Gratitude Practice - What does it Even Mean?

“Dear journal, I am thankful for my health. Dear journal, I am grateful for my family. Dear journal, I am thankful for the food we have. “
Okay, so maybe there is a better way to approach gratitude? 

Many times when I mention gratitude practice to my leader clients, they have the same look on their face that I used to have when someone said they practice "meditation."; It is the look of "come 'on another woo-woo thing that people who wear tie-dye shirts do?’“ 

In this article, I will clarify gratitude practice and suggest a few ways that might be helpful for you to experiment and see if it helps you boost your energy, focus, and adversity and brings a sense of joy that might be missing in your life. 

Hi, I am Noa, and I work with leaders, executives, and founders of companies just like you to go beyond with their leadership. Are you ready? Let's go. 

In one of my last videos, I mentioned the negative bias. The negative bias is a tendency we focus in our day, week, and life on the things that don't work for us. For example, you had a wonderful day at work, and then around 2 pm, there was one annoying coworker comment. When you come home, and your partner asks you how your day was, all you remember from that beautiful day is that one annoying comment and respond with a grumpy face: "I had better…." That's what we call the "Negative Bias." Our ancient brain was engineered to be obsessed with our mistakes, with our failures, because the focus on the mistakes and failures made sure we learn from them; that was our way to survive our life in danger out and about. This Negative Bias mechanism kept us alive. The mechanism stayed as in many ancient brain behaviors, but the need is different. 

The good news is that we can reprogram our brains. Our brain CAN learn new ways that serve our new life needs. One of the ways to teach our ancient brain to lower its focus on the negative bias is to focus on progress, what's working, and gratitude.

• Progress – where can we see improvement?

• What's working – where we can recognize and appreciate what we do well?

• Gratitude – where we can appreciate and be grateful for what we have in our lives?

 To learn more about the Negative Bias and rewiring your brain check out my article HERE.

Multiple studies show that gratitude can boost our well-being and improve our mood. A study published in Applied Psychology in 2011 showed that people who practiced gratitude for 15 minutes before they went to sleep slept better and had fewer negative thoughts. Another study found that people who practice gratitude have fewer negative emotions like resentment and anger.

Being more aware of gratitude's impact on our lives, I have noticed a pattern. When I coached successful leaders who are more resilient and find it easier to adapt to change, I asked them what made these attributes their strengths. The answers were the same repeatedly; they were grateful for what they had had in their life. Many mentioned that expressing gratitude was something they saw in their house with their parents or grandparents or another influential leader or teacher they met in their life journey.

This supports other studies that positive and grateful people are contagious; many want to get closer to them. Many successful people practice gratitude every morning.

How do you practice gratitude?

There are many techniques, but I will share three that most of my clients appreciate and, most importantly, find easy to adapt as a habit. 

1.     Journaling

Here is how I define Journaling; Journaling is writing your thoughts and emotions in whatever fits you. There is no right or wrong way to journal; there is no specific length of writing which is good or bad. It can be one word or many pages. It can be a few times a day, every day, or every few days. It can be different from one day to another. The important thing is that you take the time to express your thoughts and emotions in writing and/or drawing/doodling and any other art that suits you. Maybe even composing what we are grateful for?

Here are two you can try.

• The Long List – take time to write down 50 things in your life every day that you are grateful for. This technique is not for every soul. But the purpose of this approach is that the more you write, the deeper you must challenge yourself to see what you have to be grateful for. The competitive, or those who like a challenge, can enjoy this practice. 

• The Shortlist (the Zen Approach) - If, like me, you prefer short and deep. You write two or three things you are grateful for every day, but you have to be specific. 
  Write a specific sentence that expresses why you are grateful for your health: I am thankful that today I could work out for 30 minutes even though my right knee hurts. Instead of writing a vague short sentence like, I am grateful for my health. Or rather than writing, I am thankful for my family, write a specific example that explains why. For example, I am grateful that my son in college called me today, even though I know he prefers to text. 

2.     Visual/Imaginative way - Scan your day and choose the best images of your past day.

 One of the best ways to reprogram your brain to focus on what's working is before you sleep. Before you go to sleep:

• Scan your day.

• Look at all the visuals in your day, somewhat like a video.

• Click the Pause Button on your remote when you identify a moment you are grateful for and be with it.

To appreciate that moment and keep scanning the video of your day, focusing on moments of gratitude, you can take a moment to enjoy and be with them fully.

3.     Praying

Praying can be a religious practice, but not only. Praying can work well for people who like to express their thoughts and emotions out loud. It can also be an excellent gratitude practice for people engaging in or reconnecting with this routine. Prayers can be poems or quotes you feel can be a perfect way to express your gratitude; they can be religious prayers or prayers from a prayer book you like; they can even be prayers you wrote yourself. Prayers can be a poetic way to feel and express how grateful you feel for what you have in your life.

If you choose to experiment with gratitude practice in one of the ways I mentioned above, or a different way, I invite you to pay attention to your day or the day after you practiced gratitude. When I try a new habit, I do my best to be consistent with this new habit, but when I miss a day rather than being upset with myself, I move into curiosity.

What do you notice about yourself when you practiced gratitude vs. the days you didn't? Did something feel different?

 Did you feel more focused? Did you feel more positive? Do you have more energy? Did you sleep better at night? If nothing changes, let it go. But if you notice a shift in the way you experience life, in your ability to deal with challenges and even experience more joy, maybe it's a new routine you can add to your life. 

Thanks for watching. If you liked this video and would like to keep going Beyond with your leadership, please follow me @noaRcoach, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and check out my Beyond Blog here www.noaronencoaching.com

The Negative Bias - Train our Brain to Look at Progress for Better Results and Inner Peace

You're having a great day when suddenly, you have so much progress with the project you lead, and then when you meet a coworker during a coffee break, they are making an irritating comment. The rest of your day went well; during your 1:1 with your supervisor, they complimented you on influencing an idea in the last meeting with the team, and later on, you met with a peer to progress on another project, and you both worked well together. But when you arrive home, all you can remember is the irritating comment from your coworker during the coffee break. 

Why, when you had a not-good, but great day with so many accomplishments, all you can remember is that one incident? 

That phenomenon is called "The Negative Bias" or negativity bias. And in today's article, I will share what negative Bias is and how we can overcome it. 

Hi, I am Noa and I work with leaders, executives, and founders of companies just like you to go beyond with their leadership. 

When you look at your passing day, your week, or maybe even your past month? What are you looking at first? 

1. What have you not accomplished? 

2. What didn't work?

3. What worked?

Most of us tend to look first at all the things that didn't work. Why do we tend to focus on the negative? 

There are different reasons; some are the way we were raised, by our parents our culture: "do better," "do your best," and "aim for excellence!!" "why 99 and not 100?" or "did everyone get 100?" these sentences shape the way we look at the world.

And today, I want to focus on another reason: our brain and, more specifically, our ancient brain. In the last few years, neuroscience research has become very strong. And what we know now about the ancient brain is that its role is to flag danger so we can know if to: "fight," "flight," or "freeze" in moments that can be risky for us and get in our way of surviving life.

One way is by flagging something that is different; the brain will communicate to us: "Hey! Be careful; this is different! It might be dangerous. Stay away."

Another way is when our ancient flags make mistakes: "Hey! That was not a smart idea! Next time you do that, you might get in trouble or lose your life! Don't let it happen again." This mistakes mechanism that our ancient brain flags are called the negative Bias.

But now, when we no longer live in the jungle, that negative bias mechanism can get in our way. Rather than focusing on what's working, we focus on that one thing in the day that didn't work and give it so much attention that we feel distracted.

For example, when we sense that someone is annoyed by us, maybe they even said something to communicate how they feel. We can sense our ancient brain triggers the negative Bias, and we will repeat that sentence in our head many times during the day, asking ourselves: "what could we have done or said differently?" or "why are they so annoyed by us?"

Another example is when we have an important presentation at the office. We wear the yellow shirt that makes us feel confident. After the presentation, a few people stop you outside to compliment you for the presentation. You stop to chat with one of your peers, who says: "by the way you have a coffee stain on your shirt. Do you want the special stain pen I have to fix it?" You thank them, but all you can think about the rest of your day is: "How did I miss this stain?" the compliments from others on your presentation disappear, and you are distracted by the stain.

So what can we do to keep the negative bias mechanism from distracting us? Neuroplasticity, or brain flexibility. Some call it rewiring our brains because our brain is like electric wires that send notifications. We can teach those wires to send new messages. The brain can learn to do that.

But this time, with our brain, the machines you use in the gym are replaced by new ones.

How can we do that? We train our brains like any other muscle we work in the gym. Like any change, change happens in repetition.

You see, what the neuroscientists have found is that we can reprogram or train our brain or pay more attention to what's working, progress, and strengths than the negative, what's not working, and weaknesses. 

Studies show that people who look at progress and strengths as routine practice achieve more.

 Now remember the focus is not on not allowing ourselves to see what's not working or even negative emotions and ALWAYS STAY positive; it is not about not letting our peers express challenges and non-positive experiences. We want to embrace and accept where we are and create a safe space for ourselves and others. And yet, if we notice that our focus is all the time on what's not working when the only feedback we give to others is on weaknesses, when we talk with ourselves and others about improving and doing better but never recognize what's working, maybe it is time to pause and ask ourselves if the ancient brain is distracting us. We might need to refocus and train our brains to notice: Strengths, Progress, and What's working.

How can we do that? 
There are many options, but I will share the two that you can take:

1. Gratitude practice.

 Take time in your day, week, or month to practice gratitude. Please check my next blog post and video to learn more about that.

2. Reflect on what's working and progress. 

Take time at the end of your day/work day to reflect on your day, week, month, quarter, and year. 

 Here are a few questions you can engage in your daily/bi-weekly/weekly/monthly/yearly reflections:

• What are the three things that worked today/week? 

• Where have you seen progress today? Work and life, 

• Where have you seen yourself using your strengths today/this week?

• What are you grateful for?

Find an accountability partner to meet with or share your notes if needed. Ensure you always start with these 4 points before you dive into fixing or discussing what you could have done better.

The more your ancient brain meets this practice, the more you will notice progress with yourself, your peers, your team, your kids, and your life.

I Challenge You:

Do you need to give a performance review to someone you feel is not performing well? That can be very challenging. I will challenge you to take a moment with yourself before you meet with them and ask yourself: what does that person do that works? What is one strength that this person has?

 Find at least one for each of these questions and then prepare again for your conversation with this person.

 I have done the Progress Reflection Practice weekly for over 12 years. Still, each time I reflect on my week, my ancient brain will try to distract me from what's not working, and every week I will delete the first sentence that starts with what's not working and refocus myself and my ancient brain on progress. Remember, like any muscle, when we stop using them, it becomes harder to use them, and the more we use them, the shorter it takes us to overcome challenges. It is a life work of progress, just like any workout.