What a precious privilege it is to be alive; to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
RECAPPING TODAY ON THE SERIES; GRATITUDE AND HOW IT CHANGES OUR BRAIN TO BE HAPPIER. PLUS, CONTINUING ON THE BOOK TEN-MINUTE RELAXATION FOR MIND AND BODY.
Hello followers,
Happy Sunday!
Are you ready for the week ahead?
For most of us, this will be a short week; for it is Thanksgiving on Thursday.
Since Dan and I have been blogging on the subject gratitude, the other day this popped up on my social media page; Humans, by nature are social creatures and we have a natural drive to connect with others.
When we embrace this connection and improve the lives of others, we not only make a great difference in the world around us, but we also make a great difference in the world within us.
Your own growth will be amplified twice as much when you are helping others than when you focus only on helping yourself.
Continuing, GRATITUDE AND HOW IT CHANGES OUR BRAIN TO BE HAPPIER.
So, how does gratitude impact the mind and body?
Gratitude stimulates our brain’s reward system.
You may be familiar with the brain’s reward system, or at least the concept of it.
When we desire something, when we experience the pleasure of getting it, and when we learn to associate these feelings of pleasure with getting what we want, our reward system is at work.
The reward system is a group of brain structures that are activated both by intrinsic rewards that are inherently pleasurable; like food, sex, alcohol, and drugs, and extrinsic rewards that we are conditioned to find pleasurable, like money and success.
While research on the brain areas involved in feeling gratitude is relatively new, the findings so far show that feeling gratitude activates areas of the brain that are part of the reward system.
Therefore, people who express gratitude are happier and less likely to develop addictive behaviors.
Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch brain activity while people played a social interactive game involving receiving help from a partner.
The brain scans showed that when the study participants felt grateful, their feelings were encoded in the ventral striatum, part of the brain’s reward system.
The feelings of gratitude were then fed to the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, which tracked feelings of gratitude over time.
A similar study used a social interactive game and fMRI to track brain activity during feelings of gratitude and got similar results.
Gratitude activated and ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which are linked to reward; for example, the reward of feeling relief from having a stressor removed.
The study authors give an excellent discussion about the relationship between gratitude, morals, empathy, social connection, and pain perception.
A 2017 study was only the second study ever done to track how the brain changes with a regular gratitude practice.
First, the researchers used fMRI to see what areas of the brain are involved in feeling gratitude as well as pure altruism (feelings of reward resulting from giving to others).
They had similar results as the previously mentioned studies: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the nucleus accumbens (part of the ventral striatum) were activated.
Next, the study participants did gratitude journaling for three weeks, after which the activity in their vmPFC increased.
The researchers concluded that gratitude journaling increased both gratitude and neural pure altruism, meaning that gratitude biases the brain’s reward system toward feeling rewards for others rather than oneself.
A study on the neural basis of human social values found that feeling gratitude activates the mesolimbic reward pathway.
This dopaminergic pathway in the brain releases and transports domamine through reward system structures, regulating desire, motivation, reinforcement, reward-related motor learning, and pleasure.
When the mesolimbic pathway is not functioning correctly, addiction is more likely to occur.
Now that we have some idea of how gratitude works in our brain, we have physical proof of why expressing gratitude makes us feel happy.
Even more exciting is the potential that gratitude interventions have in clinical settings.
A study of 2,616 people found that higher levels of gratitude were associated with a decreased risk for alcohol and drug abuse, depression, anxiety, and bulimia.
And an important 2014 study found that expressing gratitude immediately increases self-control.
One of the researchers suggests that simple gratitude exercises have “tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking.”
NOVEMBER 20th, Dan, and I thought on continuing this segment with the series with some fun; What is it about November that is so significant during this month?
Name Your PC Day – November 20, 2022
Name Your PC Day is celebrated every year on November 20.
If you think about it, your PC spends the most time with you from your teenage years well into your adult years.
Be it for school or work, the PC remains our loyal companion.
We spend hours sitting in front of it trying to accomplish tasks, playing games, listening to music, or playing around.
So, it’s only fair that this digital friend deserves a name, right?
Whoever created this out-of-the-box holiday has got to be someone who spent a whole lot of time in front of their personal computer that they felt the need to give it a name and make a personal connection.
Well, we don’t mind because it makes us realize how much time we spend in front of our computers for work, school, or watching television series and movies.
Many of us cannot live without our personal computers now and often feel incomplete without them.
In the 1970s, a microcomputer revolution catalyzed the positioning of personal computers as mass-market consumer electronic devices.
The development of the microprocessor allowed personal computers to be sold as affordable consumer goods.
Early personal computers were also called microcomputers and sold in an electronic kit form and limited numbers.
The target audience was generally hobbyists and technicians, specifically inclined towards the Exidy Sorcerer, the NorthStar Horizon, the Cromemco Z-2, and the Heathkit H8 computers.
In 1977, three pre-assembled small computers hit the markets.
The Apple II and the PET 2001 were advertised as personal computers, and they became a hit by 1978, taking the market by storm.
In the same year, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet.
This helped people use the personal computer as a business tool rather than only a game machine or a typewriter replacement.
Since then, there has been no turning back, and you can find a PC in many households worldwide.
Several computer brands have invested in research and development to produce the best PCs possible.
And on Name Your PC Day, we can celebrate this important creation by naming it and giving these machines a personal touch.
RECAPPING TODAY ON THE SERIES; GRATITUDE AND HOW IT CHANGES OUR BRAIN TO BE HAPPIER. PLUS, CONTINUING ON THE BOOK TEN-MINUTE RELAXATION FOR MIND AND BODY.
The most powerful weapon against your daily battles is finding the courage to be grateful anyway.
Gratitude will shift you to a higher frequency, and you will attract much better things.
When gratitude becomes an essential foundation in our lives, miracles start to appear everywhere.
Gratitude is the direct way out of comparison.
It is not happiness that brings us gratitude. It is gratitude that brings us happiness.
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see.
Time is precious and is priceless, so Dan and I will continue each day to pull from a box of 365 inspirational quotes, one quote and share with you.
Today is:
ACTION MAY NOT ALWAYS BRING HAPPINESS; BUT THERE IS NO HAPPINESS WITHOUT ACTION.
Today Dan and I will be continuing the book, Ten-Minute Relaxation, For Mind and Body by Jennie Harding.
Whenever you are feeling under pressure, ten minutes is all you need to relax totally, using tools that are always with you; your senses.
This book is packed full of wonderfully simple ideas and exercises for using sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch and that vital sixth sense of intuition to rebalance your energies and bring you back into harmony with the natural world around you.
Identify your favorite sensory relaxation solutions and combat that stress!
Per Dan and my experience this is another component in keeping ourselves healthy, meditation.
By using your five senses, you can learn to relax in just ten minutes.
CHAPTER 2; THE SENSORY JOURNEY; SMELL
SMELL; TIME CYCLES AND RHYTHMS-
COPING WITH JET LAG.
If you travel long distance on an airplane and have trouble adjusting to time-zone changes, use the aromas to help you.
The morning oils will help you stay awake, and the evening ones will help you relax at times that do not immediately coincide with your internal clock.
MORNING OILS
Rosemary; green, bracing, pungent
Tea tree; fresh, medicinal
Lemon; zesty, clean, bright
Frankincense; uplifting, resiny, sharp
EVENING OILS
Lavender; floral, soft, fresh
Rosewood; sweet, woody, soothing
Ylang-Ylang; floral, jasmine-like sensual
Sweet orange; sweet, soft, citrusy
Tomorrow, AROMATIC SKIN AND HAIR TREATS-
The PHRASE TO REMEMBER; Health is Wealth.
We stand by this and continue to do daily; walk, meditation, and Qigong.
If you would like to follow with us; hash tag words #walk, #meditation #Qigong on the right of the main blog page.
What a precious privilege it is to be alive; to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. #precious#privilege#alive#breathe#think#enjoy#love❤ #gratitude#motivational#inspirational#newbeginnings✨ #positive
Until Monday, when you see something beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad.
For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.
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