147: The Science of Gratitude

The Science of Gratitude is one that is emerging to paint a picture of the vast implications of gratitude on everything in life, from motivation and productivity, to love and relationships. In this exclusive episode, Tudor Alexander reviews prominent published literature on gratitude and the conclusions of such resources.

Transcript

This is episode 147,

The Science of Gratitude.

My name is Tudor Alexander and this is the Dance of Life podcast.

Every week,

My goal is to inspire you to take action towards what you love,

Live a transformed life,

And enjoy the journey there.

Are you ready?

Let's go.

What's up,

What's up,

Everybody?

Thank you so much for joining me today as we talk about the science of gratitude.

I have a great quote here from a researcher named Robert A.

Emmons from a paper.

He wrote,

Gratitude as a Psychotherapeutic Intervention.

Robert A.

Emmons is a popular researcher.

He's gonna be making an appearance in some of the studies we're talking about today,

But he's a big name in positive psychology and the research of gratitude and happiness.

So what he wrote is very profound.

He said,

Gratitude has one of the strongest links with mental health and satisfaction with life of any personality trait,

More so than even optimism,

Hope,

Or compassion.

People who experience gratitude can cope more effectively with everyday stress,

Show increased resilience in the face of trauma-induced stress,

Recover more quickly from illness,

And enjoy more robust physical health.

Taken together,

These results indicate that gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions and pathological conditions,

And that it may even offer protection against psychiatric disorders.

Now,

All that stuff is really profound,

And that's why I wanted to share with you today because ultimately,

Gratitude to me,

You know,

I don't need science to prove that gratitude is an important part that you should include in your life.

But what these researchers do and what these research studies that I'm gonna share with you today,

What they really point to is a very powerful and profound effect on everything in our life.

You know,

We're gonna be looking at three things in this episode specifically.

We're gonna be looking at motivation and productivity.

We're gonna be looking at relationships.

And we're gonna be looking at health and happiness.

And really,

You know,

If you think about that,

Those are really three of the main areas of our life,

Being able to pursue our dreams,

To take action on what we love,

To have great relationships with others,

Not just romantic relationships,

But,

You know,

The studies we're gonna be looking at are mostly with romantic relationships,

But I think they apply to everything.

And of course,

Health and happiness.

You know,

Health is such a big pillar of our life.

And one of the main problems to health is stress.

You know,

Not being in that chronic stress of seeing that life is terrible,

Complaining,

Being toxic,

Being around toxic people,

All those things,

That is where disease originates.

You know,

So gratitude is such a big part of life,

Being able to continually connect to all these things we always talk about,

Which is appreciation,

Being present in the moment,

Reframing things,

You know,

As we're doing that special series on Mondays,

If you're tuning in for that,

We're gonna be looking at all the different obstacles to gratitude,

And then after that series is done,

I'm gonna be doing a longer series on building a daily gratitude practice.

You know,

So if you don't know,

I relaunched my first book this summer,

Super stoked to share it with you.

It's called The Gratitude Map,

And you can get it for free at thegratitumap.

Com.

It comes with a free mini course and,

You know,

A lot of other stuff,

Free PDF to write your own gratitude routine on,

And also the Daily Gratitude Practice Facebook group.

So you can check that out if you want.

It's a lot of really powerful resources for you during this time to be able to incorporate this in your life,

You know,

So I thought I'd create an episode in the book,

The last chapter,

I wanted to include,

You know,

Some stuff that basically can appeal to the logical mind and really show,

And a lot of this stuff is really impressive too,

Some of these studies,

It's like,

Wow,

That's really interesting stuff,

Because again,

We don't tend to think of gratitude as this super high-powered life hack or strategy for being successful,

But ultimately,

If you look at anybody who's truly successful and inspiring and enjoying life,

It is a common theme to see this pattern of appreciation,

The ability to check in,

The ability to see the beauty in life,

To continually return to that state of gratitude and appreciation.

So,

So important,

I think,

For every aspect of your life,

And you know,

In my own life,

This stuff has changed my life,

So I hope that this episode inspires you with the curiosity to learn more,

To pursue it in your life,

To see what aspect of your life are,

You know,

You may need to appreciate more.

You know,

My own life,

For example,

One thing I struggled a lot with was complaining,

You know,

That's one of the things we'll talk about in the Monday series on obstacles in the next couple weeks,

But complaining was a big part of my life,

You know,

I had to really work hard and I still complain every now and then,

But I made a habit to cut myself off whenever that starts to kick in.

We all have our own habits,

Our own obstacles that come into play,

Like I said,

If you tune in Mondays,

We're going to be going over the top eight obstacles,

Again,

I'm pulling all that stuff from the book,

So feel free to grab the free book,

It's available to you and follow along,

But all this stuff is super,

Super important for life,

You know,

So our first area that we're going to look into with these studies is on motivation and productivity.

You know,

This was probably,

I think,

My favorite area because the other two,

It's kind of a given,

You know,

When you think of,

For example,

Relationships,

You think of gratitude,

You know,

With relationships,

Like yeah,

You know,

That makes sense,

Like the studies are interesting,

But it makes sense that gratitude will improve your relationships,

You know,

And also with health and happiness,

That's probably the most obvious one,

Like of course,

If you're grateful,

You know,

You're happy and of course,

You're also,

It helps your health as well,

But the thing about motivation and productivity that I found so interesting with these two studies I'm going to share with you,

And again,

These are,

You know,

I'm paraphrasing them,

So feel free to do your own research,

Look them up or,

You know,

Look at the book,

Like I said at the end,

The last chapter,

I include these in a little more detail,

But the thing that I found the most interesting and why this is so powerful to me,

This is right here,

The central motivation for this episode was that gratitude affects your motivation and productivity profoundly,

And that's something that most people don't associate to gratitude because,

Again,

It's kind of like this inspirational quote on Instagram type of thing,

But what if gratitude is a strategy,

What if appreciation as a strategy in your life was equal to you in importance next to all those other things that we learn,

You know,

Like life hacks and business hacks and,

You know,

Willpower and how to be motivated and all that stuff,

And ultimately,

You know,

If we can be grateful,

What impact does that have on our productivity and our motivation?

That was something that I was really shocked to learn with these two studies,

The first one was by Emmons which was the guy who did the quote in the beginning,

Robert A.

Emmons and McCulloch 2003,

They basically kept track of three groups,

They took three groups and then for a period of ten weeks,

They had them keep track of either the positive stuff that happened in their life,

The negative stuff that happened in their life or neutral,

Like basically that was the control group,

They kept track of just like neutral things like,

Oh,

I went to the grocery store today,

You know,

But the group that was basically negative,

They had to basically keep track of their complaints.

So can you imagine for ten weeks,

They're basically like,

Okay,

You know,

Like you're free to complain but only complain,

You can't keep track of anything positive.

So it was really interesting because the results of this study after ten weeks,

The people who were more positive,

Basically the ones that were instructed to keep track of just the positive stuff were so much more productive and they stuck to their routines,

They're more optimistic,

And they even stuck to their workouts consistently,

Right?

So they're basically motivated to keep on track and do their things whereas the control group,

Compared to the control group,

The negative list,

So the people that were complaining every day,

Man,

I would hate to be part of that group,

That sucks,

But those people were actually much less productive.

They got more interrupted,

They got more stressed out,

They felt less optimistic about their future and their goals by the end of those ten weeks,

They didn't stick to their workouts,

You know,

So compared to the control group,

They actually reduced their productivity and performance.

So this is a very powerful study because it really teaches us like,

Hey,

You know,

If you have a grateful mindset,

If you're constantly,

You know,

Tuning in that appreciation and positive and appreciative,

That rubs off,

You know,

That's a state of being,

It's not just like a little trick for your brain,

It's tuning into this productive state.

When you're grateful,

It's easy to be productive and to take action,

To be motivated,

You know,

Motivation I think,

In my own opinion,

I'll tell you,

I think it's overrated.

A lot of times we rely on,

I just got to get more motivated,

I got to get that willpower,

And ultimately,

You know,

That's kind of a very Western approach,

I think.

But if we can learn to tune into what we appreciate instead,

Something that we already have,

Something that we love,

That we see that we're so fortunate to have,

You tune into that vibration,

That's much easier to do than trying to force yourself through a negative state of being because sometimes,

You know,

That's just,

You're going to waste a lot of energy doing that,

And it's not always going to work.

So having a regular practice of tuning into what you appreciate on a regular basis,

That's why there's that Daily Gratitude Practice Facebook group,

We do gratitude challenges every day in that,

So you know,

Feel free to join it.

You know,

It's such a valuable tool to continually get yourself back to center because in that space,

When you're grateful and appreciative,

You can be creative,

You can be productive,

You are using the right part of your brain that can handle higher level thinking and problems.

When you're stressed out and you're negative and complaining,

You're actually activating a different part of your brain,

You're activating the survival mode,

And it disrupts all of your higher order strategies,

All the stuff that you learned,

That we learned,

That we constantly try to improve ourselves,

All that stuff is meaningless when you're stressed out,

Like it doesn't work because literally a different part of your brain is active.

So you have to have the habit of finding that stillness,

Centering yourself,

Getting back to cool,

Calm brain,

Appreciative brain,

So that you can be productive.

Now another study,

Also in this kind of area of motivation and productivity,

Also very interesting,

By Grant and Gino in 2010,

It's called A Little Thanks,

Goes a long way,

Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior.

This kind of opens up the idea of prosocial behavior with gratitude.

So what prosocial behavior is,

And this is why gratitude and generosity,

Which we're going to talk about a little bit later,

But they go hand in hand,

You know,

Prosocial behavior is what are the impacts on the relationships around you?

You know,

What is the impact on you and how you interact with society as a result of X?

In this case,

It's gratitude.

So what they found in this particular study,

They studied these university fundraisers,

Which is,

I don't know if you know what that is,

But it's those people that call you from your old college.

If you haven't graduated from college yet,

Then get ready.

You're going to get phone calls basically asking you to donate money,

Which nobody likes these phone calls.

But can you imagine working in that position?

You know,

Oftentimes these are volunteers too,

And having to basically cold call people and ask them for money.

It's a very stressful position.

So what they tested in this study was very simple.

They basically said,

Okay,

We're going to pick a group and we're going to acknowledge them.

We're going to have the manager acknowledge them for their hard work and say,

Hey,

You know,

You're doing a great job,

Really appreciate you,

Basically expressing their gratitude to this group versus the control group that didn't have that.

So they found that obviously the group who was being expressed gratitude to,

Who felt valuable,

Who felt appreciated and acknowledged,

They were actually way more productive.

They got a lot more work done.

Their stress levels were much lower.

And on top of all that,

They exhibited prosocial effects,

Meaning they were much more willing to help others in their team,

Stay later,

You know,

And basically contribute and things like this.

So a lot of other residual effects by being acknowledged,

You know.

So,

You know,

There's another study that kind of was quoted with this,

Which is the Holt and Blunstadt study in 2010.

Big study on prosocial effects and longevity,

Which is basically the health of our relationships is correlated to our actual physical health.

There's two,

They studied,

There's been many studies on this,

But the top two things that determine your longevity in life,

The first one is your integration in society,

Meaning do you have a purpose,

Do you have a role,

Do you acting on,

You know,

What is passionate to you,

Do you have some sense of contribution.

And the second one,

They're both equal,

Which is the health of your relationships.

Do you have healthy relationships as you go into older age,

You know,

Or are you,

You know,

Alone,

Do you have toxic relationships,

That kind of thing.

Those two things were more important for your health and longevity and stress levels,

And diet and exercise and all these other factors contributed.

So,

Why this is important is that,

You know,

Those,

That group that got acknowledged,

That was,

You know,

Feeling appreciated,

That accomplished two of these big goals for health.

The first one is they felt,

Okay,

Like I have a purpose,

I belong here,

You know,

So I'm motivated now,

I'm happy and productive,

I have a direction in life.

Obviously,

You know,

Maybe the person who's working there,

That's not gonna be their,

You know,

Final stop in life to be a solicitor for a university.

But again,

Having that sense of purpose,

Having that sense of belonging and direction is so important.

And the prosocial effect on their relationships and the office,

That was a huge effect.

You know,

I don't know if you've worked in an office,

You know what that's like,

There's often a lot of office politics and drama and stress and things like that.

So,

Ultimately,

Creating that acknowledgement,

That space of acknowledgement and gratitude was so important for everybody's health levels and overall productivity.

So,

Really interesting,

Really interesting stuff.

Gratitude is the key for motivation and productivity.

And that was something that really blew my mind when I read it for writing the book,

The Gratitude Map.

So,

We got two other areas,

You know,

The next one is relationships.

And in this one,

There's some interesting studies about how gratitude affects our willingness to basically open up and also kind of these residual effects that we keep talking about,

These prosocial effects.

The first study by Algo in 2010,

They looked at basically two,

You know,

Two people and again,

These are all romantic,

You know,

Relationships,

But I think you can apply this to anybody.

They looked at,

You know,

When somebody is keeping track of the good things that their partner is doing,

And also acknowledging them for it.

So,

Again,

We go back to that acknowledgement.

And when we get to our special series on Monday,

About the different habits to include in your daily gratitude practice,

Number six or seven,

I believe,

Is acknowledging others.

You know,

That was one of the ones that I picked for this book,

Because it's such a core habit is basically expressing gratitude to somebody.

So,

In this particular study,

They had their partners keep track of each other and when that person did something that they enjoyed.

So,

Let's say whatever,

Let's say you like that when your partner takes your garbage,

The garbage out,

That makes you happy.

Well,

They had them keep track of that stuff,

But then also keep track of when they express their thanks to that person for doing whatever they did.

So,

Let's say that partner took out the garbage.

Hey,

You know what?

Thank you so much for doing that.

I really appreciate you and my life,

So on and so forth.

So,

On those moments when that happened,

What they found was that both partners reported that they were super satisfied with their relationships on those days and for a day or two afterwards.

So,

They had this residual effect of,

Hey,

Just that little bit of acknowledgement created the sense of belonging and connection with one another and that stability,

That security,

And it also had a residual effect for a few days afterwards.

So,

That's really important because ultimately in a relationship,

You're always going to have.

.

.

Relationships are difficult of all kinds,

Partnerships,

Business partnerships,

Employment situations,

Romantic relationships,

All relationships are difficult and they all come with continual challenges.

So,

Unless you're able to continually bring that gratitude and appreciation and express it,

I often heard this quote that I love which is,

It goes something like this,

Having gratitude but not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.

You have to continually express gratitude.

That's one of the main parts.

In the book,

I have the three S's of gratitude and you have senses which is your basically being present in the moment using your senses.

You have stillness which is basically the practice of finding that zero point,

That stillness,

We can call it meditation if you want,

But it's really just getting rid of those emotions that come into play and those obstacles like fear and worry and anxiety.

You got to get back to stillness if you want to create gratitude.

Gratitude doesn't happen when you're zooming around or when you're angry.

You have to find stillness first,

You have to be zero.

And the last one is sharing.

So,

Senses,

Stillness,

And sharing.

So,

Sharing is the idea that whatever is inside,

You got to let it out.

And that's so important for a practice of gratitude as you can see,

Especially in a relationship,

It creates that domino effect with each other.

And if you're both doing that on a regular basis,

So,

So important to build momentum that will help you overcome all these little things that wear away at relationships.

It's such a shame because most of the time,

It's not the big things that happen,

It's the little things that just eat away at you that go unresolved.

And if both people don't have a practice of appreciation,

Of getting themselves back to that zero point,

That stillness,

Then it's very easy to just start keeping ledgers of one another.

You need to start keeping track of,

We keep track anyway.

And you keep track of what people do all the time in your mind.

That's just the mind and what it does.

And unless you're unless you're training your mind to keep track of the good things,

By default,

It will keep track of the negative things.

And that kind of stuff eats away at you after two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Ten years.

Then you look back and say,

Oh,

You know,

We hate each other,

How do we get to the point or whatever.

And it's really oftentimes because we didn't practice gratitude in our own life,

Not necessarily for that person,

But just practicing gratitude.

And that helps us transition into being more grateful with others in other relationships.

So that's really important.

There's a second study about relationships,

Which I also want to mention,

Which it measured the effect of gratitude on being open and vulnerability,

Which I absolutely love this study.

And basically,

You know,

They looked at people and having the effect of acknowledging each other and basically instructing them through gratitude practice,

And measured,

You know,

Through studies and through research and surveys,

What is their openness to discussing difficult topics,

Like if they needed to have a conversation about something they didn't like or something they were afraid of,

You know,

What they found was that having a daily gratitude practice,

This study was by Lambert and Finchman in 2011.

Again,

All these studies are in the book in the back chapter.

So if that's something you want to look more into,

Feel free to grab the book,

It's free.

But this particular study was by Lambert and Finchman in 2011.

And this particular study looked at openness and vulnerability,

And the people who had a practice of gratitude reported a much more comfort and ease to be able to talk about the difficult stuff.

And that makes sense to me,

Because ultimately,

Gratitude is a virtue of the heart.

There's courage,

You know,

Courage is a big part of gratitude,

Because it's a gratitude practice.

So now,

We go back to all these areas of your life.

You need your heart for everything that you do.

You need your heart to be creative,

You need your heart to be authentic in business.

You need your heart to follow your desires and take action on what's important to you.

You need your heart to express yourself.

Your heart is the source,

It is the key.

And gratitude,

By practicing gratitude,

It helps you open that heart up.

And through opening it,

It's not selective,

It's a general opening.

And what that does is it makes you more courageous,

Makes you more vulnerable,

It makes you,

You know,

More open to experiences and being able to share and express.

And that's why it's so important.

That's why people don't realize the vast impact that gratitude has on all these areas of your life,

Because gratitude is centered around the heart.

So that's the thing that I want to inspire in you today with these studies.

We have one more section here and that's on health and happiness.

There's a lot of really powerful studies in this that I could find.

And again,

There's so many studies,

But these ones that I picked out were really interesting.

Seligman and the whole team,

Basically in 2005,

Studied all these different,

You know,

Intervention methods.

And this was kind of where that quote from the beginning was as well.

And basically what they found,

So they compared cognitive behavioral,

They compared medication,

You know,

They compared all these different psychotherapy interventions.

And with that,

They also added writing a gratitude note and delivering it to a person that they never felt that they had proper to thank for.

So the patient was instructed to write an authentic gratitude letter and deliver it to a person that they felt,

You know,

They never resolved this gratitude with.

And this particular,

Just doing that,

Just doing this kind of act of kindness and expression,

They found in this study that it was more effective for the person's,

You know,

Immediate sort of well-being and stress and transformation and long-term effects than any other method.

And they compared cognitive behavioral methods,

You know,

Basically sitting and talking about their problems.

They compared even medication.

And they found that this particular,

Just one act,

Had a profound effect on the person's psyche.

So very interesting,

You know,

There's a lot of neurochemicals that are released when we practice gratitude,

When we connect.

Again,

That's that prosocial behavior when you're expressing gratitude,

That dopamine,

You know,

Serotonin,

All these things are getting released,

And that has a profound effect on your psychology.

You know,

When you look at some of these studies also,

This is kind of related,

But like on magic mushrooms,

And they did all these studies on the profound impact that even one session with these things has on a person's psyche,

Because it floods the brain with,

You know,

Serotonin and all these things that in that heightened state,

There's a new breakthrough possible,

Because literally you're perceiving the world differently because of those neurochemical transformations.

So the same thing is with this,

You know,

When that person was writing a gratitude letter and expressing it to the person,

Giving it to them,

Physically delivering it,

And having those prosocial effects,

That flood of emotions and positive neurotransmitters puts that person in a different state.

And in that state,

You experience a new perspective that you weren't able to see before when your mind was just in reasonable mode,

In survival mode,

Which is also there's a vibrational chemical profile to that mode.

So the whole point is change the mode and you change your perspective of what you see.

Now,

The second study was by Elizabeth Dunn and her team in 2013.

You know,

She did so many studies.

One book I highly recommend is called Happy Money,

The Science of Smarter Spending.

There's a lot of that work in there that she wrote.

Basically,

She studied a lot about,

You know,

The effect of spending money on ourselves versus spending it on others and how those effects differ.

And one thing,

There's two particular studies I wanted to share with you.

One of them was basically they instructed people for $5 a day to spend either on themselves or on another person.

They did this for five days.

And so they measured their happiness every day.

And you can guess pretty much that the people who spent money on themselves,

They reported,

You know,

Decent happiness in the beginning,

But by the fifth day,

They were just,

It wasn't the same feeling anymore,

As opposed to the people who were instructed to spend $5 a day on a different person or on someone else.

Even if it was the same person,

They found that their levels of happiness and excitement were still higher.

Like basically,

They were consistently higher.

They didn't decrease at all because they were able to keep that excitement going.

They were even excited to spend the money the next day as an adventure.

Whereas,

For example,

The people who were spending their money on themselves,

By that fifth day,

You know,

It's like,

Oh,

Okay,

I already know I'm gonna spend money on myself.

Like I'm used to it.

I'm taking it for granted.

There's another study also where they basically had people do 10 rounds of a word puzzle game.

And what this was,

Basically every round they would win,

I think it was like a hypothetical,

It was like a fake amount,

Or maybe they actually won some money,

But it was some small amount of money like 10 cents or 20 cents or something.

But regardless,

They won some money every round doing this word puzzle for 10 rounds.

And at that point,

They had a choice to either keep the money or donate it to charity.

So what they found was obviously that the people who basically were winning and choosing to spend it on themselves,

The joy of winning was not there anymore.

It was getting mundane.

They got bored with the word puzzle.

Like they just got desensitized to it.

On the other hand,

The people who were choosing to donate,

Who had to basically donate to charity,

They were getting excited every round.

Their level of excitement and engagement with this activity did not change.

So what all this boils down to is a very,

Very important principle.

And that principle is habituation.

You know,

In the obstacles series that we're doing on Mondays,

We talk about desensitization as one of the obstacles.

And that's pretty much what this is,

Is the idea that we get desensitized very easily.

And particularly when you're,

Especially when you're giving,

Let's say you're spending money on yourself,

It's very easy to get desensitized because like,

You know,

Anytime you eat,

For example,

Use that as an example,

Anytime you eat,

The first bite feels so good.

But by the end,

It's like,

Okay,

I'm used to this.

I'm over it.

I'm over it.

And that's just a natural thing that happens to us as human beings.

We get desensitized.

And that is the problem with hoarding things for ourselves or constantly focusing on ourselves.

We get desensitized.

We take things for granted.

Things aren't as exciting anymore.

But when we can focus and shift that attention outward to others,

It seems that this reward loop of getting that dopamine and serotonin and all these neurotransmitters that reward us initially,

That is bypassed.

The desensitization,

The habituation that naturally is built into our system,

We can bypass that when we do things for others.

So we can continually get the same reward without getting desensitized as long as we're focusing on doing it for somebody else,

Which is really fascinating.

This is a fascinating idea because that is truly how you can quote,

Unquote,

Hack your mind with this gratitude stuff and generosity to live a fulfilled and happy life.

It's true,

All these things that we hear,

All these quotes,

To get lost in the service of others,

The meaning of life is to contribute.

All these things we hear as philosophical ideas or principles of living,

There's an actual scientific basis to it.

And that's what really I found very fascinating with all these studies.

So I hope that this episode has inspired you to do more of your own research and if anything to take up a gratitude practice.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the next couple of weeks with all these special series and different interviews and stuff.

There's a lot of really exciting stuff coming your way.

I hope it's going to inspire you and contribute to your life.

Like I said,

If you want to grab that book,

It's free.

Just pay for shipping.

It comes with a free mini course,

PDF to get you started on your own daily gratitude practice.

We've got the daily gratitude practice Facebook group.

So much awesome stuff in there happening all the time.

Check out the book if you want to get that.

It's at thegratitudemap.

Com or you can check out it on the website as well.

And I hope to hear from you.

I hope to see you in the group.

And like always,

Remember that life is a dance between the things that we want and the obstacles that come in a way.

So gratitude is such a key part to helping us return to center,

Return to our balance,

So we can take action on those things that we love.

Gratitude is the key.

It is the ultimate technique to get you back in the rhythm,

Back in creativity,

Flow and happiness.

And it will help you dance your life well.

For more episodes and weekly content,

Stay connected at danceoflife.

Com

Reviews

Very inspiring

Wow! So interesting, thank you for sharing. I try to keep these practices because they align with my truth and pave the way to living a balanced life. But hearing things like this just lights a fire of inspiration inside me for some reason. This was captivating, my eyes grew wide and my heart center burst open just listening 😊🙏🏽

Perfect talk for Thanksgiving morning! Thank you.

Excellent points, tha j you 💜x