As we are coming up on the holiday season, it is a time to be thankful and grateful.
Do you have a gratitude practice? If not, why not?
Gratitude practices can help you to have higher self esteem, you'll sleep better, you have lower blood pressure, you have more energy, you have a stronger immune system, more prone to exercise, lower stress levels, you become more generous, have better relationships, more compassionate and empathetic, happier, less depressed, more optimistic, greater resiliency, and less physical discomforts.
Welcome to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach and the founder of formfit. A community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mama three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise healthy families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information you need to help raise healthy humans. As we are coming up on the holiday season, it is a time to be thankful and grateful. And I found it interesting the other day, I asked a question in my community about whether or not people practice a gratitude have a gratitude practice. And I was surprised that there are a lot of people that don't. And I'll be honest with you, I don't practice on a daily basis. But there are times where I'll go through phases. And I will do some sort of gratitude journaling in the morning. But there was a study done by Harvard, and they found all of these things can be changed with gratitude. So I wanted to read off the list to kind of help you make that decision maybe to start practicing some sort of gratitude. So with a gratitude practice, you will have higher self esteem, you'll sleep better, you have lower blood pressure, you have more energy, you have a stronger immune system, more prone to exercise, lower stress levels, you become more generous, have better relationships, more compassionate and empathetic, happier, less depressed, more optimistic, greater resiliency, and less physical discomforts. And they found also, if you've ever read about the Blue Zones, projects, and how the centenarian communities, these communities where people are living past 100 years old, they have five things in common outside of like their nutrition and their movement and things like that. But they have a sense of meaning and purpose of life. They have a community, a relationship within their community. They cultivate kindness. They focus on strengths and experiences. And then they're grateful and optimistic. So what can we do to start practicing gratitude if you don't already have a gratitude practice. One thing that I would encourage you to do do, starting today, if you're able to, this is something that we have done in the past. And it is I have a vase, it's a vase that I bring out during fall. And there we find branches around the community or wherever. And we place these branches, large branches in the vase, and then we cut some leaves up out of construction paper. So we've got brown, thinkful, brown, orange, yellow, red construction paper, and I leave those on the dining room table with a marker. And then each evening that we sit down for dinner at the table, we'll write something we're thankful for. And we place it on the branch so that by Thanksgiving, we have this pretty centerpiece and pretty in the way of you know, you can see some beautiful ones on Pinterest. Ours is not that Pinterest worthy, but very sentimental for us. So you have that and then on Thanksgiving, you can read through them. And I then save them from year to year and keep them so that I can see what has been written and like my father has written one that he was grateful for a meal with his daughter and the kids. Someone wrote thankful that Grady cleaned the bathroom. They said Happy daddy is coming home because that year, dad was doing some traveling for work, so he wasn't home, but he must have been on his way home that evening. Thankful for boys deciding on dinner because I don't like making dinner all the time or coming up with the idea. Someone put I'm thankful for this tasty Malay sauce, but you you get the idea. I'm thankful I have soccer practice. So they all were writing different things that they were thankful for. And as you go through the years if you do decide to hold on to these, you'll see how things change over time. Time as to what these, you know what your children are thankful for. So that's an idea that I have for you, if that's something you're interested in, you could start it today. And you'd have about two weeks of leaves or you know, branches, two weeks of thankful this notes that you could then go and read on Thanksgiving Day, if that's not something that you're interested in, I would recommend maybe two other things. I like that one, just because it provides the whole family the opportunity to be grateful and thankful for things. But you can also do this for yourself. So some people take some time and write thank you notes to people taking pen to paper again, and writing a thank you note. And you could maybe do that for the next five to seven days, right? I think you know, each day to someone that did something for you, or the gratitude journals, those are very popular. And you do start to once you start practicing gratitude, you start to pay attention to the little things. And it makes you become more present in your life. So if you could take like five minutes each day, and just think about things that you are grateful for. And if you do this over time, you will start to see that you will notice more things. So they did a study at Cal University, where they did just this, they did a 30 day thankful for challenge, they had to write three good things that they were thankful for each day. And what this study found was that these people not only changed their happiness during the 30 days, but it lasted for up to an over six months. And all they did was take five minutes each day to jot down something they were thankful for. So if you want to practice that, I'd love for you to join me, in our form fit mom community, and we can go through this together this next week, providing something that we are thankful for each day, you can put as many as you'd like. And then if you want to, you know, practice the other ideas as well, you are welcome to do that, of course, just wanted to kind of share my thoughts in regards to gratitude with you and how important I think it is I do think that it provides us it's not only good for our health, but for the health of our children. And if we can start allowing our children to see at a young age, the importance of gratitude, then that will provide them an opportunity to live a healthier and happier life over time. So again, I hope you all have a wonderful day. I do want to let you know that next week, for the week of Thanksgiving. If you're here in America, we are going to be speaking with Dawn jumper and she is going to be talking all about manners with our children. So I hope you all have a wonderful week. And make sure to join me in the form fit Hmong community so we can share some things that we are grateful for each day. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor if you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media and make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy humans. Now go out and enjoy more madmen throughout your day.