{"id":6196,"date":"2024-01-21T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-21T21:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.happybellyhealth.com\/?p=6196"},"modified":"2024-08-19T12:02:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T12:02:03","slug":"an-introduction-to-gratitude-journaling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.happybellyhealth.com\/hbh-staging\/an-introduction-to-gratitude-journaling\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction to Gratitude Journaling"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What is gratitude journaling?<\/p>\n

One of the most transformational realizations we can have in our lives is that stress is a subjective experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Certainly the circumstances of our lives at a given point in time may be more or less objectively concerning or alarming through our common social lens. But ultimately, our experience of stress is determined only about 10% by what happens <\/em>to us, with the other 90% coming from how we choose <\/em>to react or respond to those events.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The glass that is both half-full and half-empty of water is a powerful, simple example. Both assessments are factually true. Which you choose is about your perspective. And your perspective plays a dominant role in your expectations and your habitual patterns of reaction\/response to events.

\u201cLosing your job\u201d may be a fact. Having a lot of financial limitations as an immediate result may be a fact. But the experience of devastating fear or excited opening to beginning a brand new, more fulfilling career is a choice. A perspective. One that will have dramatically different downstream effects on our bodies.<\/p>\n

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We train our dominant perspective in life by how we respond to more normal everyday events. <\/strong>If we cultivate the habit of focusing on predominantly negative or critical or disturbing aspects of our everyday lives, we are much more likely to do that when presented with major, unexpected events.<\/p>\n

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We will choose the glass half-empty, a negative and more intense stress reaction, promoting a potent, ongoing sympathetic nervous system activation.<\/p>\n

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We can begin, however, to consciously choose to focus on positive, uplifting, supportive aspects of our everyday lives<\/strong>. From there, we can cultivate the habit of choosing a more empowering response in the face of unexpected events too. Over time, we learn to instinctively insert a pause between events and our reaction.

When we create this gap, we are able to choose to respond in ways that are helpful vs. reacting immediately and mindlessly in ways that promote stress (and its damaging effects) in our bodies.<\/p>\n

Gratitude Journaling: An easy way to practice mindfulness<\/h3>\n

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Many mindfulness practices can help to cultivate awareness and a more positive, uplifting perspective. The easiest, most approachable of these for many people is gratitude journaling.

By taking a few minutes every day to purposefully focus our thoughts on what we appreciate, what we wish to celebrate and savor<\/strong>, we train our brain to look for and focus on this perspective more often. Ultimately, this enables us to choose <\/em>to have less stress. The result? Lower stress hormones, more endorphins, less oxidative damage to the brain, better long-term cognitive function.<\/p>\n

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Here are a few tips to get started with this powerful personal practice:<\/p>\n

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