With everything that's transpired in 2020, our mental health dropped us faster than 3rd period French. Raise a glass for depression, anxiety, PTSD, self harm, substance abuse, and more.

But what if I told you that there were some things you could do to help rewire your brain?

One of the biggest weapons we have in situations like these (and everyday life for that matter) is gratitude. Before you write this off as hippie woo-woo stuff, there's loads of neuroscience behind it. Shifting our focus to positive thoughts affects certain neurotransmitters.

There's so much on this topic that it can effectively ease anxiety, depression, grief, and builds emotional fortitude. It can increase your energy, attention, enthusiasm, and productivity.. all of which have taken a huge hit right now. It even affects your physical body ailments.

Gratitude has such a powerful impact because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain cannot easily focus on both positive & negative stimuli at the same time. Your brain also loves confirmation bias, it looks for things that prove what it already believes to be true

So once you start seeing things to be grateful for, your brain starts to look for more, and the virtuous cycle continues. This is the key of emotional fortitude. Conversely, negativity does the same thing, so the more you doom scroll, the more doom you're going to look for. Ouch

Gratitude sounds great, right? Well it's not as easy as just saying "I'm grateful for..." and going back to your life. It takes work to repattern your thoughts. You have to be dedicated to keeping up on the practice, which is a challenge when things feel bleak. Structure helps!

Gratitude journals, both daily and weekly, gratitude assessments and mindfulness, meditation, and most of all-- working gratitude into your communication with others are all excellent methods. A quick Google search will yield many suggestions for gratitude exercises.

But the one I'm implementing, to which I challenge you to as well, is to post something daily that you're grateful for. Build that muscle with a daily practice! Tag #mentalfortitude #wepersevere #gratefulsexwork and me, so l see it.