3533: Want to Feel Better About Work and Life? Try Saying These Two Words by Dr. Jenny Brockis

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Living Daily. Want to Feel Better About Work and Life? Try Saying These Two Words by Dr. Jenny Brockis of drjennybrockis.com. And I'm Justin Malik, the guy that reads you articles, stories, or essays – every day, including holidays – since 2015, covering personal development or self-help, how to live a better life, and a lot more, always with permission from the authors or websites. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:01:03] Want to Feel Better About Work and Life? Try Saying These Two Words by Dr. Jenny Brockis of drjennybrockis.com. Want to Feel Better About Work and Life? Try Saying These Two Words Thank You. If you ever had to spend time with a professional complainer, you'll know just how demotivating and energy-sapping they can be. Their language, amateur dramatics and catastrophizing, is more than a little wearing.

[00:01:33] It diminishes your own sense of happiness and well-being because it affects how you feel. Our feelings are our conscious interpretation of an underlying emotion. While we have no control over our emotions because they're generated at a subconscious level, we use our prefrontal cortex to regulate our feelings. This is important because we are heavily influenced by the emotional intensity of those around us.

[00:02:00] The contagion of emotion means that if you're surrounded by naysayers and doom-and-gloom merchants, you're more at risk of becoming infected with their negativity germs, which then manifests through your choice of language and thoughts. Which is why consciously choosing to adopt a more positive outlook using reframing and reappraisal can help. If you're telling everyone and yourself how frustrated, fearful, embarrassed, or angry you are,

[00:02:30] that negativity can quickly spiral further down. Feeling good about what you do in work and life is about taking pride in your work, feeling inspired to give your best, staying hopeful that things will improve, and being grateful for what you already have. Feeling grateful and expressing our thanks is an extremely powerful way to help us pull through even the most challenging of situations. This is because practicing gratitude shifts our state of mind,

[00:03:00] altering those neurochemicals that enable us to move to a more positive mindset. Gratitude enhances our psychological well-being, increases stress resilience, and boosts interpersonal relationships. Expressing gratitude makes us happy. New research by Kant and others have found a neurobiological explanation for why being grateful makes us feel happy.

[00:03:25] Choosing to be generous was shown on fMRI scans to lead to increased activity in the part of the brain, the temporal parietal junction, or TPJ associated with empathy and social cognition, and greater connectivity between the TPJ and ventral striatum, relating to increased levels of happiness. For the workplace, this implies how choosing to be generous in sharing knowledge, information, and being kind to your colleagues can have a huge payoff.

[00:03:53] Working in an environment where you feel supported and encouraged by the generosity of others motivates us to want to return the favor. Work by Fox and Damasio has also demonstrated how feeling grateful activates those brain areas associated with feelings of reward, moral cognition, subjective value judgments, fairness, self-reference, and economic decision-making. Quote,

[00:04:19] Gratitude rewards generosity and maintains the cycle of healthy social behavior. Antonio Damasio Feeling grateful makes us more generous and is self-perpetuating. When we're feeling grateful, we become more attuned to the process. One study showed how gratitude training led to an increase in paying it forward acts of generosity three months later. It seems the more we practice, the more we adapt towards a gratitude mindset

[00:04:49] that spontaneously moves us towards more pro-social activities. This is a great example of neuroplasticity in action based on the Hebbian theory that neurons that fire together, wire together. Practicing a mental skill set in this way strengthens those neural circuits that over time become embedded in our automatic behaviors. In a world that can appear overflowing with negative news, uncertainty, and stress,

[00:05:16] expressing gratitude is a simple way to build and maintain greater mental resilience. It can be practiced in a number of different ways, including Number one, keeping a gratitude journal. Write down three to five things you're grateful for either at the beginning or end of the day. Remember too that the process of writing with a pen helps us to process our thoughts in a different way than when using a keyboard.

[00:05:41] Buying a nice journal and your gratitude pen makes you feel good even before you've started. Expressing positive emotions in this way makes it harder to stay stuck or to ruminate on other negative thoughts that can otherwise become all-consuming. Number two, cultivate gratitude in a jar. My friend Angela Lockwood, author of Switch Off, How to Find Calm in a Noisy World, uses a glass gratitude jar.

[00:06:08] For this, she suggests writing your notes of gratitude on colorful post-it notes that you then fold and pop into your gratitude jar that starts to swell with gratitude over the months. Then at the end of the year, or whenever you feel in need of a gratitude top-up, you can enjoy reading some of the notes that you've put in your jar over the course of time. Number three, write a letter of gratitude to another person. Expressing gratitude this way, even if the letter is never sent,

[00:06:37] is another way of using words with a positive association to shift your perspective to a happier place. As Andy Pudicombe from Headspace advises, when we feel down and gray, we forget that the sky is still blue above those gray clouds, even though we can't see it. Expressing gratitude is an effective way to help us start to see those patches of blue more clearly again. And number four, call out the good in others.

[00:07:05] We're often swift to criticize, blame, and judge others who we perceive as having done something wrong. But how often do we call out a person for doing something good? Acknowledgement of a job well done, being appreciated for having gone the extra mile, not only makes the recipient feel good, a nice little extra squirt of dopamine, it strengthens relationships and elevates mood in all concerned. This is where having something like a praise wall at work

[00:07:33] to extend gratitude and thanks to colleagues can be a huge workplace happiness booster. It's about saying thank you to your work colleague for their support and encouragement on a recent project, or showing your appreciation in buying a small gift or sharing a hug where appropriate. When we feel happy, acknowledged, and respected, everyone benefits and productivity levels skyrocket. Stuck on what you're grateful for?

[00:08:01] If you're in a job that you hate with people you can't stand, finding something to be grateful for can be a challenge. This is where taking time out to consider what you have beyond work can be helpful. Because no matter your circumstances, there will always be something you can be grateful for, such as living in a safe place, having a roof over your head, food on the table, and family and friends. Reminding ourselves of those good things, no matter how small,

[00:08:29] can have a huge effect on our well-being. Be grateful to the invisible. Saying thanks gets easier with practice, so a great way to start is to look for the opportunity. There are many people we interact with on a daily basis who often get little acknowledgement, not because they don't deserve it, but because we're so wrapped up in our own little bubble that we don't see the need. You can make their day with a smile and thank you for the person at the supermarket checkout,

[00:08:58] waitress, barista, hotel cleaner, bank clerk, et cetera. It helps us to keep a sense of perspective in a world of first world problems. Reminding ourselves of all that we do have reduces our tendency to drift into the what-ifs and negative self-talk that we're so good at inflicting on ourselves. Because we are human and therefore fallible, imperfect, and prone to making mistakes, practicing gratitude creates a deflector shield

[00:09:27] to protect us from seeking that impossible perfection that can otherwise lead to resentment, envy, and frustration. You just listened to the post titled, Want to Feel Better About Work and Life? Try saying these two words by Dr. Jenny Brockes of drjennybrockes.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth products are designed to transform your five to nine, the time that matters most,

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[00:10:53] Sanctuary awaits at Cozy Earth. Thank you to Dr. Jenny. This one's actually pretty timely for me personally. I was just thinking about gratitude the other day when I was editing one of my brother's episodes for Optimal Health Daily. It's funny how we can sometimes forget something so simple like saying thank you that can have such a big impact. I'm not perfect when it comes to complaining. I think we all tend to do it from time to time, but I think it's true when I'm around someone

[00:11:21] who's constantly complaining or focusing on the negative. It's like this cloud that kind of hovers over everything. Before you know it, I'm starting to see things from that perspective too. But the reverse is also true. Spend time with positive, grateful people and it tends to lift you up. It was nice to hear some science backing it up that being generous actually activates the parts of our brain associated with happiness. And it makes sense logically. It's like this self-perpetuating cycle.

[00:11:50] You feel grateful, so you're more generous, which makes others grateful, which makes them more generous and so on. We really can have a big positive impact on our own happiness, but also the happiness of others too. So thank you to Dr. Jenny for this one. Thank you for listening and being here. And I'll see you back here tomorrow as usual, where your optimal life awaits.