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**Adam Stacoviak:** It's the feedback loop, too. We've talked about this a thousand times, and ever since I can't get it out of my brain. Maybe it's just the way things happen when you learn new things... But this feedback loop - it's a necessary social component to our lives, that makes us human. So the feedback loop,... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[24:02\] Yeah, exactly. So not surprising that this practice also activates the brain's altruism and reward system regions. Another study found that practicing this, what the researchers describe as neuropure altruism, which basically means that your brain craves the experience of giving.... |
Again, when these groups were compared, the results showed that the group that had focused on gratitude had greater activation in this ventral medial prefrontal cortex and this neuropure altruism. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Hm. That's deep. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right? And I think about this, because I help so many people trying to navigate relational challenges, and the concept of giving without expectation of return, and how that shouldn't be linked in terms of resentment. One of the indicators when it comes to boundaries is going "When my resen... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This ventral medial - is that different than the medial prefrontal cortex, or are they the same? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, it's sort of even more specific. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Gotcha, okay. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** So medial prefrontal, then ventral medial. So yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But the point is that those who'd focused on gratitude had greater activation in that area of the brain. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. So it's just showing that this literally affects our brain. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. And that's the area that reinforces emotional balance, stress levels, things like that. Obviously, we want to -- hey, regulating an emotion is a pretty important thing. If I was up and down constantly, I can't regulate my emotion, that's probably not a good person to be around generally, beca... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And if I have high amounts of stress, especially prolonged stress, it's gonna have negative effects on me in my relationships, my physical body over time, my adrenal glands... All these different things that sort of play a role in managing and dealing with stress. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yes. So this frontal lobe - again, all part of that same area in the brain - is involved with this perspective-taking. So very much like the forest for the trees. So when I can see things in side by side, or often I'll reference it like picture in picture, that I can see the broader perspe... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What about the aspect -- can you kind of go deeper on the... I don't know if you use the word "addiction" to helping -- reframe that for me. Remind me what you said there, because I'm probably framing it wrong. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** With altruism and resentment? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Exactly, yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[27:43\] Yeah. So relationships are complicated, right? And everybody has different ideas around what it looks like to give in relationship. I always talk about it in terms of you, me and we. So imagine two circles - there's you, there's me, and then we both participate in the overlapping... |
So imagine I'm more focused on an outcome, as opposed to just altruistically, like "This is what I want to give, because I can't help myself, and I wanna give it to you... Because I care about you, I appreciate you etc." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, that's what I heard there, "I can't help myself." Not addiction, "I can't help myself. I want to do it. I just can't stop, I just have to. I have to be this way." |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. So an example too I think would be much more along the lines of like at Christmas time, and where I live there's bridges and ferries, and people will go through the bridges and pay for the people behind them... That didn't benefit them in any way, but it's this sense of altruism or d... |
So leaping over, stepping over a little bit in terms of addiction, that more so related to the same neurotransmitter... But dopamine is involved in gratitude. This is the important neurotransmitter when it comes to pleasure, reward, motivation, attention and bodily movements. So it actually gives you a natural high, cr... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I don't know. You could be overly gracious, overly thankful, constantly... It might get annoying. That may be the downside, the annoyance of like "Okay, I get it. I get it. I mean a lot to you. Let's move on now." \[laughter\] |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, again, that would be more so than you're only focusing on... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The negative. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** ...that side. Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I think it's important to really dig deep into this. I love the science behind it, I love the practical aspects of starting each day with gratitude, and tactical things you could do, like journaling to express this, and write it down and cement these ideas... But then you can't really deny the brain... |
For me, I didn't really grok or begin to understand health-related things, especially around food, until my thirties. Unfortunately, I just wasn't educated in my teens, obviously, because I'm an adolescent, and then twenties, to really understand the health benefits of food, and things like that. So that was the first ... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[32:13\] Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You know what I mean? It's kind of an easy button. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It really is. I mean, dopamine is such a critical neurotransmitter, but it's really what is involved in why we continue to do what we do. If you haven't, we talk more about this in our other episode on habit formation... But this is what is going to reinforce the repetition of doing it. Sh... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The circle of gratitude. I like it. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yes...! |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You can't just help do it. I mean, sure, like I said before, it's easy to see the negative, and there is in some cases, especially right now, a lot of negativity. You turn on the news, you get negative right away. It's not not acknowledging the fact that there is negativity, or bad things happening,... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, you're spot on, Adam, because it really is. Imagine two lanes - the negative is there, and I'm not saying ignore it or deny it, but going "I'm just not going to sort of enhance it, I'm not gonna blow that up in my mind's eye, so that the negative clouds over any and all of the good t... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Let's get practical. You've mentioned journaling before. What are some other ways that people could practically implement and practice this idea of gratitude? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** I love this -- one of the things you can do in the workplace is actually start meetings with what went well. I think especially in creative endeavors, when people are vulnerable, because it's their creation... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right, and criticized. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. So starting with it with going "Hey, let's look at what you did well." You're practicing tuning your mind's eye to seeing those things more often alongside some of the challenges that emerge. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I like that. There's actually a practice in software called Agile. It's a methodology for producing a product, essentially... And as part of one of the requirements or prescriptions for Agile software development is this idea of a retrospective. So after what's called a sprint, a time period for whi... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You know what I mean? So it kind of brings that aspect into it. To some degree, that "what went well" is second-nature to many folks in tech or software. It's an often thing. I love the aspect of retrospective, that's why I think I loved being product manager so much, is because I really enjoyed the... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[36:15\] I think that's really huge, because we've sort of talked about this and referenced it in other ways, but that is exactly what happens - practicing gratitude allows you to fall more in love with process over outcomes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Because if I set myself up -- I mean, why do sports get us so much? We could be devastated for the day of "Our team didn't win". |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's true. \[laughter\] |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right?! |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yes. So true. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** But rather going "I just love the process of competing. It's so fun - around can I do better? What can I learn from it? What could we tweak or improve upon? What legitimately went well?" Because all of those things sit together. I think that that's really the way that you can enjoy your li... |
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