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Getting Started with Gratitude

The beginning of a New Year is an interesting time for everyone. Some of us are excited with high energy, planning our rebirths and new goals. Others may be struggling with a deep focus on all the missed goals and negative feelings about not accomplishing what we set out to do. While many others will fall somewhere in the middle. 

Regardless of where you fall on the happiness scale right now, you can add gratitude to your life. Gratitude will immediately change your mood, mindset, and how things manifest for you in life. Getting started with gratitude means (if you haven’t before) becoming intentional about taking time to focus on the things in your life that you are grateful for. It is tough to feel stuck, sad, or worse while also expressing gratitude. That is why gratitude is the perfect place to start when addressing anything internally or externally in life. Gratitude puts you in a better headspace and allows you to gain perspective that our lived experiences might influence in a not-so-good way. 

Thank Your Past

It is very easy to look back and think of all the shots you missed, goals you never hit, and milestones you didn’t cross, but can you look back and remember the things you overcame. I love the phrase “don’t look back because you aren’t going that way” because it reminds me to keep pressing forward and not become overly consumed with the past. With that said, I think it is necessary to look back when you need to remind yourself how far you have come. Showing gratitude for your past is powerful. Thanking the experiences that challenged and changed you helps you genuinely grasp how amazing you are. It’s perfect for times when you are feeling down or less than. The pain you once felt is gone; that old wound has healed, and while your life in the present isn’t perfect, it’s a progression, and you should have no regrets about that. 

Thank Your Body

I have a mother with diabetes and an aunt with lupus, so trust me when I say, “I understand the negative feelings that can arise when looking at our bodies that don’t look how we want them to look or perform how we would hope.” Shaun T takes people on physical transformation journeys every day. Still, that change is not rooted in rejecting your physical appearance or disrespecting your body. Your body is the only one you have. Even if you aren’t at the physical level you want or look what you may see as “more attractive,” your body consistently works for you, allowing you to live your life as you wish. Yes, there is room for improvement, but let’s start with showing gratitude to our bodies and not overly obsessing over the ones we want. Truth be told, the body you want is on the way, but it will never arrive without gratitude and a bit of hard work. It is so easy for us to fall into problematic mindsets of comparison in the digital age. Still, you can choose today to focus on the body you are in right now and thank it. Thank your eyes, mouth, nose, heart, etc. Thank your body for digesting the food you eat. Thank your senses for alerting you of danger or when you are safe. Yes, literally point out parts of YOU and say thank you. It is a gratitude practice that is very practical and powerful. 

Thank Your Environment 

Many of us are not living in our dream mansions or cozy countryside villas. Still, there are parts of your house, neighborhood, and even your office that make you feel good and give you energy. Take time to connect with yourself in those spaces and thank them. I have a local park that I love taking my dog to, and I regularly thank the trees, grass, and sun while there for being a space where both Cole and I can feel free, happy, and breathe deeply. It might sound a bit airy and random, but this gratitude practice will instantly adjust any mood and put a smile on your face. 

Thank Your People

We all need somebody, it could be a friend, family member, or co-worker. If you feel like a person is in your corner, thank them. The people who allow you to feel heard because they actually listen when you talk, thank them. The people who make you feel smart, thank them. The people who push you to be your best self, thank them. The people who help you feel loved, thank them. Yes, we need to show ourselves gratitude, and another just as powerful practice is articulating our appreciation to our tribe. That practice has a double positive effect as you will feel great for saying it. Often, your people will feel amazeballs as they receive it.

You Can “Eat Smarter” and Hit Your Goals

During a Live Q&A on the Trust & Believe Podcast with Shaun’s Safe Space Community (now called the Unity Community), Shaun T and Shawn Stevenson broke down the need to know information for hitting your wellness goals and eating smarter. Check it out!

I can’t get my husband on board financially to buy quality meat. He won’t make the switch to grass-fed or organic meat. I work so hard to eat clean, is this one small area of meat undoing all of my hard work and still having a major impact on my health and immune system?

There is no diet aspect that is going to make or break you. It’s really about stacking conditions in your favor. For example, if you are doing 7 good things for your body, I don’t want you to be neurotic about eating some less expensive conventional raised beef. 

What are the changes you made and things you have done to be healthier through the pandemic? 

What I have cultivated in myself and my thought process is to ask myself, “Is this normal for the development of a healthy human being .”Anything that has us stray away from the things our genes expect of us always puts up a red flag for me. No matter what, I do what I can and maintain some modicum of fitness. For example, there is a study that showed going for a short walk boosts your natural killer cells production and mobilization in your immune system. These killer cells are your body’s natural defense for things like CoVID, and the media is not talking about that. 

Watch the FULL TRUST & BELIEVE PODCAST EPISODE w/ Shawn Stevenson 

The Stress and Health Journal found a direct correlation between an individual’s capacity to deal with stress and their natural killer cell activity. They found that folks who do not cope well with stress dramatically suppress their natural killer cell production and activity. It’s unbelievable the amount of stress we are under right now and its suppression […] one of the most dynamic and effective parts of our immune system that should help keep us healthy

How come when I eat some things, I am able to control portion size, but when I eat other stuff, it seems like it starts an out-of-control binge? 

A lot of these things are happening in our minds, but we don’t tend to really get that. Your brain controls everything about your physiology with an important caveat: your gut. Your gut is largely determining what is happening with your brain. When we have hunger and cravings, it has to do with deficiencies. Chronic nutrient deficiency leads to chronic overeating. As we evolved, flavors actually had nutritive feedback. There is a nutritional association between certain flavors and certain nutrients our body would get. Animals in nature know what foods to go to to meet their dietary needs. Our nutritive association has been hijacked. The other part of this is the relationship with our hormones and our transmitters when we eat certain foods. Certain foods we eat have this very satiation effect and stimulate activity and sensitivity with our hunger hormones and modulating hormones. 

To fix this: 

We have to do what’s necessary for our unique metabolism to increase our sensitivity to satiety-related hormones and reduce sensitivity to our hunger-related hormones that play a role in us eating more. 

We also need to diversify the foods we intake to diversify the microbiome and natural gut bacteria and what signals they send to our brains in terms of things we crave. 

You Can Eat Smarter and Hit Your Goals

How can we look at what we consume to help with how we sleep

A whole chapter in the book “Sleep Smarter” is dedicated to “Edible Sleep.” We can do all the things, but we don’t really understand that to get all of our sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters that enable our body to sleep, they are made from the food we eat. So if you are deficient in the things that make the hormones and neurotransmitters, you are going to have sleeping problems. Also, your body produces hormones at a certain tempo every day, and when that schedule gets messed up, your hormones get messed up. There is 400x more melatonin in your gut than in your brain and what you put in your gut inherently affects your melatonin production and storage for your entire body. We have to take care of our gut. There are also good sleep nutrients like Omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin C that you can make sure you are getting to help with quality sleep.

Shawn Stevenson Answers All Your Questions About His New Book “Eat Smarter” | Shaun T

How do I avoid being sabotaged by an unhealthy mindset, social habits, society, relationships affecting my healthy eating habits? 

How can you eat better if you don’t even know that exists. I come from an environment where we didn’t realize that there was a difference in types of food. As a result, most of the people I knew had some kind of chronic disease. Our environment determines our food choices, but also our food choices affect our environment because we aren’t just products of our environment but creators of our environment. When you become aware that this is a thing, it immediately starts to lose power over you. Set the intention of having people who are more dedicated to your healthy lifestyle in your life. Also, being more present with your food is going to be helpful. Make it a mandate because you are so powerful beyond anything you can imagine.

Listen to the entire podcast with Shaun Stevenson here!

5 Healthy Habits to Create a Happy and Mindful Life

How you feelin’ today? With all the sh*t going on, it’s easy to get distracted, annoyed or depressed. We need to learn how to change our mindset to put us back on track!  Being intentional with our habits and taking time each day to focus on the positive things we can do to stay grounded, happy and healthy will dramatically enhance our life.  We make time every day to scroll social media, grab a coffee or workout – we can make time for this!

Here are 5 Healthy Habits to Create a Happy and Mindful Life.

Silas, Sander and Shaun T – Instagram @ShaunT

Walking

At the start of the pandemic, I began to walk to escape my house each day. I would walk 4 miles around my neighborhood, and with this practice, I found a new level of peace, calm, and perspective on the many things racing through my mind (my brain is nonstop like the Energizer Bunny!). Maybe it was the fresh air, or the time by myself or jump starting my blood circulation – whatever it was, I got a reset on my mindset that I needed.  Keep it simple!  It doesn’t have to be long – 5 minutes can work wonders!  Take a break, put down your phone and step outside!

A Gratitude Jar

A gratitude jar is one of the easiest ways to intentionally inject more gratitude into your life. You simply grab a jar and add little slips of paper to it with things you are grateful for written out. You can make this a daily habit or something you do when you are not feeling so great and need to change your vibe. Typically you allow the slips of paper to build up over the year and read them in reflection at the end of the year, but you could also revisit these grateful things when you feel down or uninspired. 

We talked about how to “Get Started with Gratitude” here if you wanna know more about an intentional gratitude practice for a happy life. 

Deep Belly Breathing

The University of Michigan published an article on various breathing techniques to help with stress management and relaxation.  Deep Belly Breathing was one of those suggested practices – follow these steps to try it out:

  1. Sit or lie flat in a comfortable position.
  2. Put one hand on your belly just below your ribs and the other hand on your chest.
  3. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and let your belly push your hand out. Your chest should not move.
  4. Breathe out through pursed lips as if you were whistling. Feel the hand on your belly go in, and use it to push all the air out.
  5. Do this breathing 3 to 10 times. Take your time with each breath.
  6. Notice how you feel at the end of the exercise.
5 Healthy Habits to Create for a Happy and Mindful Life

Eating Without Your Phone

Let’s face it, there is very little we currently do without our phones, and honestly, that can be a serious problem. Because we are so fixated on our phones, we are distracted and not present in a lot of our lives. Eating is an activity that you should be present for to make healthy decisions, have space to listen to your body when you are full, and truly reflect on how the foods you eat make you feel. Starting today, try to eat at least one meal a day without checking your phone. Instead, focus on chewing your food, tasting the flavors, and maybe thinking about your favorite moment from the day. This semi pause as you eat will help you clear your head and create calm, especially when days are chaotic.  

Journaling

Journaling is a very personal and powerful tool to stay grounded and build confidence. Taking time to reflect on your thoughts and feelings while writing about them will create a safe space to support any positive habit or mindset shift you are trying to make. Journaling helps us to listen to ourselves, which has become increasingly hard in a world that is constantly campaigning for your attention. There is no right or wrong way to journal; whether you grab a book or start with a single sheet of paper, take some time and get to writing. Replacing 20 mins of social media scrolling with journaling will exponentially improve your quality of life.