EP49: Finding Gratitude in Difficult Times

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

This episode's guest is Gael Wood.  Gael has over 25 years of experience in the massage and spa industry. She has an immeasurable amount of knowledge and expertise in the art of growing and maintaining a thriving massage & spa business and now concentrates on coaching, and teaching in the areas of marketing, business start up, online business creation, customer service and spa services.

Gael was inducted into the World Massage Hall of Fame and featured as a Massage Magazine All-Star in 2019. She is the co-host and co-founder of the Global Wellness Professionals Marketing Summits and creator of the Massage and Spa Marketing Content Clubs, Author of 10 eBooks, over 40 Online courses, and the Elevate Mastermind. Gael is the author of The Gratitude Habit Journal 30 Days of Gratefulness During Difficult Times. In this episode Gael shares her story and how she built her gratitude habits. 

Follow Us:

Website: LessStressinLife.com/podcast/

Stay tuned for more conversations with Deb, Susie, and Lindsay as they empower you to live well, manage stress, and build a thriving, healthy life!

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Barb Fletcher, Gael Wood, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the less stress in life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best.

Barb Fletcher  00:22

Hello, everyone. I'm Barb Fletcher. Welcome to our series of 52 practical tools for less stress in life. This is episode 49.

Deb Timmerman  00:33

Hi, I'm Deb Timmerman. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies to help you move from being stressed to feeling your best. Today, our guest is Gael Wood. She has over 25 years of experience in the massage and spa industry. She has an immeasurable amount of knowledge and expertise in the art of growing and maintaining a thriving massage and spa business and now concentrates on coaching, and teaching in the areas of marketing, business startup, online business creation, customer service and spa services. Gael was inducted into the world massage Hall of Fame and featured as a Massage Magazine All Star in 2019. She's the cohost and co founder of the global wellness professionals, marketing summits and creator of the massage and spa marketing content clubs. She's authored 10 eBooks over 40 online courses, and is the creator of Elevate Mastermind. She's also the author of The Gratitude Habit Journal 30 Days of Gratefulness during Difficult Times, which is what we're going to talk about today. Welcome, Gael.

Gael Wood  01:38

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and talk about gratitude.

Barb Fletcher  01:41

Can you share with us a little bit about what motivated you to write the book about gratitude?

Gael Wood  01:47

Yes, so actually, the pandemic, I had started a gratitude journal at some point on my computer, and then the pandemic hit. And I thought, you know, this would probably be a really good time to put something like this out. And that's what motivated me to finish it up and to share more of my story and not just journaling prompts. So it turned into a whole book at that point. But it is based on a time in my life where I was so stressed out and had so much anxiety, I couldn't sleep, you know, when you don't sleep that affects every part of your life, just had continual stress for a period of really months. And I just started realizing that gratitude would call my entire system down. So, I thought you know what a book like this could certainly help a lot of people to experience the benefits of gratitude and hopefully create their own gratitude practice.

Deb Timmerman  02:46

When we met to talk before the podcast that we're doing today, you talked about how you were feeling these very uncomfortable feelings in your body. Can you tell listeners what that was like for you and what your experience was a feeling that stress in your body,

Gael Wood  03:03

I felt completely overwhelmed and my heart would be pounding would get short of breath. And just it was like, just a heavy feeling of like, of dread. Either way to explain it, my future felt very uncertain. And that is a stressful situation to be in the thoughts of, I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know how this is going to work out, or that's going to work out or having to pay my bills and all of those things. Those thoughts create the feelings in your body?

Deb Timmerman  03:35

How did you make that shift of connecting what you felt in your body with knowing that you needed to make a change, to calm that from what I remember our chat, it was very intuitive to you.

Gael Wood  03:47

It kind of was one night I was just lying there wide away thinking am I am I normally here half the night again. And I thought you know what, I don't know. I just somehow said I need to stop this. I need to think of things to be grateful for. And I started thinking of any little thing I could grasp onto to be grateful thing like random stuff, like I have shoes to wear, the more I thought of things to be grateful for the more I realized how much in my life was not that this one area was kind of crappy, but had hundreds and hundreds of things to be grateful for.

Barb Fletcher  04:22

How did you sustain that focus throughout the day, we're bombarded with all kinds of stimuli. Sometimes it's more difficult to stay in that space of gratitude.

Gael Wood  04:35

Oh, it definitely is kind of just had to work with myself and train myself. And over a few weeks and a few months, every time I started feeling stressed. I was like, Oh, it started to mean to my mind and my body like oh, we're stressed out. Now is when we look for things to be grateful for. And so that's why I call my book The Gratitude Habit because it actually just became a habit that I didn't even think about anymore. It did take a little while at first I had to consciously be like, Okay, I'm awake, let me think of 10 things to be grateful for before I get out of bed and I'd actually count them on my fingers. But then it became a habit. And I started noticing more and more like, throughout my day, like, oh, I can find something to be grateful for in this situation. And I can find something to be grateful for at work when my client didn't show up, well, okay, but I have more time to eat my lunch, and then call my daughter. So, I kept looking for stuff.

Deb Timmerman  05:33

For those of you who are watching on Facebook Live, you could see that Gail made a very conscious display of counting those gratitude’s on her fingers, and actually grounded herself in that thought, if you're listening, you would have missed that. But that's a huge piece is in getting the mind and the body to unite and think. And what you're describing is that you have to be first totally aware of what's going on. And then you had to make a choice, you could either sit in that space of feeling uncomfortable, or if you change that focus and got to the things that really weren't good in your life, it really changed your thinking. And those habits you've said built over time. How long before you started to see results?

Gael Wood  06:19

Oh, well, I mean, the results of being able to sleep better, were immediate. And so I would think of things to be grateful for I correlated to counting sheep. Instead of counting sheep, I counted things to be grateful for, until I drifted off. I use gratitude to distract myself from thinking about anything. That was stressful. But I would say, Lee a few months of being really consistent trying to catch myself and say, Okay, let's shift that energy. Let's turn our focus to gratitude. And now it's, I would say it's my general disposition. I mean, we all have days and times when we're not painful, of course. But I usually can find five things to be grateful for, especially if I catch myself.

Barb Fletcher  07:05

So, you spoke about sleep being a big one. Were there other things, other experiences in your body or experiences around you that you noticed, when you were making this shift? I think

Gael Wood  07:18

it changes so many things, when you're in that place of despair, people are going to react to you differently when you're in a place of gratitude shines through. So, I don't I can't think of anything specific. But I do believe that it helps me be at work and all throughout the day. So the stressful situation is I was separated from my husband. And we did end up reconciling, we're still together, it worked out. And so I don't know how much maybe my gratitude practice had to do with that. And me being able to shift my perspective on some of the problems we were having even

Barb Fletcher  07:53

I've certainly had a similar experience. And when we're depleted, and it doesn't really matter how somebody behaves or reacts or changes. It's still never going to be a good fit. It's always an inside job first, isn't it? 

Gael Wood  08:10

Yes, definitely.

Deb Timmerman  08:11

What would you say to the people who are naysayers about gratitude? I hear sometimes I don't have time for that, or that's just whoo, whoo.

Gael Wood  08:22

Well, I would say they haven't tried it, don't knock it till you try. And you have to try it more than once. More than like, oh, I wrote a few things to be grateful about at one time, and I didn't feel any difference. I think you have to, you have to give it a good college, try, you know, do it for a few weeks and get out of your like, we all can say the same things every day. So I started looking for like more different and unusual things to be grateful for. Like, okay, my car won't start, how could I be grateful for this? You know, I'm going to be late for work. I'm going to have to probably pay money to get my car fixed. How can I be grateful right now. And so, to me, it was almost got to be like a fun challenge, to find things to be grateful for. There are all kinds, you know, like, I have a car. That's something to be grateful for.

Deb Timmerman  09:15

Yeah. And if that's happening at home. How grateful Are you that it didn't happen when you're on the highway or you get stranded someplace? So it's really about shifting that perspective in that mindset.

Gael Wood  09:27

And then I have a phone and make the call with and that I guess I'll have six months ago bought AAA, I can be grateful to her. I just think if somebody doesn't think gratitude works, they haven't tried it enough. They haven't really played around with it. And I think to find kind of our own path with things like gratitude. You know, we all have different dispositions and different ways that that we work and function so it definitely doesn't have to be writing in a journal. Some people aren't big journal errs. I mean, I will often in my morning journaling, jot down things that I'm grateful for but I wouldn't necessarily have to do any writing.

Deb Timmerman  10:04

So you mentioned a gratitude practice or writing in your journal. What else do you do to keep yourself in that mindset throughout the day?

Gael Wood  10:11

I still in the evenings when I'm going to sleep, I think of things to be grateful for. So that's just kind of remained a habit and even thinking like, okay, hitting it from different angles, like, what could I be grateful for that happened today, or thinking of something that maybe went wrong and trying to find something to be grateful for him that? Well, I got to learn that lesson. Again, as I go throughout my day, just checking in and saying, you know, what can I be grateful for in this moment in this time, and what I think it does to that is especially powerful is it helps you to not focus on or sweat the small stuff, when you're in a place of gratitude, you're not going to worry about little things somebody said or that maybe you made dinner for your family, and some of it didn't turn out, right, because you're just going to be grateful for that you were able to get together with your family, and have that experience at all.

Deb Timmerman  11:06

So, take us through some of the journal prompts in that 30 days. What does that look like?

Gael Wood  11:13

Being grateful for the things about yourself that you perceive to be flaws. being grateful when you're having maybe feeling lonely. Being grateful when you make mistakes? It's so easy to beat ourselves up,

Deb Timmerman  11:17

You were gracious enough to send us a copy of the eBook. Thank you for that. I love to the questions and the different perspectives. So, I think people teach gratitude from the simpler things. And I love what you did to help us think outside the box and think bigger about gratitude, than just those little things. And I thought you did a great job on this. So for somebody who's looking to start a gratitude practice, Gil's book would be wonderful because you could do it in 30 days, or you could slow it down. And you could spread that out over time, because there's a lot of meat in it. So if you're looking to start a gratitude practice, I would highly recommend that it's a great place for you to write and deposit stuff, but have something fixed. So you don't feel so overwhelmed about, oh, gosh, what do I need to decide today, there are great prompts in there to help you really stay on your page

Gael Wood  12:19

It also has a prompt, and then a list. I love lists. I'm a big list maker. So thinking of 10 things like this has 10 reason I'm reasons I'm grateful to be exhausted. And I find that you're trying to come up with a 10 is, you know, it's a great workout for your brain to take you places that you might not expect. So and then realize things like maybe you realize through this journaling prompt that, gosh, you really do need to I don't know, get a checkup or take a me day or something like that. So hopefully it kind of takes you on a bigger type of journey.

Barb Fletcher  12:58

It's a valuable contrast to how we perceive gratitude and one of the challenges that many faced during the pandemic, people found it difficult to find the optimism, the potential, the connectedness, that may have come and spent their time perhaps more focused on things that weren't necessarily available to them. And my husband and I actually spent a good amount of time listing all of those things that were richer in our lives because of that experience, as opposed to those that we felt perhaps we didn't have quite as much. And that exercise has shifted the conversation moving forward about that event that continues to influence our lives.

Gael Wood  13:54

I think most of us lost some things during the pandemic, some things that were important to us and really care that we really cared about. But yeah, like you said, we can also look at how much the areas where we gained.

Deb Timmerman  14:08

The world has changed in some ways for the positive because of that. I think even using this as an example where people come together and collaborate, over zoom. We didn't do so much of that then and now just in a couple of years, we're doing telehealth, we're doing all kinds of projects. I mean, Barb and I have never physically met in person. All of what we've done has been collaborating over zoom. And that was a little oddity, but now it's more than norm. Right? It happens a lot.

Barb Fletcher  14:42

And messages like your scale are now easier to share with a broader audience because of this technology.

Gael Wood  14:54

Yes, thank you for letting me share. I'm so excited.

Deb Timmerman  14:58

So for the last month We have been focusing on bringing guests and sharing how gratitude has really showed up in our lives and our gratitude practices. And we're going to wrap that up now. So, Gael is our final guest talking about gratitude., but gratitude shouldn't only be in one month. We need to be looking at something to be grateful for every day. So, our challenge to you is to keep going with that gratitude practice, whatever you've started, and if you haven't started a gratitude practice, really looking at the materials that we've presented. The brain science, the things that have happened in people's lives because of gratitude. How they've changed, and hopefully motivate you to reframe your thinking and figure out how to weave gratitude into your daily habits. So Gael, if they want to get your book or connect with you, wherever they find you?

Gael Wood  15:57

Yes, so my website is elevate with gale.com. And Gael is GAEL. And on my website, you can buy the eBook, which comes with a couple of bonuses. And if you want the print book that's on Amazon, and you can just search for Gael Wood.

Deb Timmerman  16:16

What final words would you give or advice about somebody who wants to start a gratitude practice and isn't quite committed?

Gael Wood  16:24

I would say try it. Do your own challenge., Try it for 30 days, maybe even set of phone reminder. Three times a day for 30 days, do your 10 things. Use your fingers to do 10 things. And you know, it may not be for everybody, I don't know. But I would say give it enough of a try that you can really know.

Deb Timmerman  16:48

Well, thank you so much for being our guest today. Barb, do you want to give a little preview about what's coming in December?

Barb Fletcher  16:55

So we're going to be talking about the stress around the holidays, whether it's relationships, could be about clutter. We're going to get a good sense of some strategies to catapult us into 2023.

Deb Timmerman  17:13

So, until next time, we'll say goodbye. See you next week.

Gael Wood  17:18

Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome.

Deb Timmerman  17:23

Less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com. That's less stress in life.com