05/30/2026
If you were told, “You have five minutes ⏰ to tell me 100 things you’re grateful for; in return - $1,000,000”. 💰💰💰Could you do it? Heck yes you could!
The practice of gratitude has substantial benefits - energizing the more rational part of our brain. 🧠
Struggle with anxiety? Practice gratitude. Why?
“It's true, you can't be anxious and grateful at the same time. The hippocampus in your brain acts like a switch, and when you have a thought or a feeling it will either switch that down towards your amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for fear, anxiety, fight, or flight, or towards your front lobes, which will help you make a rational decision about how you're going to respond. And the thing that reliably switches away from amygdala and towards frontal lobe is when you take a moment to find something to be grateful for in the midst of an anxious thought”. - Dr. Lee Warren
When my kids were young, on the drive to school, I’d have them say three things they were grateful for. Would they roll their eyes? 🙄 Sometimes, yes! One day, one of them just looked around and said, “stop lights, 🚦the road, etc.”. My response: “be serious”. His response: “really - if we didn’t have stop lights, there would be accidents”. Touché, kid. 🤔 But it made me think: how many things in my life am I overlooking that are going well, or even just ok?
We can always find what is not not going well, but we can also intentionally look for what IS going well. ☀️
Gratitude doesn’t negate hard feelings, but it can offer perspective in hard situations. The article below gives support and examples of this concept.
ADAA Blog Post by Ashley Smith, PhD - Research shows that the more present we are, the happier we tend to be, even when the present moment isn’t pleasant or enjoyable. Rumination is a sneaky mental habit that zaps us of joy. This is where gratitude can be particularly helpful.
