The Science of Gratitude & 6 Surprising Ways You’re Getting It Wrong

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What is it? Well, we're going to talk about the difference between genuine gratitude, the kind that you and I need to be practicing the kind of gratitude that really improves your life and toxic gratitude. Now, believe it or not, I was very surprised to learn in researching this show that there are six forms of toxic gratitude. And another thing that I was very surprised to learn is that I engage in all six of them didn't even realize it. And so in unpacking these six ways that we use gratitude in a toxic manner, it's kind of like toxic positivity. But this goes even a layer deeper. You're going to, I think, have a couple epiphanies about your own behavior or the behavior of other people. And the reason why you should care about this is because genuine gratitude is one of those things that you and I need in our toolkit.

 

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And if we're doing it wrong or we're engaging in toxic gratitude, we are not getting the benefit of genuine gratitude. We are also using something that could be a force for good to be a force for bad stuff to happen in your life. And so we're going to end that today. And the way that we're going to begin the conversation though is we're going to begin with a story, okay? Because this morning was fricking crazy. I came down to New York City yesterday and stayed the night because I am really excited that the Mel Robbins podcast was selected by Good Morning America as their podcast of the month. So we come down from southern Vermont, we spend the night in a hotel. I am sound asleep, and at 3 48 in the morning, the fricking fire alarm goes off in the hotel and it's so loud. It's like, and my first thought was, is it already six 30?

 

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That's the time that I had set my alarm for. And then I realized, oh my gosh, it's the fire alarm. And in my elementary school education, we went through fire drills so often, I don't know why we did, but there were constant fire drills. And how many times did you have to stop, drop and roll? I literally thought stop, drop and rolling was going to be a skill that I would use all the time in my adult life. So immediately, elementary school, Mel takes over and it's as if the principal was coming over the loudspeaker and the hotel management is like Attention. Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Amy (03:22):

We have detected that the fire alarm is going off. We are investigating the New York City Fire Department is on its way. Please stay in your room and await further instructions.

 

Mel Robbins (03:38):

Who on earth is going to stay in their damn room when that is happening at 3:48 AM in a high rise hotel in New York City? Well, I'll tell you, Mel Robbins certainly is not. So I scramble around my hotel room and these days I sleep naked because I'm constantly having hot flashes. And so I'm soaking wet because I've soaked through the bedsheets and I'm trying to find my tights. Thankfully, I had laid out my exercise tights. I pull them on, I pull on a t-shirt without a bra, I put on my sneakers, I put on my favorite necklace and I run out of my door. Now, I do not get in the elevator because I have had training as an elementary school student that if you're ever in a fire in a building with an elevator, you do not get into the elevator. So I go down eight flights of stairs and I push open the door, and when I push open the door to the lobby, I startle the gentleman that is working at the front desk.

 

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He's like, and I was surprised there wasn't already a party down there. As I was going down the stairs, I was thinking, I'm going to be late. There's going to be a ton of people down there. We're all going to be in robes and PJs, and I got to get down there and I'm not smelling smoke, but I get down there, I am the only person in the lobby, the only one out of an entire New York City hotel. There is one person in the entire hotel who has decided to leave their room, and it is Mel Robbins, the firetruck show up. And as the firetruck show up, it was really cute, a family of six they had gotten up to, because they had their kids in strollers, and I could tell they had gotten up in a hurry because shirts were inside out and their shoes, when you put your shoes on really quickly and you have to slide your feet in and you stamp your heel down and they flatten your shoes, so they become almost like mules instead of sneakers. All six of them had on shoes like that. And then as the fire truck, the firemen start walking in a second couple come down, tourists from Australia. And it was at that moment that we heard the manager go, attention, attention. This is the hotel manager. Everything is okay. It's a false alarm. Thank you for your patience.

 

(05:49):

Goodnight ladies and gentlemen.

 

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And that was it. So I get into the elevator and I look in the mirror in the elevator, and you know what? It's now like 4 0 6. I'm wearing my exercise tights not only inside out but backwards. So the label is right on my stomach facing out, and my t-shirt is inside out and backwards. Thankfully, nobody was in the lobby to notice. So I go back to bed. Now what happens next? Well, my alarm goes off at six 30, but I'm such a daze that I don't even know if I heard it. I don't know if I heard it and turned it off. I didn't even remember waking up. And then I wake up again and it is 6 55 and I realize, oh my God, I have registered for a pure bar class and it starts in five minutes. And Amy, who is my colleague, is probably waiting for me in the lobby.

 

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And so I immediately pull on my clothes. It is now 6 57. I see Amy has texted me, are you coming? I then text her, I'm running, hold a spot, grab me socks, and I go out the door. Now I am panicking. And here's why. Have you ever been to a bar class? A bar class is a very unique animal because typically if you are late to a bar class, you are treated as though you have been cut from a New York City ballet tryout. How dare you show up? Very strict, very precise. And so oftentimes a lot of the studios have a very strict and precise staff. And so I'm sprinting down the street in my clothing. I got to run to New York City blocks, and I am not in any kind of running shape whatsoever. So I'm sweating. I'm huffing and puffing. I'm imagining a scenario where I roll into class five minutes late, the person at the front desk, Holt, who goes there, no one goes in class, not you don't be late.

 

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And so I'm going anyway, I'm going to try. I really want to exercise because it's going to help me do better on Good Morning America this morning. And it's a big morning. And so I am huffing and puffing. I get to the building, I run up the second flight of stairs. I am fully out of shape and about to have cardiac arrest at this point. 

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And we walked toward the studio and he was just so loving. He's like, honey, here's your little, here's your thing. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm just my shoes, ears. Oh, let's put the tennies right here. Oh, and Amy's already got you set up. Do you have a hairband? Do you have a hairband? I forgot a hair. Oh, honey, right here. And he was so calm and he was so grounding and so loving. I mean, I just felt like I was in the hands of somebody divine. And he put his arm around me and walked me into the exercise studio, and there was Amy, and they had set me up, and Amy had even bought me a pair of those sticky socks We had matching rainbow stocks, happy, pride, everybody. I just felt so appreciative and so much love for not only Amy, but Judah who had walked me in with his arm around my shoulder.

 

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I mean, wow, it was the exact opposite of what I had been bracing for. I leave class and I feel so moved by how I was treated, by the energy exchange, by the care and the generosity in his spirit that I had to thank him. And so I walk up to the desk and I say, I am just so grateful for you. You are like a human ray of sunshine. You are warm and you're caring, and you are so generous with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And what I was expressing was genuine gratitude. And so as we were leaving, I stopped by the front desk and I asked him his name and he said it was Judah. And we had this incredible back and forth. And so I wanted to tell you that because what I experienced and what I expressed to Judah this morning is an example of what researchers call genuine gratitude.

 

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And I'm going to unpack what genuine gratitude is according to the research, how you practice it, the common mistakes that we make. And as it happens, I believe in synchronicities. Judah smiled wide, and he said, well, when you walked in, I was busy writing out my gratitude list for the morning, and I do think it's important to spread positivity to be a force for good. And so I have a surprise because he was so cool that I asked him, what are his top three takeaways when it comes to being a force for good and having such calming positive energy? And he has three takeaways for you. So you're going to want to listen all the way to the end so you can hear Judah, the human ray of sunshine, and he's got one practice that is a physical practice that you will love. He has a second technique that I would call a meaningful mantra.

 

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And he has a third technique that will really get you thinking about how to make it personal. And I can't wait for you to hear those three takeaways. 

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And one of the really important takeaways from decades of his research is that gratitude will strengthen every single relationship that you have because gratitude usually requires you to notice how other people or the universe or some higher power or nature, how it is supporting and affirming you. And when you are practicing genuine gratitude in this manner, it has this other benefit. It will literally rewire your brain when you do it correctly. This is based on decades of research and there's a reason why. First of all, the major benefit is you're teaching yourself to scan the world for the positive instead of constantly scanning for the negative. So for example, let's go back to my story. This morning when I was racing late to the bar studio, I was scanning the world for the negative, wasn't I? And what was happening? I was sweating, I was stressed, I was panting and hyperventilating.

 

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I was bracing for the worst, I was probably jacking up my cortisol. I was reaffirming a negative experience which created a negative experience in my body. Genuine gratitude is when you're noticing and appreciating what's happening around you, and that triggers a positive chain of events. There are four different types of neurotransmitters that get stimulated. And here's the thing that's super cool. It stimulates dopamine, which we know is the molecule of motivation. A lot of people talk about it as the happy thing. It has more to do with craving, but we'll talk about that on another episode. Oxytocin, which we know is that feel good hormone. It reduces cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and it also triggers the flow of neurophin. I cannot say this word, neurophin, neuro.

 

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You know what I'm talking about? It's the energy hormone and I cannot say it. Thank you, dyslexia. And what happens when all of these feel good hormones and the neurotransmitters like dopamine, oxytocin, and rein, whatever the heck it's called, you still love me. You feel calmer, you feel brighter, you feel more focused, which in turn makes you feel healthier. It makes you feel happier. It helps with decision making. It helps you with focus. And so there's such a profound chain reaction that happens in your mind. And the second that I started to feel this wave of appreciation toward Judah and how he was taking care of me, I was expressing and feeling genuine gratitude. It did shift how I felt in my body. I did feel calmer. I did start to focus and feel more focused on the positive about the class. I felt a deep level of connection to this person that I had just met seconds ago.

 

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And that is the benefit that is available to you. And there are three specific ways based on the research that you can turn on this incredible genuine gratitude effect in your life. The first one is when you use genuine gratitude to look backwards, so you use it in a past base, and we talk about this a lot on the Mel Robbins podcast, you look backwards at the lessons in your life, right? So you're looking at a negative or challenging or heartbreaking situation. You acknowledge the negative and challenge and heartbreaking thing that happened to you, and then you see how it shaped you and you feel this wave of calm takeover so that the genuine gratitude and the lesson that you see, it's almost like back in the past there was this massive mountain in front of you. And now that you look back with gratitude, you can see that the mountain is behind you and you see everything that you gained from scaling that mountain and you know how hard it was, but you can stand in genuine gratitude now that you look back in the past.

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You can harness genuine gratitude in that moment, not to wipe away the fear, but to help lift you up and balance it out knowing that with the right attitude and with the right actions, you will be able to face this next mountain in front of you and scale it, and it'll be behind you, even though it's going to be a challenge to climb it. That's how you can use it. Now, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about toxic gratitude in particular, and the six different ways that I'm personally guilty of practicing, I don't even know if you practice it, you just engage in toxic gratitude, is because gratitude to me feels like it's reached the jump, the shark moment. And for those of you that may be too young to understand the happy days reference, it just means that something has gone way overboard.

 

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It's no longer in it's out, but gratitude needs to be in genuine gratitude does. But we've gone so far overboard. And you know how I know when you walk into TJ Maxx or HomeGoods or Target for that matter, and there are a bunch of pillows that have gratitude on 'em on the clearance rack, we have all gone way too overboard on the gratitude train. And it also means that we are not doing it correctly because gratitude is a deep, deep, deep experience and it's deeply personal. And I will admit to you, I have in fact bought a pillow off of the clearance rack at Home Goods. Mine did not say gratitude. They said thankful. And I want to explain that for a minute because had they had pillows on sale two years ago that said gratitude, I would've bought the gratitude ones instead of the thankful ones because there's an important difference 

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Alright? So I promise that I would unpack the difference between being thankful versus genuine gratitude. Okay, you ready? So being thankful. Think about this as something transactional that's just sort of on the surface because if you're thankful, it's automatic, it's in the moment and it's sort of like good manners, right? It's almost that you expect someone to be thankful. If somebody, for example, holds the elevator door for you, you're not grateful, you're thankful, you say thanks. And the second the door is closed, you forget that you said thanks. And they forget that you said thanks because they expected you to say thanks because they held the door open. And so there was an expectation that you would thank them for something like that. That is what it means to be thankful. It's transactional, it's automatic, it's momentary. The second you express the thanks emotions are gone, gratitude something else, indifferent, something else, entirely genuine.

 

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Gratitude is when you are deeply moved, when the emotion that you feel, the emotion of appreciation, the emotion of being connected either to another human being or some larger force, that you can't explain the emotion lingers. And the other thing that's important about gratitude is that it's not expected in the moment from anyone else. And oftentimes moments of genuine gratitude, they take you by pure surprise. And the other thing that's so important is that the impact is lasting. It's like a positive energy buzz. And so let's go back to the example this morning with Chuah, I was deeply moved by how kind he was. I was so moved that even when I was in class and my quads were quivering and I was huffing and puffing, as I'm doing this bar class, I was still thinking and feeling this emotion of appreciation for how I was welcomed late into the studio and how I was taken care of.

 

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And when I stopped by the desk and I called Judah a human ray of sunshine, he wasn't expecting that. He smiled wide. He might've been expecting a thank you. But no, I expressed this deep, deep emotion and I think you can tell because this happened just a couple hours ago, I'm still buzzing from the appreciation and the, I guess what you would call the dopamine rush and the oxytocin and the rine or whatever you call that thing. That is the energy drug. It is lingering in me. That's how I know it is genuine gratitude. And there is this connection that happens when you have a situation where you express genuine gratitude, you feel deeply connected to the energy of the other person, and you're going to feel that when you hear the message that Judah has for you and the three takeaways that he has for you about gratitude.

 

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Lemme give you one more example of being thankful versus being grateful. Let's say that you're in an area where there is a huge snowstorm and next door to you, you have an elderly neighbor and you go over in the morning after shoveling your own steps, in your own drive, and you shovel the steps of your neighbor. When you're done shoveling the steps, can we just be honest with one another? You kind of expect a thank you, right? You'd be sort of like me. What a rude person. If they didn't open up the door and say thank you or didn't wander over later and say thank you. That's what I mean by the nature of a thank you. It's transactional. It's expected. You kind of expect it to be something automatic in a moment. That's not how gratitude works. Gratitude is the woman opening the door and coming down and hugging you and putting her hands on your shoulders and looking you in the eye and telling you, the last time somebody shoveled my walk was when my son was alive.

 

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Thank you so much. I'm so grateful that you took care of me this morning. You can feel the fact that she's deeply moved. You can feel the lingering emotion. You didn't expect that, but you now have this lasting kind of buzz feel good thing too, don't you? That is genuine gratitude, and I don't even need to explain the research. When you cultivate those moments for yourself in your day-to-day life, it changes how you move through your day-to-day life. That's why this is such a profound practice. And one of the mistakes that people make when they quote have a gratitude practice is they're really writing down things that they're thankful for. I'm thankful for my health. I'm thankful for my kids. I'm thankful for my job. I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for that. That's not practicing genuine gratitude. Genuine gratitude is something very specific. It is deeply filled with emotion.

 

(26:41):

It is named, it is expressed and it is felt in a lingering way. And so if you're somebody that's writing down three to five things, that's wonderful, but stop writing down the same five things everybody does, which is I'm grateful for my health, I'm grateful for my house. I'm grateful for the blue sky. I'm grateful for this. No, no, no. Make it super specific. I am so grateful for my daughter who always calls me out on the ugly clothing that I wear, even though I hate hearing it in the moment because she wants me to feel and look my best.

 

(27:27):

Wow, that kind of works a little bit, even though it's a very odd example. I say that because my daughter picked out my outfit for Good Morning America, and I kind of second guessed her, but she was right. So I'm sitting here very grateful because I got a lot of compliments on my bell bottom jeans and my red t-shirt that I wore at a good morning America today. And I have a lingering buzz about it. So there's an example, specific example and why. What is it about the thing that you're grateful for? What is the emotion? It conjuress up. That's how you can practice it in the written form by yourself, but just ticking off things you're thankful for. You're not getting the benefit. Now let's go a layer deeper on the negative. Let's talk toxic gratitude. Yes, there is such a thing as toxic gratitude.

 

(28:13):

We've all heard about toxic positivity, right? Toxic positivity is when you basically paint everything with a rosy lens. Got to always be in a good mood, got to always be upbeat, got to always see the bright side of things. And when you engage in toxic positivity, it's just gross because you're minimizing the very real struggles and discrimination and suffering and valid feelings and negative experiences that people have. Toxic gratitude is a slice of toxic positivity, and it's when you use gratitude in a very negative way. And I'm going to walk through the six examples of this after we hear a short word from our sponsors. They allow me to bring all of this to you at zero cost. And so I am very thankful for our sponsors. I'm grateful that you're going to stick around. So I'll see you after the break. Hey, first of all, it's Mel.

 

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I just want to tell you I am genuinely grateful that you are here watching the Mel Robbins podcast on our YouTube channel. And I got to ask you some, could you please subscribe? Don't be sitting here like a thankless freeloader. Please, please, please, I can bring you a new video every single day for free because of the support of our sponsors right now, everybody on the podcast is listening to our sponsors. You're not. But if you subscribe to this show right here, it really helps us with our sponsorship here on YouTube. And if you listen to podcasts, please, please, please subscribe wherever you listen. We're on Spotify, we're on Amazon music everywhere. You listen to podcasts. And now with deep gratitude for real, thank you for doing that. Thank you for supporting me. I really, really, really want to be able to do this to support you.

 

(29:57):

Let's you and I go back to the show. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and today we're talking about genuine gratitude and the six types of toxic gratitude that we all engage in, including yours truly. And here's how we're going to do this. First, I'm going to tell you what all six are, and then I'm going to go one by one and explain them. And I'm also going to share with you the takeaway that you need so that you can stop doing this, okay? And it's all based in the research. You're going to love this. 

(30:47):

The fourth way that gratitude gets toxic is when gratitude is a way to escape uncomfortable emotions that you don't want to feel in yourself. The fifth way that gratitude becomes toxic is when you start pushing positivity on other people because you don't know what to say. So you say something positive. And the final toxic form of gratitude is when you use gratitude as a way to knock yourself down when you're accomplishing something. And so let's unpack them all and then give you the takeaway so that you can empower yourself and not be using gratitude to knock you down. Okay, here we go. Number one, toxic gratitude is when you only focus on the things that are going good in your life, and you are so over-focused