“Living Well” podcasts from Strengthen focus particularly on habits, activities and lifestyle choices. Drawing on evidence-based (that’s science backed) knowledge and techniques, Andrea shares how these blend with, and support, strengthening lifestyle practices encouraged in scripture. Paid subscribers receive these regularly and can access the growing archive of podcasts here on Substack. Today, this podcast is open to all readers and listeners, giving you a taste of the “Living Well” podcast series.
Here’s the transcript if you find reading easier today:
Hey there, welcome!
Today's Strengthen podcast is about living well, specifically meeting anxiety with gratitude. Why have I chosen to talk about gratitude today? Well, we have lots of encouragement in the Bible throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament to give thanks - specifically in 1 Thessalonians 5, we're told to give thanks in all circumstances. And in Psalm 95, we're told to come before God's presence with thanksgiving.
Today, I'd like to encourage you and give you some information about gratitude and how it works, and then explain how we can leverage that to help us in our daily lives, specifically when we're experiencing turbulence and anxiety and storms in our life.
Now gratitude is something that scientists and neuroscientists have discovered is uniquely beneficial. It's far and above more effective than many other positive habits that we can do and actions that we can do, and scientists have been quite overwhelmed actually at how gratitude is very distinctive as an activity and very distinctive in the way that it impacts our wellbeing.
It does that on an emotional level, on a psychological level - in our thought processes. It also affects us physically. There are loads of studies about people with physical illness and how developing habits of gratitude and thankfulness help with coping with pain and... coping emotionally within chronic illness. And also gratitude impacts our spiritual life and how we experience our faith and how we experience our relationship with God.
So, gratitude is something that I think is really important not to ignore, because we're literally hardwired in our brain for gratitude to have positive impact in the rest of our body. And scientists, as they've been studying, they can see that, when they do their scans and actually watching what's happening in the brain. They can see what is happening and they can see the impact of being thankful.
Now I said I want to talk to you about meeting anxiety with gratitude, and personally, and there is a lot of evidence that also speaks against this too, I do not believe that we should be going around thanking God and saying that we are grateful for the turbulence or for the terrible things that have been happening in our lives or in the lives of other people. There is a fine difference between saying I'm grateful for this horrible thing and actually changing that and saying well I'm grateful for what God may be doing in me during this time, but obviously not thankful for the adversity. It's really, really important - it's very toxic to actually start thanking for the actual storm. And scripture doesn't tell us to do that.
In 1 Thessalonians we're told, give thanks in all circumstances. It doesn't say for all circumstances. It just says that when we're in difficult circumstances and also when we're in good circumstances, to remember to be thankful.
Now, obviously when the Bible was written, they couldn't see inside our brains like the neuroscientists nowadays. So they only knew from habit and from reports of people who practised gratitude. They only knew from doing that this was actually effective. And nowadays, here we are in our world with so many scientific things that back everything up. And we've got evidence as well to show that giving thanks and developing a habit of gratitude makes a difference in our lives.
I mentioned Psalm 95 where it says come before his presence with thanksgiving. And I want to just encourage you today and say that if you have circumstances in your life where you're longing for the presence of God to come and invade them, if you have difficulties and things that you're struggling with and you think “God come and invade this situation with your presence”, then I'd like to encourage you to begin thanking God - even within that situation. Just a reminder not for the situation but just pump up that gratitude.
So why is this important? One of the beneficial things about gratitude that scientists have discovered is that gratitude and thankfulness broaden our perspective. Now when we're in a storm, when we're in challenging times, when we're experiencing anxiety, what happens is our focus really hones in on the difficult emotions or the difficult circumstances. It's like we have a micro focus, but gratitude is macro. So it broadens and it enlarges. And when we practice gratitude, it broadens your perspective on your whole life. So you're not just focusing in on the thing that is causing anxiety. You're not just focusing in on the storm and the adversity, but it begins to put all of those things in perspective.
Now, as Christians, as believers, God's story over our life is the story that matters. And when we're in adversity, it can be hard. And it's challenging to remember that God is good and his goodness is spoken over our lives, and he releases his goodness into our lives. It can be challenging to remember that he is our healer, because we want to see more of it in our life, for example. And so rather than focusing in on the micro difficulty of the situation, when we begin to expand our thinking with gratitude and remember who God is, and the goodness that we do have in our life, we begin to see that he is greater than this moment or this circumstance, this difficulty that causes us anxiety.
Now, I'm not talking about denying anxiety. I'm not saying let's just ignore it and just be thankful and pretend it's not there. I'm just saying that gratitude is a really, really useful and beneficial tool to help us to put things in perspective and to actually say to God: “God, I remember how great you are. Come on, I want your presence to invade this situation in my life”.
So How do we do this in practice? Well, as I've said, we're not talking about thanking God for the actual adversity. There are loads of different gratitude habits. Some of them people have done studies on as if people attributed them to them. But to be honest with you, most of the studies, the activities that have been recorded, are things that people have been doing for centuries anyway. There is a habit that I want to encourage you within the Strengthen community to do which some people call Drop 10. I would like to call it Speak 10. So this is where when you feel yourself starting to get overwhelmed, that you stop, that you breathe, take a moment and you make a conscious decision to interrupt the overwhelm and speak out 10 things that you're grateful for in your life.
In a sense, you're trying to disturb and interrupt the overwhelm, to disconnect from that a little bit and to reconnect with the goodness of God and the good things in your life, just to bring some perspective down. But because gratitude also works on our nervous system, what happens is that as we begin to express gratitude, our dysregulation (so that means when we're a bit out of kilter in our emotions and in our body because of something), becomes more regulated. So the longer that we focus and just meditate a bit or speak out things that we're thankful for, the more that our body begins to regulate and we find that we can just be a little bit calmer and just handle the situation a little bit more easily.
So I'm calling this Speak 10, also because speaking out our gratitude has also been found to be even more effective than just thinking it. So thinking it is great, that works. If you're somewhere where you can't speak it out, don't worry, you can think it. Writing it down is also something that's really effective. But there is a particular effectiveness when we speak it out. Spoken word - we're saying it, we're hearing it as well. And even more effective, if you're with someone and you develop this as a habit within your family or within a relationship, or perhaps you're with someone you're close with and you say, I'm just going to speak 10 and they know what you mean. And you can just start speaking out those 10 things that you're thankful for.
Now let's break it down because things that you can be thankful for don't have to be really big things. They can just be daily things; that your toast wasn't cold this morning by the time you got to eat it or that the sun is actually shining or perhaps the opposite if you live in a land that is barren, that there is actually rain today. It can be small things or it can be big things. And it doesn't have to be things that are in your day right now, if you're being overwhelmed by the day. There might be things you want to look back at. It might be something where you're grateful for people in your life. But if you do this really quickly, you'll find, yeah, there are five things in my life that I'm thankful for. So speak five and then your next five are about God. So you’re going to be thinking about how God has been faithful in your life and remembering that. You're going to be thinking about who you do know God is and thanking him for that.
Try to ground the thanksgiving into specifics that you've experienced and specifics that you know because that's really important as well, that this isn't just an exercise where your head is going off on:“Oh God is faithful, God is thankful, God is my provider, he’s my healer. Don't just reel all that off - but ground these in things that you really know. “Thank you god that you did come through for me that time when I prayed about this and then I saw you do that. Thank you God that I'm saved and I know that you love me. Thank you God that I'm not alone and I know that I have your Holy Spirit with me. These kind of things - really heartfelt - and things that are real to you.
Now I've spoken for a bit longer than I usually do on these podcasts, I try to keep them to less than 10 minutes, but just wanted to encourage you. Try to meet anxiety and overwhelm with gratitude. It's a really great habit to get into and a really good spiritual practice. And the great thing about it is, although you can practise gratitude on a regular basis, a regular time each day, that's cool too, journaling or set an alarm and just think “Right, I'm going to speak 10 now”, it's also something that you can use in the moment to interrupt that downward spiral of negative emotions. If you feel yourself starting to get het up, try this: Try to speak 10 and yeah, come before God's presence with thanksgiving and invite him to invade your turmoil as you give thanks to him.
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Meeting Anxiety With Gratitude