Isn't It Great

You're listening to the Uppercase Life, and I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. Life is hard. You need money. The cost of everything is up. Jobs are harder to find. And sometimes it feels like we have a lot of reasons to complain and feel discontent. There's political division. There's cultural problems. There's financial problems. There's probably difficulties within your own home.
Among family members. Among friends, it sometimes feels like we need more than we actually have. And there's some great tragedy lurking around the corner to sabotages when we least expect it. But these feelings can have negative impacts on our brain. And while obviously there are a lot of things in the world that we wish were different, there's probably also a lot of things that you have to be grateful for, things that you are not giving thought to, because you feel so overwhelmed by the needs that you have or the challenges that seem to be presented in front of you.
But I'm here to tell you that gratitude is really essential to a meaningful life, and it comes with a whole host of really positive health benefits as well. But we have to cultivate an attitude and a practice of being grateful in order to get this positive result from it. UC Berkeley released some information a couple of years back that I remember reading about how gratitude changes you and your brain.
And I remember really being struck by some of the facts that they discovered when they were studying this. Gratitude has an ability to temper your toxic emotions. And we've probably heard things like for every negative thing you say, you've got to say so many positive things to offset it in order to change the mood. But it really is true that the more negative language we use on a daily basis, it really strongly affects our mental health so that when we choose to employ gratitude in our language and we use words that aren't all about us in our problems, but are more about what we're grateful for, it actually can help temper some of the struggles
that we deal with when it comes to mental health and also gratitude helps both. When you have it yourself and when you share it with others. So in other words, I could have a good relationship with you and I could feel grateful toward you for that. Gratitude actually benefits me, even if I don't share it with you. So even if I just think in my mind about how grateful I am for my relationship with you, I am still going to reap the benefits of gratitude.
And of course, even more so if I choose to share it with you. That gratitude can be more helpful between two people. But even if you're telling no one, in fact, I've had a practice for years of waking up in the morning and starting my morning with a five minute gratitude practice. And all I do really is in most of the time I just start while I'm laying in bed.
I just run through in my mind and start giving thanks for whatever it is that I see. First, when I wake up in the morning or the thoughts that cross my mind about what I'm going to do that day, I just think to myself how grateful I am to have these opportunities, and I just speak it out into my own head like, thank you for my wife, thank you for my family, thank you for the job that I've got.
Thank you for the work that I'm going to be able to do today, which is super cool. And, you know, thank you for the roof over my head and that you have a hot shower that's waiting on me and you know, these things. I don't have everything I want in life, but I have plenty to be grateful for.
And that's helpful. Even if no one else hears you being grateful. But it is true that gratitude is a practice that's going to take some time. It is a practice. So you might find it a natural right now. You might find yourself in a season of life where you only see the negatives and trying to be grateful feels disingenuous.
But if you, despite your circumstance, is can cultivate an attitude of this gratefulness and you can start practicing it on a regular basis, you can start seeing a difference in your state of mind, in your perspective, and eventually in your overall health over time. But you're going to have to institute it as a practice. You can't just start today and expect a magic fix.
However, just like working out at the gym over time, this is going to accumulate into something that really benefits your life. And did you know that gratitude actually improves your brain in certain ways? Being grateful actually activates a part of your brain that's linked to learning and decision making so that you might actually learn better and make better decisions every day.
If you're in a mindset of being grateful, whereas you're probably aware of this, but things like anger, fear, guilt, these things do the opposite, right? They inhibit our ability to make good decisions and to learn or even to enjoy the tasks that we're doing. So I think it is critical to your day, even though it might sound really insignificant, to be grateful, be grateful for the people in your life.
Be grateful for the opportunities you have, even if they haven't been realized yet. Be grateful that you woke up this morning, which might be one of the only things you can think of to be grateful for. But that is a gift some people didn't get today. There are so many things to be grateful for and there are so many benefits to being grateful that if you can cultivate the discipline of gratitude in your life and really engage in it, the benefits may surprise you.
Thanks for joining us on the show today. What are some ways that you cultivate gratitude in your life? I'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, your comments, and you can email me at [email protected]. And if you enjoy this episode, consider sharing it with a friend who might also need to know that gratitude is important to their daily life.
Or even if you're feeling extremely generous and grateful, go over and give me a review in the podcast app that just helps this show become more visible and it allows more people just like you to experience this content as well. And until next time, live like it matters.