Won Body Won Life, Ep 6: Benefits of Gratitude for Physical and Mental Health - Thanksgiving Special

In this episode, I discuss 3 physiological and mental benefits to giving gratitude daily, followed by 3 practical strategies that I use daily to practice gratitude.

Gratitude by definition is the readiness to show appreciation and return kindness, and it's also the gesture of being thankful.

This Thanksgiving, let's not take it for granted and simply give thanks during Thanksgiving. Use this episode as a reminder to practice it daily, and you'll find far more success financially, spiritually, mentally, and physically than you ever imagined.

Scroll down for the show transcript.

Welcome to the Won Body Won Life podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Jason Won, lifestyle physical therapist, I talk about everything health and wellness related so you too, can have a more resilient body and more fulfilling life.

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Today is the day before Thanksgiving. And that's why I'm going to share with you three benefits of practicing gratitude for better mental and physical health, followed by three practical tips that I use to practice gratitude daily.

Now, when we're not practicing gratitude, our physical and mental health often deplete especially as we age, if things don't go right, if we're financially unwell, we have poor relationships where we have very little purpose for life. Or if things bad happened to us, we oftentimes will practice non-gratitude, will actually get mad, will become resentful, and that oftentimes will lead to lesser mental and physical health.

Now, this is actually a part of emotional awareness and emotional competence. Gratitude can actually help us to feel more positive emotions more often. And gratitude can actually build and strengthen relationships around us. However, if we don't practice gratitude daily, then many nuances of life can throw us the opposite direction where we're thinking about comparing with other people. We'll compare our finances we'll compare things that we don't have, and that oftentimes will leave us astray and lead to poor mental and physical health.

So I'm going to share with us specifically three benefits scientific benefits to being more gratitude.

So, in positive psychology, research, gratitude is actually strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Studies show that gratitude can actually boost the neurotransmitter serotonin, and activate the brainstem to produce dopamine. And since dopamine is our brains, pleasure chemical signal, the more we think positive, grateful thoughts, the healthier and happier we actually feel.

Number two, gratitude actually produces oxytocin in the brain, which is a hormone important for bonding and social support. Oxytocin, which many consider the gratitude hormone, helps with boosting immunity, relieving oxidative stress and holds the potential to actually live longer. Yes, you heard that right. Being thankful and practicing gratitude can help you to live longer.

So a study in 2021 by Burnham here at all linked associations between increased serotonin, serotonin, and oxytocin secretion with telomere length. So telomeres are sequences of DNA that play a major role in chromosome stability and is extremely sensitive indicator of tissue-specific cellular aging.

Therefore, with increased secretion of oxytocin, which can be increased with increased social support and practicing gratitude, you can significantly slow down telomere shortening, preventing oxidative stress and decreasing cellular aging globally throughout the entire body.

And I think that's a pretty impressive thing, that practicing gratitude, which is something we can do for free, something that we don't have to pay for the latest food or the latest drug that promotes the promise of decreasing or aging, you can just simply practice gratitude, 5, 10, or even 30 minutes a day.

Lastly, number three, the benefit is gratitude can actually make you richer, not just mentally, but financially as well. How is that so? Well, studies show that practicing gratitude leads to increased happiness, which leads to greater motivation to achieve your goals.

So gratitude also can make you more complacent with where you are currently from a financial standpoint, which allows you to stay focused and centered towards making better decisions financially, versus envying things that other people have are comparing your bank account to others.

And lastly, gratitude has been shown to increase productivity by over 37% accuracy with tasks by 19% and have 23% greater energy in the midst of stress. So all these with when improved, can significantly increase your wealth long term, but also increase your perception of wealth.

Wealth, as we know is not strictly defined by our bank accounts, but also our physical and mental well-being. So how can you be more thankful and practice more gratitude so you can reap all the benefits that we just discussed? Well, let's discuss three practical tips that I do daily and what you can get started with too.

So the first tip that I use daily, is I use a gratitude journal In all, this can be something anywhere between actually getting a pen and paper and just buying a simple $10 booklet that you can use daily. And you just keep it by your bedside or somewhere convenient.

But also me, as a very tech-savvy person, I really like using apps. Now, I'm not addicted to my phone in any way. But I do like to use my phone for specific purposes. So I can always go back to looking at the things that I was grateful for. So gratitude journals, there are a lot of different apps that you can use. The current one that actually use is called Draio.

And this one is actually a paid app, which allows you to use different features like putting posts into different sectors or different folders, you can actually tag certain posts based on emotions or gratitude, or let's say something in regards to your health or your finances, you can actually create tags and refer back to it. They also have a very nifty search feature. And you can add pictures of things that you were grateful for.

Other apps that I've used in the past is Daybook. Daybook is a free app, but there's also a paid version. And a lot of people do use Evernote and Google Keep. Google Keep I used to actually keep my gratitude journal within Google Keep. But Google Keep is more of the all-purpose type of note section. So I don't use that specifically for gratitude anymore.

And I feel Draio is a much better fit for me, because Draio is specifically used for journaling my everyday thoughts, including practicing gratitude, and a lot of people will use Evernote. Evernote, as we know has paid features, it can sync manually to different apps, different computers and tablets, and even onto your phone. So I highly recommend using Evernote as well.

So number two tip that I actually do is I use a gratitude Post-It notes. Post-It notes, as we know are very, very cheap. And you can post them in different places and Post-It notes we can post basically onto our computer screen to remind us of certain tasks, but you can also use Post-It notes to use it for gratitude as well.

So what I do every single night is I put a gratitude Post-It notes in my bathroom, and it's actually in my bathroom. Currently, it's on my mirror. And it's just a simple thing as, quote-unquote, “I am thankful for” followed by an underline. And every single time I brush my teeth, I say it out loud, I say, “I am thankful for blank”, followed by, I actually stack-up things.

So you guys already know that I love movement. So I always will say “I am thankful for blank. I'm thankful for my son, my wife, my family, and thankful for great friends and family”. And then I always followed up with doing some sort of exercise. And right now in this season of November, it is 10 single-leg squats. So “I am thankful for blank”, followed by my 10 single-leg squats then it sounds crazy. But it allows me to get in my movement, but also end the day with gratitude, which allows again, all those different hormonal secretions like oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and making me feel good at the end of the day.

Last and final tip is practice being thankful for every situation that you're in. Even during the times of stress, let's say you've lost some money or there was a poor investment. And the investment was not the best decision for you. Be thankful for that. Be thankful for be having a house over your head for having family that you can still love. Be thankful for the fact that you made that mistake. And now you have the opportunity to make better decisions afterwards.

And oftentimes, I often tell people, you have to fail your way to success. So being thankful for even negative situations or negative decisions that you make can be very, very helpful and can flip a negative into a positive.

Also think about being thankful for the people in your life. Being thankful for the task and chores that you were able to do. Be thankful for the body that you have. Be thankful for a spouse that either does things for you, or does things indirectly for you, like put the kids to bed or does chores. Give thanks and actually say it out loud. Say “hon, I am thankful for like I'm thankful for you. I'm thankful for the things that you do”.

If somebody invites you to their house, be thankful. Don't forget to use words like “please”, “thank you”, using all those different words and positive words are things that are often very neglected in life because we move so fast through life.

There are a lot of just we're constantly on our phones. We're constantly not actually interacting socially, in person. So being thankful for literally every situation every person in your life and practicing that consistently, not just at the end of the day, but throughout the day can be the significant factor between you living life like there's negatives all the time and you being that negative Nancy and can turn every day so that you become the positive, Polly. And that sounds kind of silly. But I think that there are a plethora of benefits.

But I want you to come out of this Thanksgiving week having some practical strategies that you can truly practice gratitude and actually reap the benefits that we just discussed. And for me personally, there are a lot of negative things that happen in my life. There are a lot of people that wronged me, I have made poor investment decisions.

But every single day, I practice gratitude. And that often makes me feel like I'm living life with more purpose. I am happier, every day in life feels that much more meaningful because of practicing gratitude. So that's what I got for you today.

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely hit that subscribe or follow button. I release new episodes every morning on Wednesdays. And I'd love if you can leave a rating and your podcast so my content will reach more people who could benefit from the tips that I put out.

And I'll leave you always with these last words of advice. We only have Won Body Won Life, make every decision you take the one that makes you a better version of you. Take care