The Power of Gratitude with Ashley Mora

Pretty happy podcast is a weekly series covering the topics of developing a healthy mindset gratitude habits boundaries, health, fitness, relationships, beauty, creativity and confidence. This podcast is for anyone desiring inspiration and direction. Your host me Ashley Nicole, dishes out insight on personal growth and shares weekly inspiration on how to create a pretty happy life.

Hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday and welcome to episode six of the pretty happy podcast. I just want to start by saying thank you for finding your way over here and taking time out of your day to listen. Please don't forget to subscribe, rate, review and share. Every time you do it is so appreciated. And I'm so happy to say that the pretty happy podcast is now available wherever you listen to podcasts. We were most recently added to the I Heart Radio platform which is so exciting. You can find the pretty happy podcast on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Pandora, and more. So, continue to share with your friends and family keep spreading the word. Whenever you do, it means the absolute world to me.

As you probably already noticed, today's episode is all about the power of gratitude. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably already know that I've been using a five minute journal for years now. I love mine so much. It's one of my most favorite belongings. Not only do I use it almost every day when I'm at home, but I take it with me everywhere. It's also one of my favorite gifts to give people because it's the gift that keeps on giving. I personally reached out to the Five Minute Journal this week and asked if they would be interested in collaborating this week for a giveaway. And I'm so thankful that they said yes, I'm beyond excited. I just can't wait to give this to one of you guys. All you have to do to enter this week's giveaway is share the pretty happy podcast to your Instagram story, and tag @prettyhappypodcast You do have to be following @prettyhappypodcasts to win. I am just so excited about this giveaway. This journal has literally changed my life. I can't say enough good things about it. And the fact that one of you guys will get to take one home for yourself brings me so much joy.

All right, let's get into today's episode. On today's episode, I want to talk about the power of gratitude. expressing gratitude has played a huge role in my life. And I want 100% attribute who I am my mindset, my outlook on life, to the power of gratitude. Now, not every day is great for me, I'm human, I have bad days. In fact, I'm going to share about my really weird week with you in just a moment. But for the most part, while not every day is great, I can find good and every day. And that's because I practice gratitude. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. But we're all going through stuff this year. Jobs have been lost, the number of people reporting depression and anxiety is at an all time high because of this pandemic. Stress and fear is everywhere. Everywhere we look. It's literally everywhere. And I think it's so important right now to focus on gratitude. If there's anything at all that you take away from today's podcast, I want you to take away this... Expressing gratitude isn't just having these happy moments where we write down the things we're grateful for an a cute journal, expressing gratitude is about taking care of our mental health. Let me just say that again. Expressing gratitude is about taking care of our mental health. Now we're going to get into a pretty deep conversation about the power of gratitude today, but before we get into today's episode, I want to share about my week with you all because you guys it was so wild.

So it started off with me losing my wallet. I had a small wallet that had my ID and all of my cards, my debit card, you know basically my entire life was in this wallet. And it was the weirdest situation because we're on another lockdown here in San Diego so we can't really go do anything. The day that I lost my wallet, all I did was go on a walk! I thought that I was losing my mind last week. I mean, when I realized that I lost my wallet. I started doing damage control. I started retracing my steps, and I realized Okay, I only went for a walk. I went and walked the path that I always walk around the harbor. then it was nowhere to be found. So then I tore up my entire apartment looking in every drawer, looking in every corner, looking through everything, couch cushions, everywhere you could possibly imagine. And my wallet was nowhere to be found. I checked my cards to see if there had been any charges, & there weren't any charges, which makes me feel like it's just lost somewhere. There haven't been any charges and no one's contacted me saying that they found it.... So I don't know what happened to it. It is again, the most bizarre situation. And it's also just really unfortunate. If you've ever experienced this, you know you have to cancel your cards, and then deal with all the bills that are linked to your cards. And now I have to go to the DMV. So that happened last week and then I also had a COVID scare, which was really interesting. So I personally wasn't exposed, but I was around someone who was potentially exposed. So a very hypothetical situation. And I'm sure by now we've all probably gone through something like this by now. But when it happened last week, I just started going in this downward spiral of like, Oh my gosh, if I have it now, I'm gonna have to quarantine for two weeks, which means that I'm not going to be able to go home for Christmas. And I just, you start thinking of all these things. And it got me thinking when this happened... I guess let me just say this now, everyone ended up testing negative, which is a huge blessing. So again, all that freaking out kind of for no reason. But it's just what happens. Anyways, I was thinking when this whole situation was going down how many other people right now are going through the same thing. Because we're in the middle of a pandemic, there are certainly going to be people who find out that they are COVID positive, or that they are around someone who was COVID positive, and they aren't going to be able to spend the holidays with their families, Which then led me to think about how focusing on gratitude right now is more important than ever before. And I know this because I experienced it last week... It's so easy right now, to slip into a downward spiral. It's so easy to take the small things for granted, it's easy to get caught up in the stress and the fear of everything going on. But if we take a step back, and we start appreciating the small things, it's like a snowball effect. All the small things you start to appreciate turn into big things.

So you might be wondering now how you can implement gratitude into your daily life. And I'm going to share a few different ways you can do this. But before I do, I want to talk about some of the benefits of practicing gratitude. If you Google what the benefits of practicing gratitude are, you'll find so many articles in so many studies done on how practicing gratitude enhances your life, I got this specific list that I'm going to share from positivepsychology.com, but practicing gratitude.... It improves your overall physical health and improves your sleep, It helps boost the immune system, reduces aggression, enhances self esteem, increases empathy, and it just helps us become more kind and compassionate humans. It's crazy how many benefits are correlated with expressing gratitude. I highly encourage you to do a little research later on today, because it's just very interesting. And I truly believe it. And I've said this a million times, but change starts within, we have to get our minds in the right place before we can become successful in our careers and in our relationships. The work starts within.

So I want to share a few different ways that you can practice gratitude daily. And I would highly encourage you to make one of these part of your daily routine. The first would be to keep a gratitude journal. I mentioned this earlier, but I have a five minute journal and it's actually called the Five Minute Journal. I'll link the one that I have in the notes for this podcast. I love it because it's simple, and it's easy. It's called the Five Minute Journal because it takes five minutes or less. I also like that you write down three things every day that you're grateful for. For me, I like that it has me express gratitude in the same way every single day because in doing so it's instilling a habit. I love it. Of course, you don't have to have the Five Minute Journal, you can use any notebook but there's just something about taking a pen to paper and actually writing down what you're grateful for that sets the tone for the day.

The second idea would be to have a gratitude jar. Maybe you and your family Or you and your roommate or just you yourself can do this. But you have a gratitude jar, you slip one note per day in the jar, and then at the end of the month, you can take out all the gratitude notes and reread them. I think it's really interesting because when you take them out, you kind of forget what you wrote down. So it's just interesting to reflect.

I also like the idea of putting sticky notes all over the mirror, I think this isn't just a cute way to express gratitude. But it's also a great reminder of what you're thankful for. Because obviously, you would be passing this mirror every single day.

And another idea would be to send out thank you cards to your friends, families, co workers, anyone at all that has had a positive impact in your life in some ways. So I actually used to do this, about five years ago, when I worked in an office, I had a pack of note cards, thank you note cards that I had on my desk. And it was the first thing I did every single day when I went into the office, I would write two to three notes and send them out every single day, it was obviously a little bit easier, because I could walk the card to the front desk and get it mailed out. But it was such a great thing to do. And the thing is about doing the thank you notes is that you're not only benefiting from expressing gratitude, but the person receiving the card is also benefiting, because I mean, none of us really receive mail, like actual mail that often. So when you receive something in the mail, you just kind of feel special. Then of course, seeing the thank you note is just going to make somebody's day. So I would highly encourage you to try this. I think it's a wonderful way to express gratitude.

And last but not least, would be to take a few seconds every single day in the morning, just quiet your mind and say out loud two or three things that you're thankful for. So I hope that at least one of these five examples today I gave resonates with you. There is seriously not a more perfect time than right now to start practicing gratitude. I promise you, your life will enhance and become so much richer once you start doing this.

I'm also excited to say that in the spirit of the holiday season and in correlation with today's episode, I'm going to start the 12 days of pretty happy acts of kindness and it's going to start today! My intention for doing this is to cultivate a culture of appreciation here in this pretty happy community. So for the next 12 days on the pretty happy podcast Instagram page, which is @prettyhappypodcast I'm going to share a prompt for an act of kindness for you to do so. For example, today's act of kindness will be to write a thank you card to a family or friend and mail it to them. When you complete your act of kindness, Share it on your Instagram story and tag @prettyhappypodcast and use the hashtag #prettyhappyactsofkindness. I cannot wait to see you guys go out and do good in the world. I think the world needs kindness now more than ever before.

I am going to keep this episode short and sweet today since the last two were much longer but before I go, Don't forget to enter this week's giveaway for a five minute journal. All you have to do to enter is screenshot the pretty happy podcast to your Instagram story and tag @prettyhappypodcast You must be following pretty happy podcast on IG to win.

If you love today's episode, don't forget to rate and review. I cannot wait to talk to you guys again soon.

Until next time.