Whole-Body Gratitude 1/4: Begin With Your Focus (feat. Jenna Zint)

We're trying something new this month--an interview with someone I have so much respect for, and I know you as listeners will love hearing her too. It's my life coach and fellow sister in Christ--Jenna Zint!

SHOW NOTES

CONNECT WITH JENNA:

Instagram: @jennazint

Habit Lab podcast

Marriage Lab podcast with Jenna & Aaron Zint

"Scientist vs Judge: Curiosity Over Contempt"--the principle that transformed my life and made me a devoted student of the Zint's teachings.

Schedule a coaching session here.

Benefit from her teaching gifts by purchasing one of her e-courses here.

Victorious Emotions by Wendy Backlund

Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

I already know what you're thinking. Gratitude in November. Ugh, how cliche. Listen, don't turn me off. This month we are gonna go into a much deeper talk than I have heard before about the value of gratitude in your life. We're gonna talk about noticing things to be thankful for, forming habits around it, the brain science. This is not your cliche. Let's be thankful together series. And you guys, someone that I quote often and has been my own life coach on my healing journey for the last year and a half is gonna join us. I am so excited. Hello to all my faithful listeners. I just wanted to jump in real quick and let you know that in practicing learning how to do a podcast with two people, I have learned a lot, which includes sound. So I know that the sound is a little wonky in places in this interview, and I just wanted to let you guys know up front, hang with me. We are trying really hard to give you the best listening experience possible, and there was just some places that we could not fix. Thanks so much. Welcome back and happy November for all of my faithful listeners at the mentors table. Like I said before, we have a special guest this month that I am so excited about. But before we jump in with Jenna, I wanted to take a minute and do our minute of silence as we do. So could you all just take a deep breath with me? Let it out slowly. Open your palms, let them face up and surrender to God. Take another deep breath. Repeat after me, Lord, I give everything to you. I love you so much. Come and speak to me now. Join me as I listen to this podcast. Twiet my mind, quiet my heart. I love you, Jesus.

unknown: 2:21

Another deep breath in change.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25

And let all the cares and the noise and the pain and everything that's going on right now go slowly with that long release. That's so good. Okay, you can open your eyes and let's get started. You guys, today is gonna be so great, and honestly, it's not just today, but we actually broke this conversation into four different parts so that through the month of November you can get the full gamut of what we talk about as far as gratitude being a whole body experience and the ways that you can form habits of gratitude as well as what's going on in your brain, how God has designed us so that we can benefit physically and mentally and emotionally from gratitude. But before we get started, I want to tell you a little bit about Jenna. So Jenna Zint is the host of her own podcast called The Habit Lab, and she co-hosts a podcast with her husband Aaron called Marriage Lab. She also has e-courses available on their website, and you guys, this is the thing that I like to push the most life coaching. This is where we were connected and have been working together for the last year and a half. I will link all of that in the show notes. But before we get into the conversation with you, I wanted to give you a chance to hear a little bit about how we met. So my best friend Rachel, who passed away a little over four years ago now, has a younger brother, Daniel, and I've been very close with all of her family. And Daniel and I were talking once, and he had recently moved out to Writing, California to go to Bethel's School of Ministry, and he kept talking about these people that he met, Jenna and Aaron, and their podcast, The Marriage Lab. And he kept pitching it to me. Hey, even though I'm single, I'm getting a ton of stuff out of it. I really think you would really enjoy it. And so I finally started listening to the Marriage Lab, and they used to actually end their episodes with awkward sex stories, and I don't even want to get into it, but it was just a way to connect and laugh and just have some connection with the listeners, but it was too awkward for me. I just couldn't handle it. And so I finally confessed to Jenna and I was like, I couldn't handle it, I had to turn it off. And she started laughing, and she was like, You are not the first one, that's why we don't do it. So just so you know, I mean, it's been over two years probably now of marriage lab podcasts that do not end with an awkward sex story. So um I highly recommend listening to it. But, anyways, I finally got back into the groove with listening to it, and I came upon the episode where they talk about approaching pain as a scientist versus as a judge, and this episode transformed my life. I've talked about this way of approaching things on this up on this podcast. I've also talked about it in my book, and I um talk about it with all my friends as well. So it started changing my life so much that I began sharing that episode with everybody, and eventually Jenna actually started her own podcast called Habit Lab, and I was listening to both of those and really wanting to have her as a life coach, but couldn't find room in the budget. And then March of 2024, I lost my dad unexpectedly, and that just opened up a whole nother level of grief and pain in my life, and I just got to the point where I realized I can't do this alone. I really need some support in this time, and I need somebody who's led by the Holy Spirit because that's really important to me. And so I finally was able to find some room in the budget, reached out to Jenna, and we started our sessions, and it has been a really powerful healing journey this last year and a half, and I continue to work with her because she has brought so much good into my life. I have now dubbed myself the Marriage Lab Wyoming Ambassador, and I tell everybody that I know it's not even just in Wyoming, but I'm in Wyoming about these two, and I love them so much, and I'm so thankful that Jenna took some time to come and join us here on the mentors table and talk. I hope that you guys get just a taste of how much depth of wisdom she has, and that you go and check out her podcast and learn from her and book a session with her too. Please, you are not going to regret it. And I'll be real honest, it's real cheap. It's a lot cheaper than going to a counselor, and there's the Holy Spirit involved, which really sets these sessions apart from if you go to a traditional counselor. So let's jump right in and we'll start with Jenna telling us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

Oh, it's been so fun getting to know you. So I'm excited about this conversation. I am about to be 40. Woo woo! And my birthday's coming up, feels substantial. I have three kids a 12-year-old, a nine-year-old, a six-year-old. I've been married for 16 years. Um, my husband and I met at our church's ministry school. I came straight from college, he came straight from high school. So when I first met him, I was like, I have my bachelor's. I cannot date a teenager. But it was really only two and a half years difference. And so then when he turned, actually, we teased that I didn't date him until he was 20. I was like, I could not date a teenager. And then the rest is history. Um, since we met at the ministry school, we kind of um continued in volunteering in a bit, and that is where our love of emotional health married. Ha ha marriage, but like mixed with Holy Spirit, like the combination of the both, both was just so um transformative to our own journeys, and then our marriage that that's a lot of why we started doing what we're doing. So we've helped for over a decade at our church's like pre-marriage uh with like doing that, and then we started the podcast from that because we're like, frankly, we were looking for another hobby as like, you know, kind of not a lot of extra money. So we couldn't do a hobby that was expensive, we couldn't pick up golfing and we had little kids. So we started doing the podcast. We're like, well, we both love emotional health and relational and the Holy Spirit. So let's just make that some kind of almost like our date night. And then yeah, I think it's been almost five years that we've had our marriage one, but um, I love it. It's such a blessing to be able to like connect with so many people around the world who I think the cool part about psychology and like neuroscience is how much of it reflects the truth that we've known in the gospel, but then like shows how the Lord wired it's almost like it backs it up further. Like, oh, this is actually how your brain is wired and work. And like someone who does not know scripture is confirming what scripture or proverbs or psalms tells us to be true. And that's when I geek out. And like sometimes I like read something new and I'm like, God, you are so good at your job. Like, that's true on this level, and it benefits that and it makes us want to go, this is so cool. So that would be me. I love the Holy Spirit, I love emotional health, and I do have a lot of energy. So I also love moving. I'm kind of in constant motion all times, all things, all places.

SPEAKER_01: 9:57

Oh, we love the energy. I listened to myself on the podcast, and I'm like, oh my gosh, Joy, speed it up.

SPEAKER_00: 10:04

I love your bubing piece. It is something I have never been accused of carrying a lot of. It is.

SPEAKER_01: 10:11

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00: 10:11

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 10:13

Okay, I just want to jump right in and talk a little bit about why we're talking about gratitude. First of all, I want really want to focus things on how gratitude is a full body, whole person experience. The idea is that we're not just practicing gratitude with our mind and thinking about things, but that we're getting our entire body involved so that we can have a felt experience of gratitude. The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I have two teenage daughters and then one elementary school daughter. And when the girls were teenagers, we used to really get into Thanksgiving and the month of November being a month of gratitude because I was homeschooling, so I had more time and more bandwidth, and I would either make this big tree and all these different colored leaves, and each day we would write on the leaves what we were thankful for. Or one year I made this turkey and had it was made out of a foam ball, and then it had these feathers, and um, each feather we would write at something that we're thankful for, and then stick the feather in the turkey. And I just found that now with my youngest elementary daughter, I just don't have the bandwidth for that. But yet each November I find myself kind of dreading the month coming up because I'm watching Instagram and I'm comparing myself to other people who are taking time each day to be grateful about something or to share somebody that they're thankful for. And I start to feel some shame and some guilt because I'm not being as thankful as I could be. I also feel shame and guilt because I'm not being the same level of a craft mom for my daughter that I used to be. And so all of these things cause me to kind of push away the subject of gratitude, but I really wanted to get back to it and come back to this subject and talk about it with you here on the podcast because I do know that it's important and it's something that I want to not just connect with on a surfacey level, but connect with on a deeper bodily level.

SPEAKER_00: 12:18

I'm for you. It's like you were talking to past me that would have like rolled our eyes. Like I remember people having gratitude journals and they're like, I've done it every day for three years. And in my head, I'm like, I don't think it's working. Like their negative outlook, and I was like, Well, clearly that doesn't actually work. So it's shocking that I'm the one on this podcast. I'm like, a Paul to Saul, no, opposite Saul to Paul conversion over here. One of the things that actually was super interesting to me when I first started was I heard, and I didn't write this down sadly, but I heard that like the point isn't to actually just list the thing. You have to almost think about it until you literally connect with an emotion. Like it almost is like, you know, on Mario, when you could miss the you have to jump up so that you get the gold coin. And if you jump too early, you don't get it. If you jump, you know, whatever. You actually have to engage with it to release that. That gratitude works because there needs to be some level of a release of a dopamine. So you have to actually connect with the emotion to get the effects of it. So sometimes when we do it too fast, I realized that was my issue of where I didn't see it. I didn't experience the transformative power, is because I would just write the list, would actually not sit. So now I actually imagine chewing on it. Like, you know, you're supposed to like take 20 chews for every bite. That's what I imagine. Like, I don't actually, I'm not trying to add another to-do. I am like really thinking about this until I actually have an emotional connection of like, oh, that is wonderful that it happens. Like, I actually really take one thing and I just think of like, what does this mean to be true about them? Why am I blessed? Like, what would it be like if I didn't have this? I just think about one thing in like 30 different ways until I actually emotionally connect because I'm like, oh, this doesn't, it's not one more thing to do. It's actually you have to get that emotional connection to get the release. Solid gold already, guys.

SPEAKER_01: 14:03

Are you so excited about this conversation? Oh my gosh. Here's the other thing. I've been talking a lot about Victorious Emotions, the book by Wendy Backlund, and we'll probably continue talking about it. But she talks about that, and she talks about how you need to connect until you feel the emotion in your body. And so I think that's a really important point that we all need to remember. And also let's talk a little bit more about like how do we get there? Because as a recovering, what am I gonna call myself? Recovering emotion stuffer, that's what I'm gonna call myself. Um that idea when I hear you say it, I know it's true, and it sounds so uncomfortable. And I'm a good doer and a goer, and so to sit long enough to feel an emotion when I have for so long just stuffed emotions and ignored them. Those are two things that are working that are really hard against the way that I have um become. Oh, but listen to me telling my beliefs about myself. Gotta change that.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

Actually, as we were recording this, I had one of those too. I was like, I believe I'm not good at technology, and this is why it's taking you so long. And I was like, oops, we're about to talk about the power of our words, and here I am working against myself.

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

We have all been there. All right, let's go back to this idea of gratitude and talk a little bit about why we're drawn to it. You know, why when I see my friends posting on Instagram, that I don't just feel guilt and shame because I'm not, you know, reaching some standard that they are meeting, but also I feel this longing in my soul. There's something about that practice, that intentional repetition of gratitude that is really compelling. I wonder if it has something to do with us being image bearers of God. But what do you think is so compelling at a soul level that draws us to a regular practice of gratitude?

SPEAKER_00: 16:16

Wow. I mean, that was a deep question. I do think there's something that like gratitude is like the gateway, which there's that scripture in Psalms, like, you know, enter your courts with Thanksgiving. But I do think there's this gateway where gratitude leads to contentment, which leads to joy, which leads to like worship like it's the starting spot. So I think we're drawn because we know that like I don't know, it's something we actually can change. It's just our it's our perspective. So it's like we even if we can't change factors around us, we can change our perception of them. So it actually feels powerful to me. So it's like, hey, maybe like nothing actually changes about what's going on in my life, but my perspective could change in a way that I could experience more joy. Like so it actually feels empowering and like hopeful that I could have a better experience, even if the factors don't change if I see or connect with how the Lord sees it differently. So it actually feels empowering to me and like, oh, okay, like there could be more joy here. This leads to joy, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 17:16

Yes, that's so good. It actually reminds me a lot about what we just talked about a few episodes back on the pod talking about how we are not victims to our circumstances, but instead we can be atmosphere changers. And one of the ways that we can change atmospheres is by choosing to notice the things around us that we want to be thankful for. You know, I wonder if we can even take this as a cue and say, okay, instead of being triggered into shame or into loneliness by seeing people talk on Instagram about what they're thankful for, we can use that as our reminder. Oh, hey, yeah, I have an opportunity to notice as well. And so I can just take my eyes off the screen and start looking around and seeing what I can notice to be thankful for. I just heard on another podcast they were talking and they gave this illustration and they said, okay, look around the room for five seconds and find all the things that are red that you can find. And so I'm looking around my room. I see my Kleenex box, I see my pen, I see a Bible, I see a flower on the little frame. And then he says, Okay, great. Now close your eyes and think and tell me what things are blue in the room. And of course, you can't remember any of it because you weren't looking for blue things, you were looking for red things. And that's really important for us to know is that what we are focusing on or what we're looking for, that's all that the brain is looking for, and it doesn't see the other things. And so if we make a choice to look for things that we want to be thankful for, then we're gonna notice those things way more than if we didn't decide to look for those things.

SPEAKER_00: 18:58

Honestly, too, like you said, you're uh recovery and emotion stuffer. I was as well at one point earlier in our marriage, my husband was like, I was like, can't you just get over it since that's not what I meant? Like, and your feelings don't hurt and your heart's fine. And he was like, I'm not an emotional robot like you. And I was like, So I'm on your team too, Joey. But I would say that the difference is when you go on the journey of like giving voice to your like maybe painful, like, oh, I felt hurt or lonely. It almost feels the counterbalance is the awareness, like you can almost zoom in on what is hurting and miss the also the flip side. So it feels like to me, in order to make room for my heart, it's like the tension of both. My awareness needs to be for both, or I could feel, I don't know, too much like of a victim of the hard things and not aware of also what's growing that's good. So it kind of naturally creates a like full picture rather than I actually the first time I had some level of a gratitude habit, which I literally had never had before because I was like, I don't do cheesy things. Um, the Lord was like, I it was a hard season, but he was like, at one point after I had like maybe a couple weeks of my prayer walks, and most of my time was about this hard part of my life. And the Lord is like, Hey, you're not actually suffering. You feel like you're suffering. This is hard, this is uncomfortable, but you have zoomed in so much on the hard that you're not like you're not rightfully, like you've blown it a bit out of portion. Can you counterbalance with what else is happening that is not just hard? Because this hard is like taking up your peripheral, like your vision. So then I was like, okay, so actually I'll be honest, it was about my husband. I felt like pretty alone in some of the responsibility with the kids and the chores and even like the initiating connection, or um, I don't know, like now the buzzwords kind of like the mental load of the house is what I felt alone in. And I was noticing all the ways that he wasn't showing up and proving how alone I was in it. And actually the fruit of that, like while there was some pain, was resentment and bitterness started to like really grow kind of heavy. And I was aware I didn't want to be a resentful, bitter person, but I didn't actually know what the antidote was. So that was kind of when the Lord was like, Hey, you've zoomed in so much on what he's not doing. Like, so the counterbalance of the antidote of not just don't be bitter. Like sometimes we just you're like, just stop doing the thing. The sun, you know, this is the Sunday school answer, and you're not there, so be better, you know, like dig deeper. And at that point, the Lord was like, No, actually, you like let's do a gratitude habit for what your husband is doing because you're hyper focused on what he isn't doing right now, and did that I think for like 30 days. And actually, I invited people. Did you do that little gratitude challenge for with me a couple years ago? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01: 21:30

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

I just invited a couple people because I know accountability helps me. And since I was a little allergic to things that felt cheesy, I was like, I gotta get other people to do this with me or I will not finish. So I just did it, and then I saw so much fruit where it really is like, what's that expression? The forest for the tree. You miss the forest because you're for the trees. That's what I was like, oh, like my husband didn't actually change, but my awareness of all that he was doing as I counterbalan balance some of my pain of what he wasn't doing was actually a fuller, truer picture. And my heart towards him and the bitterness just I didn't have to white knuckle, stop being bitter or resentful. It it's almost like we the gratitude weeded it out, and it couldn't live as I was cultivating the other half of it, too. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 22:15

Yes, absolutely. I got this um memory of when I was a man I think I was a leader in youth group, and the church that I went to is really big, and so like the youth group um meetings were like a whole production. Anyway, so they had lots of resources. So the youth pastor is on stage and he's up there, and he was just like, Okay, I only have one thing that I need you to do. Don't think about pink elephants, and then like the lights are all pink, and then he has like a stuffed pink elephant in his hand, and he's like, Don't think about pink elephants, don't think about how strange that color is on an elephant, don't think about the color pink and what is uh how it's associated with love, and he just went on and on and on about pink elephants, and so of course that's all you could think about. And I was thinking about that when you were talking your story about Aaron, like if you are only looking for all that confirmation of why he is not showing up as the best husband, that's like saying, like, don't think about that, don't think about how he's not taking the trash out. You didn't say that, but uh don't think about it. It's like you read my mind. Um anyways, and so then that's what you end up thinking about. And so the idea is to like you're saying, the forest for the trees, like take a step back, get a 30,000-foot view, and choose something else to focus on, like what's red in the room, you know, and because your body or and your mind and your eyes, all of it is designed to just find that thing.

SPEAKER_00: 24:00

That's so good. And I think even to what you were saying about backward, you know, like making room for your heart. I think the idea of like not getting so black and white, like it hurts, or I'm grateful for it. Actually holding the tension like there could be pain and there could still be things to be grateful for helped me, it helped me a lot. Like I almost thought you choose gratitude and then shut down or pretend like the pain's not there, or I flip to the other side of glorify the pain and then there was nothing good. You're like, oh, actually, I think it's Dr. Becky. She's the the one who talks about good inside for kids. It's a really good book. But she just talks about a really simple concept of two things could be true. So I think with contentment and gratitude, that or gratitude, that's really helped me. Like, I can be grateful and there could be blessings and there could be pain at the same time. Like I could hold both in my hands and they're both true, versus I think when we just get so black or white, either it hurts or you're happy. You lose the fullness. Kind of there's so many tensions in in the Lord when you're following the Lord. I think that's one of them that helped me be like, oh, both could be true. This could be painful, and there's also a good part. So if I'm more aware of the pain, I need to be work on some gratitude. And if I'm trying to shove the pain and pretend like it's not there and just pretend like I'm happy, that's probably not honest too. So that's really good.

SPEAKER_01: 25:13

That speaks to spiritual bypassing, yeah, which we've talked about before on the podcast. But this idea that you just like slap a verse on it and it's all gonna be fine, and we have this denial of reality or denial of the pain that's still there, that instead we can hold both. We can we can name the pain and we can hold on to God's promises and know that it is gonna get better. Wasn't that so good? I am so excited for you to hear the rest of our conversation. There's just so many good golden nuggets that Jenna brings to us, and I am so excited to share it with you. She's gonna be with us, like I said, all of November. So keep tuning in. If you haven't already, please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts so that it will auto-populate in your feed so that you don't miss a single episode. Next week, we're gonna jump into talking about some of Jenna's gratitude habits. And hopefully, the goal is partially for you to be inspired, and we're not trying to be prescriptive as far as like telling you if you do X, Y, and Z, then you will feel grateful. Um, instead, our hope is that as you hear other people's practices, that that will inspire you in your own way and have a powerful lasting impact on you, and you can take what you hear, hear, and then go and apply it in a way that works best for you. My invitation to all of you listening is if you guys could just start praying right now and ask God and say, you know, God, I am entering your courts with thanksgiving. And I just want to know, what am I noticing? You know, we talked a lot about today what we are noticing or what we're looking for is all that our brain and our bodies are going to collect information on. So ask God, God, what am I noticing? Am I noticing the good? And I am I just focused on that and I don't have any room left for my pain, or do I notice the pain, like Jenna mentioned, where I can name it, but then I don't have any room or any hope for good? Or am I noticing a tension of both of them? And I would just challenge you to let him stir a desire in you for more remembering. Ask him to show you what you are focusing on, and then use that as information to choose accordingly what you think and what God is leading you to is the best thing to focus on. Thank you so much for joining us at the table this week. We are so glad that you are here, and we will see you next week here on the mentors table. Nerd alert, nerd alert. Guys, I am such a nerd. I geek out on show notes. So if you ever want to know how to contact the show directly, how to find us on socials, links to books or anything that we mention on the show, go to the show notes. And at the very bottom, there is always a link that says support the show. It doesn't matter how little or big or how often you want to give, it's super easy to do. And I like to consider it a way for you to take me out for coffee and say, Hey, thanks. And you know what I say? Thank you. You guys are the best.