December 14, 2021
REDLEG STATE OF MIND #8–21
Monthly newsletter of the Cincinnati Reds Mental Skills Program. What we’re pondering and promoting to optimize your mental performance.
Theme: Offseason is gratitude season. “A time to be thankful”, “season’s greetings”, “a time for cheer”, “season of giving” and so many other sayings tell us that this is a time to be grateful and to appreciate life and those around us. We would argue most times are excellent times to be grateful. Because of this, we wanted to talk about what gratitude is, why it is important, and how to train your brain to experience more of it in your life.
- What is gratitude? Gratitude is a person’s orientation, or pattern, toward recognizing and appreciating the positive in life, which produces the emotion of gratitude. We all experience gratitude, however, this definition is of trait gratitude. In other words, how much gratitude do you experience on a regular basis? Is your brain trained to experience a lot of gratitude or are you constantly focusing on negatives?
2. Why is gratitude important? The simple answer to this question is because gratitude is a positive emotion. As humans we are wired to experience and remember negative emotions more commonly than positive emotions because this has historically kept us safe. Emotions like fear, anxiety, unease, produced behaviors that kept us alive against predators and other dangers that living outside of modern times was fraught with. This has a lasting impact today as can be seen in examining your handy dictionary (everyone still has a dictionary these days right?). Interestingly, Dr. Robert Schrauf from Penn State University found that typical emotions used in everyday language lean more negative (50%) compared to positive (30%) and neutral (20%). Thus, we all can use more positive feelings when we can get them to balance the scales.
Secondly, the specific emotions of gratitude has been positively correlated to many other variables such as optimism, alertness, goal attainment, determination, life satisfaction, social connectedness, forgiveness, sleep quality, prosocial behavior, hope, and the ability to forgive. Really cool is the inverse relationship gratitude has with depression, anxiety, negative affect, burnout, and psychological distress. These relationships are covered in a great review by Dr. Nicole Gabana on gratitude’s implications for mental health, well-being, and performance. Therefore, doing things that deliberately bring about emotions of gratitude and feelings of appreciation can have a tremendous cascading effect of positivity and productivity in your life.
Lastly, gratitude impacts how we perform. It does this by being closely related to resilience, or our ability to bounce back. If our brain’s dominant pattern (or trait) is to seek the positive, even when things are not going well, this habit puts our mind and body in a better place to perform at a high level. This ability to actively seek the positive is much more functional than dwelling on negatives which typically leads to negative spirals, or what we think of as a snowball effect. Another way to think of this is having more gratitude and positive seeking ability buffers you from the harmful effects of stress.
3. How do we train gratitude? Research interventions have given us effective methods to build better gratitude patterns into our lives. Some example of these exercises include gratitude journaling, expressing gratitude to others in written form, creating a gratitude list, gratitude meditations, and a “three great things” exercise as described here in a previous post that we describe as “hunting the wins.” All of these exercises are built to start changing what we recognize, seek, remember, and think about over time, slowly shifting from pessimistic negatives to optimistic positives.
Therefore, during the holiday season, it is perfect opportunity to make gains in training your brain, making shifts, and making better patterns in how your mind functions. In life, sport, and business, gratitude provides the bond to truly connect ourselves with others. This bond is necessary for us to perform at our most optimal levels with the necessary support surrounding us. How are you showing appreciation and kindness to yourself and others daily this offseason?
3. Quote of the week: Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Therefore, during this season of joy and greetings let’s be consistent in reminding ourselves and others of those things in life that we are grateful for.
#Trainyourbrain and #Upyourgame
- Tyler and Oscar
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