In this Day 5 session of the Autumn Blues wellbeing course, the instructor guides listeners through building a lasting gratitude habit using simple visual cues, explains how neuroplasticity allows us to rewire our brains by changing behaviours rather than just thoughts, and introduces the "quartet" of happy chemicals—serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins—highlighting how lifestyle choices affect their levels. The core of the lesson is a tiered social‑interaction framework: Level 1 (CSE) encourages smiling at three strangers, Level 2 (CSC) adds brief eye‑contact and greeting, Level 3 (GCSE) involves more substantive conversation, and Level 4 (A‑level) promotes random acts of kindness. A downloadable handout with 50 kindness ideas is offered, and the instructor cites Dr. Joe Dispenza’s massive simultaneous meditation event as evidence that collective positive intent can reduce crime, accidents, and emergency admissions. The session ends with encouragement to practice these behaviours, noting that repeated positive actions can elevate internal chemistry and create a self‑reinforcing desire for further kindness.
Chapters
Hi and welcome to day 5. So what were you grateful for yesterday? Did you do the CSC level or have you started yourself on the GCSE? And as I mentioned yesterday, the real benefit in the attitude of gratitude is on creating a habit. So maybe think about putting a little Post-it note on your bathroom mirror to remind you every time you get your toothbrush out to practice the attitude of gratitude. I tend to do it when I go to bed, so I have a little Post-it note on my bedside table that acts as a reminder. And very quickly you will start to feel that that's just a part of what you do, but it takes a little bit of conscious effort to get that going. And today we're going to build on that, but moving away from physics into chemistry and biology— much more a comfort zone for me. And in the world of psychology at the moment, the real exciting development is what's called neuroplasticity. Years ago, the perception was the brain is hardwired, you can't change it, but now we know that's not true. The brain can adapt, can change, so we can change how our brains work. Yesterday, the Attitude of Gratitude activity was focusing on changing your thoughts. As a way of changing your feelings. Today we're going to be talking about how you can change behaviours to change those feelings, because you really can change your mind, literally. And it's quite simple. The more you do this, the easier it becomes. So let's think a little bit about chemistry for just a second. We have what we call the quartet of happy chemicals: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. And when these 4 chemicals are abundant in the body, that's when we jump back to being that buzzy person that we were talking about yesterday. Similarly, low levels of those chemicals, we tend to be relatively low on energy. But we can change those things. Think about some of the chemicals that we ingest. If you have perhaps a sweet tooth, if you started drinking 4 or 5 cans of Coke every day, the body starts to go, I need that now. And if you don't have your 4 cans of Coke a day, you start to get withdrawal symptoms. Same is true with, with nicotine, with alcohol, with lots of other substances. Because the body adjusts. I now like having lots of sugar in my system because I've been drinking 5 cans of Coke for the last 2 months. It needs to be maintained. So that's what we're going to do with the internal chemicals. If your internal chemicals are typically low, there's things that we can do to keep knocking them up until they become at such a high level that if you don't feel like that, you go and do something to bring them back up. And this is all about behaviours, doing things that leave you feeling good. And again, we've got a couple of levels to it. Now, back to Neanderthal. We are pack animals. We're designed to be around people, but in the modern world, we can often become very isolated. How well do you even know your neighbours? Do you know them by name? Do you even say hello to them when you walk past them in the morning or on the stairs? So level 1, back to our CSE level, is I just want you, 3 people today, to engage with them. And it may be that the limit for you is just to smile. Look them in the eye, give a big smile. And whilst I can't guarantee it, I am confident as I can be you'll get a reaction, and it's likely to be a smile too. So CSC level, pick 3 people, 3 people you don't normally interact with, whether it is a neighbour, whether it is someone else at work that isn't part of your department. Actively look them in the eye, smile, because it's going to get a reaction, most likely a smile too. But it will make you feel good. Stepping up a bit to our GCSE level, heighten that to an interaction. I mentioned yesterday that I will quite often interact with people standing in supermarket queues. My children find it hugely annoying, but rather than just smile at someone, say hi. I will often, if I'm walking around Salisbury, my most local town, I will pick out traffic wardens policemen, the people checking out in supermarkets, because not a lot of people interact with those, and if they do, it's often quite negative. But I will make a point of saying, hi, how's your day? How are you? How's your day going? And it rarely ceases to amaze me at how much these people will really, really light up, because most traffic wardens, the only interactions they get are negative. Same with a lot of people are very hostile towards policemen, so if they get someone positive and smiley coming up and saying, hey, how's your day? You get this amazing buzz. And what is wonderful is, and the whole point of doing this exercise, when you are nice to someone else, it makes you feel good. Think about giving someone a Christmas present that you've put a lot of thought into, you're really excited, And when you hand it over and they light up, it makes you feel really good too, doesn't it? And this is what we're doing. But you can't give presents to everyone every day, but you can interact with people every single day. So GCSE level is start now interacting with people in a more focused way. Be positive, and it's actually from a very altruistic perspective. Because by being nice to them, you are gonna feel really, really good too. Then we're going to go up to A-level. Our higher level today is to start doing random acts of kindness. Now, I've got a document on the website that you're very welcome to download. It's a free resource that gives you 50 suggestions on things that you can do which are random acts of kindness. There's lots of them on them. I haven't done all of them yet, but I'm working my way through them. So one of them, for example, was that you can offer to buy some— to buy someone a coffee in the, in the queue behind you, in the coffee queue, or you can pay for someone's parking ticket if it's just an hour or so. People are really like, really? You're gonna do that for me? Yeah, and do it unconditionally, even if they think you're a little bit weird. That's okay because it makes you feel good. And when it comes back to energy, a positive activity multiplies way, way much higher than a negative one does. So the more positive that we can be, the ripple effect very soon becomes a tsunami. And if we all did a random act of kindness, it would send a massive positive energy. into the world. And this is proven. I follow a guy called Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I've been involved. Last year he tried to get— he didn't try, he did get over a quarter of a million people meditating at the same time, having positive thoughts. And the proof was that crime levels came down, the admissions into A&E came down, road traffic accidents came down. During the hour that this was going on in a focused number of cities across the world. That's the power of a positive attitude. You can do your little bit, but the wonderful thing is by doing your little bit, you are massively helping yourself too. So please download that handout if you want to get some ideas. You can pick on one and just keep doing it, that's absolutely fine, it doesn't matter. But the different ones that you do, again, you'll get different feelings. And slowly you are going to start nudging that residual level of your internal chemistry up until you start to crave to be able to do positive things. And when you get to that place, wow, that is a magical place to be. So I will leave that with you for now. We've done physics, we've done chemistry, we've done a little bit of biology too. Tomorrow will be something different, and I will leave that with you for now. Have a wonderful day, and I will look forward to chatting with you tomorrow when we'll be halfway through. Take care. Bye-bye.
