Christmas Morning Special - The Power of Gratitude

Join me on this special Christmas morning episode as I share the transformative power of gratitude. I'm reflecting on my personal experiences, going from the joy of a snowy Christmas morning to the challenges and grown from over the past year. 

I'm exploring how practicing gratitude can enhance our mental and physical health, reduce stress, and improve relationships. I'm also giving some practical tips on incorporating gratitude into your daily routine. 

This episode is a heartfelt reminder of the importance of being thankful for both the big milestones and small everyday pleasures in our lives.

00:00 Introduction to the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast

00:26 A Christmas Morning Reflection

02:54 The Power of Gratitude

06:43 Gratitude's Impact on Mental and Physical Health

11:01 Simple Pleasures and Everyday Gratitude

21:47 Gratitude in Challenging Times

26:45 Conclusion and Christmas Wishes

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My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

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Transcript

 Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host Ayesha tahir. 

 Hello, my friends. I'm recording this special episode on Christmas morning.  So, wherever you're joining us from around the world, Merry Christmas. This week in the Northeast, where I live, in the Northeast USA,  we have had snow. And I love it when it snows around Christmas time. I just love white Christmas.

This morning. I was looking at the world outside while sipping on a warm cup of coffee and  there is this soft blanket of snow covering the ground.  And it just looks gorgeous.  I especially love the fresh snow on tree branches.  The air is crisp and invigorating and the soft glow of the morning sun reflects off the pristine, glistening snow. It's just like, I'm in a movie,  and it makes me think about the story of Snow White that my mom used to read to me as a kid. You know, my mom is the best storyteller. Sometimes she would just share stories from her memory. And  I'm really, really, really missing her today. I wish I could be in California with my family today, but because my oldest son Rayan, he's home for winter break.

I decided not to go to California because he's home.  I'm probably gonna go later in January because I want to have like a later celebration with my family. But Definitely feeling it today.  So here I'm sitting inside my warm and cozy home recording this episode. And I tried to switch it up today.

I am recording it in front of my fireplace here in the living room, because I was like, Oh, it would be great to just switch up. The location, you might hear some echo because I'm not in my podcasting room, but it's okay, right? I want to post the video of this podcast recording as well. , 

and I wanted to talk to you guys. It's been a long time since I've recorded a solo episode. I want to talk to you about something. Special something that we can practice every day in our lives, and it could make us healthier, and it could make us  more resilient, and it could also turn us into the best versions of ourselves, which is always my goal.

And I know that on this podcast, I talk a lot about exercise and how it changes our biology and it leads to better health. But today I'm going to talk to you about another behavior change that can also change your biology. And  that behavior is the practice of gratitude. I want to talk about the power of giving thanks, the power of offering thanks.

gratitude. This is going to be a short and sweet episode because I want us all to go and have rest and have fun with our family and friends. My kids are sleeping upstairs. As soon as they come downstairs, I'll have to stop the recording and I want Make them like a stack of pancakes and, my oldest right on, he loves, pumpkin muffins.

So I have the batter ready to go. When he wakes up, I'm going to  bake and, , make breakfast for them. Christmas morning breakfast is a big thing for us.  My kids and I, and in my family, I've always had like a big, Christmas breakfast, and we end up watching something Christmassy on  TV too, while we are eating it.

So over the past few weeks, I've been reflecting on this year, and I've been thinking of how my podcast has grown. And I've been thinking of all the speaking opportunities I had this year. I'm super thankful. To all the corporations and community organizations for inviting me to talk to their employees and members.

It's such a privilege to be able to guide and help people live a healthy life. I've had an amazing running season this year. The running goals that I had set for myself, I could achieve them you. And the fact that I could improve my fitness, the fact that I could improve my running, it just made me feel so alive.

I'm also grateful for my son, Rayyan, starting. School, and going to Cal Poly and running track there. And my younger boys, Aiden and Niall, they love running too. They've been running regularly every day this year. I am so super proud of them. Like even I skip days for running and they,  don't. So they're looking forward to the track season this year and I'm looking forward to their track season. 

And I'm just so grateful for my kids because they are just wonderful human beings. And I'm not saying this because I'm their mom, but because I see them.  I see them, how they interact with their friends and their track coaches, and they're absolutely so kind to people around them,  that warms up my heart.

 So I was thinking about all of these things that I'm grateful for this year. And that gave me. The idea for this podcast episode, which is  about gratitude, what is gratitude and the power it has  for improving our health and well being.  I'm a firm believer in giving thanks every single day.  A couple of years ago, I used to write down one thing that I was grateful for every night and I used to put it in a glass mason jar.

I've gotten out of that habit lately, but I always mentally make a note of something positive. Every night as I lie in bed, so gratitude to me is an emotion very similar to appreciation, right? Like you're appreciating something good in your life and maybe something not so good. Sometimes it's okay to appreciate Something that's not going well, but it's actually teaching you something.

It's making you grow according to the American psychological association. Gratitude is defined as a sense of happiness and thankfulness in response to a fortunate event or a tangible gift. So I did a little bit of digging online and I found some cool stats to share with you.

Okay,  I want to start with this one.  Just one simple act of gratitude can boost your happiness by a whopping 10%. How amazing is that?  Now picture this. If we all had more gratitude to our daily routine,  think about how much happier we would all feel. And it's not just about happiness, though.  Practicing gratitude can also help reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.

And research shows that it actually reduces depression by up to 35%. That's a lot. So showing gratitude can make you feel more satisfied with your life. People who are constantly grateful tend to be more content with their lives.

Plus it can even improve your sleep. Regularly jotting down things you're grateful for can boost your  wellbeing in many different ways. I'd say that we can all use more happiness and better sleep. Don't you think so? 

Another thing I've been thinking of As I was getting ready for this episode, and I was thinking about the practice of gratitude was often when we consider things that we are grateful for, we tend to think of the overt and profound experiences in our lives. And maybe. something expensive or a luxurious item that we bought.

Maybe you had an amazing vacation this year or you bought a new car and that's okay. It's good to be grateful for those things. You deserve them. You earn them. That is great. But if we just went a little further we might feel grateful for, Things that we just take for granted, like being grateful for your family, being grateful for your career or your job or your business, being grateful for good health and the opportunity to gain an education.

Although it's important to be grateful for these experiences, I am all in for being grateful for all of this, but our gratitude practice can venture below the surface too. Because below the surface is where you'll find all the simple everyday pleasures that often go unnoticed. 

For starters, I love drinking coffee in the morning and I like to explore new coffee houses and I can easily write for hours in a coffee shop. Like there's something about the environment of the coffee shop that makes me so productive. Also, I love my morning workouts. Whether it's a CrossFit session or a run on the road. And I'm grateful for those workouts. I'm grateful for having the ability to push my body's limits and gain strength. I just love, love, love breaking a sweat. And a handful of times when I haven't worked out this year because I was either tapering for my race or I had a medical procedure done, I felt so awful. So coffee and workout.  is something that I'm so grateful for. And I start my day with both these things and they make me come alive. And getting those things first thing in the morning is a non negotiable for me. I'm also grateful that I get to work in the exercise industry because I love. every minute of it. It's such a privilege that my work is also my passion. I'm so grateful for that.

But even beyond this, if we look at even smaller things, like maybe reading a great book, a laugh with a friend, or eating yummy cookies, whatever simple pleasures  may be for you, Consciously being thankful for them helps us see the positive and count our blessings.

And we are all blessed. Believe me, no matter how hard things look,  there's so much good around us. I want you to remember that. Like being alive, breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, a working car, a roof over your head. a comfy bed, my fireplace for me, having awesome friends and podcast listeners like you guys, there's so much that we can be thankful for

in the field of, mental health, you know, mental health professionals are constantly.

Looking for and working to help clients get the most out of their treatment in the shortest time possible. And as I was doing research for this episode, I came across a research study that found that people who wrote gratitude letters during their therapy sessions compared to those who didn't. didn't write the letters had more brain activity in a specific area of the brain, which is associated with positive emotions when they felt gratitude during a task or while they were being thankful,  to someone.

when they were writing the letter. And this effect lasted even after three months of writing that letter, which means that expressing gratitude can have a long lasting impact on brain and in the shortest amount of time.  Expressing gratitude is also associated with A host of mental and physical benefits, like improving sleep, improving your mood, boosting your immunity.

Gratitude can decrease depression and anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain, and risk, and it lowers your risk of disease. So if a pill could do this, It would be the bestseller flying off of the shelves, just like the weight loss drugs have taken off in the last three years. Let's talk about how it impacts your brain and your physiology because I always like digging into physiology, there has been some research that was done at Mayo Clinic, which found  that expressing gratitude releases oxytocin in your brain. Now, oxytocin is your love hormone. It's why you feel warm and positive when you're in close physical contact with a loved one. You can also release this hormone simply by taking the time to feel grateful.

Isn't that amazing? And that's not all. Gratitude also causes your brain to release dopamine and serotonin. These are the neurotransmitters with the most impact on your mood and emotional regulation. So if you think about it, being grateful causes your brain to take a warm bath in neurochemicals that make you feel happier and more content.

while reducing your stress. And I want to talk about the stress relieving impact of gratitude. Now, when we are stressed out or we are going through a stressful situation, stress triggers a fight or flight response in our nervous system. So your nervous system,  starts acting up, your heart beats faster, your muscles contract and adrenaline pumps, but gratitude can reverse these symptoms.

Taking a moment to be thankful causes physiologic changes in your body that initiate the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that helps you rest and digest gratitude and the response it has. helps bring down your blood pressure. It helps decrease your heart rate. It helps to slow down your breathing rate. And that is what helps with overcoming the stress response. I believe the biggest benefit of practicing gratitude is that it activates your parasympathetic nervous system. If you're ever stressed out, Make a list of two to three items that you're grateful for in your life and take a pause. and be thankful for them.  Another benefit of practicing gratitude that I love is that it helps me train my brain to be more sensitive to all the good that I have in my life. By consciously practicing gratitude, I'm able to Override my brain's natural tendency to focus on the negative. So we all have automatic negative thoughts, right?

So if you want to overcome them, if they're really taking over your brain and your life, one of the ways that I've found is best to overcome those thoughts is by Practicing gratitude,

appreciating what I have in my life makes me feel more optimistic. I'm more satisfied. I'm less frustrated. And I feel like I have less regret  and as a result of that gratitude has enhanced my relationships with my friends, with my family members, with my kids. You know, we are often attracted to positive people. So think about it, you know, this positivity is going to make it Easier for you to get along with others. It will be easier for others to talk to you. And sometimes, you know, it's, it becomes easier to talk about difficult things too, things that we don't want to bring up.

So being thankful for the. Important things in your life and important people in your life is going to pay you off in so many ways. And if you're thankful for  your family, your friends, your kids, guess what? It is more likely that that gesture will be reciprocated. So how can you practice gratitude, right?

You're probably wondering. Just like any habit, you can build it. Start small by saying thanks to someone who held the door for you. Start small by saying thanks for the meal you ate . And I always give this example. If you've never lifted weights in your life, you're not going to start with a 250 pound barbell for back squats.

You'll probably start with an empty bar, right? So just like that, focusing on a small positive thing every day in life can become a habit over time. Eventually it will be second nature to you, right? You'll be saying thanks for all the things that happen in your life, all the good and bad things that happen in your life every single minute.

That's it. I really believe  that you can be grateful for everything.  Everything that happens to you. I also am a strong believer in the power of writing down things. So dedicate a notebook or a journal to gratitude so you can reflect and remind yourself of the positive moments, or even sometimes like negative moments that helped you grow or failures.

Like we have to reframe failures and I'm going to talk about it in a minute. Another thing that I have found to be helpful for practicing gratitude is to just take a break, to pause,  because when we pause, when we stop,  we often reflexively are saying thanks for all the things that are good in our life. If you're feeling frustrated or you're like stuck in a negative thought pattern, take a step back  and shift your focus to something positive  or a positive aspect of the situation and take a breather. Once you do, you'll see how that situation is actually helping you. I also love sharing my gratitude with others.

So, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I send out tons of thank you notes to people I've worked with, to my friends, to my family members,  it's a quick note. Telling them why I'm thankful for them and how they have made an impact in my life.

So make sure you're letting people know how important they are to you. 

I want to talk about being grateful for the, Challenges in life and failures in life,  I think it's so easy to focus on just the good parts of our life when we are trying to be thankful and that's okay, but it can also help us reframe the way we think of our failures, the way we think of the obstacles in life.

Originally, when I was creating the outline of this episode, it was around Thanksgiving time, and I didn't have this part in the outline,  but over the last few weeks, I've gone through a life experience, which I consider as a failure in my life. And that made me reflect on. My life as a whole, and especially this past year. So I thought of all the clarity I had over this year, which led to the decision I made in my life, and it's something that I'll share with you guys when I'm ready.  I want to be thankful for that clarity. I want to be thankful  for having. That experience, the more I think about it, the more I realize that even recognizing difficult situations and setbacks provides us with valuable life lessons.

You wouldn't have those life lessons if you didn't go through those things. If you didn't have those experiences in your life, the personal growth that you experience through that is Like, you know, off the roof really. And the opportunity. It provides to develop resilience and to persevere for yourself and your family.

It's something to be grateful for. And they're part of the gift of life. So viewing challenges as stepping stones and blessings is better than thinking of them as roadblocks. And being thankful for them is one of the ways that you can  actually view them as blessings.  When you're going through stressful time or difficult situations in your life, gratitude is not only needed.

It's essential because in tough times is  we have most to gain by being grateful, by having a grateful perspective on life. I feel like in the face of difficult situations, when I'm demoralized, I'm broken, or feel despair.  That's when gratitude helps me to be energized, helps to heal me. 

It brings  hope.  So in other words, you know, all I'm saying is that gratitude can help you cope with hard times.  For me, personally, I believe the best time to offer thanks is late at night, especially if you're like me and you lie in bed stressing about all the negatives, which I feel like we all do at times, and that makes it very hard to drift off to sleep.

Often my brain will like to go to lack of things, all the things that I wish I had that I don't, all the stressors that I'm feeling in my business, all the things that are going on with my boys and everything seems like so doom and gloom. But if I just tell myself, okay, I have to be thankful for something right now.

Like there has to be something. That went well today. That went well this week. When I just start counting my blessings, it helps me feel relaxed and it helps him fall asleep and don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in a crisis. It won't, it's easy to feel grateful when things are going well, and it's not the other way around.

I understand that, but the more you practice it. The easier it will become for you to be thankful and grateful and difficult situations as well. And especially at night to start counting your blessings, make that a habit. So no matter the highs and lows of life, there's always, always, always something to be grateful for.

And I would encourage you to Adopt a gratitude practice this year. I hope this Christmas you're grateful for all the blessings around you. Maybe you can start a journal today and write down three things that you're grateful for today and three things that happened to you this year. Just be intentional, just be whole and give yourself the opportunity to offer thanks for all the good, or even the tough times you had this year.

 That's all from me for today. I think I hear my  kids waking up upstairs, so I have to go and fix a big breakfast for them I love you guys so much. Hugs and kisses from me and Merry Christmas. 

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