5. What Are You Grateful For?

Welcome to a dopamine kick, your weekly dose of positivity. We're your hosts Sparky and shell. Join us each week as we have changed your habits and challenge your mindset. Let's get to it. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode five of a dopamine kick Episode Five already. So today we're going to be talking about gratitude practice. Gratitude practising is a daily habit of acknowledging and be aware of everything we have and how fortunate we are, rather than always focusing on what we're missing or comparing ourselves to others. And I think that that's something that's really easy to do in today's society, with social media, is to always be looking at other people's profiles and pictures and thinking, I really wish I had a bigger house or a better job or a nicer car. But actually, when you think about it properly, we do have a good life. So basic needs like food and shelter, are rarely thought about on a day to day basis for us, you know, you might not have the dream life you want yet. But survival in our modern world is very rarely considered. Yeah, that's very true. I mean, just going back to what you said there about looking at other people and what they have, sometimes when we look at things like social media, we can see highlights of their life, can't we and that's not really a reflection of what's going on behind the scenes, because all we're seeing there is a highlight of someone else's life. So that makes us feel a bit down. And we think to ourselves, oh, well, you know, look at what everyone else has got, look what I haven't got, and then that can turn into negative talk negative emotions. So I think it's really important to think about gratitude and what we do have in our lives, and there are various ways that we can express gratitude, and we'll discuss them in this episode. And it's time for the science part of the podcast over to you shell. So this, we've got two studies for you, because I love them both so much that I couldn't pick which one to include. So as always, we'll link to them in the show notes if you want to read them in full yourself. But the first study looked at a online community. And they show that gratitude practices could reduce stress, fear, improve sleep, and increase positive emotions, and overall well being, which I think is really nice to see that it can have such a big impact on so many different areas of your life. The second study, I just thought was absolutely phenomenal. So it's only a very small study. It's just as a small pilot study. So more work needs to be done to get to the clinically significant results. But this study showed that gratitude journaling daily gratitude journaling, actually had a impact on the prognosis for patients that were in Stage B heart failure. So they concluded that gratitude journaling may actually reduce inflammation within the body, which leads to a better long term outcome for heart failure patients. And I think that it's just absolutely phenomenal. That is truly incredible, that literally, just the impact of gratitude and journaling, and your thoughts can affect you this way. I think it's I think it's phenomenal to Okay, so what are three things show that you are grateful for? Oh, God put me on the spot there. Okay, well, I guess the obvious one must be my health. So at the moment, I am in reasonably good health, I wouldn't go so far. I say I'm a fit. But having good health. That's something that's something Yeah. So that's something at the moment, that means a lot to me, because I have recently had a period of quite poor health. And it's just, I suppose really highlighted to me that health is something I can't take for granted. I've never had a long term, chronic illness or anything like that before, I've never really been seriously ill before. So being of sort of fit average house is something that I'd always experienced my whole life and sort of taken for granted that that was how everybody lived. So it was a real eye opener for me to not be in that state. And I'm very grateful to be back on my feet again, a second one. I'd have to say, my, my lovely daughter. Although she brings her own stresses asleep, this is becoming quite the mother. She takes off to you. She she does. I had hoped she'd take after her mom, Hallowed father, but not to be the case. So I definitely think that she is something that I'm so grateful for and didn't think that we were going to be in the position to have a child so we're just really blessed every day that she's in our life. And I think I think my final one is going to be what I've touched on at the very beginning of the podcast. I'm grateful that I don't really have to consider self you know, if I want to drink some water, I just turn on the tap and have instant access to fresh, clean water.

You know, I don't worry about where I'm going to sleep tonight, or where my next meal is coming from. So I think that's a really privileged position to be in. And something that I'm grateful for every day. Oh, that was so humble and alive that because you sound grateful for the simple things in life. And I think, you know, we do live in a privileged society nowadays. So I think if we have those privileges, we should definitely be grateful for those. Okay, give me your three lens. So mine are pretty much simple things as well, a little bit like you. So I'm grateful for the fact that I do have a roof over my head, because I could quite easily not have one over my head. I think if you rearrange the lounge one more time, you might not. Well, the thing is, the amount of stuff that I've done to this house is absolutely abhorrent, really. So I think one day, I'm not going to have a house left because I put too many holes in. You might have the house but there won't be a roof on it. as well. He literally every time I come to your house, something is different, either. The Lounge is completely changed the kitchens a different colour, you're sleeping in a different bedroom. Everything is different. You know what that is? Is. But I guess you know, I'm also grateful for the fact that I have friends who stay my friends. Even though I've got all these problems. I remember when we used to live together. If I would come home from work really late. I'd have to be really careful because if I did something like walked into the lounge, and didn't turn the lights on, I genuinely might bump into a piece of furniture that hadn't been there when I left earlier that day.

And I'd be like, Oh, okay, well, I mean, it's, it's, this is a bit unusual, but it looks alright, so I even like I hate it. I hate it. Can you help me move it all back? It was always the worst. Like, talk at night be like hefting the furniture back round, you couldn't possibly go to bed until it was sorted? No, because I was procrastinating because I didn't want to work in the morning. So it was my dopamine. You can't blame the dopamine kicks here. It's not my fault. I've got bad habits. So yeah, I guess I'm grateful for the fact that I've got really good friends and family. And you know, the quality of relationships that I've got with people as well means that I've always got someone to turn to. So that's something to be really grateful for. And the last thing I'd say is my job. I mean, I love what I do, I love going out and filming, I love going and photographing things. And, you know, now I have the pleasure of staying at home and working from home and having really nice clients to work with. So I'm really grateful for all of those things in my life. It's so relevant to this podcast, gratitude has also been shown to increase levels of dopamine and serotonin. So what we thought we'd do is go through a couple of different ways that you could express gratitude. And the most important thing is to get into a habit where you're doing it ideally daily. But if not, at least a couple of times a week. So some of these ideas will resonate with you better than others. So it's just about finding out what works for you and what you think is going to be sustainable for you long term. So Sparky, do you want to kick us off? Okay, so the first thing is gratitude journaling. And that is taking time out of each day to pause and remind yourself about what you are grateful for in your life, it can be really, really powerful. Now, you don't have to spend a lot of time on this, if you don't want to, we appreciate that you're all very busy. But you know, just five minutes a day, just to write those things down can be really powerful. They can really help with a lot of things such as your life satisfaction, your well being and happiness and give you a positive effect. So it's something that if you can do every day or even if you don't do it every day, just a few times a week, that would be absolutely fantastic and great for your health in terms of working it into your daily routine. I recommend either doing it last thing at night, or first thing in the morning to the advantage of doing it first thing in the morning is it sets you up in that positive mind frame for the rest of the day. However, I appreciate that many of us, myself included are not only people and don't tend to have even a minute to spare let alone five minutes to sit down and journal. So the other alternative is to do it last thing at night. And the advantage of that is it lets you unwind and relax and set yourself up for a great night's sleep and rest. So another great way to express your gratitude is to connect with your friends and family and remind yourself how lucky you are to have these people in your life. They might not like everyone in your life, but there are people in your life that you are going to appreciate. And there are people in your life that you know you are lucky to have. So for this I really recommend either picking up the phone and ringing someone out of blue or blue. This is a big one for me. Don't just lurk on social media. So if you're looking at a friend's profile, or maybe you're looking at some photos that they've put up and you haven't spoken to the middle while just drop them a message to catch up, which you mean, just out of the blue shallot, just drop a message out of the blue and say, Hey, so your holiday photos? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it sounds random. But if you just spent, you know, if you've wasted half an hour of your life, looking through their holiday photos, just something from experience, Oh, absolutely. Like, I can just waste so much of my life on Facebook. And you know what, a lot of the time, I don't even particularly look at my friends. You know, I would say that my actual friends profiles are the place I spend the least amount of time. Because I know what's going on in their life. I keep in touch with them. What I end up doing is like, usually, the sister of someone that I went to primary school with are like, look through the one photos of her all sorts of things. It's just ridiculous. Well, and then do get locked down because she's got a better house than yours. So times, yeah, sometimes. I can't believe, especially if they're someone that I didn't particularly like. And they've got everything you want. Yeah. Or appear to anyway, you can appear to have everything on Facebook. Currently, it's very easy. Yeah, that's a good a good thing there actually, that you've just said, to actually realise that social media is just a highlight reel of everyone's happy times. They're not actually a snapshot of what their actual life is, ah, just a highlight reel of all the good points. It's not necessarily their actual life. I mean, I know I don't put all my bad sheet on social media. Definitely.

I think social media is something that we'll do an entire episode on. Because it's something that yeah, we've got a lot to say on that. So let's get off our soapbox. We're talking about gratitude. Another thing that you can do that is really good for gratitude is to try a no complaining bracelet. I love this idea. Outside love this idea. This is something that shall actually wrote down in our show notes that we were going to put on for this episode. And I actually never heard of anything like this before. I didn't know you could buy these type of bracelets. So shall they give me some more information about them. So the I'll just say straight away, not only idea at all completely stolen this, but I love it. You can buy specific bracelets, if you're interested in specific no complaining bracelets, we'll put a link in the show notes. But really any any bracelet will work. And the idea is you wear it on one wrist for 30 days. But the first time you can play, you have to swap it to the other wrist and start again. And the idea is complaining breeds negativity. And it's usually useless ruminating, you know, very rarely do you complain for good reason, you know, whining about the weather or moaning about how long you've had to wait for something. You know, that's just useless negativity. So yeah, I love this idea of and they complaining bracelet. And I really, really think that it's something that we should try. Because I think our last 10 minutes, 10 minutes 10 minutes show, I definitely think bracelet, he's really gonna show how much we actually complain. I love this idea. Absolutely love this idea. Okay, I'm going to buy these bracelets for us. And then we will update everybody on this podcast about how we're doing. And the final way that we've got for you to express gratitude is to give back to others. So whether this is random acts of kindness for a stranger donating your time or money, even just giving compliments to your friends, when you have a positive impact on other people's life, you will benefit also. Yeah, and overall, there's a greater sense of feeling connected to others. Isn't there like a more optimistic view towards life, when you are practising these gratitude, emotions daily, I just think it creates a positive way of thinking about the future. And you know, all those negative things that you had in the back of your mind just kind of melt away like hi scream. I know they do for me anyway. So that's it for today. But we've just got time for our little kicker, our little kick of this week is going to be a 30 day gratitude challenge. For those of you that don't know, shelters, run a blog is called business with a baby. So if anyone's interested or link in the show notes, this is where you'll find the challenge. And also, there's a massive, comprehensive article here that shad has written, which goes through ways that you can find gratitude and things that we would have talked about in the podcast, but we just don't have a lot of time to carry on talking and talking because we don't want to bore you. But if you do have time, it would be great to jump on to Shell's website and have a look. We'll link it in the show notes below. And it basically just goes through the mental and physical benefits of gratitude. And there's so much information on there. It's so comprehensive. I mean, I'm just having a look at it now when I'm talking to you guys. And there's so many things and scenarios that you can do on there. And I think it's really going to help a lot of people and really help you find ways to Get your dopamine kicks, I think it'd be really good and beneficial for you to go and have a read. If you're interested in that, if you don't want to read all of that, you just want to do the challenge. There's a section right at the top or right at the bottom, where you just pop in your email address, and you'll get your 30 day challenge, it's completely free of charge. So it's a little bit clearer. And it just goes through a prompt every single day to remind you of what you're grateful for in your life. And the idea is that every day, it's a little bit of positivity, and a little reminder of the things in life you have to be grateful for. But at the end, when it's all finished, that's a 30 page booklet that you've got for the rest of your life, whenever you're having a bad day to remind yourself of all the things that you do have to be happy and grateful for. All right, that's everything this week, guys, but if you want to carry on with the conversation, join us over on our social media platforms or on all the major channels and our handle is as a dopamine. We'd also be super grateful if you could leave us a review on the podcast wherever you're listening, because it helps us to grow our audience and help more people. Okay, we'll see you in the next one. Bye bye