Gratitude (Huberman Lab)
Found an awesome new podcast, Huberman Lab, by American neuroscientist and Stanford Med professor Andrew Huberman. Here’s some key points from the episode “The Science of Gratitude & How To Build a Gratitude Practice.”
Messy notes:
Human brain is embedded in story; it’s a major way we organize information in the brain
If you enter an ice bath with intention (positive health effects, character development, etc), your body responds in a net positive way by releasing chemicals differently than if you were pushed or forced into it
Gratitude is a mindset that activates the pre-frontal cortex, and in doing so sets the context of your experience such that you can derive tremendous health benefits
You can’t simply lie to yourself and say “good” to any terrible experience. That’s a myth. Reframing and setting context on experiences is highly valuable and is possible, but it’s not done through lying and setting fake affirmations.
Enhancing autonomic arousal towards more alertness is what amplifies gratitude.
Best gratitude practice is not when you give gratitude, but when you recieve gratitude/thanks
Strong stories of other people experiencing positive things in their life has created strong feelings of gratitude (ex: Narratives of survivors of genocide who had people help them along the way. Conveyance of struggles + description of small but highly significant things that led to their own feeling of gratitude)
When people start to feel some affiliation or resonance with the storyteller, strong feelings of gratitude are created… one has to powerfully associate with the idea of receiving help
Prosocial circuits —> Theory of mind: ability to attribute or to understand the experience of another without actually experiencing the thing that they’re experiencing.
Many people either struggle from (1) lack of motivation & drive or (2) high fear or anxiety attached to having high motivation & drive
Gratitude and the circuits associated with it are especially prone to neuro plasticity in a positive sense
Building out the most effective gratitude practice:
Think into when somebody was genuinely thankful for something you did and how they felt in receiving that gratitude. Or… thinking deeply about the emotional experience of somebody else receiving help
Story doesn’t need to have any semblance to your own life experience
Take 3-4 salient bullet point notes: what the struggle was; what the help was; something about how it impacts you emotionally; the state you were in before and after the gratitude.
Having a story that you come back to repeatedly has a perceptible shift in your heart rate and breathing
You don’t need to hear the full length story each time. But you have to know what the story was and what the practice references back to. You only need 1-5 minutes to read off your bullet points. Then 1-2 minutes to just genuinely feel and soak in that gratitude.
Huberman suggests 3x/week.
Check out the full podcast here