Join Erin and me as we talk about cultivating thankfulness. Life can be challenging and messy, yet choosing to be thankful can change our outlook in life.
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From the show:
In the midst of the hard and messy of life, we can choose to be thankful.
Ellen shares how she has been cultivating thankfulness for the year 2016. It started with a hard 2015 and a realization that something needed to change. Ellen had spent so much time focusing on the bad, that she needed to switch her focus and focus on the good. This year has not been easier, but her outlook in life has changed dramatically.
Ellen wrote about her plan at the beginning of the year, you can read that here: Challenge: A Year of Thankfulness
Erin and Ellen discuss Ellen’s latest post and go through the different areas in which special needs parents can find thankfulness. Read the post: Thankfulness: The Special Needs Way.
Research shows that cultivating thankfulness has a positive impact in several areas of life.
“Gratitude is an attitude and way of living that has been shown to have many benefits in terms of health, happiness, satisfaction with life, and the way we relate to others. It goes hand in hand with mindfulness in its focus on the present and appreciation for what we have now, rather than wanting more and more. Feeling and expressing gratitude turns our mental focus to the positive, which compensates for our brains’ natural tendency to focus on threats, worries, and negative aspects of life. As such, gratitude creates positive emotions like joy, love, and contentment which research shows can undo the grip of negative emotions like anxiety. Fostering gratitude can also broaden your thinking, and create positive cycles of thinking and behaving in healthy, positive ways.” Melanie Greenberg PH.D
If you want to learn more about the psychology behind it, you can read the rest of Dr. Greenbergs article HERE.
Ellen mentioned she chose thankfulness over gratitude after reading something that resonated with her. Gratitude is a feeling, thankfulness (or thanks-giving) is an action.
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