Summary
Joe and Brett dedicate an entire episode to gratitude — what it is, why it’s uncomfortable, how it drives productivity, and how to practice it as a full-body sport rather than a performative exercise. Joe shares how gratitude became central to his venture capital team meetings, not as a soft nicety but as a practical tool that made the team more connected and effective. Brett draws from his experience in extreme sports, where gratitude after dangerous jumps became a way to integrate experiences and update decision-making.
The conversation explores why gratitude is so uncomfortable in our culture: it requires feeling good in front of others, surrendering ego control, and acknowledging something greater than yourself. Joe explains that many high performers avoid gratitude because their drive comes from a sense of not being good enough — and allowing satisfaction threatens the identity that fuels their ambition. Yet gratitude self-corrects: if you truly feel it, the attachment to outcomes naturally dissolves.
Joe outlines the practical benefits of gratitude for problem-solving (seeing what’s right and growing it rather than fixing what’s wrong), changing identity, speeding transformation, and dissolving poverty mentality. He distinguishes genuine felt gratitude from performative positivity: real gratitude is a full-body sensation that can include tears and anger, never denies other emotions, and requires no convincing. The episode closes with a live gratitude practice demonstrating the principles discussed.
Key Concepts
- Gratitude is a full-body sensation, not a mental exercise
- Gratitude solves problems by seeing what’s right and growing it
- Gratitude changes your sense of self and identity
- Allowing satisfaction is scary because it threatens the driven identity
- Gratitude self-corrects when truly felt
- Gratitude is a healing medicine — a homeostatic response
- Gratitude practice: keep it short and feel it before speaking
Key Quotes
“Gratitude is not like Thanksgiving dinner table — ‘I’m really grateful for the food, can I eat?’ It’s a felt sense that is typically tingly and warm and there’s in it this acknowledgment of something greater than yourself.”
“If you really allow yourself to feel pleasure, there’s a certain safety that comes with it, but there’s also the lack of self.”
“Most people who are really high performers in business — what motivates a lot of them is trying to satisfy a critical parent. To actually allow themselves to feel satisfied is scary because the sense of identity goes away.”
“If you’re feeling the gratitude, it kind of self-corrects. You become so grateful that the outcome starts becoming kind of silly.”
“It’s hard for me to walk through a day and not see a thousand things to be grateful for.”
“What is gratitude? It is a healing medicine. There is something deeply healing about gratitude.”
Transcript
what makes gratitude so uncomfortable for people feeling good in front of people in our society is kind of kinky now imagine you’re sitting at a table at a restaurant and one of your friends like goes into ecstasy it’s going to make everybody really really uncomfortable if you really allow yourself to feel pleasure there’s a certain safety that comes with it but there’s also the lack of self so I’ve been working with a CEO client who recently they wanted to bring more connection into their meetings into their leadership meetings and so I asked how if at all gratitude is involved in in their meeting process and first he was a little shocked and then he kind of laughed and squirmed a little bit and I was like what’s what’s the squirm and he’s like yeah I just can’t imagine explicitly inviting my team to share things they’re grateful for in a structured way in our meetings I just that just I’d be embarrassed and you know I found that fascinating and it’s also not at all uncommon uh somehow in especially in a lot of business circles but kind of across our culture in a lot of ways gratitude is often seen as something that’s orthogonal or unrelated to productivity or efficiency Superfluous even so in that spirit I want to take up an entire episode to talk about just gratitude let’s be super superflous let be super list and just talk about gratitude I love it let’s do it and let’s also do it in a way that even the most hardcore productivity nerds could get behind Okay see if we can do that sound good sounds good let’s do it awesome yeah so so kind of to start with like in in our meetings internally in AOA we we have this practice we always take a moment to share something we’re grateful for we’ll kind of do a round uh We’ve even had entire meetings here at AOA have been fully dedicated to gratitude or celebration in critical moments and I imagine that wasn’t always the case in your career as a VC imagine that wasn’t always the norm and so I’m curious just to ask you first to start this off how did that come to be that gratitude became such an explicit part of work culture for you yeah yeah interestingly like it didn’t really happen in a lot of the board meetings but our internal meetings almost from the start as a venture capitalist we did gratitude um and it was my idea it came to be because I one I just knew it was a really powerful practice and the original thought was I like I had no idea of all the benefits that it would bring um and how for the productivity nerds how much more efficient and productive we would be because of it um but I just wanted a way for us to connect and what I noticed was was that most of the time we were spending we were talking about problems what are the problems you know occasionally we’d be like this went well but it you know most of the in business in general it’s just like you spent a lot of time focused on what’s not going right and so and and as you should like if you’re going to pay attention to only the things that are working in your company you’re not going to make improvements and you’re probably not going to get where you want to go so you really want to focus on where you can improve on things and so that usually presents itself as a problem and you’re considering and thinking about problems or thinking about how to make something better but you’re not really being grateful for what’s happening and and what I just noticed is that humans without that shared experience of being grateful is just harder to connect and so that’s all it was it was just like I wanted our team to feel more connected because I knew that would be good for me and I knew it would be good for them and that’s how it started and then later I just found out holy crap I had no idea how powerful of a practice that is if it’s done if it’s done well then it’s an incredibly powerful practice Yeah beautiful yeah and and but how how about you with gratitude like was there any gratitude in Air Sports or like like how like was there like wow besides like I’m grateful I didn’t die like what how was gratitude if at all a part of your your world before this yeah well I mean grateful I didn’t die is it is a big one but and there there’s actually some like depth to it but initially it was just like this is a dream to be able to do this thing that I like saw and then went after and then did and be able to go in the mountains with my friends and just have these beautiful Vistas and have these beautiful flying experiences yeah there’s a lot of gratitude for that and it was you know very quickly when when you’re doing something that’s really risky what the are you doing it for if you’re not really deeply enjoying it and grateful for the experience uh so quickly started to become obvious when I was just starting to do it for the you know for the goal achievement oriented kind of aspect without really actually being with a gratitude um but there also it also started to become really functional in a in a deeper way uh for example if you if you make any kind of jump you are on some level your skill in your training is involved and on some level there’s just luck and Grace and so after any jump there would just be a process of even during the jump but like really after jump especially one where something went a little bit hairy you know and you’re like you got that like fear moving through the system you got that adrenaline and there’s just like the I found that the more that I let myself really feel the gratitude for for my own actions and behaviors and skills and whatever but also just for the configuration of reality that occurred that allowed me to get through the situation the more it actually allowed me to really integrate what had happened and update my you know update my model update my decision-making update my abilities and uh make different decisions in the future and uh and also be doing it less from a seeking kind of a place less from a chasing the dragon more from the really reveling in the beauty yeah that makes a ton of sense yeah that’s cool thanks for sharing that yeah yeah so I want to kind of go into like how do we in this work Define gratitude what is it that we’re talking about here just so we can tease that out relative to what people might perceive gratitude to be yeah so I don’t think anybody’s too confused about gratitude it’s you know the feeling of thanks or gratefulness for a situation I I think the the distinction in our work compared to other work is that it’s a full body sensation it’s a full body sport gratitude is not uh is not like you know Thanksgiving dinner table I’m really grateful for the food can I eat you know like it’s not that it’s a it’s a felt sense that is you know typically tingly and warm and and there’s in it there’s this acknowledgement of something greater than yourself the natural part of gratitude is that it there’s it’s something that’s beyond you you know when you like you said oh I could have died like it’s it wasn’t completely up to me that when it like hairy I might have had something to do with it but even that there’s this acknowledgement like oh man I turned just at the right time and so there’s this and and in that is a relief of pressure there’s like the ego pressure can can you know get released out of the balloon a little bit because it just get it lets that pressure out because there’s an acknowledgement that you’re not fully in control of this thing and I’m sure there’s viewers who are like I’m in control of it it’s like I my response there would be you can’t even decide the next thought you’re going to have or the next 10 thoughts you’re going to have like so if you’re not even making that decision which is what’s propelling all the rest of your decisions like there is there’s something greater moving and you know life call it life if you want to but there’s just something that’s beyond us that’s occurring and um even if it’s our genetics right it’s but it’s not that sense of ego and and in that there’s a so the sensation also comes with a relief the the the emotion of gratitude there’s a kind of a certain sense of expansion and a certain sense of relief that comes with it yeah and so that that’s how I would describe it and if you’re not feeling it you don’t get the benefits of all the there all the many benefits of gratitude you don’t get them if if you’re not actually allowing yourself to experience the Gratitude yeah and that leads really well into my next question which is around what makes gratitude so uncomfortable for people so you know not everybody but like there there is a certain there is a certain kind of keeping at the borders and I imagine that might be related to the uh the egolessness of it the letting it come from outside of ourselves the the surrender the that that is that can be a scary experience especially if you’re trying to really get things done and you’ve got a mission uh but I want to ask you like what what do you think makes it not as much of an explicit practice a full body sport as you say in our society funny about that is you asked me the question I was like I have I don’t think I have an answer for that one and then you’re literally giving me the answer with with like a while saying it’s like it comes from the outside um that was good uh yeah what I think yes that probably some some part of of it if not all of it comes from the idea that you know there is something Beyond you that you’re not fully in control and that can be scary until you actually allow that feeling in yeah um and usually it it comes also just from a certain level of chaos what I’ve noticed is there a certain amount of Chaos in your earlier life it’s harder to get in touch with gratitude except for maybe in Extreme Ways you know something that’s really like life or death or something to that effect um and so there’s like there a say again I wonder who that might apply to um I think the other thing that makes it um difficult is that uh feeling good in in front of people in our society is is kind of kinky meaning we can laugh together um but you know imagine you’re sitting at a a table at a restaurant and one of your friends like goes into ecstasy it’s going to make everybody really really uncomfortable I mean even you know when you watch Tera eat purple potatoes exactly watching dare eat as an example she takes so much pleasure in it or you know I think it’s why so even so much of our sex is so you know transactional even with ourselves like it’s masturbation is like a very transactional thing is because that pleasure to allow yourself to totally feel the pleasure in a in a way it makes people self-conscious often times people feel shame around pleasure and and so so that also happens it also if you really allow yourself to feel pleasure there’s a certain safety that comes with it and then there’s that lack of control but there’s also the lack of self like you know if you feel a like what people don’t usually say is like I felt total ecstasy and I felt very solid and grounded in my sense of self like ecstasy in itself is like oh it’s kind of transcendental it’s like ah so so so I think that’s the other thing is there’s this loss of control and self in in feeling good that is even though everybody wants it is a bit challenging to allow or to let in which is why it’s not as prevalent in our society yeah and so those are the reasons and the only thing I’ll add there is in like groups are in businesses it’s even more profound than that because it’s we’re supposed to be serious we’re supposed to be productive I’m valuable by what I’ve created and most of the people who are really high performers in business this isn’t required to be a high performer but what motivates a lot of people in business is trying to satisfy a critical parent or you know this feeling like they’re not good enough and then they have something to prove and so to actually allow themselves to feel satisfied is scary because the sense of identity goes away and their mind goes if I allow myself to feel satisfied or grateful well I’ll stop trying I’ll stop being productive I’ll stop being ambitious yeah yeah when we’ve learned to use the trauma or the those patterns to drive us then it’s scary to let them go so yeah gratitude unravels these things and allows us to actually be present and enjoy where we are then yeah yeah that can really mess with the mind a little bit and so yeah it does so kind of given that um given that there’s a sort of push pull here in in society and in a lot of our our culture what are when people do allow that gratitude as a full body experience a full body sport uh I want to talk a little bit about what are some of the like low-hanging fruits of just doing a little bit of practice of gratitude and we’ll later on talk about what that practice looks like but I want to talk about what are sort of the the easy gains in the productivity sense and also what are some of the benefits that are available from doing a deeper practice from really making it a lifestyle yeah so I would say a deeper like a little bit and a deeper practice there’s not too much of a difference between them but we’ll go into that as we talk about the practice it’s you know maybe the difference of seven minutes a day or something to that effect but um so the okay so productivity wise the first thing is gratitude really helps you solve problems um what that means is that we’re usually solving a problem with what’s wrong and how do I fix it gratitude allows you to say what’s right and how do I grow it so um I don’t think I’ve told this story but if I have I apologize there was this classic story of a guy who was in save the children or Feed the Children or something like that and he went to Vietnam and he wasn’t welcome and he only had a $50,000 budget and his job was to like stop childhood malnutrition in like an entire County or two or something like that and he got greeted on the plane and they were like we don’t believe in you we want you gone but we I’ve been told to let you try for three months and he had no budget and so he walked around he just looked and he found one village where the kids weren’t malnourished and he noticed what they were doing and they were taking the same amount of rice but they were putting into three meals instead of two they were taking little insects out of the fields that look like micro and they put them in the rice and they cut these bitter greens and they chopped them really finely and put them in the rice and he saw that they did it and then he brought all the mothers together and he showed them all the difference in the weight and the way the kids were and everything like that and then the whole County changed and so he solved the problem by going what’s right and how do we grow that instead of what’s wrong and how do we fix it if he would have been like how do I get another $50,000 how do I convince the government to how do why like that’s one way to solve the problem this was a completely different one so that’s one thing really helps you solve the problem and particularly helps you solve a problem in another way too which is if you start doing gratitude practice and you learn that you can be grateful for difficult stuff not it’s going to be okay not not like denying the pain of difficult stuff but actually being grateful for the pain of difficult stuff uh then you see opportunities where very few people see the opportunities where it’s like oh it’s covid and like if you can really get into the Gratitude oh I get to be home alone with my family and I get to really like focus on myself and here are some things I’m grateful for yeah I’m not going to say it doesn’t suck but in that then you can say oh well what do I want to do I want to learn while I’m home alone oh I could do an online course and then you you’re taking advantage of an opportunity so that’s another one two ways that it solves problems uh that just gives you a whole different set of problems and another great benefit is you know I think we talked about this in the money episode but uh if you have poverty mentality around anything time money um smarts whatever it a lot of that is because you define yourself as stressed or you define yourself as not smart or you define yourself as poor if you start doing gratitude in a way that allows you to see the wealth that you do have to see the intelligence that you do have you change your definition of yourself and so that also solves problems I don’t I countless people I know have done like a 10-minute gratitude a day on something that they feel like they have lack of and they’re just grateful for all the ways they don’t have lack like oh yeah I’m poor and I have a house to live in and I have food on the table and having like a deep gratitude for that not just saying it but having that deep gratitude I don’t know how many people I know who that has totally helped them transition their money issues so so that’s another great solution that works as a team too as a company you can do the practice of here’s what we’re shy of let’s be grateful for all that we do have and it turns you know lack of resources into resourcefulness so that’s another really great one um in that is the changing a sense of self gratitude can really change your sense of self and we behave mostly by who we think we are not by anything else you know if we think that we are studious we study if we think that we love working out than we work out and so if you’re working out and you’re grateful oh I’m so grateful that I want to work out I’m so grateful that I told myself it’s time to work out I’m so grateful for working out I’m so grateful for how I feel when I’m finished working out you’re going to keep working out like eventually that that identity is going to come into place of you’re the person grateful to work out instead of you’re the person who doesn’t work out and says you should work out yeah so that’s another one yeah or or somebody who’s been told by their parents that they’re that they’re manipulative because they have the emotions and needs that they’re manipulative and so then they end up learning to be manipulative and then the Gratitude could be oh you know what yeah I’m actually really cunning yeah that’s great right right or I’m grateful I’m grateful that I had needs I’m grateful that I expressed my needs I’m grateful that I stood for the stuff that I needed even in ways that I couldn’t I’m I look at all the ways that I’m also just kind and generous and and then all of a sudden you’re a person who respects other people’s needs and your own needs yeah and the manipulation if there is any just kind of flips away so that’s another one yeah so sense change of identity um it it speeds transformation so if you’re transforming and you are constantly thinking I’m not going fast enough this isn’t working just like the working out thing why is there any change I this is all going to go away I wonder if this is going to last all that stuff is going to slow you down if you’re like oh I’m so grateful I saw that I’m so grateful that I did this I’m so grateful I did the class and like again you feel it not just say it like I was but like really feel that deep gratitude um then then yeah it speeds transformation instead of slows it down so that’s another really good one including in a company if you can show gratitude for the changes that are happening in the right direction it totally speeds that transformation so um and I’d say the last one that I there’s others but just because I’m rambling at this point a little bit um there’s just an emotional yoga thing that happens as well which is because positive feelings are difficult for us this is a practice of actually allowing that emotional experience into your world and so it just begets more of those emotional experiences so once you start opening up to them you stop being as scared of them they just are more plentiful all of a sudden there everywhere and it’s like it’s hard for me to walk through a day and not see a thousand things to be grateful for yeah one one thing that strikes me from all the things you just listed is that gratitude seems to just be like the universal acid for doubt just like striking cutting through doubt yeah I I usually say that it’s like you can’t have doubt with a closed heart um but I like that because in a weird way one of the things about gratitude is that it it opens you can’t have gratitude with a closed heart yeah like there’s an openness to there’s a required openness to experience gratitude yeah and openness yeah which which also might be why people are scared to do it because you know letting love in is really scary for most folks right and that that the same goes for the relief the there’s the the letting go of the tension the patterns that that also requires the open heart and that that I think interplays with a lot of the the benefits that you just described is that relief of tension yeah the other thing I’ll say for all the non-productivity Nerds out there it just makes life feel good so what’s the benefit it just feels good like if you want to feel good do gratitude yeah yeah well that statement seems like it answered the next question that came to mind but I still want to ask it which is yeah how do you know if what you’re feeling is actually if what you’re feeling is gratitude and you’re really letting it happen and it’s not just a dissociative form of positivity positive thinking or looking the bright side yeah or telling yourself you shouldn’t feel bad that’s a great question uh I mean yes it’s going to feel really good it’s it’s you’re not going to convince there’s no convincing in real gratitude of yourself or of anybody else um so that’s one clue it like physically feels really good that’s another clue I think the other the other like this one’s a little more subtle um but um if you’re like when I do gratitude sometimes I cry when I have gratitude sometimes there’s anger um so it’s it’s not denying another emotional experience it’s not trying there’s no trying in it and you’re not pushing something down to feel this gratitude the feel the experience of gratitude is it encompasses everything I can be really grateful about my anger and I can be really grateful about my sadness and I can be really grateful for my fear in fact oftentimes being grateful about the things that we find difficult is incredibly transformative yeah so I’m hearing this a lot about the the breadth and the depth of where gratitude exists and is applied that’s so there’s kind of emotional yoga in expanding the range of motion of where we can allow the Gratitude to be that’s right in our experience yeah that’s right yeah yeah I’m curious to get just kind of like any tips for people who who want to step into that flow of the Gratitude without forcing it or trying what’s what is a good way to to really be in that allowing and let that current move you yeah I mean the the so trying to get there is going to not bring you there so like there’s no trying that can gratitude almost feels like a receiving so that’s part of it it’s like oh I’m not trying to get there I’m receiving gratitude is it is more of the feeling of it and the other thing that I would say is there’s always something spectacular happening and so the job is to so there the job you don’t have to find it you know like you don’t have to like go searching for something to be grateful for it’s there’s just always something in front of you is oh here like here we are I’m speaking on a zoom thing I don’t have to go to recording studio anymore I get to talk and be with people like you and people listen and what the hell and people love this podcast what like whoa like it’s all all around just not to even mention the technology like if you saw my rig and the fact that I can afford this you know that that almost you know anybody working can afford this if this is what they want to do and the microphones like and the technology is stunning so the to feel the Gratitude it it’s going and searching for it is like this lack of faith faith in it and and so it it pushes it away from you rather than just oh it’s there is something right here to be grateful for I don’t have to look just the idea that you’re wanting to be grateful is something to be grateful for yeah that’s beautiful I really like that and uh I also want to talk about so this was this was sort of like how this was about feeling the gratitude and also there’s the aspect of you know there’s there’s the way people might cling to it and want it to stick around but also there’s something really valuable and just noticing the ways that we fall off of it you know like kind of like walking a slack line I’ve talked about before is the process of learning all the ways you fall so that you notice them and bring yourself back or fight them less and so I’m curious what are some of the ways that when people feel gratitude and it is overwhelming and then skip away from it what what are some of the different ways that that occurs so that people can become aware and notice more so much in that besides your question that I want to answer so so one thing is if you notice that you have fallen away from gratitude that’s something to be grateful for because you’ve noticed like the the harder thing is when you don’t notice notice but the good news is when you don’t notice there’s nothing you can do so so it’s like so then it shows up and it’s like and everybody like what a lot of people do is damn it I wasn’t grateful when they remember instead of oh oh look at that I’m like I can be grateful again I’m grateful that I just remembered that like so that’s that’s one thing the other thing is like I don’t want gratitude to become like moral or like something that has to be done or that you should be doing that’ll take all the joy right out of gratitude and there there won’t be any gratitude there to find because it becomes this big should so I think that in itself to realize that gratitude isn’t a should makes gratitude more available and less intense um now for your question which is yeah if you really get into gratitude it can be incredibly overwhelming and and I will just say the thing that the fear that arises and deep gratitude is is is the fear of our freedom it’s the fear of our identity slipping away and yeah you like take your time with it you know like allow your system to to digest what it can digest and and just the knowing that this is just a solution and it’s the thing I’m actually looking for the thing that’s scary is the fact that I’m looking for this thing and I’m finding it the same way like the you might feel like in the last stage of a video game and you’re like oh my God I’m here and I could almost get finished and then you know yeah um the same it’s the same thing and so to just to know that actually is incredibly helpful and and the other one is if you are in the overwhelm see what like what makes it not pleasurable like overwhelm is overwhelming but it can be really pleasurable overwhelm is usually you know as we’ve talked about before it’s it’s like we’re not letting ourselves feel the whole thing so the overwhelm typically is the resistance to the Gratitude not the Gratitude itself and take your time with it there’s no rush like there’s you know you don’t have to you don’t have to like you don’t there you know the thing about that’s the other thing about gratitude is there’s a way in which it creates a gentleness that allows us to you know more like the the Marines say slow is smooth smooth is fast there’s like a there’s something about that too with gratitude yeah it allows you to to be at a pace that’s actually most productive even though it feels a little slow yeah so slowly moving to this next uh what comes up for me right now I as I Was preparing for this episode I thought of like okay a lot of people talk about gratitude and there’s a lot of people who talk a lot about gratitude and I don’t see them necessarily living it or I don’t necessarily see their lives transforming um yeah and so I want to really make sure that we like this episode has has some juice has some meat and so I I sat down and I thought about different projections that we might have onto gratitude that I that I’ve seen that I’ve seen in myself and so I’m curious to kind of go through a couple of these and see see what what comes up here uh the first one that showed up for me was uh a pattern before we before we go there I just want to say I have another idea where we could actually just do a gratitude practice at the end of this like you and I do oh cool okay cool okay I’m not letting us get out of that oh that’s happening yeah that’s happening yeah cool great um but yeah the first one that I came up with uh that I’ve noticed is when when we see gratitude as a result something caused uh once I have XYZ then I’ll be able to feel the Gratitude but if and if I’m not feeling gratitude now it must be because something some condition isn’t right yes and that needs to change so that I can feel gratitude oh yeah um that’s a great question I you don’t have a question there so I don’t really have an answer I could just go through these on a list and see like what pops for you and you’re like oh that’s something I have something to say on okay well I I can definitely say something on that which is oh that’s hell that’s like uh right it’s the same thing as like once I am a certain way I can be loved and and then I can act lovable but acting lovable is actually the thing about being loved it’s like it’s allowing the love in and it’s the same thing with gratitude that it in a weird way it’s like if you’re it takes a tremendous amount of ego and it’s not the ego maybe that we think of like we’re the greatest thing ever but there’s a tremendous amount of ego meaning self-definition to not to say I can’t be grateful until X Y and Z happens it’s like really not acknowledging all your ancestors the people who are providing the lights for you who built your house the electricity that came in the technology that you’re using like all the ways that you are supported it is really just saying screw you to all that support all that effort in the world and that requires a real ego to do that yeah that makes my heartbreak a little bit yeah yeah and there’s there’s the flip side of that one which is using gratitude as a strategy yeah like I’m I’m gonna be grateful so that XYZ happens which is interesting because we’re talking about all the benefits of gratitude and so I want to kind of challenge us like what is the what’s the difference here between like really feeling gratitude and getting the benefits of it and relegating gratitude to a strategy that is just for an outcome so I mean what I would say is that most of the stuff that we teach if you do it to get to the place it stops working gratitude is not one of those things interestingly assuming that you’re feeling it ah like like if you’re feeling the Gratitude it kind of self corrects it’s like this amazing tool that it just like it’s like you become so grateful that the outcome starts like becoming kind of silly and then you don’t you’re not so concerned about the outcome and then the outcome happens so it’s like one of the few tools that we teach that actually self-corrects if you’re actually feeling it now if you’re saying I’m I’m really grateful for money for these six reasons so that I can be rich then you’re not going to feel it but if you really feel it it self corrects which is odd it’s it’s one of the few that I can point to that does that yeah yeah I love that and another one that came up is using it as a scorecard or a measurement whether that is in the sense of like am I there yet am I enlightened yet or in the sense of like I’m going to project or I’m going to display my gratitude so people can see where I’m at in my journey like both of those seem like different ways of like using gratitude as a as a measurement or scorecard how does yeah do you have to say about that how does that play in here oh I would say it’s not a great scorecard um and and like the other thing about gratitude is it’s like it’s this weird thing right where there’s this great study of people picking tomatoes and they say we’ll pay you more money if you pick more Tomatoes like there’s this and what it ended up doing is making everybody pick less tomatoes and that doesn’t work with all humans so everybody but the majority of humans they just pick less tomatoes and um so I think it’s a really similar thing if you are scoring yourself on your development it slows down the process like if there’s a map and you’re like paying attention to it just think oh what might happen next or whatever but if you’re engaged in like how do I become how do I get to the next level how do I get to the next stage there’s there’s a certain slowness that that creates gratitude also over time starts taking away that desire if you’re doing gratitude a lot the desire to score yourself doesn’t matter because you’ve got the thing at the end right like if you’re grateful all the time on a regular basis you’ve already won the game so why do you give a about the scorecard and yet you still are productive and you’re still ambitious and you still want to do a lot of stuff but you’re not doing it from that sense of lack or that sense of anxiety uh and and therefore you do things smoother with more intention with more Effectiveness because you’re not bringing that fear that chases everybody yeah and and speaking of the sort of the in the relation to everybody aspect here uh another piece that I noticed is just around shame like when gratitude feels shameful or embarrassing or something that we feel like we need to have socially earned or deserve I I imagine there being a common pattern of like I can feel gratitude in my in the secrecy of my heart or when I’m alone but if I’m if I’m flaunting it out there running around showing my gratitude letting people see it then I’ll be I’ll be shamed I’ll be attacked I’ll be uh making people feel bad I’m curious about that pattern yeah it’s there’s some truth to that meaning you know if you’re grateful and you show it you will get some skepticism maybe a little attack but usually a little bit of skepticism because if somebody can’t feel the Gratitude they are going to be skeptical of your gratitude and so and that that used to stop me honestly it used to stop me from showing my gratitude and um now forget them you can be skeptical all you want and what I notice is that they usually cave in about 10 like like if I’m grateful for them and I’m just and and I I’m making sure that I’m never grateful as a way to chase their love or to make them happy I think that’s actually a real pothole of gratitude of like wow I’m really grateful for you it’s like like that’s just people pleasing um but if there’s an authentic gratitude that comes up and you say it with somebody almost all folks you know in the sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth one is going to start like they’re just they’re not going to be into the like skeptical of you thinking you’re doing it to kiss their ass or whatever um typically and if they still are after 10 it’s a really good there’s a really good question to be asked which is like what am I doing hanging out with this person right like one of the things that happens when you when you have gratitude practice is people around you start becoming more grateful or they go away like or there’s just more people around you that are grateful I like I think about our community and like gratitude is normal in our community and so and and like my personal life and like that’s just part of who I want to hang out with and and like a life that I like leading and so so to some degree that they just go away so that’s why I just do it because I’m standing for I’m standing for the future that I want to live in by living in it right now I’m going to be grateful and we’ll see who sticks off yeah and who meets me yeah I love that so I have uh we’ve talked a little bit about how gratitude even for the difficult experiences are in the midst of grief and difficulty can be really really beneficial and growthful and I want to share just kind of like a really brief story and then ask your thoughts on this uh there’s a friend of mine who was recently in a base jumping accident and they they broke a bunch of Bones including their hand and they somehow managed to use their broken hand to pull out their phone you know they called their girlfriend and of course first asked the girlfriend how she was doing and listened to her talk about her day before mentioning that they were broken and waiting for a helicopter um which is just hilarious on a totally different level um wow when I heard about this and uh when he was receiving calls in the hospital I called him and I was like hey what’s going on like how are you tell me tell me how he told me that whole story um but I was like and how are you holding up I asked and he’s just like I don’t understand it but I’m just like so full of gratitude for he’s just like yeah you know I mean the the helicopter was there quickly the people were there to like rescue me I got to the hospital people have been treating me really well um but also like there’s a weird way I’m actually grateful for the for the whole thing like already you’re still laid up in the hospital broken and you’re like what how and so so that’s my my question for you is like what what have you seen in in all your uh in all this work around how gratitude influences post-traumatic growth yeah so yeah it’s really interesting there’s something there I read something about I don’t quote me but I read some article I never verified it but it was about lottery winners and people who had some sort of like significant accident and the people won the lottery like three years later really weren’t grateful for the fact that they they’re just like that was like they were poor again nothing you know whereas the people who got in these really bad accidents were great had gratitude had like more gratitude and were happier and and so I’ve read a little bit about the how a lot of folks find gratitude through significant injury I’m talking like paralyzation and stuff like that like I think being confronted with the fragility of life is something that brings us closer to gratitude generally um almost losing our life brings us closer I think also it’s like one of the few ways out if you are paralyzed or something like that you know there’s a there’s just having gratitude accepting what is and having gratitude like can relieve half the pain and fighting it is just horrendous and so to some degree I think it’s it’s forced on a certain certain group of people because there’s just like it’s either that or I’m going to just go crazy in my head wondering what if I would have done this what if I would have done that or crazy in my head because I’m constantly going I could have I could have I could I should have I should have why me why me why me all that will just drive you nuts so at some point you like you have an option to do that or to and then the contrast of that will make you feel so like that gratitude feels so sweet like it’s so sweet um because you’ve been living in this hole of I could have I wish I would have why me you know that whole thing so I think that’s that that that’s my guess as to that and just like holy I almost lost everything and so that really makes things present yeah um yeah it’s interesting it also seems like to some degree those moments like the further those moments get away the Gratitude seems to dissipate for some folks like there’s like a little like life gets back to normal and there’s not quite as much gratitude as like you know when they first Discover it it seems um so yeah it’s it’s a strange it’s a strange phenomenon but please you don’t have to go through that to find gratitude it’s it’s almost as though there’s like a like a resource of gratitude that like comes up it’s like a homeostatic response that our body just has sometimes it’s like okay this is actually going to be what is needed for healing and it’s actually available to us all the time it’s in a natural state and yeah when we have like little problems or big problems that feel like big problems in our story we might not feel like we have access to it but then something just cracks through it like happened for Byron Katie or for Buckminster Fuller each have stories involving this yeah yeah yeah I think that yeah I think that’s beautifully said and I love the idea that like it’s for our healing but that’s like a more succinct way to discuss gratitude we could have used that as the as the definition what is gratitude it is it is a healing medicine it like there is something deeply healing about gratitude that’s beautiful yeah yeah it’s why I call it one of the foundations of doing any transformative work it is incredibly important for if you’re doing transformative work if you do this it’ll definitely like it’s a really like the right fuel for the engine yeah yeah I’m just thinking now of people who sign up for master class and they’re like okay I’m going to do this like leadership development program and step one I’m gonna start with my homework gratitude practice gratitude every day oh boy oh boy oh goodness but I mean you see all the transformation and gratitude all the healing that I mean sorry all the transformation that happens you see all the transformation that happens in and groundbreakers and like it’s like everybody’s going through these big shifts and nobody’s like oh it’s the Gratitude that’s doing it but it’s the base it’s like the fuel for all of it um because it’s the daily it is the daily practice really and so so it’s it’s easy to overlook but it is absolutely in my mind one of the things that makes master class so effective yeah yeah so I want to leave then uh leave our listeners with some concrete practice that they can bring into their lives to bring gratitude into their personal their work um maybe start with the general like what what is just the the core practice like one one really Baseline thing that people can do yeah so it’s just best with another person anybody um if you can’t find somebody reach out to our community there’s people who want to do it where you just sit across with somebody and you say one of you says you’re grateful for something you savor that the other person says they’re grateful for something you savor that first person says they’re grateful for something you savor that and you just go back and forth for seven 10 minutes um the important aspects there is that you keep the Gratitude short the and the reason for that is if you make the gratitudes long which people have the propensity to do I’m really grateful for and then also this and because of this and the other thing often times there would be a lot of hedges in those sentences and the other thing is it puts you in your head so you don’t get the full visceral experience somatic experience of gratitude so it’s really important to make the gratitudes very short um always less than a sentence definitely not a run-on sentence or a compound sentence um I mean it you might mess up once or twice it doesn’t matter but generally you’re you’re being as concise as possible and then the other thing is to feel the Gratitude before you say it so it’s a full body sport so it’s not and if you need to say something to yourself for a while to get yourself into the Gratitude or think of something to get yourself into the Gratitude that’s fine but like have the visceral sensation of it and then speak the thing you’re grateful for and then if you want to up the level after you’re like nice and sunk in then you can start finding things you’re grateful for that are that are a little difficult you know it’s something that’s a trial find something you’re grateful for inside of a trial or a problem that you’re having that’s it awesome that’s how you do it and what would be a couple of quick practices that could be brought into a workplace for example into like a meeting format as as a leader do what we do is like we start the meetings with the round of gratitudes or a couple we used to do a couple rounds of gratitudes um and really have it like again be a full body sport when it’s done like have the explanation um so that’s one uh the other thing that you can do um is if you have a problem that’s intractable or um like two people are fighting or something like that to share a gratitude about like what’s the the gratitude for the opportunity in the situation so you can start solving problems like if if you have a problem that you’re all solving together that feels like hard or something like that you can say hey let’s just do a gratitude for the problem and then everybody can show gratitude for what you know what is potent the potential of learning or what they’re learning or what they get to do because of this problem and then solve the problem and that changes that usually helps a lot quicker yeah opens up the problem space the solution space yeah right I love it that’s right right instead where usually people come in and they’re like oh I got to solve this I’m not going to solve this like which is really not kind of the self-fulfilling best problem solving state of mind yeah awesome well how about a round of gratitudes to close this how about a round of gratitudes for um for our listeners and viewers yeah oh that’s great yeah yeah yeah I’d like that yeah I am so grateful every time uh this almost feels like an ask but I’m just going to go with the gratitude that came up but I’m starting with feeling it I really am grateful for every time I’ve seen someone share this work share this podcast share what we’re doing on social media but primarily just when I see when I feel the energy in it of like how grateful they are we’re we’re gonna start again because that long one is exactly and it was for the reasons like you don’t need any yeah I’m really grateful when people share you say it like that it’ll come across yeah yeah okay let’s start it again okay I am just so grateful there’s a performance in there I’m really grateful to see how much people have been loving the work and sharing it on social media it just feels so good so so good I am grateful that so many people who are listening to the podcast showed up to our free Q&A this morning that felt so good to have so many people who knew the work coming instead of people who didn’t know the work coming I just did it too long too sorry yeah again yeah I uh I am grateful that uh so many listeners showed up for our free Q&A today and that they had this base of of work from the podcast when they showed up it was lovely I’m grateful that there are listeners who have been with us from the beginning several years ago and they still reach out with questions and appreciations and gratitudes I love receiving gratitudes from listeners feels so good uh I’m grateful uh that I get to do it with you and that people get to experience us I’m grateful that there’s a 100 plus episode record of our journey as teacher student co-facilitators friends business partners the whole thing I’m grateful um for the stories of people listening to a podcast and crying or pulling over the side of the road to puke where the where the they where viewers take it in and really allow it into their body I’m very grateful for that I’m grateful for the times that I hear of somebody who I’d never made any contact with they’ve never come to one of our courses but they’ve been listening to the podcast and it’s been impactful for them and when I hear that I’m like wow I never even never even knew I’m grateful that we are in the top 35 self-help podcasts of all time because of our listeners that they yeah that feels so good according to good pods thank you good pods according to good pods and lastly I’m grateful I got to see the eclipse and see with my eyes the perspective on the solar system that that made available that was cool awesome yeah thanks for a great great podcast yeah thank you Joe thank you everybody I feel all mushy and gushy now so don’t even know how to close us out like us and things send us gratitude we’re on social media find us if you want to don’t if you don’t bring gratitude in your life and spread it around enjoy it take care