Hi, and welcome to the In The Cortex podcast.
We are your hosts.
I'm Poloma Garcia.
And I am Dani Perrecone.
And we're the founders of In The Cortex, an online community with programs that show
people the tools that they need to change their lives, their brain reorganization, no
medication, just movement.
When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start
to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life.
And now on to today's episode.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of In The Cortex podcast.
We are really excited to break down this topic because it is jam-packed with science and
there's so much to what we're about to talk about.
We're going to put a lot of information, lots of content into the show notes.
So make sure you go to those out.
But today, the episode is all about gratitude and how important gratitude is for living
a cortex life.
And we're going to talk about how to attain gratitude, how to live in that space of gratitude
and appreciation.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, gratitude is the quality of being thankful, readiness
to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
We're going to talk about that today and how living in your cortex can help you live in
that state in the emotion of gratitude more.
Yes.
And gratitude has so many benefits for the body, for the mind, for the brain.
It helps us produce the positive neurochemicals, right?
Dopamine and serotonin and norepinephrine and all these amazing things that are helpful
and positive for our brain.
It helps us feel more connected with others.
That kind of makes sense, right?
It's pretty natural.
It helps us sleep better because it has to do with the hypothalamus.
When we feel gratitude, we activate the limbic system, which includes hypothalamus, which
has a lot to do with our sleep regulation, our REM cycles.
It really is one of those things where you're like, everything about gratitude is good.
And also it makes you feel good at the end of the day, right?
And I think we wanted to talk about this, Danny, because don't you get this?
A lot of people are like, we used to make a lot of content about this when we first started.
People being like, I can't, how are you going to be sit down and look at all the good things
and be grateful?
This is toxic positivity.
This is not fair.
I can't do it.
And that's a really valid point.
A lot of the people, when they first start out their brain reorganization journey, that's
the way they feel.
They're like, that's what do you mean gratitude?
I'm not grateful for the stuff that's going on with me.
I'm not grateful for all my challenges and all the stuff that's happening.
And we understand that because that's usually people that are stuck in survival mode, right?
And so that survival mode, what it does is it helps your brain become hyper aware of
all the negative because anything that's negative or scary could be a potential threat.
And so it's constantly scanning to your environment to see if something's going to be a real threat
or not.
And ultimately, if you're in survival mode all the time and your brain is disorganized
and so your central nervous system is dysregulated, then that makes it so you're perceiving threats
all the time, right?
And so that just being in that state most of the time makes it so you're in fight or
fight all the time.
You're not going into rest and digest as much as you need to.
And so getting to the point where you're able to feel grateful and look on the bright side
and look at the positive things of even the negative things that happen in life is really,
really, really hard, right?
It is.
That's why we always say you got to start with the brain.
Yeah.
And I could tell you, I for sure thought that life was a battlefield when I, before I learned
about brain and organization and before I even did these movements to help my brain get
out of survival mode, I would wake up just thinking like, all right, who's going to cross
me today?
Like, what do I have to armor up or right and put up this like protection on myself?
Because I literally thought life was just so hard.
It felt so hard.
And then as soon as my brain came out of survival mode and I was able to shift my perception
on how I saw the world, I was like, oh, wait, there's actually so many kind people and this
happens all the time.
You're in California now, so you experience this.
Everyone thinks that Californians are just these horrific people.
Like honestly, I give so much flack for being a Californian.
And I'm like, and I remember when we traveled the country and everyone's like, watch out
for your California plates when you drive into Idaho, they're going to chew you up and spit
you out.
And we didn't experience that.
And it's because I felt like my perception on the world was so different.
And I'm not saying that I'm like, you know, you know, this like amazing human that like
everyone's like, oh, but, but it was just like I did had a different perception.
I met people with kindness and then that was what was reciprocated back.
And that's a lot of gratitude is being able to shift your perception.
Feel that state of appreciation.
Like I am so appreciative when I go into a restaurant and I have service or whatever
it is, and I always set my intention to like set the stage for kind of creating more gratitude
and appreciation coming from that experience.
And then the people will always match it.
And I feel like that's such an important thing.
But if you're the person who walks into a restaurant, you're always like, all right,
my food's already going to be bad.
Or I am holding up the persona of a Californian who has a negative attitude on life.
That's what people are going to reflect back to you.
And I think that's where gratitude is so cool because the more you step into that appreciation,
the more you step into being grateful for life itself, you can then shift into a different
perspective of what the world and really all this is.
And Paloma and I like to dive into all topics connected to all things.
And we go down rabbit holes, especially when we're researching for a podcast and we start
fighting all those different nuggets about, oh, look at what this science says about gratitude.
And then it comes back to like religion and spiritual things.
And when you really look at everything, we're all just trying to be connected in one, right?
And we're all just trying to remove our egos, which is like the hurt and the wounding that
we have to be able to see each other that we're all in this together.
We're all human.
We're all having these feelings and emotions and it's all hitting our perceptions differently.
And when you come out of survival mode, you're able to actually express empathy and you're
able to connect with people on a level that, hey, you're not against me.
I don't have any hard feelings on you.
Like, I can see you're hurt.
I can, you know, I'm hurt.
Like let's work on being in a better cohesive relationship.
So it's kind of this like moment where, yeah, this time of year, Thanksgiving's coming up
for a lot of people who celebrate that.
And it's kind of funny that there's like one day dedicated to like, let's show your gratitude.
I mean, we're like, let's work on gratitude year round.
And you can't do it until you've really fundamentally shifted your brain to really feel it from a
different way.
And I mean, there's people who can, right?
There's people who, if you, you can, because you can do anything, right?
Of course.
But it's going to just be a lot easier for your brains out of survival mode.
Cause if you're trying to become more for practice, more gratitude and become more grateful
in your life and your brain is in survival mode, you're just working way harder than
you need to on that one tiny skill.
And gratitude isn't really a skill.
It's something that is innate in all, in all animals, not just in humans, part of the
research we were doing.
And we'll plug that in the show notes, but it really is one of that.
One of the things that keeps us in that oneness, right?
That togetherness as a group and something that's also interesting about survival mode
is if you're in survival mode, it's hard for you.
There's part of your brain that wants to keep you separate from the group because you're
only focused on yourself.
You're focusing on you and surviving and probably your children if you're a mom or a parent
or a caregiver, right?
But it's very much like centered on we need to survive.
I need to survive before even thinking of becoming part of whatever that might be.
And if you kind of zoom out, you can see that a lot in a lot of different cultures and a
lot of different ways that we interact with other people where we want that connection,
but we don't want it, right?
And that's just the brain.
This is our own survival brain in any other way, don't you think?
All the time.
It's so funny.
And this, and this is where we love to bring everything back to the brain, primitive reflexes
and the subconscious.
And I can tell you for me, I love human connection.
I don't love being alone.
I love alone and me time in bits and pieces.
But then when it goes to the extreme or then when I want to go do events and I schedule
myself out for all these fun things and then when the time comes, I'm like, just kidding,
I don't actually want to go anymore.
Oh yeah, it's so really funny.
So there's so many brain functions within those moments.
And I'm really recognizing my inability or my lack that I used to have of being able
to say no to things and like, hey, let me think about that because I did a lot of fawn
of people pleasing.
So this is where this idea of gratitude, it just seems like, oh yeah, it's so easy.
But when we look at it, we're like, it's actually not an easy thing.
It is something that needs to be practiced.
And it is something you have.
It's a muscle you have to work at.
And it's so easy to walk into a room and see what's wrong.
It's really hard to then shift your mindset and to see what is working for you.
And that's a big part of what we bring into our program is helping people shift their
mindset as their brain structure is literally shifting and making new connections.
Yeah, while acknowledging that not everything is sunny and bright and wonderful, there's
a lot of dark things in the world.
And that's often what helps you see the light more easily, right?
And the good things.
And that's another point.
I used to have a really hard time with certain things in the world that I'm like, how does
that happen to certain people?
And it would just like hurt my stomach.
I'm like, I feel so powerless in the situation.
How do we help this situation going on?
And the more that I would enroll into that feeling of being powerless, the more I almost
feel like I fed it.
And then I would have to like shift myself into, okay, everyone's got a journey.
And then it taps into like, how do you make sense of all these journeys that we're on,
right?
And then every single person has the ability to find something, whether they're in the
midst of something really yucky, and we've all been in something, obviously there's people
who've been through things that are way worse than others.
And the ability to be able to find some sort of silver lining in it to help build upon
it is what can help shift your brain structure to then make you more resilient, to make you
be able to overcome adversity and help you live an authentic life.
And I think that's what for me, gratitude bulls down to, because you can tell when someone
is like truly authentically grateful or when they're just like, you know, when I tell my
kids, say, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, that was very robotic.
You don't even know what that means.
Like, where's your authenticity?
Yeah.
Have you seen that, that TikTok of this kid, they're like recording a Thanksgiving table.
This kid is literally crying, like breaking out.
He's like, I just want to think about all the things that I'm grateful for, but he's
bawling and everybody's laughing, but he's so cute.
He's like, like eight years old.
And you can tell that he's genuinely overcome with emotion by how thankful he is for everything
that he has around him.
And I mean, we don't have to all break down and cry about it.
I mean, if you want to, that's great.
It's a good release.
But I think also, like, especially in the United States, there's a lot of pressure around
that like gratitude thing in Thanksgiving specifically.
And I feel like there's a lot, I remember listening to that with my friends when I was
little, because I never really did Thanksgiving when I was growing up because, you know, we're
Mexican.
It's more of like a thing that I do when I'm here.
And it's, it's not really like part of my culture.
But I remember them being like, Oh God, like, yeah, gratitude.
Like, what am I going to be thankful for?
Like the dry turkey that my mom's going to cook, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And I'd be like, yeah.
Obviously, you know, you're 14, whatever.
But I think that there's a lot of pressure around like actually having to do it.
And I think that's why it is only once a year now that I'm thinking about it.
Cause like, okay, let's just boil it down to just one day a year and let's just put it
out there.
And then that's it.
You know, then that we got check it off the list and we're done.
And I think a lot of other cultures are more about let's practice it all the time, daily.
And even certain religions will do that every single day, every, even every time they have
a meal, right?
Every time, or the amount of times a day.
I mean, it's a different way of looking at it.
But I think in the United States specifically, it's become kind of like cheesy or like hokey,
you know, to like be, oh, let's be grateful.
Let's be great.
Say thank you.
Like that kind of stuff that you're just saying, it seems like somebody's like telling you
to do it.
And it doesn't necessarily, like it can mean all, it can mean so many different things.
It's just an appreciation, right?
And I think for a lot of people, it can also mean just acknowledging what's going on around
you and the people that you have around you or the things that you have.
It doesn't always have to be this like, oh my gosh, overwhelming gratefulness for whatever
it is.
It has different levels and different layers.
And I think that's the one thing that we all have some of it.
So it's about tapping into what, what it means for you.
Does it mean reaching out to somebody and saying thank you for something?
Or does it mean making a little list or just making a note in your mind?
Like, oh, that's kind of cool that I have that or that I know this person or that that
experience, that I had that experience or that opportunity, you know, it doesn't always
have to be enveloping.
For sure.
And I think that taps into this hidden brain podcast that we like to share of the reciprocity
that's behind gratitude.
And I know before brain work, I used to feel like this massive indebtedness to people if
they did something to help me because it came from a space and this is going to tap into
the subconscious beliefs.
I used to think that like no one would just do something kind for me.
Like I wasn't worth that kindness to be given to me.
And so then I would always have to like immediately match them with something in return and be
like, okay, now we're even like now we're squared up.
And now I've been stepping into as I dive deeper into my worth and my value and all
these core feelings inside of me.
I'm like, thank you for thinking of me.
Thank you for acknowledging me.
Thank you for being appreciative of me and helping you.
I'm going to accept that and leave it there and then know that I can go return the favor
somewhere else.
And so yeah, the paying it forward thing, right?
You don't always know.
And that's something that I've seen more and more as I've been able to get out of my lack
mindset is you might not get like say Paloma gave something to me.
I don't have to immediately return it back to Paloma.
I can go pay it forward to someone else and then it'll go back around.
And you always will see that when you're able to be in that higher zoomed out perspective
of,
Hey, we're all in this together.
And it's funny because that is a lot of what like what religion pushes on is like coming
in and being a part of something and but not always needing it to be from another person
like directly.
Right.
It's a very just give to give because when you give more giving comes to you and you're
like showing that appreciation and it's bringing you up to a higher level.
Yeah, totally.
And once again, that ability to even zoom out.
Yeah, brain.
It's all the brain.
It's all the primitive brain.
If you're stuck in survival mode, there's no way you're going to be able to zoom out
or you might be able to do it for five seconds and then you're like back into the into the
day to day into the only seeing what's right in front of you directly tunnel vision.
Right.
And that's, you know, I love when this like comes kind of like very full cycle.
No.
Yeah.
It's always there.
And then that is really a big thing.
I know a lot about the subconscious beliefs and how that first seven years of your life
really before like before your parents even created you is really putting an imprint on
how you're going to see the world.
And that is your perception on the world around you.
It's that epigenetics, that ability.
Well epigenetics is kind of tied into the subconscious beliefs, but it's literally the
expression of your genes without actually changing your DNA.
So, so many times people think like, oh, this is just the way I'm always going to be this
way.
And then we have a process called a reconnect, which actually helps you shift the way you
express your perception on the world.
And it's we were just talking about this in office hours or someone, she's like, I actually
like after being with my husband for nine years, she's like, yeah, actually I was like
able to go into the reconnect and then focus on all the things that he did that were loving
for me and show appreciation and gratitude towards it.
And then I looked at him differently and was like, I actually am falling in love with you
again.
Like there's parts of you I haven't seen before.
Yes.
And that is directly connected to the ability of having epigenetics because before it was
the whole nature versus nurture argument forever stuck in that forever.
And that's what we're always trying to bust is like, no, you are not stuck in who you
are said or whoever someone told you you were going to be.
Exactly.
You have the ability to shift out of it.
And that's what epigenetics is.
And there's a lot of people that are showing lots of science behind it.
But I mean, even Harvard, we're going to put this really cool infographic in the show.
What Harvard University has created about, no, like your epigenetics is such a changing
of your perception on reality.
And we have a really cool process that helps you get there.
Another thing that I think would be cool is to share that and we start a journal, a
journaling practice in our program.
It's part of the program.
Most people we recommend do it.
Some people don't love journaling and we understand that, but we always recommend that our members
do it.
So every module you have journal prompts and in week two, we actually start doing a gratitude
journal specifically.
So you set aside a couple minutes a day.
I think we start with just one minute, like just literally set a timer on your phone and
do one minute where you either think about or write down things that you're grateful
for.
And here's the kicker.
There's actually, one of the things that we plugged in, the, we're going to plug in
the show notes, talks about how even one minute is more than enough in the New York
Times article, because just that one minute is going to, it's better than nothing.
And it's going to build little by little by little.
And you don't have to always be grateful for like the big things in life, right?
We think that it always has to be, and that's kind of what I was trying to say earlier with
the Thanksgiving thing.
I think I just didn't really bring it home then, but we always think we have to be grateful
for like all like the overarching themes in our lives.
And it has to be this like life changing life, altering feeling that really brings you to
a spiritual experience.
No, you can literally be thankful you have Starbucks right here.
Like you can be thankful for the smallest things.
I can be thankful that it's raining today because I love rainy days.
I can be thankful that I got to connect with Danny this morning.
I can be thankful that I got a Starbucks coffee this morning.
It can be really the smallest things.
Just expressing gratitude toward the small, even the smallest things in your life is still
practicing that muscle.
And then you'll get to the point where sometimes you will feel inspired and you'll be like,
Oh my God, you know, the, the amazing people that I have around me, my family, this and
that.
And that's always something that's great to continue to be grateful for, but it can also
be the smaller things.
So remove that pressure from yourself.
Yeah.
If you're trying to start a gratitude practice.
I love that.
And it's something that is.
So I think sometimes some of us have this all or nothing thinking when it comes to a lot
of things and gratitude can be one of them.
And I think a lot of us are working towards being coming more grateful and appreciative
of our lives and all the things.
And I think, you know, sometimes you have a bad day and that's okay.
And sometimes your kids have bad days and that's okay too.
And so we have to just again, what is pulling to say, remove society's expectations of
being perfect and knowing that being grateful that you have emotions, right?
And being human.
And I, I feel like I finally have owned that too of just, I'm grateful that I am an emotional
person because it helps me identify more of what's going on within me so I can find the
truest and most authentic version of myself.
Totally.
And there's no, I think that's where here in the cortex, we're all about just like living
with more levity and light and fun and just.
Giggle more and just laugh your way through life.
And when you can tap into the appreciation and the gratitude emotion, it helps it and
it's more fun.
Like pull them on a lap for large parts of our meetings.
I'm productive, but hey, we are so productive and we're so appreciative of each other because
we get each other's jokes and we're just having a great time, you know?
And I mean, just a quick little like appreciation plug because I'm feeling kind of cheesy and
corny, but I'm so appreciative of Paloma because she is the into my Yang.
And honestly, in the cortex, it has been something for years that we've been wanting
because Paloma was my intern how many years ago, 10 years ago.
10 years ago.
Yeah, something like that.
And we connected from the minute we met.
Yeah.
Kind of weird to be like, wow, that's crazy.
Yeah.
And we connected from the minute we met and then the universe like, you know, we got moved
apart.
I had my kids and then we came back together and we created this and it's been now three
years that we've been working on our in the Cortex project together and it's really cool
that we get to help people change their lives.
And I am so grateful that I have found my calling that you found your calling.
And we keep figuring out more of what our calling is and we totally every day.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, this isn't like an end like, okay, we're done.
We're we're done.
We don't have to do anymore.
No, we're like, oh, what else can we learn from it?
And being appreciative of the adversity to I was literally going to say that.
Okay, that's okay.
That's because we're connected.
Yeah.
I think he's trying to convince me to get a tattoo with her.
Where's like, I'm not going to have any tattoos.
I got one.
I'm not a pain averse, but I was just going to say that because something that we I think
practice often, both in our personal and our professional lives is looking at a negative
situation or a challenging situation, feeling it first of all, like feel bad about event
about it, get it out of you, get those emotions like going, because they're in you for a reason
you got to get them out somehow, right?
Whether you're going to cry, whether you're going to vent about it for 25 minutes, you're
just going to creep it out where you're going to do anything that you want to like work out
and you don't go run or just jump around or whatever it is.
Get that out, but then come back and look at what are you learning from it?
Because ultimately that's the truth, right?
We're learning through the only thing we can do we can control is how we respond to situations,
especially now when we're in a more regulated state.
So what we can do, we can't change the situation that's going on.
We can't always control everything, but what we can can control is the way that we look
at it.
So looking at, okay, what am I learning from this?
What is this setting up setting me up for?
What could I have done differently?
What can I do differently next time?
And I think that's a really cool way of looking at things that are challenging because there's
always a learning opportunity, always, always, always.
Right.
And if you're stuck in that victim mentality of things are happening to me, why me, why,
why, why, you're not going to be able to learn that lesson and then move on to like the next
level and like what you're supposed to attain in this lifetime.
And I like to look at life as like these levels of attainment and getting to a higher version
of me and being able to achieve more.
And I go, wow, in my 38 years, I've done a lot.
I've achieved a lot and everything that's taken me to here is for a reason.
Totally.
And then I get to go practice a lot of patience right now.
Like I'm in the time of patience and like knowing and trusting and working on all that.
And I appreciate it.
Even though it's easy to be like, I can't believe this is what my life looks like.
And I'll go there.
I'm human.
And I'll be like, wait, whoa, Danny, stop yourself.
Like switch it.
And so it's something that you have to work on.
And I was talking about this earlier with the subconscious beliefs in those first seven
years of life.
Some people find gratitude way easier to attain, being able to appreciate because maybe their
parents were able to nurture them with that mindset of, Hey, let's look at the world this
way with the glass half full.
Maybe you came from parents who are more in the negative space.
And so that's going to be a little bit harder for you to switch it.
But the cool part is, is no matter what your starting point is, you have the choice and
you have the ability to decide, am I going to look at it this way or am I going to look
at it this way?
I agree, especially when you're in out of that survival mode.
And that's ultimately our message is first get out of survival mode and then gratitude
will become so much easier.
But we encourage you to start practicing it every day.
I usually will do, and I actually stopped doing this, but I want to start over again.
We used to do like a journal where we would do one page per day.
Remember?
And so just one page sometimes you feel like you can go for five pages and sometimes you
wake up and you're like, cause I would do it first thing in the morning.
And sometimes you wake up and you're like, okay, I'm really struggling to fill this page
today.
Yeah.
And it's fine.
But even just putting yourself in that mindset in the beginning of the day is similar to like,
and if you do your brain work in the beginning of the day, that's a game changer.
I struggle with the brain work in the beginning of the day.
I'm very honest about that, baby.
But hey, I might get there, but when I do do it early, I'm like, okay, this is really
a different vibe for my day.
But anyway, that's kind of our podcast for today.
I think we will come up, I think we have a few more podcasts to go in the year.
So we have some more interesting things coming.
We have some interesting sales coming up if you're wanting to do that.
We have, you know, just, just check out our social media.
We're not going to be, we're going to be sneaky about it.
We're going to be mysterious about it because that's who we are.
That's what we're trying to shoot.
That's our choice today, but check out social media because there's something interesting
coming up in the next month, week or so.
And let's do this.
So social media, Instagram in the Cortex underscore us, tick tock in underscore the underscore
Cortex Facebook in the Cortex us.
Email, hello, at in the Cortex.com website, www.inthecortex.com.
And if you want to sign up today, use promo code Brainiac for $10 off your very first
payment of our program.
And that's it.
You're grateful.
We are grateful for you listening to this and being here with us.
And please share, subscribe, rate the podcast.
The more ratings we get, the more we get recommended to people.
We now heard that we're getting the algorithm is already recommending us to people on Spotify,
which is very exciting.
So thank you all of you for being here because it's, it's you that helps us get to that point.
So yeah, thanks.
Thank you.
And happy Thanksgiving.
If you celebrate that, we'll be sending lots of gratitude thoughts out there.
Everybody.
Bye.