15

Use Gratitude to Rewire Your Brain

One thing that nearly every law in this book has in common is that they take you out of a stressed state of fight or flight by making your primitive defense systems feel safe. This is how the world’s most successful people find the power to change the world. And the absolute best way to ensure that your body knows it’s safe is to cultivate gratitude. The people who are at the top of their fields, do noteworthy things, have power, and use it to serve others know that gratitude is not just something that is pleasant to feel; it is vital to having the energy to do what they do and to enjoy life while doing it.

It’s easy to be grateful when life is going well, but having gratitude for everything, even your worst traumas, setbacks, and obstacles, is not simple. Yet, as these luminaries have attested, it is essential. Instead of falling into the trap of self-pity or creating a narrative that the odds are stacked against them, they did the hard work of seeing the beauty in their darkest moments. Many of the people I interviewed said they wouldn’t be as happy or as successful as they are today if they hadn’t found a way to be thankful for their struggles. The same goes for me.

I’m grateful that I lived in a house full of toxic mold that completely jacked up my biology. I’m grateful that I lost all my money and had to keep working. If I hadn’t lived through the pain and difficulty of those moments, I wouldn’t have learned the valuable lessons that inspired me to create Bulletproof and share what I’ve learned about how to create more energy than I thought I was supposed to have. It took work to make myself feel that way, because my natural response was to feel pretty pissed off about the whole situation. But that work pays off every day because I don’t carry the burden of anger anymore.

If you were to skip every other chapter in this book and read just this one, you’d still be ahead of the game. Gratitude is that important. And it’s a skill you can learn to develop. With regular practice, gratitude leaves a lasting imprint on your nervous system, making you more sensitive to positive thinking. This means that the more you practice gratitude, the more you will default to positivity instead of negativity. Basically, life takes less work when you practice gratitude. The more you naturally tend toward positive thinking, the better you are able to transcend your base instincts and spend your precious energy moving the needle for yourself and perhaps the rest of humanity, too.

Law 44: Gratitude Is Stronger than Fear

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Overcoming fear that does not serve you is necessary to access your greatness. Courage works, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain. Save courage for when your life is actually on the line. The rest of the time, use gratitude to turn off fear at the cellular level. Freedom from fear leads to happiness, and happiness is what makes you perform your best at whatever you choose to do.

One of the most impressive guests I have learned from is Dr. Stephen Porges, who is a distinguished university scientist at Indiana University, where he directs the Sexual Trauma Research Consortium at the Kinsey Institute. In 1994, Dr. Porges changed the face of medicine when he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, which links the autonomic nervous system to social behavior and provides a physiological explanation for behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. His work has profoundly changed the way scientists approach the topic of mental health and offers insights into the functionality of stress that can benefit us all.

Known as the “wandering nerve” (vagus is Latin for “wandering”), the vagus nerve starts at your brain stem and wanders throughout the body, connecting your brain to your stomach and digestive tract, as well as your lungs, heart, spleen, intestines, liver, and kidneys. The vagus nerve’s main job is to monitor what’s going on in your body and report information back to your brain. It is a key component of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming you down after your fight-or-flight response revs you up. The strength of your vagus nerve activity is known as your vagal tone. If you have a high vagal tone, you are able to relax more quickly after experiencing a moment of stress. Low vagal tone is the opposite and can keep you in a chronic state of fight or flight.

Clearly, being able to override your default programming and calm down more quickly after experiencing a moment of stress is important. Luckily, according to Dr. Porges, it is possible for anyone to improve his or her vagal tone. One way to enhance vagal tone is through social interaction. We as mammals did not evolve in isolation; we evolved in communities. As such, we benefited from and continue to need the help of others. Caregiving is not a selfless, one-directional act. It is bidirectional, or at least it should be. We naturally feel good when we help other people, as long as they are pleasant recipients of that help. Children and dogs are perfect examples of this. They are needy and respond lovingly to our care, and that makes us feel good and want to continue caring for them.

Another human experience that impacts vagal tone is feeling gratitude. Dr. Porges explains that when you’re in a state of gratitude, your nervous system is bathed in cues of safety. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint—you’re not going to feel grateful when a tiger is chasing you. But you need more than just the absence of a tiger to feel grateful. He reminds us that the removal of a threat is not the same thing as safety. Your body needs to receive cues that you are truly safe in order to feel gratitude. He suggests that there is a decision process of sorts that determines how your body responds to perceived danger. You are not conscious of this process—it happens in the background, and different branches of the vagus nerve activate in response to different situations.

When you experience a frightening stimulus, your body responds first to social communication: verbal language, body language, vocal tone, and other nonverbal cues.¹ If the stimulus is too strong for these responses to provide adequate comfort, your brain activates your stress hormones—your fight-or-flight response. If you have poor vagal tone and are not able to return to baseline, you may freeze completely and become unable to act. Dr. Porges suggests that this is common in survivors of trauma or abuse.

When you know your fear is irrational, you can use safety cues to stop panic and keep your body from going into full-blown fight or flight. One of these safety cues is to use a soothing voice. Dr. Porges explains that this phenomenon is hardwired in us. Think of young children, who are measurably calmed by soothing, singsong tones. Parents often use these tones instinctively with their children, but altering your tone of speech works for adults, too. Guided meditations, either in person or recorded, adopt a slow, rhythmic tone of speaking. Using the voice as a relaxation cue coaxes your brain into a relaxed state faster than a normal conversational tone would. (There’s a reason I don’t talk fast on Bulletproof Radio!) The implication is that if you’re stressed, Rage Against the Machine may not be the right soundtrack for you, even if it is energizing; calm music may pay higher dividends for your nervous system.

Another way to activate a safety cue for your brain is to imagine your happy place. I know this sounds cliché, but it works. To do this effectively, you’ll need to determine a “safe place” or “happy place” while you’re calm. Close your eyes and think about an environment in which you’re completely at ease, content, and peaceful. Imagine as much sensory information and detail as you can—sights, smells, and sounds. Practice this visualization often. That way, when you start feeling fearful or angry, you can conjure up your “safe place” without much effort. It’s there for you when you need it. Mine may or may not look like a Bat Cave.

Another top expert who taught me a lot about gratitude is Dr. Elissa Epel, who, as you read earlier, is a professor at UCSF who studies how stress can impact our biological aging via the telomere/telomerase system and how meditation modalities may buffer stress effects and boost physical and spiritual well-being.

Dr. Epel told me about a study she did with the mitochondria researcher Dr. Martin Picard at Columbia University. They examined participants’ blood to determine the activity of their mitochondrial enzymes. These chemicals play an important role in producing energy for your cells. Dr. Epel and Dr. Picard found that as a group, caregivers—such as mothers who had a child with a chronic condition—had reduced enzyme activity. Yet within that group there were some notable exceptions.

To learn the origin of these differences, the researchers took an inventory of the participants’ daily lives and asked them questions such as: From the moment you wake up, how much are you looking forward to the day? How much are you worrying about the day? How happy are you? How stressed or anxious are you? They were looking not just for the participants’ affect and emotion but for their appraisals of what was going to happen to them, good or bad. In other words, were they locked in a cycle of always anticipating a threat, or did they also experience hope and gratitude? They checked participants’ mitochondrial enzymes in the morning, after a moment of stress, and then again in the evening. They found that the people with the most mitochondrial enzymes had a higher positive affect when they woke up and when they went to bed, especially around bedtime. It was their recovery mood and whether or not they held onto the residue of everything that happened to them throughout the day that determined how well their mitochondria were functioning.

To help people improve their mood and not wake up anticipating stress, Dr. Epel suggests that they think of something they are grateful for in the evening before bed. That simple gratitude exercise could potentially boost the participants’ mitochondrial enzymes and made them happier.

Although it’s understandable that mothers of sick children might be prone to fearing the worst, Dr. Epel explains that many of us anticipate moments of stress without even realizing it. The question is: Are you carrying that perceived danger or threat with you throughout the day and ruminating over it? Are you putting yourself into a state of fight or flight by anticipating stress before it happens? Or are you bathing yourself in cues of safety by feeling grateful? An easy way to tell if you are spending your days anticipating threats is by paying attention to how you feel in the evening. At night, your mood is really important because it reflects how well you’ve recovered from your stress. How positive is your mood when you get home from work in the evening and before bed?

Several years ago I instituted a gratitude practice at Bulletproof. Our weekly executive team meetings begin with each team member sharing what he or she is grateful for. Sometimes it’s a big win at work. But most often it’s time with family, a volunteer project, or maybe a Seahawks win. Starting a meeting with gratitude makes for a more powerful interaction and builds connection among the team members. I see it as an act of service I can offer to the people who so passionately support the company’s mission: to help people tap into the unlimited power of being human.

I value gratitude so much that I don’t save it for Team Bulletproof. Every night before bed since my kids were old enough to talk, I’ve been asking them to relate an “act of kindness,” something they did that day to help another person. Their vagal tone increases when they recall something nice they’ve done. We follow with a nightly gratitude practice. Lana and I ask them for three things they’re grateful for. Sometimes it’s a little thing, such as being grateful for having had grass-fed rib eye for dinner. (I love having foodie kids!) But sometimes it’s profound. Once when my son was five, he got a strange look on his face and said, “Daddy, I’m grateful for the Big Bang because without it there wouldn’t be anything.” Then he rolled over and happily went to sleep with his nervous system calm and his mitochondria running at full power. It works for adults, too. Try it.

Action Items

• Stop putting yourself into a stressed state by anticipating problems before they occur (worrying). If you sense this happening, work on going to your “happy place.”
• Do something kind for someone else every day to improve your vagal tone.
• Every night before bed, think of three things you are grateful for to boost your mitochondrial enzymes. In fact, try it now and feel what it does to your nervous system. You get bonus points for locating where in your body you feel intense gratitude.
  • _____________________
  • _____________________
  • _____________________
• Speak in a calming, more soothing voice when you want to turn off the fight-or-flight response in yourself or others.
• Listen to high-energy music when you need the energy—but if you’re already stressed, focus on music with calm voices.

Recommended Listening

• Stephen Porges, “The Polyvagal Theory & the Vagal Nerve,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 264
• Elissa Epel, “Age Backwards by Hacking Your Telomeres with Stress,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 436

Recommended Reading

• Stephen W. Porges, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe
• Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel, The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer

Law 45: Forgive, but Don’t Be Sorry

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Gratitude by itself improves your performance. But the most advanced performers know that gratitude is also the doorway to forgiveness. When you forgive, you reprogram your nervous system to no longer automatically react to memories of past trauma, suffering, and perceived slights. To forgive, identify the false stories you tell yourself, then find a way to be grateful for even the worst things you’ve experienced. You don’t have to say you’re sorry to forgive. Forgiveness is the single most powerful upgrade to human performance. Forgive with the same intensity you bring to your mission in life, and you will access new levels of energy and happiness.

On my path to becoming Bulletproof, I spent some time in a sweat lodge after completing a week of Alberto Villoldo’s advanced shamanic meditation training. An old and powerful Native American sun dancer led the experience, which I was honored to share with a group of a dozen people. One of those people was a woman who was extremely unhappy, even though just being there was an incredible gift. She kept saying things such as “I’ve hit rock bottom; it can’t get any worse,” and when she had the opportunity to ask the earth for anything, she said, “I just wish I had enough energy to make it through the day.” I was floored to witness her belief in her story and blurted out, “Why not at least ask for enough energy to dance through the day?” I’ll chalk that indiscretion up to the incredible heat, but it provided an important lesson in believing your own story.

The wise elder who was overseeing the sweat lodge looked at her and said, “You are suffering from something called self-pity. We know what to do about that,” before he poured more water on the hot stones. Indeed, that woman had plenty of things she could have been grateful for. She was still standing. She was able to afford that relatively expensive experience, and she’d had an opportunity to learn from an amazing game changer like Alberto Villoldo before being invited by an elder to participate in a sacred ceremony.

This is a matter of reframing. Every one of us has both things we can feel self-pity about and things we can feel grateful for. Which ones are you going to focus on? Even if your life is really hard right now—or if your life has always been hard—you can find something tiny to be grateful for. When I’ve felt as though things were bad, I’ve always gone back to being grateful for having two good legs. Things can always be worse. You’re still standing. You have this book and the wonderful chance to learn from hundreds of high performers. You can handle this. You are not enough—you are way more than enough.

In part, gratitude is so powerful because it takes you out of your own story of self-pity. Imagine that someone cuts you off in traffic. Most of the time when this happens, we immediately tell ourselves a story without even thinking about it: That guy thinks he’s better than me. What a jerk. But what if you change the story? Imagine that person is rushing to the hospital to see his or her dying mother for the last time. In that case, wouldn’t you be grateful that you were able to let them go ahead of you?

It’s the feeling of gratitude for even a perceived slight that opens the door to forgiveness. Of course, neither story has any validity. You’ll never really know why that person cut you off. But you can choose a story that allows you to feel grateful and forgive, or you can choose to hold on to resentment. The person who cut you off won’t know the difference. His or her life won’t change no matter what you tell yourself about why he or she did it. At its core, forgiveness lets you stop carrying other people’s grudges. You have more important things to carry.

Many of us make the mistake of doing this halfway. Someone cuts us off, and we decide to forgive the other person without creating a narrative that allows us to feel gratitude. In other words: He cut me off because he thinks he’s better than me, but I forgive him. This is a step in the right direction, but it results in merely a cognitive level of forgiveness that won’t affect your brain waves or nervous system and allow you to experience the full benefits of gratitude. Thinking about forgiveness is not the same as feeling it. In other words, it’s easy to pretend that you don’t care about how a jerk treats you, but if it’s secretly sucking your energy on the inside, you will still end up paying the price.

Finding gratitude even for the corrosive jerks in your life, on the other hand, will actually boost your happiness. Having a thick skin isn’t very useful, because it forces you to keep taking hits, it blocks positive emotions, and it is energetically expensive to build and maintain your thick skin. When you can learn to feel gratitude and compassion for a jerk, however, his or her behavior will pass right through you without costing you any energy. That is called forgiveness. The best part, of course, is that showing and actually feeling gratitude for a jerk makes that person even madder than when you ignore him or her. And that costs the jerk even more energy than it takes to act like a jerk in the first place. There is no possible way for your secretly hating anyone to improve your life or theirs.

40 Years of Zen Neurofeedback Augmented Reset Protocol showing forgiveness and gratitude impact on brain waves during executive cognitive enhancement training

In one of his interviews, I asked Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek fame what three pieces of advice he’d have for someone who wanted to perform better as a human being. He replied with a quote from B. J. Miller, a palliative care physician who is a triple amputee: “Don’t believe everything you think.” Tim says that when people question their deep-rooted philosophies and basic assumptions, they very often find them to be completely off base. He experienced this in his own life. In response to BJ’s advice, he started telling himself: Don’t retreat into the story. If you wake up in a funk or you’re in a depressive period and you retreat into a disabling story about yourself or the world, you are never going to be able to change the game.

While I learned from many spiritual teachers and personal development experts to phrase affirmations in a positive way—focused on doing something rather than not doing something—Tim says that don’t retreat into the story has worked well for him. It’s like a stop sign that he uses to interrupt the pattern of self-deception. This allows him to look at what’s in front of him nonreactively and without the emotional baggage of trauma or past mistakes. The positively phrased version of that would be “See things as they actually are, and live in that world.” You can do both!

For instance, if someone on the phone appears to be very curt and rude to you, don’t assume that he or she has some personal vendetta against you and that he or she is trying to ruin your day. Maybe he’s just hungry. Maybe she needs to go to the bathroom and her boss won’t let her take a break until the next hour clicks through. Choosing a positive story enables gratitude and therefore forgiveness for a small slight, but if you retreat into a story that fosters self-pity, you’re not going to like your life.

Perhaps no one has mastered the art of reframing self-pity into gratitude better than Tony Robbins, the world-famous motivational speaker, personal finance guru, and multiple-time New York Times bestselling author. In a special episode of Bulletproof Radio, Tony, Peter Diamandis, and marketing guru Joe Polish discussed Tony’s story and how he believes that nothing is impossible. Impossible, he says, is not a fact; it’s an opinion. Technically, everything is impossible until somebody does it. Even in the field of science, many things that have been shown to be impossible were later proven to be possible. Therefore, Tony says that anytime a business is not growing or a person is not succeeding, it’s not because it’s impossible. It’s because that person has a story about why his or her strategy isn’t working. As Tony says, “If you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes.” Having met Tony and shared his stage, I can assure you that there is no one who lives that motto more!

The truth of the matter is that the stories that are holding you back are all the result of past traumas when your nervous system believed you were seriously threatened. Trauma is held in the body. The stories exist as your body’s primitive way of making sure you don’t fall victim to the same situation again. Feeling gratitude and offering true forgiveness is the way to untangle these stories and see things as they really are.

Action Items

• Think about the worst thing that has ever happened to you and come up with one good thing that came from it:

  __________________________________________

• What is one limiting story you absolutely believe to be true about yourself or the world?

  __________________________________________

• Can you imagine one thing that would make the story not true, at least one time? If the answer is yes, stop believing the story. If the answer is no, keep digging or ask a close friend for his or her take. Self-limiting stories are never, ever real.
• Make a list of people or things you hold a grudge toward:
  • _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________,
    _____________________
• Those grudges are costing you energy, causing you pain, and not affecting the other party at all. Find gratitude and seek forgiveness for everyone on this list, and watch your limits fall away.

Recommended Listening

• Alberto Villoldo, “Brain Hacking & One Spirit Medicine,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 220
• Gabrielle Bernstein, “Detox Your Thoughts to Supercharge Your Life,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 455
• “Address Invisible Patterns, Find Joy in Solving Problems & Other Lessons with the Founder of TOMS Shoes,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 442
• “Mashup of the Titans” with Tim Ferriss, Parts 1 and 2, Bulletproof Radio, episodes 370 and 371
• Tim Ferriss, “The Tim Ferriss Experiment,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 215
• Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, “Special Podcast, Live from the Genius Network,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 306

Recommended Reading

• Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!
• Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Abundance: The Future Is Better than You Think

Law 46: Use the Tools of Gratitude

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Don’t leave gratitude to chance. Take advantage of simple, effective tools to build gratitude into your day the same way you build in exercise or healthy food. Gratitude is a muscle. Exercise it.

UJ Ramdas is an entrepreneur and behavioral change specialist with a background in cognitive science. He’s also a certified hypnotist who is passionate about bringing together practical psychology and business to create a better world and has changed the game for his many consulting clients. But I wanted to speak to UJ because of his focus on gratitude and setting up habits to foster more of it throughout his life. UJ suggests that you must experience gratitude both cognitively and physiologically in order for it to be effective, meaning you have to think it and feel it. When those two elements connect, you can reshape your thinking in a powerful way.

For years, UJ had a nightly ritual that enabled him to experience the power of gratitude. Every night, he used a journal to review all of the good things that happened that day. But when he looked at the science, he saw that the effects of gratitude were more powerful when people asked themselves what they were grateful for first thing in the morning, so he shifted to a morning routine that consisted of asking himself and writing down the answers to three questions: What am I grateful for? What can I do to make today great? What kind of person do I want to be today?

UJ says that answering these questions first thing in the morning allowed him to take advantage of the primacy effect, the idea that doing something as soon as you wake up has a disproportionate effect on your entire day. The second and third questions prime the brain to anticipate positive actions and results, which boosts feelings of gratitude. For example, UJ says that when people think they are going to watch their favorite movie, their endorphin levels automatically increase. Anticipation is therefore an incredible source of well-being and happiness, as long as you are anticipating something positive.

Instead of giving up his nightly ritual, before bed UJ began reviewing three good things that had happened to him that day. He says that when we write down something we’re grateful for, we sleep better, experience a better quality of sleep, share a greater sense of closeness with our family and friends, and have an increased desire to do kind things for others.

Then UJ asks himself, “What’s one thing I could have done to make the day better?” This keeps him in the mind-set of constantly improving. UJ is so passionate about these gratitude habits that he created a custom notebook called the Five Minute Journal to make it easy for people to adopt them into their own lives.

UJ says that these simple habits can make you more resilient, increase your prefrontal cortex activation, and help you stay calm and focused in moments of stress instead of panicking, because they improve vagal tone. Just as important, these gratitude habits lead to other positive changes. In one groundbreaking study on gratitude back in 2003, the scientist Robert Emmons had participants write down five things they were grateful for just once a week. Ten weeks later, the participants who had practiced gratitude were exercising one and a half hours a week more than a control group (without being told to) and reported feeling a sense of reciprocity toward their family, friends, and colleagues that inspired more kind acts. In other words, they wanted to do nice things for the people in their lives because they were grateful for them.

The energy Tony Robbins extends to help others is legendary, so it only makes sense that he has a personal gratitude practice. Tony says he spends just three minutes thinking about three things he’s grateful for and visualizing each one of them in great sensory detail. For example, instead of thinking “I’m grateful for that roller coaster over there,” Tony mentally puts himself into the front seat and feels himself going over the edge, becoming completely present in the visualization of the thing he is grateful for. He also makes sure that at least one of his three things is something really simple, such as the wind on his face or his child’s smile, to train himself to be grateful for the little things in his life.

After doing this for three minutes, Tony does a three-minute blessing, during which he imagines life, God, or energy coming into his body, healing every muscle and nerve, and strengthening his passion, love, generosity, creativity, and humor. Then he visualizes any problem he’s facing as being solved. Once he feels that fully, he imagines a circle of energy around himself, his intimate family, and his friends. Then he continues the circle all the way out to his clients and imagines them being healed, getting what they want, and having the lives they deserve.

Last, he thinks of three specific outcomes that matter to him, and instead of thinking about achieving them, he sees, feels, and experiences them as done and imagines the impact that completing them would have. He sees people’s lives being touched and experiences their joy, and he feels grateful. This entire practice should take about ten minutes, but Tony says that he often lets it go for fifteen or twenty minutes because he’s having such a good time.

To experience the same effects, use UJ’s technique, Tony’s technique, or the one I use with my kids. Add in any combination of these tools:

KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL

This is probably the most popular gratitude practice, in part thanks to UJ’s Five Minute Journal app. Writing down the things you’re grateful for is tangible, and it’s easier to remember to be grateful daily when it involves a physical object. The process is simple: write down three things you’re grateful for in the morning and three more before bed. If that’s too much, write in just the morning or the evening.

PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

Slow your life down. If you find that you’re rushing to get to work, notice it and relax. Being a few minutes late won’t kill you. Next time you go up the stairs, pay attention to every step. Look at the trees and flowers and the grass growing through cracks in the pavement when you take a walk. Literally stop to smell the roses. There’s tremendous beauty all around us, and most of us blow right by it on the way to the next goal or obligation. Life is too short not to appreciate the little things. Take your time. This bathes your nervous system in safety cues, which shuts off your default programming and allows for the power of gratitude.

RETHINK A NEGATIVE SITUATION

Here’s an old parable. A farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors said, “What a shame!” He said, “Maybe.” The next day, the horse came back, and it brought more wild horses with it. The neighbors said, “How wonderful!” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day, a horse stepped on the farmer’s son’s arm, breaking it. The neighbors said, “How horrible!” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day, the government came to the village, drafting people for the war. They passed over the farmer’s son because of his broken arm. “How wonderful!” the neighbors said. The farmer said, “Maybe.”

It’s a silly parable, but it makes a good point: situations are neutral; how you perceive them is what makes them good or bad. Find the silver lining in everything. Often the silver lining is that each hardship makes you learn something new or become a stronger, more resilient human being. Don’t force yourself to feel a certain way if you’re not ready. This isn’t about being happy and positive all the time. Some situations suck, and it’s important to feel your negative emotions. Just get into the habit of finding positives, as well.

APPRECIATE ACTIVELY

Look for opportunities to be grateful throughout your day. This is especially useful when you’re having a bad day or find yourself focusing on negative emotions. This isn’t about being fake or lying to yourself. It’s about actively looking for things in your life that you authentically appreciate. This might start out as just being grateful for your (buttered!) cup of coffee every morning, the fact that you’re healthy, or the fact that you have two working legs.

FILL A GRATITUDE JAR

This is a play on journaling but a bit more creative. Choose a large jar or a fishbowl, and as a family (or by yourself), write down what you’re grateful for each day and pop it into the bowl. As the bowl fills, it will serve as a physical representation of all the things you have to be grateful for.

PRACTICE GRATITUDE WITH LOVED ONES

Share your gratitude as a family at the dinner table. This is a great little ritual to introduce, especially if you have children. If you want, add some ground rules. First, each thing you mention should be new; second, it should have something to do with the events of that day; and third, it should be different from another person’s gratitude that night. This cultivates creativity and engagement. Reflecting back on the day in a positive way can have some really powerful benefits. And since gratitude in general can help with sleep, the evening is a good time to do this. As a group of friends or roommates or as a family, choose a time to share your gratitude with one another. Not only will you gain the benefits of more positive thinking pathways, you’ll also foster closeness with the people you love.

TAKE A GRATITUDE WALK

Go for a walk (bonus points if you get some sunshine at the same time), and pay close attention to everything you see and experience. Notice all the beauty, the feeling of each step in the soles of your feet. This will calm your mind and foster gratitude. Focus on the feeling that gratitude creates in your body, and enjoy it.

WRITE A THANK-YOU NOTE

Write a letter of love and gratitude to someone who has touched your life in a big or small way. It can be a parent, a friend, a teacher who shaped your life, or anyone you want to thank. Tell them what they’ve done for you. This has the added bonus of deepening your connections with those you care about.

PRACTICE COMBINING GRATITUDE AND FORGIVENESS

You can carry around a lot of stress—even unconsciously—from anger and hurt. To practice a combination of gratitude and forgiveness, write down something that has hurt you, or maybe just acknowledge some of your anger or pain. Feel the negative emotion, think of a way the situation that caused it benefited you or shaped you into who you are today, and let go of the negativity. Forgiveness has a profound effect on boosting your alpha brain waves—those associated with a calm, focused mental state. I guarantee that spending more time in that state will be a game changer for you.

Action Items

• What are the three most appealing tools of gratitude from this section?
  • _____________________
  • _____________________
  • _____________________
• Now try them!

Recommended Listening

• UJ Ramdas, “Success and Gratitude,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 80
• Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, “Special Podcast, Live from the Genius Network,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 306