Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: And I am Aimee Prasek. We are talking about Gratitude today, our Element of Joy for this month, and maybe just to back up for a moment, if you are new here or we didn't explain it well enough before, we focus on one Element of Joy every month around here at the Podcast at the Program. And these Elements of Joy are not just things Henry and I thought up on a whim[00:01:00]
Aimee Prasek: to
Henry: been, there would've been good things though. If we had done that.
Aimee Prasek: We'll do
Henry: I'd say we were, we were on a roll.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, we could have thought of some good ones. But these really are the emotions, the inner states, the skills that are absolutely supported by research, um, that are powerful contributors to good mental health. So we've got some good, foundation for these Elements of Joy. And I, I think the thing to note too is that not only are these good for mental health, they won't just help us feel better, but they do go beyond that, to help us step into our lives more fully, to tap into our resilience to feel joy again. And so, that's why this month we are focusing on gratitude. Yeah.
Henry: Yeah, and you know, I think of all of our 12 Elements, Aimee, this one probably has the most research behind it. [00:02:00] As, as a mental health tool. You know, there's just so much that's come out in the last, oh, 10 to 20 years about how gratitude helps boost our mood, prevent, you know, further worse problems, gives us a greater sense of wellbeing, a greater sense of connection with others.
Henry: I mean, it is really one of those rare skills or tools that we really know that focusing on it is gonna be good for, for us.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. The good and bad of that. We'll get into that. We're told it's gonna be good for us, so thank you. Yes. Yeah, the research is there. Like you said, I think we all kind of know this. Walk down a, a store aisle and you'll see pillows stamped with gratitude and mugs like it's everywhere.
Aimee Prasek: We get that. The thing I do wanna say as well though, and I, God, I always, I think I always start our podcast with [00:03:00] this. I know we can get some eye rolls when it comes to gratitude, as I just noted all those pillows and, and mugs and such. Um, and I've, yeah. What do you wanna say?
Henry: Aimee, I think. I think, I think when you say that, I think you're saying that you have at some time or other, given an eye roll
Aimee Prasek: My God, yeah.
Henry: To the very thing you're talking about.
Henry: Absolutely. I have not come to these Elements of joy willingly. No, I have. Well, you know, it gives a lot of support to why these, why these things work. These are not the practices that I necessarily wanted to engage in, or at least felt like it was worth my time at first, but then I did and darn it. They work. So here we are. A reluctant, joyful woman.
Aimee Prasek: Absolutely. I'll tell a story of, of an eye roll actually. I remember when I started grad school, I was working full-time, goin' to [00:04:00] school full-time, uh, and the recession was hitting. This was 2007, and one of my side jobs was in-home personal trainer. The only folks who could afford in-home personal training at that time were well-off. And I had this really crappy car, which is a whole nother story of how I got the crappy car.
Aimee Prasek: I'll tell another day, but it had broken down the day before, so I had to reschedule with this client when my car got fixed, you know, I was back on the road, was able to get to their house and told them the story. And I was kind of complaining about the car and how much money it it cost to fix. 'cause I didn't have the money. And I remember my client said to me, you should be grateful you have a car. No, there's more. My husband had to get rid of his Porsche because of this recession. And I, I was like, Porsche, oh my God, [00:05:00] I have, I'm gonna try to muster up an appropriate response because you're paying me money and I wanna keep this relationship intact. So I was like, oh, that sounds really tough. I'm super sorry. A lot of eye rolls turned around, eye roll, drove home, passed by the four other cars in their garage that cost like five times my rent. And also eye rolled. So, gratitude might give you a bad taste in your mouth. And if that's true, I see you, I get that. But point being that is not gratitude, what I just explained, and we'll
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: that. So, don't let bad takes on gratitude like bum you out or ruin gratitude for you
Henry: Yeah. You know, it's, it's pretty hard to argue against the idea of gratitude, right?
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: But when we are told again and again that something is good for us,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: it can start [00:06:00] to feel a little forced or a little bit inauthentic or something. It's, it's, yeah, it sounds like a parent telling you to eat your vegetables or something.
Henry: So I think when gratitude gets framed as a moral obligation, you know, you like your
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry (2): client Who said, you should be grateful that you have this car. I mean, that's kind of implying that you're not being grateful, right? And that doesn't inspire you really to feel more gratitude. So I think we wanna try to approach this today and this whole month in a way that avoids those shoulds and the cliches that
Henry (2): we're all familiar with, so let's try to look at gratitude from a fresh, realistic, authentic perspective if we can. And you know, I mentioned the science earlier. I think that's a pretty good place to start.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, the research is [00:07:00] robust. I'll give us, I'll just give a like sampling. So we can get a, a taste of it. People who practice gratitude tend to have stronger relationships, better physical health, less pain, more happiness, quality of life, lower rates of depression, they're more empathetic, less likely to lash out, less reactive.
Aimee Prasek: They perform better at work. More productive, more likely to get promoted. Gratitude practices are linked to better sleep, higher resilience, greater self-esteem.
Henry: Better sleep. Okay. You, you, you caught me there.
Aimee Prasek: Gratitude practices at night. That's a good one for sleep. Reductions in PTSD symptoms. A lot of of impact from what really is kind of an accessible practice. So there's also a classic study that I think is, is helpful to, to call out too. 'Cause we wanna talk about gratitude in a realistic, accessible, non-cheesy not eye [00:08:00] roll, no hashtag gratitude stamped on pillows kind of way. It comes from researchers Dr. Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, and they ran— not you, Henry.
Henry: I, I should point out, it's no relation to me.
Aimee Prasek: be great if that was your brother.
Henry: It would be.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, he's like peak gratitude researcher, Robert Emmons.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: So yeah, in this study it was kind of three substudies essentially, but they had participants write about things they were great, grateful for. They had another group of participants write about the hassles were experiencing, and then another group was just kind of writing neutral events. And then all the participants depending on which sub-study they were in, would write either daily or weekly. And here's what they found: overall folks who wrote about what they were grateful for, reported more optimism, fewer health complaints. They even exercised more, [00:09:00] which I think is interesting. And for the participants who did this on a daily basis, they slept better, they felt more connected. experienced more positive emotions and even had fewer negative moods compared to the other groups. So these studies, these, whether daily or weekly, so the daily, I think was a two week study. The weekly, I'll have to check back several weeks, but essentially these are pretty condensed practices. Consistent. They were doing it daily or weekly, but in a short period of time to have these impacts is pretty, pretty profound actually. I think also what these studies highlight is that gratitude is a skill, so it's something that you can consciously practice even if you aren't feeling grateful. Don't feel... I'm not shaming you. That's like why I started gratitude practices. 'cause I thought it was BS and I wasn't feeling grateful. So it could still work, right? You can find something, a [00:10:00] cloud, a blooming flower, a snowflake, whatever it might be. And when you do that in a consistent way, and in a way that doesn't really have to take any extra time, you can actually start to feel better.
Henry: It's, this is sounding like mental flossing to me. Like something that you do every day just a little bit,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: just takes a couple minutes and, and it does really good things for, for you.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. That's perfect. Absolutely. It's, it's hygiene.
Henry: It's, hy- it's mental and emotional hygiene.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Yeah. I think too that what you're describing, Aimee, just shows that gratitude is more than just a nice, flowery idea. You know? It's, it's got some power behind it.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: And as the other Dr. Emmons points out, gratitude is not just a virtue, it's an emotion. I like that.
Henry: Thinking of it as [00:11:00] an emotion.
Henry: You know, it's just one of the really positive, most beneficial emotions that any of us can experience. And I think what the research is saying too, that it often sparks action on the part of the person doing it. So, so that when you feel grateful, for example, you're more likely to pay it forward and do something nice or kind to someone else.
Henry: So the, the research on emotional wellbeing has just shown us again and again that doing good things for others is simply one of the best things we can do for our own mental health, we are just wired for it. Just like we're wired for touch or for appreciating beauty and savoring things, which are other things we will talk about at another time.
Henry: I think we get a big dopamine hit when we do something
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: good for others or when we enjoy a feeling of gratitude within ourselves. [00:12:00] Also, I think that both gratitude and altruism, which kind of stems from gratitude, make us healthier, in part because they remove us from this constant, unhealthy focus on ourselves.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, I think when I, when I was talking about my, um, distaste for gratitude. how I, I did not come to it willingly. I think that's such good point, because, not my point, but what you just said, Henry, that
Henry: Well, your point was good too.
Aimee Prasek: Good too. But it wasn't that, that I wasn't wired for this stuff, that it wasn't part of me. It was that I, I couldn't. that point, it or tap into it. And I think hyperfocus is a really important thing to recognize, that [00:13:00] gratitude can help us get out of. I think we can all agree like that, that hyperfocus that we can get into isn't like, you know, we're hyperfocused on our self-care and self-love and nourishment is like usually a self-critical negative kind of hyperfocus, which blocks gratitude, right? So it's then hard to sort of see it and want it and recognize it as being helpful when it's just hard to tap into. But the point here again, as we're kind of making, is that it's really easy to tap into. And even if you don't really it's legit, it's gonna give you some good outcomes. And then as you continue to practice it, it starts to open up something that's much deeper than just kind of the maybe transactional notion of, of gratitude that we might see more often, around us. So let's get into that a little bit more, like into the, the definition of gratitude. So, Dr. Emmons, Robert Emmons, [00:14:00] Henry, talks about— have to clarify this all the time— uh, talks about two aspects of gratitude.
Aimee Prasek: The first is conditional gratitude, so noticing the good things you've received, and then the second one. This is, I feel like the most important part,
Henry: relational
Aimee Prasek: gratitude, is recognizing the role of others in bringing that goodness into your life. So we're gonna get into the relational aspect of gratitude a lot this month. It's a lot of the work we'll do in the Program as well here at the Podcast as well. I do wanna touch on it though, here as well, 'cause it's so important. Again, most of us can get conditional aspect of gratitude. I am thankful for this stuff. So that stuff though didn't just magically appear. It wasn't just bestowed upon you because you are more worthy. Like all that we have now is part of a long chain of folks or creatures who [00:15:00] have helped even have been harmed for us to have this stuff. until we have awareness of that, then we cut ourselves off from the world. I think that's really interesting to start to like really dig into, I'll give a tangible example. I got an avocado at the store yesterday. I am grateful for it. Now how did it come to be? I know I didn't grow it, because I'm in Minnesota and we can't grow avocados.
Aimee Prasek: So it's not just like creation of my own being. So someone else grew this. Tended to this picked, that fruit sorted it, it was watered when it was growing. The rains nourished it too. The sun, bees pollinated the flowers, the tree was on someone's land. That land was somebody's before who tended to that soil centuries ago. And it doesn't even matter if you think this is stupid to go through this kind of process with an avocado. The actual point [00:16:00] is to be able to think through the process of giving, of contributing and it's brain training. It's really brain training. If you don't like the emotional or sort of spiritual aspect of with an avocado, just understand that you are strengthening your critical thinking skills by interpreting, by identifying the many variables that go into the creation of something, of everything. And if you can't do that, then you, and you alone— here's where it gets sticky— become the sole focus of everything. Try to get that avocado on your own Minnesota folks. Like that's too much weight to hold. So you can give yourself like all the praise and the awards when stuff is going well, the gratitude to yourself.
Aimee Prasek: But when it's a dumpster fire, when life gets hard and it will, you'll need to take the [00:17:00] full blame too, 'cause you've cut yourself off if you can't see any of those connections and acknowledge them. So, I mean, it just leaves us in a place where we, we can't see how anyone else has contributed to our successes, our failure, or our failures. And so we are alone. I've been there. I've fallen for that lie. We are trained to do this oftentimes that we're all in it for ourselves, that kind of BS. So I think gratitude is like this basic understanding that you are not alone. You just aren't. Even if you go off grid and live like a hermit, you're still part of something bigger and that impacts you with or without your awareness or conscious participation. And I think that when we can tap into that, when we can realize we are part of so many pieces working together, and when we can practice a skill of gratitude to see who and what contributes to our nourishment and our successes our [00:18:00] failures or, or when we fall down, then we're able to be supported when, when we are knocked down, and life gets way easier.
Henry: Yeah. I love how that connects things to a bigger picture.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: 'Cause you know, I think it's, it's one thing to practice gratitude for these momentary things, you know, that which is good and, you know, helpful, but I think you're pointing to living
Henry: with gratefulness, which is a much broader thing. It makes it more a way of life rather than just a, momentary practice.
Henry: So there's a, a book that's really worth mentioning. It's a book by Kristi Nelson called Wake Up Grateful. And in it she, she talks about these five guiding principles for living gratefully, [00:19:00] which is kind of what I think what we're getting into now. So let's just talk, really, I just wanna highlight these five things very briefly.
Henry: First life is a gift. Even in difficult times, the simple fact of being alive is reason enough to find some gratitude. As Jon Kabat-Zinn has said, you know, the person who's largely responsible for bringing mindfulness into American healthcare, he said, as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: It's that shift in focus. So first life is a gift life itself. Second thing, everything is a surprise. I like this. Gratitude comes alive when we approach life with curiosity and wonder. [00:20:00] Third, the ordinary is extraordinary. And this, I like this too. 'cause we, we so often take the ordinary things for granted, like having clean water coming out of our tap,having friends to hang out with, or just being able to take the breath that we're taking right now. These are miracles happening moment to moment when we pause to really notice them. And then we've alluded to this fourth one, which is that appreciation is generative. Meaning that when we pay attention to what we value, it gets bigger.
Henry: Appreciation is not a passive thing. It's an active way of engaging with life and kind of spreading it, paying it forward to others. And then finally, love is transformative. Gratitude just naturally leads us toward love, [00:21:00] and that changes everything.
Aimee Prasek: Does sound sweet and wonderful. I do love those.
Henry: It does, it does, doesn't it?
Aimee Prasek: Which makes me think of something that bothers me, that I wanna bring up. I love that I just raising up all my issues here. I, I, that book is wonderful. Thank you for calling out and I'll put it in the show notes too. I wanna bring up just for a moment before we kind of wrap here, something that I think gratitude gets tied up with toxic positivity a bit.
Aimee Prasek: We noted this earlier with the shoulds that can happen. I just wanna like, we will just keep our antenna up for just a moment, to see when there might be instances when we're letting gratitude gloss over pain. Because I think that's kind of a common, um, hiccup. So I remember as an example, I got a lot of this [00:22:00] after my dad died.
Aimee Prasek: So, I was 17 when he died and I think a lot of kids who have had a parent die younger get this too. So I can't count how many people told me this. I should be grateful for the 17 years I got with my dad. I know it's another should there, but, there's, there's more there. It was, uh, dismissing the grief.
Aimee Prasek:
Aimee Prasek: I think it's just really important to, to keep our antenna up so that it's not something that we're falling into. For example, when I see grandparents super involved in their grandkids lives, yes, I'm happy for that kid and those grandparents, but my daughter doesn't have that, and I think that sucks.
Aimee Prasek: So is there anything I can do about it? No. Does it make me sad when I see stuff that I wish my dad could have been part of in my life? Yes. And that's okay. Like that feeling is okay. That grief is [00:23:00] natural and it does not have to be dismissed through gratitude. At the same time, gratitude and grief can come together. Gratitude and loss can come together, gratitude and pain. So I think sometimes we teach or we, we see these as mutually exclusive, that I'm gonna use gratitude to get rid of the grief and it just doesn't work like that. So, and we're actually gonna talk, I think, more about gratitude and grief later on, like early next year, we'll get into that. I, I think it's just so important that these things are not mutually exclusive. They exist together, and that together, they're actually pretty powerful.
Henry: Yeah, I, I love that, Aimee. I think. What you're saying about how they can fit together is just really, really important. But I do also want to really highlight that, yeah, we don't need to [00:24:00] use these Elements of Joy, any of them to cover up our real pain. You know, it's not, that's not what they're about.
Henry: And you know, as people know who've listened to us, we are not about toxic positivity or just simply denial of, you know, the hard stuff, the pain, painful stuff in life. And I think if we can do what you're, what you're pointing to, where we can, in one hand we can hold the, the real sense of pain and loss that every one of us experiences at some time in our lives
Henry: and in the other hand, hold the sense of, of, gratitude if that's possible, or acceptance if gratitude's, we're not quite there yet, but just be able to hold a balanced standpoint or approach to these really challenging things in life [00:25:00] that is authentic.
Aimee Prasek: Hm.
Henry: That's hard won, genuine gratitude when you get to that.
Henry: Mm. Yeah, holding them together. I think perfect other title for this podcast would be Sorrow Lab, 'cause like you said, probably folks who stumble upon Joy Lab are were like, "Oh, this is kind of depressing at times." We should try it for a while, Aimee. Just see what happens.
Aimee Prasek: I love that because yeah, these things are, they're, it's just life. And to, yeah, to not dismiss 'em and not gloss over them and not use joy to cover sorrow, not use gratitude to smother grief.
Aimee Prasek: Like, nope, it's all here for us. Um,
Aimee Prasek: yeah, so that's the heart of it. I think gratitude doesn't erase life's difficulties, but it gives us a way to live more fully with all of [00:26:00] it, like the joy, the sorrow, the loss, and the love. That's why we're here. Um, even, even when you have to give up your Porsche, you can hold joy and sorrow then too. Sorry, that was still, I still off, still like a little irritated by that comment clearly. We're still all works in progress. So gratitude like ourselves, it's messy. We're human. It's sometimes uncomfortable. I think it's always worth it that's why it's one of our Elements of Joy. It is so important that we're, working on this together too. I just collectively, whoof, gratitude. It changes society. It is a rapid transformation tool for a more healthy community. So let's all come together and work on gratitude.
Aimee Prasek: To close us, I wanna share some wisdom from Faith [00:27:00] Baldwin here it is. "Gratitude is a many colored quality. Reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large."
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