Attitude of Gratitude - TSMP 12
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In today's episode, we are diving into the topic of gratitude. They can not only help you to maintain a healthy and happy mind, but it would also improve your music performance. we will discuss why gratitude improves our brain function, how to cultivate this attitude of gratitude, and how to having a grateful heart to all things in life.
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The science of Gratitude
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Welcome to another Thrive x Strive Musician Podcast! This is a weekly podcast that brings unique insights and tools to help musicians to create a healthy lifestyle with mental clarity & vibrancy. And I am your host Amy Wang-Hiller, a professional violinist and a doctoral student. My goal is to open up the conversation around musician's mental health and wellbeing and provide healthy tools and wisdoms to help you thrive in personal and professional life, growing up in China, we don’t have those teachers’ appreciation week, but we have this once a year special holiday: September 10th, teacher’s day. As I'm recording this episode, we are still on September 10th. So I want to use this opportunity to thank all the teachers in my life for your guidance, inspiration, and encouragement, for believing in me and creating the Amy I am today. And today, we are going to dive into the topic of gratitude. They can not only help you to maintain a healthy mind, but it would also improve your performance. Are you wondering how? Well, make sure to stay till the end of the episode.
Speaking about gratitude for mentorship, Let's take a minute to talk about my appreciation for a learning platform called skillshare, Skillshare is one of the best learning communities I found that has expanded my creative outlet and helped me build many essential life skills to boost my music career. They offer thousands of classes from arts crafts to productivity tools, lifestyle. You can learn how to create better writing skills, build a professional looking website, even on brain training to get faster thinking , better memory and focus for improving your music performance. Skillshare also helped me to rediscover my interest in illustration as a tool for self care and destress. it's very helpful to Channel my creative energy though creative writing and drawing and I know you will too. You can also learn how to create your own online classes. My referral link you can find in the description offers you a TWO-months free premium SkillShare: So you can learn any topics and skills you want for two entire months without any charges. If you are considering signing up for their membership, they also offered a 30% off for the annual subscription. It’s time to learn something fun and useful this weekend. So, please follow the links in the show notes to claim your two month free trials. This will let SkillShare know that I send you, and will really help support this podcast! Now let's dive into today's topic.
Gratitude was taught to us the day we started learning speeches. “Thank you!” You received your first birthday gift from your parents. Say “Thank you!” My mom reminds me after my cousin shares her newest toy. As my grandma handed me the red envelope during Chinese New Year, my parents reminded me again: “Say Thank you!”. As we grew up, the times we say thank you are countless. But the times I truly feel gratitude for things I have in life weren’t a lot. Or, the times I am grateful for the disappointment in life are even more rare.
In General, we define gratitude as the quality/ feeling of appreciation and thankfulness for all the blessings and acts of kindness that you have received in your life.
Cultivating an attitude of gratitude for all things in life has more benefits than you can imagine. It creates a healthy mindset in our professional life, even helps us to achieve a better performance.
It boosts your satisfaction for life. Appreciate what you already have. In this hustle culture, we tend to keep working for the next project, next goal, earning more, buying more, completely immersing ourselves into consumerism. This constant craving for more, living in the future leads to an unsatisfied life. Gratitude gives us an opportunity to live in the now, as Epicurus said, “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Gratitude directly associates with our Neurochemical level in the brain. The researchers found that ratings of gratitude directly correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. These two are each associated with empathy, impulse control, emotion, and decision-making. On the Neurochemical level, it helps boost both Dopamine and serotonin.
Science behind the gratitude
Feeling grateful activates regions of the brain associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also take charge of our attention. It allows us to stay focused and ignore other competing demands on our attention. Serotonin is also a key player in the brain’s ability to focus and screen out irrelevant information.Also, the dopamine in our brain allows us to be more fluid and efficient in our movements. including helping us to be more efficient thinkers. - those are the essential qualities for an efficient practice session or performance. so you can almost say that GRATITUDE practice is a natural enhancement for our music making. Help us to be more focused on stage, have better coordination.
So, are you now pumped to practice gratitude more often? You can fill your calendar each day with one grateful thing you have in mind. Writing gratitude journal, write a thank you letter to someone to show your appreciation for their kindness. If you are creative enough, you can draw the things and people out and post it on your fridge as a reminder. As a musician, how about composing a work dedicated to someone you feel thankful for? There are unlimited ways to show our gratitude, The question is what are you grateful for.
Normally, When we ask ourselves, what can I be thankful for? We tend to think about good things that happened to us. I’m currently grateful for all of you listening to my podcast. I am grateful for my delicious ramen bowl I had for lunch. However, We don’t take certain things into account as something that we can be grateful for if they initially evoked some negative thoughts or feelings. I speak here for my own experience. I used to ignore the co-existence of duality in everything. I tend to see things in black and white, good and evil. When something unpleasant happens, I felt more pain and suffering since I have labeled them as “BAD”
But we forget the shadow side of things are also part of life, part of being a human..
What if you don’t see any blessings, kindness. What if we are having so much hardship. Unfortunate events happening in our life. What if ...where is the gratitude now?
Well, Gratitude is a conscious state of appreciation, the ability to feel good in the midst of difficulties and disappointments, being grateful is actually an antidote to anger. I remember this saying ”you can choose anger or gratitude, but you cannot have both at the same time.” And that applies to many other emotions. Have you tried to say thank you to an unfortunate event? And then try to feel the disappointment at the same time. It’s not possible because as a human being, we can only experience one emotion at a time. Anger focuses on lack, what's missing, unfair, or wrong. Gratitude sees the possibilities, the lessons, the value and purpose.
Being grateful is also an antidote to negativities. It transforms negative energies to positive’s. Gratitude doesn’t tell us just to maintain a positive and overly optimistic mind frame. It is to see the good in anything including the ones covered with the obvious negative masks.
when something unfortunate or bad happens -focus on the “bad” in that situation evokes feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, fear, rejection, hurt, anger,and so on. Instead, “Think about what it has taught you” start the sentence like “I’m grateful that such and such happened to me, because” do you see lessons, possibilities, value and purpose in them?
It is all about how you approach it.
We are going to end today’s episode with a quote from Melodie Beattie’s: author of journey to the heart.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
— Melody Beattie
So I really hope you find today's topic and story valuable in any way. If you like this podcast, or feel connect with what I have been sharing on this show, please subscribe! It will really help this podcast if you subscribe on any platform you are listening to, download the episode, and leave a review on iTunes. I appreciate every one of you!
And if you have any thoughts on today's episode or topics that you would like me to further discuss. Email me at thrivexstrive@gmail.com.
Talk to you all next time.
Have a great weekend!