Practice Being Grateful To Improve Your Mental Health And Wellbeing

Max Marine is on a mission to encourage everyone he can to practice gratitude daily.  While this might not seem like a priority to some at first, once you dig a bit deeper, it’s easy to see why he’s right.  Everyone from mental health professionals to traditional practitioners have studied the practice of gratitude for decades and, with each study, one thing continues to remain clear: by practicing gratitude daily, you encourage wellness, reduce stress, and enhance your physical and emotional health.

According to Kristin Francis, MD, a psychiatrist at Huntsman Mental Health Institute, “expressing gratitude positively changes your brain. It boosts dopamine and serotonin…giving you those positive feelings of pleasure, happiness, and well-being.”  And when done in groups, it has a positive impact on everyone around you as well.

Founded this past February, Marine’s company Grateful Labs has covered quite a bit of ground in a very short period of time.  The company has launched Grateful Giraffes, a full cyber-based gratitude community, driven across the United States in their Grateful Bus, hosted art installations in Tel Aviv and the U.S. that are gratitude-focused, and are launching their very first NFT very soon.

“Grateful Giraffes is a global NFT community on a mission to elevate collective well-being by making gratitude practices a part of daily life,” says Marine, the CEO and Co-Founder of the company.  The Grateful Giraffes team has approached literally hundreds of people and asked them to write what they’re grateful for – literally on a bus and multiple art installations.

For Marine and his team, this is just the beginning.  “We invite you to join us as we create The Grateful 20’s, the decade in human history where we reach a tipping point in our collective consciousness that leads to gratitude and appreciation, replacing criticism and complaining as the dominant form of human interaction in the West.”

If you think this is a big task, you likely aren’t alone.  But, the Grateful Giraffes team has it all planned out, including very real, physical Houses of Gratitude, with exclusive memberships based on their NFT, ongoing weekly Gratitude Boosts in their Discord community, and an “infinite canvas of creativity”.  Their movement is gaining momentum at warp speed and every mental health expert who has studied the practice of gratitude believes this is an essential part of the journey toward perpetual wellness.

NFT’s are experiencing rapid adoption and while they can be used as a funding vehicle, they are also a means of uniting a community.  “We see the NFT as the smartphone was in 2009.  It’s an open-source developer platform that we do not yet understand.  Beyond this, it aligns our earliest members of the House of Gratitude with its growth.  The better the product and the bigger its reach, the more valuable a lifetime premium membership becomes,” Marine said.

It’s important to note that the Grateful Giraffes NFT also represents a lifetime membership in their House of Gratitude, as well as governance rights in the Grateful DAO.  After reading this last line you may be wondering, “what’s the Grateful DAO?”  Simply put, it’s Marine’s foundation for expressing his gratitude and giving back, and it’s linked to the Grateful Giraffes NFT.

“We are donating 10% of proceeds to The Grateful DAO, a non-profit organization managed by our Giraffe holders,” notes Marine.  It’s a simple concept that enables early NFT adopters to have both a say and a vote on projects and donations supported by The Grateful DAO.   These projects may be global or they may be local.  All of that is yet to be determined.  However, if you’re looking to make a difference, joining the Grateful Giraffes just may be your best bet.

In learning about what Marine and the Grateful Giraffes are doing, the old American Express commercial comes to mind where the announcer says “membership comes with privileges.”  In this case, it certainly does.