 10 miles seem like nothing. 

11:13 

I love that this idea helps me remember that gratitude is seeing what's there. What are the benefits I'm receiving? How is my life being blessed? Gratitude has to do with opening our eyes literally and figuratively and really seeing what's there. Gratitude focuses on the blessings, on the abundance, and on the positive impact. Gratitude focuses on what's there instead of what's not there. A lack of gratitude often comes from focusing on our lack, or scarcity, rather than on our abundance. I would imagine that if you're listening to this podcast that you have somewhat of an abundance. What kind of device do you have that allows you to listen to it? A phone, some kind of a pad, a computer. Even if it's not yours, say you're going to the library, the ability to access this technology is an amazing blessing for which we can be very grateful. 

12:20 

When we start to struggle with gratitude is when we start to focus on what we don't have rather than on what we do have. And when we focus on our lack, we will always find ourselves wanting. Our discomforts will seem more obvious and glaring. Our frustrations will seem overwhelming and our wants will seem never ending. But those who feel gratitude feel more satisfaction and contentment with the state of their lives. Their overall happiness level increases the more they recognize the abundant state of their lives. And the more we focus on what we have rather than on what we don't have, the more our gratitude grows and the more our overall sense of well-being and happiness grows as well. So how can we start feeling more gratitude? 

13:13 

Let's take a look at the thought model. Where does the feeling of gratitude come from? You remember we talked about this a little bit earlier. It comes from our thoughts, right? What we choose to think can create feelings of gratitude. So how do we start that process? If we feel as though we are not grateful enough, do we even sometimes have any idea where to start? The first and the biggest, and often the most difficult, part of this process is the awareness of our thoughts. Learning to really become aware of our thoughts is something that most of us aren't really trained or taught how to do. We just think that we can do it, that thoughts come and go and there's nothing we can do about it. 

13:57 

And beyond that we have so many thoughts that we aren't even aware of. Most research estimates that we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. 60,000! How is that even possible? Now these thoughts would include subconscious thoughts. For example, my leg may be uncomfortable and my brain sends a thought to move my leg to a more comfortable position and I have no conscious awareness at all that I'm moving my body to relieve the discomfort of that leg, right? Often we say things "without thinking" and we end up in a mess in our relationships, right? We're not actually not thinking but we're letting our primitive brain do all of the thinking and processing and not monitoring it all with our consciousness or with our prefrontal cortex. But engaging our prefrontal cortex is huge in being able to become more aware of our thoughts. Often we have engaged in behavior so often that our primitive brain or our cerebellum does things so quickly and so efficiently that we've acted on something before we are even consciously aware of it. 

15:10 

And though this can be really helpful in many instances, such as habitual behaviors, like doing up the buttons on a shirt or tying our shoes, it can also create problems in areas where we want to start making different decisions. But our primitive brain is doing what it does, what it was created to do, engaging in habitual behaviors or patterns in order to save energy and  avoid pain or discomfort. So becoming aware of our thoughts can be difficult and it definitely requires some conscious effort. If you are not in the habit of creating grateful thoughts, this is where we get to start working, okay? 

15:50 

So let's look at some of the thoughts we can have that keep us from feeling gratitude. The first ones we're going to look at we often call "indulgent thoughts." And these are thoughts that may feel really good in the moment, but that long-term will cause us some problems. Often we will use the term "indulgent" with things like a dessert. It's amazing at the time we're eating it, we're treating ourselves to something really terrific right now, but long-term we are rarely happy with the results of that indulgent dessert. We may feel sluggish or frustrated with our lack of self-control or find ourselves climbing to a higher and higher unhealthy weight. An indulgent thought would be something like "why does this always happen to me?" Or "life is never fair." Or "why does life hate me so much?" Okay, at the time of difficulty we say these thoughts and we feel a little bit like a victim. Like everything is out of control and something or someone else is taking charge of our lives. 

16:50 

Initially, feeling like a victim can feel really good because it exonerates me from the responsibility of the situation and it blames someone or something else for what is happening in my life. It takes away my responsibility, right? Somebody else did it. I say initially it feels good, like eating the dessert, but as time wears on, we see the harm in those types of indulgence thoughts. We see that they put us into a state of emotional childhood where we don't take responsibility for our emotions. We always blame them on other people. We see that they keep us stuck in thought loops or thoughts that don't create any positive way out. They don't provide relief or answers. They just keep us feeling stuck. They keep us feeling like we have no control over what happens in our lives. They keep us in victim mode. 

17:45 

Another kind of thought that can keep us from feeling gratitude. are our general negative scarcity thoughts. Thoughts like, "life is just crappy, I never get lucky," or "I'm always the last person to get noticed." These thoughts create feelings of depression and even anxiety. Okay, they can make us feel hopeless and despondent because we see situations as unchangeable. We tend to feel that things are the way they are, which is negative, and nothing we can do will change that. A scarcity mindset makes us believe that there is only so much goodness in the world, and it's not our turn to receive that goodness. 

18:26 

It's interesting to me that some people just naturally tend to gravitate toward more positive or negative thoughts. Me, I tend to always gravitate toward positive. I rarely have overwhelming negative thoughts, or even really don't have a lot of negative thoughts at all. I think part of that is that I've trained myself to do that over the years. It has some positives, and it has some negatives associated with it, but I don't get sucked into a lot of negative things. I currently have an eighth grade student, however, who is always melancholy. One day I asked her how things were going, and she said something about how horrible they were, and when I expressed some concern about that, she replied that they were just always that way and that she was the type of person for whom that was always the case. 

19:15 

At 14, she has already pegged herself as a person who always sees things negatively. Are we born that way or bred that way? It's the old nature-nurture discussion, right? Most research that I've encountered says that it's a good combination of both, but the great news is that we can always learn to manage our thoughts toward more positivity if we're the kind of person who struggles with negativity. So whether we're born or bred with more negative thoughts, how can we choose to think more positive thoughts that are going to bring, feelings of gratitude into our lives. If gratitude is such a major key to feeling happiness and contentment, or an overall satisfaction in our lives, how do we get to this place? Well, I am so glad you asked. Remember, before we talked about perspective, and that has a lot to do with how much gratitude we feel. Learning to look at our lives from a different perspective can do wonders, and seeing things from a different perspective changes the way we think about them, and our thoughts control every feeling that we will create of gratitude. 

20:26 

So here's something you can do. If you've been around the mental health world at all, and read articles and that kind of stuff, you've heard about taking time every night to identify three things you're grateful for from that day. Slowing down to pay attention to things we appreciate in our lives is a huge key in feeling more gratitude, changing our perspective just... taking the opportunity to slow down and notice. But I want to expand on this idea a little bit because we want to get our thoughts  changing and not just our actions. Okay, we don't want to just create an action of writing something down. We want to actually go back and change our thoughts. So take time to write what you're grateful for and why you're grateful. So instead of "I'm grateful for my home...," also add on why you're grateful for your home. "...because right now while it's raining outside, I can be warm and dry inside. Because even though it's scorching outside, I have air conditioning that keeps me really comfortable." Identifying a why will help to create a different perspective. It will help you clarify your thoughts and start to change the thought patterns in your brain. 

21:39 

And if you have a little bit more of a creative flair to your personality, how about taking a picture every day of something you're grateful for? Rather than writing it down, just pay attention. Pull out your phone, take a quick picture. This will also slow down the process for your brain and cause you to reflect more on the why. Let's say you take a picture of water flowing from your kitchen faucet. The process of slowing down and creating the picture will give your brain time to reflect on how amazing it is that we have clean drinking water with the push of a lever. Find some way every day to slow down and connect with what you truly are grateful for. 

22:22 

And also discover the why. This helps to identify the thought behind the feeling of gratitude. Alright, so we're not just trying to create feelings, we're trying to change thought patterns and create new thoughts that will help us feel more gratitude. I saw a study once about happiness that worked around gratitude. They brought in people and had them identify their current happiness level through a series of questions. Then they had them write a letter to someone for whom they were grateful and they measured their happiness again. Then they had them call that person and read the letter to them and then they measured their happiness again. 

23:04 

Here's what they found. By writing the gratitude letter, their happiness went up between two to four percentage points. But then when they shared that gratitude with the person for whom they felt grateful, it went up between four to nineteen percentage points. That's huge. This is important information because gratitude in our hearts is one thing. But taking the time to express that gratitude is something even more important. The connection we make with other people seems to increase the happiness. 

23:42 

So here are some ideas. Just as this study did, call someone and let them know how grateful you are for them. When you're out in a restaurant or in a store, look your server in the eyes and thank them for their service. Not just a quick "thank you" as you're walking out and not looking at them. Taking that little bit of extra time for interpersonal connection by looking at them in the eyes will increase the level of happiness that comes from your gratitude. Because this is something that will increase not only their humanity, but yours as well. Oftentimes people in those serving positions as a waiter or a waitress or as a checkout person at the store, oftentimes they feel like their humanity is not acknowledged. Looking at them in the eyes, acknowledging their humanity with a "thank you," increases their happiness and yours. 

24:36 

I know as a middle school teacher, I rarely get a sincere expression of gratitude for what I do with my students from anybody. So when my humanity is recognized by one of them and they send me a small note or express their gratitude to me in some other way, it will make a huge difference in my thoughts that create my own happiness. But it also, I'm sure, makes a difference for them as well. 

25:01 

So here's the big idea: happiness doesn't make us grateful. Gratitude makes us happy. When we have thoughts that create gratitude, we are also creating happiness. And when we have opportunities all day long to create thoughts, that will create gratitude. In fact, every circumstance in our life is an opportunity for gratitude. We may not be grateful for every circumstance, but we can learn to be grateful for the opportunities that every circumstance provides us. Let me rephrase that and give an example because I want you to really understand that concept because it's so important. Every circumstance in our life may not bring us gratitude. 

25:48 

For example, we may not be grateful that our child has chosen to leave the religious teachings that we've taught them. But we can be grateful for the opportunities that this circumstance presents us with. We can be grateful for the chance to  explore our unconditional love for our child. We can be grateful for the opportunity to see our child from a whole new perspective. We can feel gratitude for our increased understanding of the Plan of Salvation and how free agency works within that plan. We can feel grateful to have a better understanding of how our Heavenly Father feels when we fall away from the things that He has taught us. When we can learn to think differently about our circumstances and create gratitude, our lives will change for the better. We will find more satisfaction, more contentment, more happiness. Learning to be more aware of our thoughts, we can begin to create more feelings of gratitude. And these feelings of gratitude will change our actions, which will ultimately create a more positive result in our lives. 

26:55 

Isn't it amazing how much control we actually have? We can't control the circumstances, but we can control the feelings, the actions, and the results in our lives, all from the thoughts we choose to think in our minds. We can learn to override the habitual negative and indulgent thoughts of our primitive brains and create new pathways of positive and grateful thoughts. Does it take work? Of course, especially if your brain has a lot of habitual patterns and thought processes that have been negative. But all great improvements in our lives take work. What great thing have you accomplished that hasn't taken work? Nothing, right? The biggest piece of this is always the first step of awareness, becoming aware of the current thoughts we're thinking and learning how to identify what those thoughts are creating. Then deciding if those thoughts are creating what we want to ultimately create in our lives. 

27:57 

This process can be challenging at first. And if you need some help, this is what I'm specifically trained to do as a coach. When you become more aware of your thoughts and see what they're creating, that's what I am here to help you do, right? To help you become more aware of your thoughts. And remember that I offer a free 20 minute mini -coaching session to help get you started on this process of creating what you want to create in your life. And I would love to do that for you. Even a small shift in just a 20 minute session can make a huge difference in how you see the world. 

28:36 

Okay, this piece, this gratitude piece, so important in our lives. If you struggle with gratitude, let's work on this because it makes all the difference in how we feel about our lives. Growing up, this is a great gig, isn't it? I love it. I love it so much. I love what I'm learning. I love how I'm growing. I love what I'm creating in my life and I hope that you do as well. I hope that you are finding yourself creating more and more of the life that you want to create. 

29:07 

Alright, and I think that's going to do it. And share this podcast if you haven't and subscribe if you haven't done that and leave me a review if you haven't done that. Those three things would help me a ton in getting this message out. I just want to help people with their mental and emotional health. This is what I do. This is what I love. It's what I'm passionate about and I hope that you can help me share this message. Thank you so much. Have an awesome week. Happy New Year to you. Okay, bye. 

29:42 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!