175. The Science of Gratitude: Boosting Mental, Physical, and Emotional Well-Being

Do you wonder how much wisdom our ancestors have and our amazement later on when you find out how much scientific proof. Really comes out of all of their habits that they did. Well, this episode is all about Thanksgiving and why it is so amazing for us to have a practice of gratitude. Not only for our mental, but also our physical wellness.

My name is Dara Thomason and I am the quilters coach. And this is episode 175 Thanksgiving for mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. With scientific proof. All right. Welcome to this episode. So to my wonderful American friends. This is coming out on Thanksgiving day. I thought that would be so fun. Um, in Canada, we do celebrate Thanksgiving, but we celebrate it on the second Monday of the month of October.

So we’ve already had our Thanksgiving. And, um, so I thought it’d be really fun to look at the history of Thanksgiving. And why. It is so important to do. Acts of gratitude and to even have a whole festival around it. But before we go into the meat of the episode, I wanted to share. A win. In my membership, because talking about gratitude and wins, I think that the more we can do. I direct our mind to the positive. And to all that. The goodness. The more that we can live a more balanced life. And one of the things that I believe so strongly in is when you learn how to accept the good and the bad you have a more balanced life.

And I am what I would call a nonconformist or a non-traditional weight loss coach, because we don’t really focus so much on calories or counting, tracking all of that. We really work on getting to the root of the issue. Learning how to feel our feelings, because really what we have is an under feeling problem.

So when we don’t know how to work with our emotions, We overeat. We overspend, we over, um, act, we exhaust ourselves, we do all these things. Um, and then we start feeling resentment and we over, we have all this over. You know, we have debt and then we have all this extra weight that we’re carrying around on our body. So this one is actually from one of my clients who attended my in-person retreat.

I do a very small exclusive in-person retreat once a year. And is this a really amazing way for me to connect with my clients and to, um, give them that opportunity of what it feels like to do a deep dive into their own personal growth. And I just finished an interview with one of them. So it’s really fresh in my mind. And the thing that really impressed me was what she said. Was that as she went to the retreat and this is only her second time going. She saw.

That in the past, she was so disconnected from, um, her life as a child.

And there was so much negative. And as she’s been able to work through. You know that. Past child self and the future self. She was able. To look at. Her life and making peaceful connections, peaceful. Like it was, she felt peace. And as you see, the name of my membership is now the peaceful heart, a peaceful heart. Membership. And it’s kind of a play on words because, you know, in quilting we pieced together. Life, but then of course we have the P E a. C E F w what we really want to feel is peace and calm. And so what she said was that. In the past, she couldn’t really go to the positive that was happening in her life. Because so much of what happened was so negative and she never really knew how to work through

it. And she has so much more wisdom now. And when I asked her, “Is it worth it to go to the retreat and spend the money and put yourself in that vulnerable place?” Like level of vulnerability. Her answer was yes, it’s worth it because I value myself. Her relationships with her family and friends, her quality of life. And then she said you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And I love what she said next.

It’s worth it for yourself. Because now she, everywhere. She goes, people see what a difference. Um, her attitude. The ways that she shows up for herself, all of that is just so much more. Um, at peace, she’s so much more aligned with who she really wants to be. She’s more fun. She can go with the flow so much easier and she just loves being her. And so if that feels like something you want for yourself, I w I. I’m by you. To come on a breakout call with me. And to really look at what it takes to create that kind of change in your life because it’s completely 100% possible for you. Okay. So in the, also in the month of no. Uh, the month of October of 20, 24 inside my membership, we did a deep dive into gratitude and the science of gratitude. And we looked at four different aspects.

We looked at gratitude and, um, mental health, gratitude and weight loss, gratitude, overall well being and gratitude. There’s one more focus. And we looked at these studies and we really dove deep into what happens when you create. An awareness and you assign your brain time. To be grateful. And so I thought that was really interesting.

And, and by the way, inside my membership, all the calls that we do are all recorded. So whenever you want to join, you can always go to those deep dives that we do every month and you can watch all those videos. They’re all available for you. There. And so I was thinking about Thanksgiving and this practice of, um, really looking at. Aye. I am so grateful for this harvest.

I’m so grateful for everything that all this hard work that I was able to do. It was kind of, even me doing all these interviews with the women that attended my retreat. ’cause, it was kind of like the harvest of all the work that I did to prepare for the retreat and everything, and to hear their testimonials and to hear that wonderful experience.

It’s really nice for me. Uh, as a business owner to just let myself feel so grateful for all that I did to make it so amazing. It’s kind of like the after Christmas, you know, You’re like, oh, I created such a fun experience for my kids or for myself and giving yourself that credit. It feels, it feels really nice.

And I think a lot of us could do a lot better at allowing that for ourselves. So I wanted to ask the question and I dove into it. We’re going to get into it in this episode. Why do you think our ancestors established an entire festivity around Thanksgiving? Now I’m going to share my screen because of good old Google. But it was really interesting. Um, so if you’re on YouTube, you can see this.

If not, you can just Google it yourself. But, um, I thought it was interesting. So now look at the Canadian Thanksgiving. Um, a lot of historians believe that our first in Canada, our first Thanksgiving was in 1579 after Martin Frobisher and his fleet landed in Newfoundland.

Which is on the east coast. And so we talk about them having this, and then several years later, the French settlers having crossed the ocean. And they came with Samuel de Champlain in 1604.

Held festive Thanksgiving. And. It was interesting. They formed what’s called the order of good cheer. Don’t you want to be part of that club? The order of good cheer. Um, and so, and they held a feast with the first nation neighbours and they shared their food with them. And so there’s, uh, there’s this, uh, history of, of having these celebrations. During the American revolution, American refugees who remained loyal to Great Britain, they came to Canada and they had, they brought their customs, uh, the American Thanksgiving like Turkey, pumpkin, and squash. And so you can see that this is happening now. I also, so it wasn’t until, um, there became a national holiday in 1879. So that’s really interesting.

Now in the American account of Thanksgiving, I thought this was really interesting. So of course the pilgrims, they held their second Thanksgiving in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought. But before that, um, I thought. This was fascinating.

Because our ancestors came from.

We have this European influence. And this historical influence. And

Oh, yeah.

So in Europe, there were, and, and Greece and all these places, they have these long traditional celebrations of. A feast to celebrate the harvest. So this has been happening for centuries now.

Oh, here we go. Yes. So in ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans feasted, and paid tribute to their gods after a fall harvest. So Thanksgiving also bears a resemblance to the ancient Jewish harvest festival Sukkot, Sue coat, S U K K O T. I don’t know how I’m pronouncing that correctly. So we brought this along. But this one I thought was interesting.

It’s. I have a little bit of a history buff. I really enjoy history. Um, but thanks to a woman whose name is similar to mine. Her name is.

Hm.

Yeah, here we go. Okay, so thanks to this woman. Her name is Sarah Joseph, a. Hail. And she was the one who wrote Mary had a little lamb. And in 1827. So she was a magazine editor and a prolific author. And she had to campaign. To establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. So for 36 years, she published numerous editorials. It sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents, and other politicians. Earning the nickname of mother of Thanksgiving. So I thought that was really interesting.

So, you know, that kind of goes with the theme I have of.

Like you, the reason we do this work is because we want to improve ourselves and we also want to improve everyone around us. So thanks to this, um, to Sarah. She was able to really advocate to have this amazing holiday where we set time aside to have that gratitude. Now, one of the things that I like to think about is truth is truth is truth. And so when you, um, go to all these different religions, it’s so fascinating to see similarities.

So when we talk about fasting, for example, Pretty much, every religious tradition has some version of fasting. So it’s some way for us to put aside that carnal physical nature and commune more with our spiritual side. Um, we also have different truths like the golden rule, for example, do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.

If you went into any, um, religious or cultural belief, there are some versions of that in there. And the reason I’m bringing this up. Is that. We all have our own inner truth. My belief is when we were born, we were all a hundred percent worthy. And we know ourselves best because we’ve, we’re the only one who have lived our life. So even if you live with, you know, I grew up with my siblings, right.

They. My sister, we shared our room pretty much. You know, our first 18 years, well, I’m two years older than her, but we shared a room for a very long time. And we have a very different way of thinking of things. We have different personalities, we have different, um, parenting styles.

She’s really artistic and super creative. In, uh, she does clay and glass blowing and pottery, and she does really funky, cool stuff. And I’m more traditional like artists with fabric and quilting. And I have a very different way about me. And so we’re all uniquely ourselves. And the main. The emphasis of this podcast. Is that there are truths everywhere. And so even though our ancestors. Even going back to Greece and these ancient civilizations, they intuitively knew. That it was important to give gratitude. During a harvest. And so my question for you is. What are the things that you know about you? That you are not allowing yourself to share. And it was interesting as I was inter sharing the wind from today. As I have. Being able to, I have a bird.

I have a very close view of this client of mine because not only was she, uh, she in the membership. But I have the true honor of being her one-on-one coach since the end of 2020. And so I’ve been able to watch. Her truly becoming who she really is. And it’s like, she’s shedding. You know, we talk about, um, we build this wall around us. And so sometimes when I’m coaching people, I’ll say, okay, I think we just got a door. I think we just built a door in the, in the armor of this big, giant wall that you’ve created around yourself. And I think that you’re ready to give the key to somebody. Right. Uh, or maybe some people were like, we have three layers of armor and we’ve, we’ve taken one of them down.

Or maybe we reduce the height of the fence, uh, to try to protect us. Now it makes sense that we are trying to protect ourselves. There are people out there. Who are not kind. There are people, especially trolls online. Personally, that is a big fear of mine. That. And I’ve had people say, you know, they haven’t agreed with what I’ve said. And that is, that’s something, you know, you’re being vulnerable and you’re sharing things. You know, even my

religion, there’s people who don’t agree with my religion, even me having five children, some people think that’s ridiculous. Right.

We’re all super different. And, but we all. It makes sense to be a little bit afraid of other people, having different opinions on how we live our life. And so. The goal for me though, is to help you. Two. Truly become your best advocate for you and to become your own best friend. And the only way that you can do that is to really learn. Is to really learn. How to be you. And so as I watched my clients, they start wearing, maybe they start wearing more bright clothes. Maybe they start having funkier classes.

Maybe they start, um, doing more things for themselves and they stop volunteering for everything and everyone, maybe they, um, go on their own vacation. They just feel better if they’re like that, they just allow themselves to be. More and more who they really want to be. And so. As we see with Thanksgiving, there is a knowing. They didn’t have all these scientific studies.

They didn’t know. That scientifically speaking, it’s really important to celebrate. And have a day or have his time set aside to celebrate the harvest. There was no scientific person saying that there also wasn’t any internet that they could Google and say, what is the best way to, you know, feel better? No, they just had this inner knowing. And so my invitation for you is to really go inside of yourself. And ask yourself, what is my inner knowing about me? So, for example, I am, I love building community.

It’s really important to me. My aunts, my great grandfathers. They came from.

Far away. And they established these small towns in Alberta. And like my, my, both of my great grandpa’s, uh, my mom’s side and my dad’s side.

Wait a minute. So my great grandpa is on my mom’s side. Okay. I’m great. My grandfather, his father came from Scotland to Canada and then out to the small town and he was the mayor. He started the whole town. He sold all of the equipment. He built that town basically from scratch my dad’s grandfather, his father, his father was a soldier who was sent from Scotland to Canada.

And he was a military soldier in Halifax. His mom died when he was 14 and his dad got remarried and he didn’t. He didn’t cope very well. So he hopped on a plane, a. He hopped on a train and then a bunch of hobos paid, paid off the train. Driver and said, oh, I’ll give this kid a chance. And my grandpa. I landed in a small little town called Clare’s home Alberta, and he literally helped build the ice rink, the baseball diamond. And I, and he used to entertain every Saturday night. My mom’s grandma, my mom, my grandma’s father, he and his brothers brought sheep all the way from Sweden.

And they went to Utah and then they brought their sheep up from Utah to Alberta. They dug ditches. And as many miles of ditches they dug, they got a certain amount of land. And so they also built this tiny town from scratch and they, so I have these deep connections.

Uh, building a community of helping people. So for me to build my membership, it’s like a, it’s like inside of me.

It’s something that not everyone has that same drive and not everyone needs to. But my question for you is if you are not feeling like you’re living the life that you truly want to live. Chances are it’s because you’re not going inside of you and learning. What makes you. Special. And what makes you tick and what makes you feel the most?

Is it possible? And I don’t need to be my sister and my sister doesn’t need to be me or my brothers. We’re all super unique and different. And the more that we can come inside of ourselves and celebrate who we really are and like the gone into that inner knowing. The more we shine, the more that the world around us. Um, benefits. So just like every day I have the privilege and honor. Of being this community’s coach. I am able to help them to learn how to do that. The tools that I teach, help you to become who you truly are meant to be.

So if you feel like you’re ready for that, my invitation is there. Come and see. Come and join. Give yourself that gift, this client that I’m talking about, she just turned 71. And she’s, she’s saying you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

She knows what she’s talking about. And so I am bold in my invitation. And I’m so glad that others. Before me, other coaches were bold and inviting me to look at myself because had I not had that nudge, I would not be. Having the amazing life that I have, I would still be hiding. I would still be, um, feeling of hiding behind perfectionism, hiding behind.

I shoulda, coulda, woulda, and I wouldn’t truly be living the life I have. And I want that for you. I do have one amazing thing. A week is coming up at the beginning of December, where we’re going to have a deep dive into how to create your best Christmas, your way. And I want you to register for it. You will not regret it.

All right. I will take, um, take care. Bye.

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