Structuring the Mind: Gratitude Vs Complaint

I will make this as quick as I can and will tell you all the ways that you actually physically change the size of the material of your brain when you complain versus when you practice gratitude. Complaining is very familiar to me.. However I have learned that it shrinks the same place in your brain that Alzheimer's does. The hippocampus is the part of your brain that controls your decision making, your emotions as well as your thought, long term and short term memory. It also creates a topic on your neuro pathways. The more you complain the easier it becomes in your brain to do so. That means it's literally easier to complain, to find things annoying. While your brain is doing all that, it is raising your stress hormone cortisol which it will need to seek out some kind of happy emotions. When you complain to someone and you vent that's going to create serotonin your “happy hormone.” You will be going to search for that more and look for things to complain about.

The structuring begins, the more you complain, the more you complain.

Now let's practice some gratitude. First and foremost it increases the gray matter in your brain and you want that, that's good. Your hormones are going to release the serotonin and dopamine, which are the happy hormones and the “get up and go” feeling, the “drive hormone.” You can basically think of those two as anti-cortisol, that stress hormone we were talking about and the root of this conversation here; the more you practice gratitude, the more it restructures your brain to find gratitude and to find the beauty and the happiness in life and in situations. You are structuring your brain to get easier to be grateful again, to release the serotonin and dopamine so your brain wants to be grateful again and again.

Just like complaining, the cycle continues. If you complain a lot you are restructuring your brain to want to find things to complain about even more doing the same thing that Alzheimers does.

If you start practicing that gratitude on the other hand you are going to grow the gray matter in your brain which is very good for sustaining your life and its going to increase your serotonin and dopamine and of course the opposite is also true it is going to structure your brain to trust and find happiness in gratitude in more situations. Kind of a trip right

It is amazing how we can literally change the structure of our brains.

As above so below.