Summary
Joe walks through a single, simple gratitude practice for moving from “not enough” to “enough” — whether the lack is around money, love, attention, respect, or friends. The problem he targets is the constant inner narration of lack: telling yourself “not enough money” hundreds of times a day works exactly like being called an idiot all day. It reshapes how you see yourself and, with that, how you see reality, hiding the opportunities that are actually there. Telling yourself to stop the lack-narrative rarely works, so you have to replace it — and gratitude is the replacement.
What makes the practice work is that it’s married to emotion, witnessed by another person, and sustained long enough to register. It has to be a felt, somatic gratitude rather than an intellectual list; big emotional experiences retrain us faster, which is why being witnessed and going back and forth with a partner deepens it through mirror neurons. Joe gives the mechanics: sit across from someone in an open body position, chin down and jaw loose, drop into the body, and trade single-sentence gratitudes — specifically around the area where you feel lack — for seven to ten minutes, once or twice a day.
He closes by naming the three ways people sabotage the practice: claiming they don’t have time (which is just time-poverty, itself a candidate for gratitude), turning it into a joyless chore (if it isn’t enjoyable, you haven’t found the practice yet), and doing it to get something (which secretly reaffirms the lack). The aim is not to acquire but to see reality as it actually is — that you already have far more than the lack-voice admits.
Key Concepts
- Repeated lack self-talk rewrites how you see reality
- You can’t stop the lack-voice, you have to replace it
- Gratitude works when it is felt, witnessed, and sustained
- Practicing gratitude to get something confirms the lack
Key Quotes
“If you tell yourself every day, hundreds of times a day, ‘You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot.’ Obviously it’s going to affect the way that you see yourself.”
“How we define ourselves is often how we live.”
“It cannot be a intellectual I’m grateful for this thing. It is a felt sense of I’m grateful for. It has to be felt in your bones.”
“If you are not enjoying this, you have not figured out the practice… gratitude feels really, really good in your system. It feels better than a dopamine hit from scrolling.”
“If you’re trying to get somewhere, you’re still at lack. And if you’re still at lack, you’re still defining yourself that way and the practice won’t work.”
Transcript
Today we’re going to take a deep dive into a practice that takes you from not enough to enough. And so we’re going to talk about what the practice is, what makes the practice work, how to do the practice, and then what are the potholes that people fall into when doing the practice that makes it less effective. But before we get into any of that stuff, we have to know what the problem is. And the problem of not enoughness can happen on many different levels in life. It can be I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough love, I don’t have enough attention, I don’t have enough good friends, I don’t have enough respect at work. It’s a perspective that shows you that you are somehow lacking. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re saying not enough. And then we’re going to take that mindset and with the simple simple practice, we’re going to move it into a self-definition of enough. Oh, I I have enough money. I have enough love. And in that practice, things start to change. So the practice itself is gratitude. Now there’s lots of ways of doing gratitude, a lot of them super ineffective. So we’re not going to do the journaling of gratitude, we’re not going to do gratitude over dinner. It’s not that kind of gratitude, it’s a whole different thing. And we’re going to get into how to do that in a second, but the thing to know about gratitude is what makes it so effective. So if you’re walking around every day and I come up to you and I’m like, “You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot.” Eventually that’s going to start affecting the way that you see yourself. But if you tell yourself every day, hundreds of times a day, “You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot.” Obviously it’s going to affect the way that you see yourself. Well, when you’re walking around with lack, feeling like, “Oh, I don’t have enough of this. You don’t have enough money. You don’t have enough money. You don’t have enough money.” And you’re saying it to yourself, then you start to actually believe that reality. And the unfortunate piece there is when you believe that reality, is that’s how you see your reality. So if you think to yourself, “Wow, the world is just full of opportunities.” And that’s the mental model that you’re telling yourself regularly, oh, possibilities, possibilities, possibilities. When you start looking around, you can see these possibilities. But if you’re constantly thinking not enough money, not enough money, then you’re not going to see those opportunities as easily. You’re also going to define yourself like you were as an idiot as the person who doesn’t have enough money. And how we define ourselves is often how we live. An example of this is I had a friend who had a kid and constantly was calling the kid naughty. Just you’re naughty, you’re being naughty, why are you so naughty? And so the kid was literally learning they were naughty. They were being told by their mom on a regular basis, you’re naughty, you’re naughty. And one day we were discussing it. We were like, oh, like, do you think that that might be influencing his behavior? And so she stopped calling him naughty. She didn’t even start calling him a good boy or anything like that. She just stopped it. She just said, oh, yeah, you’re right. I’ll just say, oh, hey, please don’t do that instead of you’re being naughty. And literally you could see over a 6-month period his behavior improve because he wasn’t being told he was something. And it’s the same thing. Your behavior around the thing that you think is lacking changes if you stop telling yourself that you’re constantly lacking it. Unfortunately, when we tell ourselves to stop doing something, it rarely freaking works, right? Like stop eating so much doesn’t seem to work very well. Stop playing so many video games doesn’t work very well. So you need to replace it with something. And gratitude is the way to replace this self-talk that is constantly telling you that you are in poverty around this subject. And the only way to make gratitude really work at its full optimum capacity is that it is married with emotions. So it cannot be a intellectual I’m grateful for this thing. It is a felt sense of I’m grateful for. It has to be felt in your bones. This is for two reasons. One thing that we know is that when we have bigger emotional experiences, it helps us retrain ourselves quicker than if we don’t have those big emotional experiences. So, it’s why things like re-education camp works or boot camp works is cuz they create these big emotional experiences for people, which help them change their behavior. Right? And so, that’s one thing. The other thing that’s really important about doing it so that it works is to be witnessed in it. So, there’s one thing to tell myself I’m different, but it’s another thing to show somebody else, “Oh, this thing that I am is no longer the case.” Or to show, “Hey, this is who I am now.” Like, having witnessed to it is also an incredibly important thing to do. So, expressing gratitude, just like in a journal, is far less powerful than the way that we prescribe doing it, which is to do it with a deep-felt somatic sense of gratitude. And then, the other thing that’s really important about how to make gratitude work is to do it consistently for several minutes. Like, 7 10 minutes is the perfect length of time to really get the hit. To really go, “Boom, oh, I get it. I see it. I know that this is true.” And to do that on a regular basis. Once a day is great, twice a day is even better. And you’ll start to notice, if you do this practice with a felt sense with somebody else, what you’re going to notice is that thing that you feel like there’s not enough of, one, you’re going to start feeling like there’s enough of it. Your mental model is going to switch cuz you’re going to actually see reality as it is instead of the way that your brain is bending reality to be seen. But, the other thing is you’re going to start seeing those opportunities that are out there. You’re going to start experiencing, “Oh, this is actually where I get it. And now I know how to get more of it.” Oftentimes, when we’re solving problems, we think, “What’s wrong? How do I fix it?” And that’s one way to solve a problem. It’s a great way to solve a problem. But, there’s also what’s right and how do I grow it? And when you’re practicing gratitude, what happens is, oh, I can grow that. I can get more of the thing that’s right. Instead of, oh, this is what’s missing, how do I go and get it? And so it gives you twice the solution set that you had when it was just what’s wrong, how do I fix it? So for all those reasons, it’s really important to do gratitude in a felt visceral sense, in a way that is relational with other people so you can be witnessed, and that has enough length of time and enough duration over days, weeks, months, so that it really starts to redefine you. You are literally needing to compete with the not enough voice in your head. With that constant perpetual you need more, you don’t have enough. So this practice, this gratitude practice, is like the most basic of the practices that we have in our courses. Right? It’s like the most simple thing. They’re wonderful practice. It’s very, very powerful, but if you start to really get into this relational thing, then know that there is a whole bunch more of these practices that you can get if you start doing our courses. And the best course to start with is the connection course. I would say start there if you really want other experiments like this that can change your life. So here’s the details of the practice. You’re going to sit across from somebody. You can do it on Zoom if you want, but it’s even better to do it in person, but it’s not that much better, so don’t make that an excuse. Sit across from somebody, and your job is to be in an open body position. Your legs are uncrossed. You’re literally in an open body position. And the reason that that’s important is so that you can deeply feel the experience of gratitude. You might even take a moment. You don’t have to make this a big thing, but you just relax for a moment into the experience of being here right now in your body. Like take a moment to really just close your eyes and go, this is what my body feels like in this moment. That’s it. Just like simple. Take a couple deep breaths and drop in. And the reason you’re doing that is so that you can really feel gratitude. So that you’re not just in your head. So whatever you need to do to really feel your body is the first step. Keeping an open body position so that your body isn’t contracting and you’re not closed off to the emotional experience. Couple other tricks on this is just make sure your chin is down a little bit. Often times we’ll put our chin up like this to make sure that we don’t feel or we’ll clench our jaw. So make sure your jaw is loose. Make sure your chin is down. Really take a moment to deeply allow your body to be relaxed without protecting anything. Okay. Once you’ve got that, you’re going to sit across from this person and you’re going to say something you’re grateful for. You’re not going to do something really long and arduous. It’s not going to be like this paragraph. It’s going to be a sentence, maybe a phrase, but definitely not two sentences of what you’re grateful for. And what’s particular is you’re going to share things you’re grateful for around the thing that you feel like there’s not enough of. So if you feel there’s not enough money, you’re going to express gratitude for all the ways that you do have financial resources, how you do have food, how you do have home, how you do have health, and that somehow or another you’re clothed, and that somehow or another you’re surviving because you have a blanket or you have heat, whatever it is. You’re going to look at anything that you have and you’re going to be grateful for that. You’re going to feel the gratitude and be grateful for that. If it’s something like love, what you’re going to do is you’re going to look at all the places that you are loved, the way that you love yourself, the way that your mom looks at you, or the way that your dog interacts with you. You’re going to really look at all the ways that you are loved. How many people are caring for you, even if they don’t know it’s you that they’re caring for. Right? Somebody put love into this video so that you could watch it. Like, can you feel that love? So, actually, lots of people put love into this video. It wasn’t just one. And so So, can you really allow yourself to feel that and a gratitude? The next thing that you’re going to do is make sure that you have the felt sense of gratitude. So, the trick here is you can’t push it. You can’t make it happen. You just recognize it. You just go, “Oh, wow Wow, these people are really doing something out of love for humanity. I can feel that and I can be grateful for it. I can be grateful for the fact that I am not homeless on the street or that I have a screen to watch this video on. Can I be deeply grateful for that?” And now the job is, for 7 minutes, going back and forth with the person, sharing what you’re grateful for in single sentences. So, you’ll share one gratitude, then they’ll share one gratitude, then you’ll share one more gratitude, and they’ll share one more gratitude. And the reason that we go back and forth like this is because the gratitudes can build on each other. Because we have mirror neurons, we can start feeling each other’s gratitude, and we can go deeper and deeper into that experience. So, not only are we doing a length of time to redefine ourselves on this issue, we’re also being seen and witnessed, but we’re also going into more and more depth of that feeling of gratitude. I want to show you how it looks so that you can actually feel it in your system, and you can do it with me. So, I’m going to say something I’m grateful for. I’m going to give you a moment to say something you’re grateful for. It’s going to be like a pause in YouTube. And then we’ll come back to me and then back to you. Just We’ll just do it a couple times so that you get a felt sense of what this feels like. Okay? All right. So, dropping into my body. I’m keeping my eyes open, so I’m in deep connection with you. I’m making eye contact with you. You’re making eye contact with me. So that we can be witness with one another. And I’m going to start with um And remember, whatever you’re grateful for is going to be on that thing that you feel like there’s not enough of in Um so I’m going to say I am grateful that you are taking the time to watch this video and that you’ve made it to this length of time in the video. And now it’s your turn. I’m going to savor that gratitude that you just shared. And now I’m going to share another gratitude. I’m grateful for all the people who care so deeply on our team about YouTube and making great videos for you. So that’s how you do it. You express a gratitude with somebody, they express a gratitude back, and you keep on like this, very slow, very savoring, really feeling the gratitude. And just going back and forth like that. Sometimes tears might come, sometimes you might be overwhelmed with pleasure. Lots of things can happen, and all of it’s okay. But the trick is to not say anything else outside of the gratitude, meaning don’t start a conversation, don’t sidetrack, just very short sentences of what you’re grateful for back and forth. And you do that for 7 to 10 minutes once or twice a day. Great. So now, it’s an easy practice. It’s super lovely. If you just did it, you know it’s enjoyable. So, I want to talk about how you can sabotage this practice. First thing you can do, you can sabotage this practice by saying, “I don’t have enough time.” So, if you don’t have enough time, that means you have poverty around time. You have time poverty. So, start with doing gratitudes around time, all the time that you do have. I know if you think you don’t have enough time, I know there’s at least 7 minutes a day of stuff that you’re doing that you’re not so proud of. Maybe you’re doom scrolling, or maybe you’re watching news that’s not important to watch, or maybe you’re having a frivolous conversation that doesn’t actually satisfy you, or maybe you’re doing something for your mom out of guilt. But, there’s something that you’re doing for those 7 minutes, and you actually have just as much time as I have, just as much time as every human being has. So, do a gratitude practice on time. That would be a great start. So, that’s one way that you can sabotage this practice. Second way you can sabotage this practice is to make it a to-do. Make it a chore. May I have to do this. I have to do this twice a day. Da da da. I have to do it for 10 minutes. Max everything out. If you are not enjoying this, it you have not figured out the practice. So, the thing about this practice is it is deeply enjoyable. It should be something that feels so good in your system that you want to do it, that you can’t wait to do it, where you’re like, “Oh, wow, I could do this for 12 minutes today. I’m excited.” And unless you are doing the practice that way, you are not actually doing the practice. Cuz gratitude feels really, really good in your system. It feels better than a dopamine hit from scrolling. So, unless you have figured out a way to do this practice so that it feels really good, and just do the practice until you figured out a way to make it feel really good, then you’re not doing the practice. The last way you can sabotage this practice is to do it so that it works. It’s so weird to say this, but it’s true. Meaning, like if you’re like, I will do gratitude so that I can have money, so that I can have love. And then you’re looking, oh, did I get the love that I want? Did I All of that assumes that you don’t have the thing you’re looking for, which then agrees with the fact that you are in lack. So, what’s really critical is not to try to get anywhere, but to try to see reality as it is. To try to understand that you do have more resources than probably most people on the planet. To see that you do, like just the fact that you have a screen that you can watch this teaching on gives you more resources than almost any human being in history of time up until like 10 years ago. It’s to see what’s actually true. Because if you’re trying to get somewhere, you’re still at lack. And if you’re still at lack, you’re still defining yourself that way and the practice won’t work.