Try This Today: How to Use Gratitude to Feel Happier & Improve Your Relationships

Speaker 1 Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Speaker 1 Today, you and I are talking about a word that is so overused, it barely means anything anymore. The word gratitude.
And before you roll your eyes, I used to do the same.

Speaker 1 I just want you to hear me out because I want to approach the idea of gratitude from a very different angle.

Speaker 1 Not your corny, just be thankful for everything kind of episode, because there's no way I'm going to tell you to ignore the madness that is happening in the world and probably even in your own life.

Speaker 1 Because peace isn't about ignoring the madness. It's about finding stillness and power within the chaos.

Speaker 1 And that's what gratitude is. Whether you realize it or not, the madness in the world world is rewiring your mind and your body for negativity.
Gratitude is how you fight back.

Speaker 1 Gratitude is what you need to rewire your mind. Because when you practice gratitude as an intentional mindset, you are teaching your mind to spot what's okay right now, to spot the goodness.

Speaker 1 to spot the things that are going well, to lift yourself up so that you don't get gaslit by the negativity. It's not just a feel-good thing.

Speaker 1 It's about intentionally changing the settings in your mind. Gratitude is going to help you calm down faster when you get upset.
It will help you think clearer. It will help you get better sleep.

Speaker 1 It will help you see that what you have is enough, which brings you even more.

Speaker 1 It trains your mind to focus on what's going right.

Speaker 1 Because where you point your attention, that's exactly where your emotions and your actions go.

Speaker 1 Gratitude is an act of defiance in a world that's trying to gaslight you into thinking you have no power and that there's nothing in the world that's good. It's simply not true.

Speaker 1 And so we're going to talk about it as an intentional act of changing the settings in your mind.

Speaker 1 And then I'm going to give you three very simple tools, ways that you can retrain your mind for gratitude, backed by by research, and it will immediately help you put it into action, and you're going to feel more present and more grounded.

Speaker 1 And it's not just going to be me. I'm bringing in some heavy hitters.
Dr. Tara Swark Bieber, who's one of our most popular guests of all time and a senior lecturer at MIT.

Speaker 1 She has a medical degree from Oxford. You're also going to hear from Dr.
Aditi Nurikar, another fan favorite who's a lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

Speaker 1 She was the medical director of Harvard Beth Israel's Deaconess Hospital's integrative medicine program. And look, I said right up front, I was skeptical about the whole gratitude thing.

Speaker 1 But got to say, the science is going to prove me and you wrong. And if you're still feeling a little skeptical, like, come on, Mel, gratitude, give me a break.
Just stay with me.

Speaker 1 Because after this break, we're going to change that forever. This is not about forcing yourself to smile or pretend that everything's fine.

Speaker 1 I'm talking three practical tools that will shift your mind and body from the inside out.

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. It's always such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you.

Speaker 1 And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just wanted to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad that you're here. I should probably say that I'm grateful that you're here because I know you don't have a lot of time, but you made the time to listen.

Speaker 1 And I'm especially glad that you chose this episode because you need this and so do I. Today, you and I are talking about the surprising power of gratitude and three tools.

Speaker 1 that will change your mind and body. I'm talking, you're going to sleep better at night, the markers for stress and inflammation lower.
There's such fascinating research here.

Speaker 1 So it's not just even the settings in your mind. This has a shift from the top down on you at a biological level.

Speaker 1 And the cool thing about the tools that I'm going to give you is you already know how to do this.

Speaker 1 Like we're going to go through these three ways that you can take on gratitude as an intentional act to change the way that you feel and to change the way that your mind works.

Speaker 1 But you don't need to do all three. I don't want you to do more.
I just want to give you some options, practical, easy to try options. You don't have to buy anything.

Speaker 1 I also love it that you can take what I'm about to share with you, start exactly where you are, and begin to shift your mental state and how you experience your life in real time, even as you're listening to our conversation today or watching it here on YouTube.

Speaker 1 And what the research is going to show you is that it only takes this slight shift from what you're already doing, slight little mental adjustments, to lead to noticeable benefits to your physical health, your mental health, to your relationships.

Speaker 1 The power of gratitude is your way to fight back and to regain control of your mind and of how you feel in your day-to-day life. And that's the first act of defiance.

Speaker 1 It's the first thing that you need to take control of because you may not even realize how much you've you've handed your brain and the way that you feel to the world outside you.

Speaker 1 And gratitude is the first step of how you're going to start to take your power back. And what I mean by that is you can take your power back

Speaker 1 by training yourself to choose what you want to notice throughout the day. rather than mindlessly allowing the world outside of you to just pour a bunch of garbage into your brain.

Speaker 1 And this reminds me of a conversation I had before on this podcast with one of your favorite guests that we've ever had. She's a regular on the show.
Dr.

Speaker 1 Aditi Narukar is a medical doctor, researcher, and world-renowned expert in stress and public health.

Speaker 1 She's a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and was the medical director of Harvard Beth Israel's Deaconess's Hospital's integrative medicine program, where she practiced and developed this enormous clinical practice in stress management using using evidence-based integrative approaches to help her patients feel better.

Speaker 1 She's also one of the 57 world-renowned experts that I spoke to and that is featured in the Let Them Theory book. I love her research on resetting your stress response.

Speaker 1 And she spoke on this show about how powerful intentional gratitude journaling can be for your brain. Check this out.

Speaker 2 The reason gratitude is so important from a scientific perspective is because when you are doing a gratitude, daily gratitude practice, it takes 60 seconds.

Speaker 2 You are rewiring your brain because what you are doing, it's a scientific, again, a fancy scientific name called cognitive reframing, what you focus on grows.

Speaker 2 So Rick Hansen talks about this idea of when you're going through stress, he's a psychologist in California, negative experiences become sticky in the brain like velcro.

Speaker 2 You hold on to them because you're, it's a feeling of survival and self-preservation. And so when you start practicing gratitude on an everyday basis, it's cognitive reframing.

Speaker 2 What you focus on grows. So you shift your perspective.

Speaker 2 So even if negative and positive are happening at the same rate, good and bad things are happening in your life at the same rate, when you are feeling a sense of stress, you are focused primarily on the negative because you are thinking danger, danger, danger, right?

Speaker 1 Red alert.

Speaker 2 And so how do you decrease that stickiness of negative experiences in your brain when you're feeling a sense of stress? By practicing gratitude.

Speaker 2 So the negative experiences may happen, but it slides off. How does it happen? Through gratitude.
So, you write down those things every single day.

Speaker 2 And studies have demonstrated that 30, 60, and 90 days, there's improved mood, decreased stress and burnout, better sleep. There are so many benefits to an everyday gratitude practice.

Speaker 2 It also silences your inner critic because it dials down the volume of the amygdala in the background.

Speaker 1 So, you're ready for tool number one because I think I've convinced you. World, get out of my brain.
It's time to lock in the gratitude settings because I am tired of feeling negative.

Speaker 1 I call this the unsent letter.

Speaker 1 And basically what it is, is it's a letter that you are going to sit down and write to someone else that is not a love letter. It's a gratitude letter.

Speaker 1 And we're going to start here because there's really interesting research that blew me away and it's going to blow you away too. You don't have to send the letter.

Speaker 1 Because what happens when you write this letter, it's about somebody else. It's about what you're grateful for, is it changes something inside you.

Speaker 1 And I wanted to start here because have you noticed that as the world around you

Speaker 1 and all of the pressure that you face right now at work and in life and with your family and in relationships, as that builds and builds, have you noticed how you get irritated and stressed and mad at everyone around you?

Speaker 1 That you start to let the headlines and just the negativity definitely not put you in a gratitude mood, you you know?

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 that negativity and the way it's reprogramming your mind and making you discouraged and stressed out and overwhelmed, it makes you snap at people. It makes you mad at people.

Speaker 1 It makes you have a bad tone of voice with people. It makes you withdraw.
I want to start here.

Speaker 1 Because even though I didn't want to do the unsent letter exercise, I sat down anyway and I forced myself to write a letter to my husband, Chris. Again, not a love letter, a gratitude letter.

Speaker 1 Because it's so easy to be mad at people, oh, they didn't do the dishes, they didn't do this. Why did they always do that?

Speaker 1 But the moment I started writing about what Chris has done for me in this season of our life,

Speaker 1 something softened. It's like all that negativity and the pressure from the outside world was like,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I didn't even give him the letter.

Speaker 1 What I experienced in writing the letter was more for me to help me recenter myself,

Speaker 1 to help me tap into

Speaker 1 what I value,

Speaker 1 to help me be able to be in the moment and not so stressed out and taking it out on him all the time.

Speaker 1 And so I like to call this the unsent letter. And let me tell you about the research.
So these researchers at Indiana University, led by psychologist Dr.

Speaker 1 Joel Wong, ran this randomized controlled trial with nearly 300 people. And these are 300 people who were in therapy.
And they split the people into three groups.

Speaker 1 So one of the groups just got therapy. The second group did expressive journaling about stress.
So they wrote all about their stress. And the third group wrote one gratitude letter a week.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Okay. So one's in therapy.
One is just talking and journaling about stress. The other just wrote one gratitude letter a week.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Guess what happened?

Speaker 1 The group that wrote the one letter about gratitude a week showed significantly better mental health reductions in depression and anxiety, not just during the four-week writing period, but 12 weeks later.

Speaker 1 This had like an afterburner effect, and they never even had to send the letters. So here's your first tool.

Speaker 1 Once a week, I want you to sit down and write a one-page letter to someone you're grateful for. You don't even have to send it, just write it.
Now, here's how I want you to do it: be specific.

Speaker 1 And you can answer these questions to help you get started.

Speaker 1 What did they do?

Speaker 1 Why did it matter?

Speaker 1 How did it affect you? I'm going to say it again. What did they do?

Speaker 1 Why did it matter? How did it affect you? I love this so much

Speaker 1 because the people in your life, they're feeling just as beaten down and negative as you are.

Speaker 1 And you're probably, because your mind is so programmed by the outside world and the stress that you're feeling, you don't notice all the good things.

Speaker 1 You just kind of pick up on the things that irritate you.

Speaker 1 It's so easy, isn't it, to get into this routine with people that you care about where you feel like roommates and you don't appreciate each other.

Speaker 1 Gratitude and the unsent letter, it's how you find your way back to each other. And I've been doing this for a couple of weeks, like I said before.

Speaker 1 You know, in fact, I got to think about who this week's person is going to be. And I have the perfect person in mind.
In fact, she's sitting in this room, our amazing senior producer, Amy.

Speaker 1 She and I have produced this show together since we started it three years ago. She's probably going to kill me for saying this, but I want to write.
the unsent letter for Amy.

Speaker 1 In fact, I can just tell her because she's sitting here. And this is the greatest thing about these tools.
You can make them their own. You could actually write the letter and send it.

Speaker 1 You could be be with somebody and you could share them this episode and in the text say, hey, I just want you to know I'm grateful for X, Y, and Z. And this episode made me think of you.

Speaker 1 I think you'll love listening to it. I'm just grateful for our friendship.
Here's the thing that I am so grateful about Amy.

Speaker 1 She's constantly, and she may not even realize this, she steps in behind the scenes. right when everybody needs it most.

Speaker 1 We have this super collaborative process with all of our producers where they all work together and they're reviewing each other's work. Amy led that.
You want to know what else Amy does?

Speaker 1 Amy texted me when my dad had back surgery. Amy's thinking about those kind of things.
She's also really fun. Amy is throwing a wear your pajamas to our house breakfast party.
Who does that?

Speaker 1 Amy, how does it make me feel? Like I have a really fun friend that makes life fun and that's always thinking about how to make things better.

Speaker 1 I mean, she's the definition of a team player, the kind of person you need if you want to have a successful show and if you want to have fun in life. And this is just who she is.

Speaker 1 And I've never forgotten it. And it may not always be front of mind, but being able to write it down helps you remember all the ways someone as important as Amy comes through for you.

Speaker 1 And it also helps you realize how important everyone is. Well, for me, just speaking for me, who works on this show.
That's why this is so powerful.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can get so caught up in day-to-day life.

Speaker 1 You can get so busy. You can get so stressed out.
And life can feel like such a pressure cooker that you don't even see the beautiful people around you. And I'll tell you something.

Speaker 1 If you actually take the time to write a letter like that and send it to somebody, do you know how much that's going to help somebody else? That's why this tool is so powerful.

Speaker 1 So let's go back to the Indiana University study.

Speaker 1 What happened to the folks in the study is that they shifted their mental framework, talking about changing the settings in our mind, from the way we usually think over our lives, just scanning for threats and all the worry and anxiety and all the stuff that's not going wrong.

Speaker 1 And oh my God, oh my God,

Speaker 1 to intentionally

Speaker 1 seeking connection.

Speaker 1 So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. And this is the way you implement the tool.
Just pick one person. You may already have that person in mind right now.

Speaker 1 And write one full page about why you're thankful for them. It doesn't have to be some fancy thing.
Any piece of paper will do it.

Speaker 1 Or maybe you want to type it or maybe you want to text it or maybe you want to send them this podcast episode, say, I was thinking about you.

Speaker 1 And then write it in the text and share this episode and tell them how grateful you are for them and why. What did they do?

Speaker 1 Why does that make you grateful? How did it make you feel? Just one full page on paper. Be specific.
Write out the moment, what it meant to you, every detail you have.

Speaker 1 And remember, this doesn't need to be sent to the person. That's why I call it the unsent letter.

Speaker 1 Just simply sitting down and writing it shifts something inside you and wires you for connection and makes you more present and appreciate what's right in front of you.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to leave it up to you to possibly take it one step further and send it. If you want to send it to them, it will absolutely brighten their day.
But this is more about your perspective.

Speaker 1 And it works wonders. Like I was absolutely shocked at how it shifted something so quickly inside me.

Speaker 1 And I was also a little sad, I'll be honest, because it makes you realize how often you're going through that sticky negative state where the world is seeped into you.

Speaker 1 But this letter and practicing intentional gratitude just removes all that gunk and gets your mind wired for connection and positivity again.

Speaker 1 And if you do this once a week and you write a letter once a week, oh my gosh, now you're going to have positive momentum. Now there's no negative stickiness, all that cognitive reframing that Dr.

Speaker 1 Adidi was talking about. You're doing it.
I love doing this on Sunday because it's a slower day for me than the rest of the days, but fit it in whenever you can.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's on a Friday or Saturday for you. All right, let's take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors.

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Speaker 1 You and I have so much more to dig into about these three ways that you can use the science of gratitude to reset your mind and your body. Stay with me.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins.
Today, you and I are talking about gratitude as a tool that you can use to reset your mind and your body. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, that brings me to the second research-back way that you can use gratitude to not only intentionally change the settings in your mind and wire you for connection and help you have all these positive things happen, but you won't believe this next study.

Speaker 1 This next study, which researched something called the Three Minute Night Journal, it's going to really blow your mind about the physical benefits that you will experience by taking on this second tool.

Speaker 1 And before I get into the physical benefits, I don't know if this happens to you, but you know those nights when you can't sleep? Like you really can't sleep.

Speaker 1 It's never because you're physically uncomfortable, right? Isn't it always?

Speaker 1 It's because your brain, it's racing, it's replaying something something that you said, worried about something that's coming up. You're beating yourself up for something that you forgot.

Speaker 1 And there's this pattern for myself, just speaking for myself personally, that I started to notice.

Speaker 1 The nights I was most wired and awake and restless were the nights where I hadn't slowed down at all during the day. It was like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Okay, try to get to sleep.

Speaker 1 No check-in, no pause. No moment of reflection.
Just go until you collapse and then just expect your mind to magically shut off. And, you know, lo and behold, that's not how your brain works.

Speaker 1 So there's something that you can do that may feel a little silly at first, but it works.

Speaker 1 Keep a notebook by your bed. And you want the notebook by your bed because then it's right there.
You don't even have to think about it. You've been going, going, going all day.

Speaker 1 And what's the notebook for? Simple. Every night.
When you climb into bed, even when you're tired, write down three small things from the day that you're grateful for. I'm not talking deep stuff.

Speaker 1 I'm talking your kids really made you laugh today. You found a great parking spot at the grocery store.
Chris made me a cup of tea this morning without me even asking. It's just three minutes.

Speaker 1 But here's what it does. It pulls your focus out of the chaos and puts it on what's actually okay.

Speaker 1 And what happens when you do that small shift? Well, I'll tell you, it helps your mind settle. It helps your body exhale.
And you know what? There's a lot of science that backs this up in a huge way.

Speaker 1 The first person that ever taught me about this type of practice was Dr. Daniel Amon.
Dr. Daniel Amon is a world-renowned expert on the brain.
He's got brain clinics all over the place.

Speaker 1 And he himself, as a brain doctor and a neuroscientist, has a practice every single night when he climbs into bed of just looking backwards through the day and scanning his day and going, what went well?

Speaker 1 What went well? And it's a simple example of how to focus your mind on the things that you value, how to get what Dr.

Speaker 1 Aditi, remember, she called it the sticky negativity, all that stuff that can cling to your brain on those go, go, go, go, go days. And then that stickiness of negativity keeps you up at night.

Speaker 1 We're just going to take the cognitive reframing Zamboni of gratitude. We're going to wipe all that out by directing our mind to just reflect back back on what went well.

Speaker 1 And this is something that I have done for a very long time.

Speaker 1 This intentional act of gratitude. And I can just scan the day.
I never, ever, ever go to bed without doing this. But how did I begin doing it? I began doing it by tool number two.

Speaker 1 And this is called the three-minute night journal. And it comes from a study done by Dr.
Laura Redwine and the University of California, San Diego.

Speaker 1 And so let me tell you about the study study because this is how I have cultivated this mindset in my life. And here's what they wanted to know in the study.

Speaker 1 Can keeping a gratitude journal truly change your body? Not just your mood? Like, does it change you biologically?

Speaker 1 Like, I think you are accepting the truth that it can change the settings in your mind, but what about your body?

Speaker 1 And the folks that they studied in this research were all experiencing early stage heart failure.

Speaker 1 Now, these are people who had heart muscle dysfunction, but no symptoms yet, which makes them very high risk for progressing to serious heart disease. And so here's what they did in the study.

Speaker 1 70 participants were assigned to one of two groups, okay?

Speaker 1 A gratitude journaling group that was asked to write about the things that they were grateful for most days of the week and just really reflect deeply.

Speaker 1 So, you know, you're talking somebody that could be progressing to serious heart disease or sitting there in their bed every night, just like you sit in your bed.

Speaker 1 They've got their journal and they're not going to write a list of generic items. They're going to reflect deeply on what they're grateful for.
So that's one group, okay?

Speaker 1 Then there was the control group that just got the standard care. They were never told to journal, nothing.

Speaker 1 And at the start and end of an eight-week period for both groups, they were tested for three things, okay?

Speaker 1 They were tested for signs of stress, they were tested for inflammation in the body, and heart rate variability.

Speaker 1 Now, an important fact here is a lower heart rate variability is associated with higher risks of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, and even mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

Speaker 1 Okay, so lower HRV, not a good thing. Higher HRV generally correlates with better overall health and longevity.
So you're probably wondering, okay, you got these two groups.

Speaker 1 They're both in bed at night. One is journaling deeply about gratitude.
The other's doing nada. Let me tell you what happened.

Speaker 1 The gratitude journaling group showed significant improvements compared to the group that didn't journal at all. They also noticed that the journaling group had better quality sleep, just like I said.

Speaker 1 Now, this was just 70 people, but the results were the results for a free and low effort tool. I mean, this is amazing using your mind to create a better you, all just from a journaling practice.

Speaker 1 Now, I want to bring one more angle to this because again, I'm offering tools. I said in the beginning, you don't have to do all three.

Speaker 1 I want you to make them your own because the best tools are the ones that you actually use.

Speaker 1 So, if keeping the writing journal next to your bed is not going to be your thing, if scanning at the end of the day is not your thing, I want to offer up one more way to train your mind for gratitude.

Speaker 1 And you can do this one first thing in the morning. And I absolutely love this.
This one comes from Dr.

Speaker 1 Tara Swart Bieber, who said to me that her entire routine in the morning as a brain scientist and neuroscientist, like she is incredible.

Speaker 1 Her whole routine from the moment her eyes open up is about practicing gratitude and not letting your brain kick in until you've settled yourself, your mind, and your body into gratitude.

Speaker 1 And I want you to really pay attention to her as she describes the details of how she wakes up, because she's so intentional. And then she's going to explain why

Speaker 1 this works and what it's doing in her brain. Just listen to how Dr.
Tara wakes up.

Speaker 3 As soon as I am aware that I'm awake, I snuggle my face against my silk pillowcase and I say, I love my silk pillowcase.

Speaker 3 And then I say, and I love my side sleeping pillow. And I love my wool mattress topper.
And I love my, I've created a bit of a haven in my bedroom. I'm grateful for my mattress.

Speaker 3 I'm grateful for my bedding.

Speaker 3 You know, usually that's the minimum. I might do the temperature in the room or how quiet it is.

Speaker 3 Then I just do some deep breathing, you know, in kind of every direction of my chest, like it's a barrel, and just have a feel for if there's any areas of tension.

Speaker 3 Then to actually get out of bed, I start thinking about how much I'm going to savour my cup of tea.

Speaker 3 And then I go downstairs and I take my probiotic and then I, because I have to wait 10 minutes until I have my cup of tea, I do my oil pulling and then I make my cup of English breakfast tea or matcha like a complete ritual and sit and really savour it and enjoy it.

Speaker 3 And then I pick up my phone and look at my messages.

Speaker 1 How does this help you? And how does this help your brain?

Speaker 3 There's a lot of scientific evidence for the benefits on your mental health and your health and your longevity of gratitude.

Speaker 3 So basically, I'm not letting my brain kick in.

Speaker 3 I'm just doing, I'm going straight to the gratitude. So I can't even think about anything else.

Speaker 1 I just love listening to her. I mean, I don't know about you, but as I was listening to her, like, oh, snuggled in her sheets, her pillow.

Speaker 1 And oh my God, as I'm thinking, I'm like this morning, it's like, beep, beep, get off. Oh, my God.
Here we go. Like, you can feel the difference.
Don't you want a morning like that?

Speaker 1 Don't you want a morning where your eyes open and you feel the sheets and you are noticing the pillow and you're kind of waking up in your body before that sticky negative stuff takes over? Holy cow.

Speaker 1 I love that this is available to us and I love knowing.

Speaker 1 the health benefits that just three minutes that's all this takes whether you're writing it in a gratitude journal at night, or you're reflecting as I do and Dr.

Speaker 1 Amon does, because, you know, I did a gratitude journal for a long time and you just train your brain to default to it, or you wake up in the morning. I'm going to take on this morning practice.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm going to do. I'm taking this one with me.
I love this. I just want you to pick the one that you're going to do and keep it simple.
Like you can keep it fun.

Speaker 1 Like, I didn't lose it on my husband today. I took a warm shower and allowed myself to linger there.

Speaker 1 Another one that happened for me that I'm thinking about is, you know, as I woke up an hour later, Chris's office is next to our bedroom and I yelled, hey, good morning, honey.

Speaker 1 And he goes, hey, look out the window. There's a deer.
And sure enough, right out there, there is a deer standing right in our yard, munching on the hosta that are dying off in the fall.

Speaker 1 And I just took a moment and I just really watched the deer for a minute. That's a moment of gratitude.
Now, here's what I can tell you.

Speaker 1 If you pick the one that works for you and you do it consistently, your body is going to start to relax. The stress is going to lower.

Speaker 1 You're going to help yourself heal and reset and feel better and you deserve that. And whether you prefer to do it in the morning like Dr.
Tara, or you prefer to do it at night like me and Dr.

Speaker 1 Amon and Dr. Aditi, who cares? Just do whatever works for you.
This feels like a good moment to take a quick pause and give our sponsors a moment to share a few words with you.

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Speaker 1 And I want you to take a moment and share this episode with them because I guarantee you they will be grateful that you did.

Speaker 1 And I'll be grateful if you stick around because you and I have so much more to dig into about the power of gratitude and the power of these three simple tools when we return. So stay with me.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins.
Today you and I are talking about gratitude as a tool that you can use to reset and reprogram your mindset. and your body.

Speaker 1 And that brings me to tool number three. And tool number three is a way to use your phone for something great instead of all that doom scrolling and time wasting that you and I can get caught up in.

Speaker 1 And here's something I know that you have time to do. It's called the gratitude text chain.

Speaker 1 And it comes from this super cool study that was done by psychologist Shelly Kerr at the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University in Australia. So let me explain how they did this study.

Speaker 1 There were 122 people in this study and everybody in the study, they were waiting to get into therapy. So they're in high distress, high need.

Speaker 1 If you've ever tried to get into therapy, it can be very challenging to get that first appointment. And so you're waiting around.

Speaker 1 And so they take these 122 people that are like on edge, waiting to get in to get the help that they need. And they were divided into three groups, randomly assigned.

Speaker 1 A third of the people were assigned to a quote gratitude group. Another group was assigned to a quote kindness group.
And then there was the third group who became the control group.

Speaker 1 And all I'm going to say is, can we just give a big shout out to the control group people? I mean, if I got in a study, I'd probably be in the control group.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't get to do the good stuff, but we got to have the control group. They're the ones doing the tough stuff for us.
So shout out to the control group. I'm very grateful for you.

Speaker 1 So you got about 40 people in each: gratitude group, kindness group, control group. Now, here's what they were doing.
The gratitude group were asked to write daily about things they were grateful for.

Speaker 1 That's it. The kindness group, they were asked to perform acts of kindness and then reflect on them, you know, hold the door open, buy coffee for the person behind you.

Speaker 1 The control group were just asked to write about, you know, just the neutral daily activities. So basically just doing some non-emotional journaling about what's going on.
What happened?

Speaker 1 Well, here's what happened with the group that practiced gratitude every single day. After two weeks of writing about what they were grateful for every day, they felt less depressed.

Speaker 1 They reported more positive emotions. And overall, they felt better about their lives.
How cool is that? And here's the part that really matters. Those improvements didn't disappear a month later.

Speaker 1 The effects were still here. How, I mean, that is just so amazing.

Speaker 1 They found that in the letter writing study too, that there's this afterglow effect when you intentionally program your mind for gratitude. So this isn't just some like quick high.

Speaker 1 It creates this real shift in how they're feeling and how they're processing and experiencing their day-to-day lives simply by training their mind to scan for things that they're grateful for.

Speaker 1 Because let's face it, when you're depressed or stressed or heartbroken or under a lot of pressure, that's all you see. So this, again, is like an act of healing.
It's an act of intentional defiance.

Speaker 1 It's getting rid of that stickiness and it has an after effect. I love this.

Speaker 1 Now, the kindness group also showed significant improvements in well-being, but it was slightly less than the gratitude group.

Speaker 1 The control group, they didn't show the same improvements at all in mood or well-being as either the gratitude or the kindness groups. So, what does this confirm?

Speaker 1 It confirms that it was the emotional and reflective aspect of gratitude, not just journaling or texting about something in general, that drove the effects.

Speaker 1 So, you know what that made me want to try? I'll tell you. I realized, and you probably realized, like, you're texting people all the time, and probably the same people, but you don't really connect.

Speaker 1 Every text thread in your phone, it's like so transactional. It's logistics, it's work.
It's you pick up something dinner. Did you feed the dogs? Did you see that email? I'm so behind today.

Speaker 1 How are we doing on that thing? Have we heard about such and such? You know, I looked at the message thread with Tracy, who is the executive producer of the Mel Robbins podcast. I love her so much.

Speaker 1 We have worked together for 10 years.

Speaker 1 I can't remember the last time either of us talked about anything that we were grateful for outside of just like, whoa, boom, bah, bah, di, da, da, da, you know, like something real, something good, something kind.

Speaker 1 Our entire text start is like, did you do this? Did you see this? Can we do this? Here's this link. What about that? What do you think about this?

Speaker 1 Here's a thing to review. When can you get on the phone? And so I thought, what if I just start dropping in like a gratitude text inside the other things and see what happens?

Speaker 1 And it's amazing what happens when you start to interrupt a transactional group text, whether it's with your family, whether it's with people at work, whether it is with friends that you occasionally are touching base with, and all you do is every once in a while, once a day, just pop in something you appreciate, something that you're grateful, point out something that went well, talk about a random kind thing that somebody did.

Speaker 1 Call out something that one of the people on the text chain did that you really appreciate, like a little public shout out, not just the transactional crap, no extra commentary, just send it.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, it's like sprinkling magic dust in a text chain because the response, almost immediately, they send something back. It changes the tone of your conversations.

Speaker 1 Like imagine if when you're texting your work colleagues or your friends or your family, it's not just logistics. It's, hey, I'm really proud of you for this.
Hey, you did a really good job for that.

Speaker 1 Hey, congratulations. I heard that, you know, your husband just finished his first round of rotations for residency.
How are you feeling about that? It changes the tone of your conversation.

Speaker 1 You don't even have to announce it. You don't have to go gratitude, text chain.
You can just say, I'm going to sprinkle a little gratitude into the text chain.

Speaker 1 It brings light into the middle of a hard week or a hard day. And the best part, it's so fast.
It doesn't ask anything of you except for honesty and a little generosity.

Speaker 1 And a little gratitude goes a long way. And it also spreads because, guess what?

Speaker 1 In our company, there's now a Slack channel, a Slack channel for the whole company called Personal Victories and Celebrations.

Speaker 1 Today in the company, one of our colleagues announced that, oh my gosh, she's expecting her first baby in March. How cool is that? We celebrate weddings.

Speaker 1 People do shout outs because their partners are doing their first exhibit of their new company at a farmer's market it is so cool it's infectious it's contagious it gets all that negative stickiness out of people's way and it lifts everyone up that's why it works it's not just about feeling grateful it's about sharing it and that's what makes the positivity sticky because if negativity has been what's sticky we can get it out of there and we can make more positivity stick.

Speaker 1 And so here's what you're going to to do. This is the tool, gratitude group text.
You're just going to drop a little gratitude into any of your typical text chains.

Speaker 1 And if you really want to go and supersize this, just get two or three of your favorite people and text them this episode and say, hey, I just listened to this.

Speaker 1 It's all about gratitude and rewiring your mind. I thought of you.
What if we started just a little group text chain and we just use this text chain to share one thing that you're grateful for.

Speaker 1 And we hold ourselves accountable to really being intentional about gratitude once a day, every single day.

Speaker 1 We can remind each other of this because this small habit makes gratitude visible and contagious. And it reminds you of the goodness in the world.
It reminds you of what's going well.

Speaker 1 It reminds you that you have enough right now, even while you may be working on more. Okay, I know I threw a lot at you.
Aren't you grateful? Aren't you grateful that I threw a lot at you?

Speaker 1 Of course you are, because I want you to find something that really works for you. So let me give you a quick recap.
There are three tools. The first tool, the unsent letter.

Speaker 1 You've got to try this one. Once a week, just write a one-page letter to somebody that you're grateful for.
You don't even have to send it. Just write it.

Speaker 1 Remember, this comes from a study from Indiana University, and it showed that this sort of journaling can lead to reductions in depression and anxiety. It just makes you feel more connected to people.

Speaker 1 And boy, will it lift somebody up if you choose to send it. The second tool is the three-minute night journal.

Speaker 1 Every night before bed, take three minutes and just write down three things that you're grateful for from that day.

Speaker 1 This comes from a study from the University of California, San Diego, and it showed that this could lead to better sleep quality, lower inflammation, less stress in the body, and higher heart rate variability, which is a very, very positive, positive thing.

Speaker 1 When your heart rate variability is high, it means that your nervous system is flexible. That's about resilience.
It means it handles stress and it bounces back quickly.

Speaker 1 And, you know, if you want to try Dr. Tara's morning, gratitude, loving those sheets and really kind of setting your mind, I'm being present and grateful before the rest of the world comes in.

Speaker 1 That's another way that you can do this. So is scanning your day at the end of the day.
It all is the same science and the same benefit. And the third tool, gratitude group text.

Speaker 1 Just start dropping that into your text and watch the magic happen. If you want to supersize it, just grab one or two people.

Speaker 1 Tell them that you want to start being more intentional about being grateful, that you'd be grateful and you'd appreciate them if they could hold you accountable, that you can do this together once a day, every single day.

Speaker 1 It's going to lift you up. It's going to lift them up.

Speaker 1 This study came from the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University in Australia, and it shows that intentionally practicing gratitude and kindness can lead to lower depression levels and more positive emotions.

Speaker 1 Now, remember, you can do all of them or just pick one, the one that's going to work best for you, because you want to know the one that's going to work best for you, the one that you do.

Speaker 1 So I'd love to know which one you're going to be doing. You can tell me in the comments and the reviews.

Speaker 1 And if there's one thing that I truly hope that you take away from this episode and the time that we spent together today, it's that gratitude, this is not toxic positivity.

Speaker 1 Your gratitude practice is about intentionally

Speaker 1 programming your mind. It is about protecting yourself from the onslaught of negativity.
It is about presence.

Speaker 1 and feeling that what you have and where you are is enough, being more deeply connected to the people around you.

Speaker 1 And what we've learned here today is that in a world that wants you to believe the negative, that is training your mind to go in a negative direction, you've got to fight back.

Speaker 1 And gratitude and these three simple tools are how you do it.

Speaker 1 And you also learned that science backs up, that this kind of gratitude, training your brain to stop ignoring what's working and focus on the things that you value, it's real. The research is clear.

Speaker 1 When you do this the right way with intention, with consistency, it changes everything. It changes your brain.
It changes your body. It changes your stress response.
It changes your outlook.

Speaker 1 You just need one small shift. One letter, three lines in a journal, one little drop of gratitude and a text message to a friend.
That's how you begin. That's how you interrupt the stress.

Speaker 1 It's how you start noticing your life again. And if you do, your brain will follow.
Your body will catch up. That negativity won't feel so sticky.
It'll break apart and disappear.

Speaker 1 And you will start to feel more grounded and connected, not just to your life, but to the people in it. So choose one tool and try it.
Give yourself the gift of noticing what's good.

Speaker 1 Give yourself the gift of setting your mind to what you value. And I promise you, absolutely everything will start to change for the better.

Speaker 1 And in case no one else tells you today, I want to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

Speaker 1 And there is no doubt in my mind. that the tools that we talked about today and using gratitude in the intentional act of setting your mind to the positive and really feeling the benefit of that,

Speaker 1 if you do that, the change is going to start within you and ripple outside of you, and you are going to start to feel like your life is getting better. Alrighty, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1 I cannot wait to be with you in the very next episode, and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.

Speaker 1 actually need to practice practice. You actually need to practice gratitude the most.
Gratitude is not an act. What do we say? The thing like

Speaker 1 when the world starts programming your mind.

Speaker 1 Hold on.

Speaker 1 Nope, hold on a second.

Speaker 1 I want you to, maybe you, hold on.

Speaker 1 I want to offer up one more way to wake up.

Speaker 1 It's logistics. It's work.
It's funny. Hey, can you grab the pigs? Did you pick up something dinner? Did you feed the dogs? Did you you see that email? I'm so behind today.

Speaker 1 How are we doing on that thing? Have we heard about such and such? I would be so grateful if you share this. And there's one.
Oh, we're going to do an excellent one. It's all good.

Speaker 1 I'm grateful you guys are here. You did a fantastic job, everybody.

Speaker 1 Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.

Speaker 1 This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.

Speaker 1 I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

Speaker 1 I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 1 Serious Axem Podcasts.

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