Gratitude Matters
Note: This post was an Empowered Aging Pro-Tip of the Month I shared with my Soma Sapien community during Fall 2023 when my family & I were on the heels of returning to the US from extended time abroad. The sense of overwhelm with the world was palpable for me at the time, and it’s pretty fair to say that many of my client community are feeling that for themselves now in November 2024.
When everything looks shitty it’s really hard to feel hopeful about your health, the world, or otherwise. But if you’re armed with a little knowledge about how our nervous systems construct our reality — and, more importantly, how you can actively influence that — the possibility for seeing, perceiving, and then feeling something wildly different is suddenly right there.
So, a good time to re-share these tools for tending to your nervous system and innate human biology, and bending the rules in your preferred direction. These are for anyone, anytime you’re feeling extra full of life, regardless of belief. Enjoy. —MW
One of the main questions I've been getting since returning from South America has been, "how is it being back?"
In a word, overwhelming.
A long period of disconnecting from US culture, and Austin culture specifically, has really made the return to the sheer volume of information, hustle energy, and utter busyness very, very...let's say, "filling."
At times, it's felt like just too much, more than I can contain and stay grounded within, and my head & body are swimming with "the alot-ness" (as I called it recently) that is life here back home.
Nothing's really changed about things here though; I largely returned to the same life I'd left. I just had the opportunity to step out of what's normal for most everyone here in the US. Stepping out, then back in, has made it clear just how NOISY our lives here generally are.
This noisiness and the pace of our lives live in our nervous systems, our bodies, and our minds, and it's easy to lose track of the fact that the noise is there. It's just the water we're swimming in every day.
To stay afloat, you need to have some core, daily practices that help you get grounded and clear. And in the return to the chaos of information here at home, mine got completely blown out of the water. I forgot them amidst the new-old noise in my System, even though they were years-long practices.
So this post is a throwback to an elemental practice to keep you afloat in the alot-ness of life.
Gratitude.
In the midst of re-learning how to swim in my life here at home, I completely let my gratitude practices slip. And that had a huge impact on my day-to-day that made life feel heavier, more stressful, and totally exhausting.
And, in my experience, when people hear the suggestion to engage in a gratitude practice they almost always roll their eyes, with an air of "yeah, yeah I know I need to be grateful." So if you rolled your eyes when you read that word, I see you friend.😁
Most people just never engage in this kind of practice. Most think (I myself did) that happiness is something that gets unlocked when the right things are in place (job, relationship, politics, etc.). So why have a practice? I'll have gratitude when things are genuinely good!
Here's the deal though friends: you have to work at being happy. It is indeed a practice.
Here's some solid nerdery about why happiness is work a gratitude practice is important:
Our Systems (mind, body, emotions) are awash in approximately 400 million individual bits of information per second.
Our reality is constructed by the limited amount of that information our nervous systems can sort & keep track of, and we have an upper limit of just about 2,000 bits…that’s it! Not much relative to what's actually available. So we have to filter out a LOT, and allow in what we perceive (mostly subconsciously) as important.
That filter, known as your Reticular Activating System, is like the bouncer at the doors of your perception. S/he allows in the most important things that then craft your perceptual reality. Some of these things are basic survival-based information (like when it grabs your attention if someone says your name across the room in a busy cocktail party); others are things you’ve trained your bouncer to filter for (like when you decide you want a specific new car and then you start seeing that model everywhere on the road). Yes, the good news here is that your bouncer is trainable!
UC Berkeley scientists determined that we filter and take in about 9 pieces of negative information for every 1 piece of positive information. Makes sense right? If we're focused on threats, stressors & the like, that increases our chances for survival. It's highly adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint, but crushes us here in modern times and definitely doesn’t make happiness our default mode.
You can bend this 9:1 ratio, but not break it -- we're working with core features of human biology here -- and improve things to about a 6:1 ratio. A 30% improvement, not bad! But it takes about 3 positive thoughts to counter 1 negative thought.
Negative thinking = higher stress. And higher stress = a higher likelihood for chronic pain & disease.
So, it's a practice to work against a feature of your innate biology, and yet it's fully possible. Your perception is trainable simply by being purposeful with what you choose to pay attention to every day.
This is one of the amazing things about being a human.
Here's my recommendation, I call this a “Somatic Gratitude Practice”:
First, get out of your head where the negative thoughts live in the 1st place, and away from your lists. Making gratitude lists is a popular idea, but those mental lists are often abstract ideas, and we don’t feel our gratitude for those things.
For example, I may cognitively be thankful for having a roof over my head, especially when I see a lot of homeless folks in the world. But if I’ve never been unhoused myself, that’s just an idea I can’t fully relate to.
So instead, aim at an embodied, in-the-exact-moment practice that focuses on all the feels you get from the very basic information your 5 senses offer you. Short (fleeting, in fact) moments like:
"Mmmm...this warm cup of tea feels so good in my hands."
"Wow, the colors of the leaves in the sun make my eyes happy."
"Ahhhh, my body feels so open and energized after that run."
"Yumm, that food smells so good."
Etc etc....choose your own adventure!
The key is to simply take the time to really feel the impact of those things in your body (remember: this is not a mental exercise!), and find the part of you that is truly grateful for them in-the-moment. Each of these experiences might last just a few seconds -- that's perfectly natural. Let that one end and then pick another one. And then another one.
Simple!
And by doing so, you're training your nervous system to a) feel good, and b) to pay steadily more and more attention to pleasant things. You're putting your perception-bouncer in training to filter more good things into your experience. And this itself is a known unlock for chronic pain and other challenges!
Give it a try and let me know how it goes. And enjoy!
Read more here about gratitude and 3 other foundational daily practices that can up your happiness index and keep you more-grounded & easier amidst the chaos of day-to-day living.