The Gratitude Challenge — How Gratitude Can Rewire Your Brain and Transform Your Life

As we move into the final stretch of the year, it’s the perfect time to slow down and savor what’s already good in your life. In this episode of Clear & On Purpose, Christina explores the powerful science and soul of gratitude — how this simple practice can boost your mood, reduce stress, and create deeper connection in your relationships.

You’ll learn why gratitude isn’t just another fluffy self-help trend — it’s a neuroscience-backed practice that literally changes your brain chemistry, increases dopamine and serotonin, and helps you feel more grounded, peaceful, and present in your everyday life.

Plus, Christina invites you to join her Free 30-Day Gratitude Challenge this November — a simple, uplifting way to weave gratitude into your real, busy life with daily prompts that are easy, meaningful, and doable.

In This Episode, Christina Talks About:

• 🌿 Why gratitude helps rewire your brain for more joy and resilience
• 🧠 The science behind dopamine, serotonin, and how gratitude improves mood
• ❤️ How practicing gratitude can strengthen relationships and boost communication
• 🌅 Simple, no-pressure ways to start a daily gratitude habit
• 💫 How gratitude helps you feel more present and less anxious about the past or future
• 🕯️ The intention behind the upcoming Gratitude Challenge and how to join

Key Takeaways

• Gratitude activates the brain’s reward system and boosts those “feel-good” neurotransmitters.
• Regular gratitude practice leads to better sleep, less inflammation, and lower stress levels.
• You don’t need big, elaborate rituals — small moments of gratitude throughout your day can completely shift your energy.
• When you express gratitude for the people in your life, it strengthens your connection and helps you feel more fulfilled.
• Focusing on gratitude brings you back to presence — helping you savor the now instead of getting lost in what’s next.

Join the Free Gratitude Challenge 🌻

During November, Christina will be sharing daily gratitude prompts on social media — simple ideas like noticing beauty in nature, writing a note of thanks, or ending your day reflecting on small wins.

✨ Want the full 30-day printable guide?
 Sign up for the email list at www.christinaslaback.com
to get the PDF overview of all 30 days and participate in the challenge with the community.

Let’s make this season one where gratitude becomes your grounding practice — not another item on your to-do list.

Resources Mentioned:

• Join The Village: Click here to connect with our community.
• Sign up for the Momentum Challenge: Click here to get started.

Resources & Links

• Follow Christina @christinaslaback
• Email us at hello@christinaslaback.com
• www.christinaslaback.com

Transcript

Gratitude Challenge

Christina: [00:00:00] People that practice gratitude consistently are going to have a more positive outlook on life. They're going to be in a better mood.

They're going to report more satisfaction with their life as it is. An irregular gratitude practice activates the brain's reward system, and so it can increase dopamine and serotonin levels. So those feel good neurotransmitters. They're the things that'll bring in that will give that instant mood boost.

It actually helps to rewire our brain to be able to get and release more of that dopamine and serotonin grateful people usually report better sleep. They have less inflammation and they have lower stress levels.

Welcome to Clear and On Purpose, the podcast design to help you cut through the noise and get back to what matters most. If you're feeling stuck, but needs to take intentional action, you are in the right place. I'm Christina Slayback, homeschooling mom of two, and life and business coach. [00:01:00] Helping you drop in and align with your values three or space Each week I'll be sharing practical insights and simple actionable steps to help you find clarity, boost your energy, and design a life that balances ambition with.

Let's dive in and get clear on purpose.

Christina: As we step into this autumn season and are looking around at the things in our life that we want to maybe change or implement, or even just looking at this from a seasonal perspective we want to really be able to start to slow down and savor some of the, parts of this season. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is the impact of [00:02:00] gratitude

as part of this last bit of the year, looking at and identifying habits and intentions and things that I wanna do and areas that I wanna work on and continue to grow and change and be able to kind of uplevel my life. when we're in this stage of growth and change and working on ourselves, it can get really easy to get into a sense of dissatisfaction because we're looking at all the things to come and not really enjoying what is, and the quickest way to be able to get into alignment, to be able to bring in more of that presence, bring in more of the positivity 

Satisfaction into our lives is to be able to focus and put our awareness on all of the good that's already around. When life gets busy, it's really easy to focus on what's missing. So we're talking about the to-do list, the goals that we haven't hit yet, the things that just aren't going our [00:03:00] way, but what if shifting our focus even just a little bit, can change how we feel every day.

That's why I wanna take a little bit of time to talk about the power of gratitude. I know that it's cliche. We're gonna talk about why it matters, what the science says about it, and some practical ways to bring more gratitude into your own life. we all hear this all the time. Yes, practice gratitude, be grateful. It's really easy to say, and it's really easy to just kind of like brush it off as some fluffy little self-help tool.

But really when you look at it, and the way that I like to be able to refocus and when I, when I really get into a good gratitude practice is as a, as grounding, it's an ability for me to recenter my own energy to look at and identify all the positive. And I can bring that in to be able to really bring in more of that presence, that [00:04:00] ability to see the beauty in the right now, it stops me from living in the past and thinking about all the things that I could have, should have would've done.

It stops me from looking at the future and all the things that I have yet to do, that I want to do, all of the things that I have to do, all that anxiety, and allows me to just get back into the present moment. And really gives an immediate energy shift. So a couple years ago I had, worked on a gratitude challenge as part of community that we were in, and I wanted to be able to bring some of that back because what I noticed is that.

By focusing on gratitude. So specifically, it really changed my overall outlook and my overall feelings, in my life at the time. it brought me into more easy communication with my family. It's gave me [00:05:00] the opportunity to feel. This just sense of ease and peace. being able to look at and intentionally find opportunities for gratitude.

It helped to ripple out into my relationships. It helped my mood and even my overall resilience when things got tough and still being able to look at those points of gratitude helped me to realize that. Even when things are tough, and I know that there are a lot of things out there, there's a lot of heaviness and negativity that has just bombarding us on a daily basis.

And so by using the opportunities that I have and being able to ground into those state of gratitude and use it as a way to center myself, helps me to not spin into all the anxiety that I could be pulled into.

 People that practice gratitude [00:06:00] consistently are going to have a more positive outlook on life. They're going to be in a better mood.

They're going to report more satisfaction with their life as it is. An irregular gratitude practice activates the brain's reward system, and so it can increase dopamine and serotonin levels. So those feel good neurotransmitters. They're the things that'll bring in that will give that instant mood boost.

It actually helps to rewire our brain to be able to get and release more of that dopamine and serotonin grateful people usually report better sleep. They have less inflammation and they have lower stress levels. All of these things that impact our regular physical health.

So even from taking out all of the mental and emotional benefits, it impacts us on a physical level to be able to lower that stress and be able to take care of our body physically. Issues with our body are related to a lot of that stress and inflammation. And if we can [00:07:00] take some opportunities to even just for a few minutes a day to be able to practice something like this that can help reduce that and be able to keep us in better health, especially heading into these winter, and autumn months.

Any opportunity to bring more of that in, I am going to take and, appreciate that. And expressing gratitude strengthens the bonds and makes people feel more connected. When you look at opportunities in your relationships, whether it's with your children, your coworkers, your spouse, your partner, your friends, looking at opportunities to add more gratitude into those increases and strengthens those bonds, if you're looking at opportunities to feel grateful for the people in your life, you're gonna be more likely.

To look at them positively, to express positive emotions to them, and with the conversation that you have to be able to have that be more positive. You're gonna want to spend more time with them because you're gonna be remembering all of these great things and all these things that you're [00:08:00] so grateful for about having them.

Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions. It helps to relish good experiences, improve health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. What I always talked about for myself and for my clients is that you really need to start with your internal state first. So there are a lot of things that we might wanna change in our outside world, our outside relationships, our outside help, like all of these things that we might wanna change.

But what we really need to be able to focus on is the things that we have control over. And with something as simple as gratitude, you can change and manage and have control over so much. From your internal point of or point of awareness that will create that external impact. So bringing it back to bringing your own power back through something as simple as gratitude.

So some ways that I've looked at to be able to bring [00:09:00] in like really no pressure opportunities to build in more gratitude. And some of the things that I do are, connection with nature, whether that's going out and watching the sunrise or the sunset, whether it's taking a look at the stars, if it's going through and just checking in for the change of seasons and looking around at the beauty that's around me.

It might be doing something like a random act of kindness for someone holding the door open for a stranger, giving someone a compliment. Taking opportunities to express and put more positivity out into the world. I've also had seasons where I have, very intentionally started and ended my day with a few prompts on, looking at the things that I'm grateful for, looking at what the impact is, and then looking at the end of the day and noting back some of the really positive things 

Made such a big impact on my mood that I do encourage all of my clients to do that, at least for a little while to try it out as well. it's something that I'm probably gonna [00:10:00] wanna go back to again. This fall is being really intentional about that and it is not about. noticing that there are little tiny things that you can do that only take a few minutes, and the more often that you can do them, the more that it'll give you that overall mood boost.

The more that it'll give you all those overall impacts. 

So with this and looking at the opportunities for me to bring more gratitude and for the clients I'm working with to bring more gratitude in their lives, what I wanted to do is go back to, you know, looking at the opportunities to be able to do this on a bigger scale and being able to offer this to other people.

And so I'm doing a free gratitude challenge during the month of November. And the intention is for helping people to weave gratitude into your real lives in a way that's really doable and motivating. And so throughout the challenge I'm gonna be posting daily on my social media throughout the month of November and offering [00:11:00] prompts.

So it could be a gratitude meditation, it could be you going out and noticing it's gonna be tiny little things. So it gives you a real opportunity to decide what. Feels really good for you and what gives you the most gratitude and be able to offer that every day for the month so people can pop in. You can complete a couple of 'em, the ones that call to you, you can come in and just do it with us every day.

If you want a copy of the PDF with the overview of all 30 days, just join the email list and I'll be sending that out to everyone. Otherwise, you could just follow along on social media, share what you're doing, how you're implementing more gratitude, what challenges you're participating in, and your reflections 

It changes your mood, how it changes your energy, how it's bringing more of a positive impact into your life, and being able to do this in a way that it can be really easy. It can be really simple. You can just do one, you can do all 30, [00:12:00] and looking at it and noticing other people are doing it as well.

Again, it's not about adding something else to your to-do list, but it's about just looking at it and intentionally creating more opportunities for small, meaningful moments that help you feel more grounded and more joyful. So I would love to have you join me. I'll have the details in the show notes I look forward to hearing how you are implementing gratitude and what those impacts are gonna be. And for today, just think about one thing that you're grateful for right now and to really feel it.

Notice how it changes your mood. The way that you feel in your body, and then think about how you can build on that for a whole month and what the impact could be. I look forward to talking with you next [00:13:00] time, and I hope to see you at the Gratitude Challenge. Bye.

Thank you for tuning in to clear and on purpose. If you're ready to take intentional steps toward a more fulfilling life and wanna customize the approach, I'd love to work with you. Visit www.christinaslayback.com to schedule a free consultation or explore current offers designed to help you gain clarity.

And reclaim your energy. And don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with a friend if you found it helpful. It helps others find the show and grow our community.