285. The Gratitude Advantage

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Joel: What if there was something that could measurably improve your mood, your performance and relationships, and had near instant results and, and I think this is the important part. It could cost you absolutely nothing. Would you do it?

[00:00:21] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:26] Marissa: And I’m Marissa Hyatt.

[00:00:28] Joel: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done, it’s about getting the right things done,

[00:00:35] Marissa: both at work and in life. And today we’re getting in the Thanksgiving spirit and it’s my birthday week.

[00:00:43] Love that. Uh, by talking about, you guessed it, gratitude and everything, it makes possible. This is truly one of my favorite topics. This is my favorite time of year, not the least of which is that it is my birthday week, but Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday also. Wow. And I love it because the whole spirit is about two things that I absolutely love, which is really great food and gratitude.

[00:01:11] And I think both of those are critical components to a rich, healthy, vibrant life.

[00:01:17] Joel: Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of everything that gratitude makes possible, I’m drinking a cup of coffee right now as I’m sure some of you listening are as you are. Yeah. And uh, and that brings me a. To think about AJ Jacobs, you may know that name.

[00:01:31] He’s kind of the guy who’s famous for turning his life into an open experiment and then letting us all in on the joke as he writes about it Afterwards, he wrote about his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica front to back and the book called the Know it All. He, uh, was maybe even more famous for his book, the Year of Living Biblically, where he tried to live every biblical rule for one year.

[00:01:53] Which caused a lot of consternation to his wife, I’m sure. But one day he was sipping coffee at his local cafe and he just had the thought, what if I tried to think everyone who made this cup possible? Hmm. And you can read about it in a book called Thinks a thousand, but. There’s like the obvious people.

[00:02:13] There’s the barista and the cafe, there’s the coffee roaster, but then of course it goes further up the chain. There’s the importers of the coffee. There’s the farmers who grew the coffee. There are all the supply chain workers. There’s the truck drivers, the warehouse workers, the customs officials, the shipping container manufacturers, and even people that paint the lines on the roads.

[00:02:33] I mean, there’s like. Wow. A million people involved in getting you this wonderful cup of coffee. Wow. And so what he did was he actually went and thanked everyone. He, he went ahead and like found everyone on this chain and like actually thanked them all.

[00:02:48] Marissa: What a cool experiment. And gosh, I’ve never thought about like, I’m sitting here drinking my cup of coffee, how many people it actually took to get this in my hand,

[00:02:59] Joel: right.

[00:03:00] Marissa: Not the least of which, I mean you could even go further down to like the mug.

[00:03:04] Joel: Oh

[00:03:04] Marissa: yeah. Freaking it out of and everything that makes it possible. Gosh, that’s really amazing. I have to say, just a quick little plug kind of timely, because those of you listening just know here in about a week or two, we’re gonna have a very exciting announcement related to this topic.

[00:03:20] Joel: I’m tempted to preempt ourselves, but I’m not going to

[00:03:23] Marissa: just stay tuned. We’ll, we’ll probably talk about it next week. Wow. What an incredible. Thought process. Thought experiment to say. Right. Even not to go to the point of trying to contact all those people, which I think he did, right? Yeah. What you’re saying is he actually not only thought of every single person who would’ve been a part of that cup of coffee.

[00:03:42] But he went this step further, which was literally to go thank all of those people, which is exactly incredible. I think that’s amazing. But even for those of us who may not go chase that all the way down to from start to finish for our cup of coffee, just thinking about how lucky we are to be sitting here in 2025, drinking a cup of coffee that took.

[00:04:04] Hundreds probably of people to deliver that.

[00:04:07] Joel: Thousands of people to actually bring it to your lips. Yeah, yeah. From the soil to your lips. There are a thousand people.

[00:04:14] Marissa: Wow. And then just multiply that by every single thing you’re probably touching in your daily life.

[00:04:18] Joel: Oh, absolutely. I think that’s one of the cool things about.

[00:04:22] Putting yourself in a place of, of gratitude. It doesn’t make life perfect, but it does make all the great things visible in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise think. It’s like you can have an appreciation for the fact that literally everything you’re. Around. Mm-hmm. That surrounds you. Literally the chair that I’m sitting on is the product of another human who put effort into, into creating it, and yeah, and I have gratitude for that.

[00:04:45] Otherwise, you know, I’d be sitting with my butt on the ground.

[00:04:47] Marissa: Well, I love this because the truth is gratitude really changes our experience of the world, for instance. Just an ordinary cup of coffee becomes something really remarkable, really fast. When you start to think about it, when you start to have that moment of feeling just immense gratitude for every single person, every producer, you know, every technology even that had to go into creating that cup of coffee.

[00:05:16] It totally shifts your perspective and your experience and how you engage with the world. This reminds me actually of, I went to dinner recently over at our sister and brother-in-law’s house, uh, and they have a three-year-old son. And we were kind of praying and he, he was just saying kind of a moment of gratitude.

[00:05:37] Mm-hmm. All the, the farmers for all the store workers and you know, he’s just like, you know, thank you for this, thank you for that. You know, and going through kind of all the people in his little mind of who he knew had to be in involved to get that. How

[00:05:51] Joel: cool did he even. Even has that frame of reference.

[00:05:54] That’s

[00:05:54] Marissa: amazing. Yeah. So I think they’ve started to kind of cultivate this in him. Yeah. And it was kind of a, it kind of like took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting it. And I think this is really true. A lot of us, you know, especially if you’re within a, a spiritual context, it’s pretty common for us to sit down at the end of the day most often.

[00:06:13] And we have that moment usually before a meal of gratitude, of thanking God, you know, for the food on our plate. But it’s rare, we really think about. The magnitude of what that is. Right. And as soon as that starts to happen, it really does shift your thinking and your experience, the way that you see the rest of the world.

[00:06:33] Yeah. And, and I love that aspect of gratitude and it’s really, to me, feels unique. This seemingly little, you know, seed of an emotion can completely transform your entire experience.

[00:06:46] Joel: Uh, absolutely. You know, if you think about like, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to come at the world, but two ways that are very common.

[00:06:52] Yeah. One is far more common than the other. Is you look at the world through kind of a lens of scarcity. There’s all the things that I don’t have. There’s all the things that I’m trying to get. There’s all the things preventing me from getting the things that I want to get. And then there’s like a sense of abundance where I have what I need, I’m being taken care of.

[00:07:10] My needs are met.

[00:07:12] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:07:12] Joel: And one of those is helpful.

[00:07:15] Marissa: Hmm.

[00:07:15] Joel: The other one is not, because when we’re in this position of focusing on our scarcity, we have like. Anxiety that is a product of that, uh, we can become cynical about other people. We have just a sense of powerlessness or even what we’re gonna get. We have to grasp for and fight for.

[00:07:35] Yeah. Thrive for at a level that is just kind of gross. And that’s. Not great, and it doesn’t have to be that way because if you did look at the world through a lens of gratitude, that sense of abundance would show up and then other things become possible all of a sudden.

[00:07:49] Marissa: Well, it really does shift everything.

[00:07:51] I mean, I think that when we think about this idea of scarcity and, and kind of approaching the world in that way, it’s shrinking. Everything is shrinking. Mm-hmm. Like you are shrinking, your world is shrinking. It just, it feels heavy. It’s like everything’s just like

[00:08:06] Joel: closing in. That’s a great image.

[00:08:08] Marissa: Versus, to me, gratitude is expansive.

[00:08:11] Joel: Mm-hmm. You

[00:08:12] Marissa: know, it really completely helps us shift. It gives us so much more hope for. The good in people, you know what’s possible, which I think is kind of the second aspect. It’s like it really helps open us up to possibility, you know? Right. It’s, it’s all of a sudden it’s expansive. It’s like, what else could be true if this it, same thing, going back to that concept of the, uh, coffee cup.

[00:08:38] Whoa. All of a sudden it’s like this expansive view of that. Really tiny little cup of coffee, right? And it just opens us up in a different way than having that sense of scarcity is gonna do, scarcity is gonna limit us, and really often puts us in a place of fear and. Because gratitude kind of takes that fear off of our back, right?

[00:09:01] It’s like we actually are able to be open to what’s possible.

[00:09:05] Joel: One of the things that’s cool about it is that, and this is exemplified in the coffee story, it involves all these other people, which means suddenly now instead of. Positioning ourselves, like oppositionally to other people. We see ourselves as like in an exchange with other people where we’re receiving, where we’re able to give.

[00:09:22] And that means connection. That means like humans actually working together to achieve things that are benefit everyone. That’s a much different way to walk around and think about people. Yeah. Than a scenario where like, I gotta get mine and you’re keeping me from getting mine.

[00:09:38] Marissa: This really reminds me. So my mom’s brother, my uncle, his name’s Uncle Lauren.

[00:09:43] I would say he has,

[00:09:45] Joel: well his name isn’t Uncle Lauren, but,

[00:09:47] Marissa: well, he’s, it’s, it’s now to all of you who are listening. Okay. He, he’ll now be Uncle Lauren. Uh, he’s probably listening. I think he listens to the show. Um, also he is. I would say hands down, the most grateful person I’ve ever met in my entire life.

[00:10:04] And simultaneously, he has gone through more challenge than just about anyone else that I know specifically related to his health. Um, he’s had many different health challenges over the years. Most recently, uh, I think it was about six years ago. Had a liver transplant related to a very rare liver. I don’t know if it was technically liver disease or what, what it would be categorized as, but something that was very rare, and he has been on the edge of death many, many times.

[00:10:35] Joel: Many times. Yep.

[00:10:36] Marissa: One of the things that I have seen him consistently do, and this is such a beautiful lesson, I think for all of us, is that even in that hardship, and this is often true, people who are, you know, living some of the most challenging lives, often are the most grateful. And every single time he comes in contact with most often people within the medical community, but.

[00:10:56] It’s kind of now expanded to anybody he’s coming in contact with. It could be, you know, his server at a restaurant or the person delivering an Amazon package or whoever it is. Whoever he comes in contact with, he says to them, thank you for choosing your profession.

[00:11:12] Joel: Yeah, wow.

[00:11:14] Marissa: I have started to adopt this.

[00:11:15] My mom has definitely started, uh, she’s adopted this for now several years and has just encouraged us girls to do the same. And so now I’ve, I’ve tried to do my best to adopt this. I’m not as good as either of them are, but recently I had to get a, um, minor medical surgery and. I did that with the nurses and the doctor.

[00:11:34] I said to them ahead of, uh, going in, you know, thank you for choosing your profession. It really matters. And this is a procedure. I won’t get into the details, but something that could impact in a really positive way, my fertility in the future. And, and mm-hmm. There’s talk about possibility, right? Like, there’s so much possibility and it made me so grateful.

[00:11:53] Looking at these nurses, looking at these doctors, the anesthesiologists. That they chose to do what they do.

[00:12:01] Joel: Right.

[00:12:01] Marissa: And ’cause of that choice that they made probably, you know, several years or decades ago, in some cases, it will change my life completely.

[00:12:10] Joel: Right.

[00:12:10] Marissa: And that is huge and, and that’s,

[00:12:12] Joel: yeah,

[00:12:13] Marissa: that’s just the difference of when you see somebody like that.

[00:12:16] And not every one of those people I came in contact with was. Perfectly pleasant and you know, fantastic, and just the most amazing person I had been with. But having that moment of gratitude shifted everything. They instantly were like, oh my gosh, you know? Wow. Nobody’s ever said that to me. And that’s most often what I hear.

[00:12:35] Nobody’s ever said that to me. So my encouragement to all of you is use this episode as a driver for you to go create more connection in your life, not just with the people that you actually know. But maybe it’s the people that you don’t know and creating more connection. Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:53] Joel: You know, I think you said that.

[00:12:55] Not every one of these people were, you know, specimens of joy and sheer and all this. But imagine if you did walk around thanking everyone in that way, in a meaningful context where that would make sense. If more people did that, I bet those people would be far more cheerful. Yeah. If you know that the work you’re doing is valued by other people, it makes it more rewarding to do it makes it more joyful to do.

[00:13:18] It makes the effort more joyful itself. And so all of a sudden now, there’s actually reasons for those folks Yes. To be cheerful. And the truth is, when you’re talking about. Medicine or something like that. Most of the people coming in are in dire straits or, you know, have, you know, not so great situations that they’re in.

[00:13:37] They’re probably not feeling great themselves. And so if they, if you’re able in that condition to muster gratitude and not only will improve your situation, but it will probably improve the situation of the person serving you. Absolutely. So it actually ends up being this mutually reinforcing benefit to everyone involved.

[00:13:57] Marissa: Yes, and what’s amazing to me is when we come at it with gratitude, we actually get more of the things that we’re wanting.

[00:14:04] Joel: That’s so true.

[00:14:04] Marissa: If you’re wanting phenomenal care, for instance, or great service in whatever context this may be, when you approach that person with gratitude first, the chances of them then delivering the thing that you’re actually trying to get them to do, you know, provide that great service, they’re gonna be 10 times more likely because all of a sudden.

[00:14:26] You’ve given them a boost of confidence. They feel, you know, a boost of purpose. It’s like, wow, what I’m doing matters. It’s meaningful. And so, yes, of course. Now all of a sudden I feel like a steward of this and I wanna do my very best to provide for the people. Who I’m caring for or mm-hmm. Or service, whatever context that may be.

[00:14:47] And, and regardless if you’re in the medical community or in the service industry, I mean, I think this applies really to all of us and a really easy application. Of course, you could do this as you’re getting your morning cup of coffee or talking to the person who gets you into the parking garage or whatever it may be, whoever you’re encountering on your way, you know, into the office, so to speak.

[00:15:08] If you think about the people that we get to work with on a daily basis. How can we show them gratitude and how can that then connect our teams even better? And this actually happened yesterday, I think it was yesterday on our team text thread.

[00:15:23] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:24] Marissa: Somebody spontaneously on our team was thanking somebody else on the team.

[00:15:27] They had, um, a lot of us had been kind of tied up and some. Big events this week, and so this person was kind of carrying a heavier load this week for the rest of us, and someone on our team acknowledged them, and it created this cascade of gratitude. All of a sudden, our entire team, which is not a very large team, we have a pretty small team, but all of a sudden everybody starts chiming in with, oh, I’m so grateful for so and so today.

[00:15:52] You helped me with this problem, or You went above and beyond for this customer. I see what you’re doing. I’m so grateful for you and how you treat our customers. It just was like this whole moment that it gave me life in a way that I wasn’t even part of what was happening. Right. I was just kind of walking on the sidelines.

[00:16:12] And it felt like an injection of, you know, positivity and hope.

[00:16:16] Joel: It’s like we said at the beginning, that gratitude doesn’t make life perfect, but it does make good things visible.

[00:16:22] Marissa: Yes.

[00:16:22] Joel: And so many of those things go unacknowledged or just not appreciated unless you take the moment. And it only really takes a moment to observe and acknowledge.

[00:16:30] And when you do that, suddenly all of these. Positive things that people are contributing are visible. Yep. And visible to everyone. And like the thing that matters, I think maybe most of all, is just recognizing how interdependent we are on each other. Yes. I can’t do my job unless everyone else around me is doing their job, and yet if I am busy, more or less just thinking about what I’m doing.

[00:16:52] I’m not acknowledging what they’re doing. I’m not even gonna get the value of what they’re doing at the level I might if I were to actually just recognize how dependent I am on them.

[00:17:13] Marissa: Moving beyond people, being grateful for people. We can be grateful for everything that we’re coming in contact with. You know, when we think about even these really challenging experiences as in our life that we’ve, you know, all of us have had at, at one point in time or another. When you look back, you know, I’d say nine times plus out of 10, it is most common for us to go, wow, that situation, that really difficult thing that I experienced.

[00:17:40] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:41] Marissa: Made me better on the other side of it. Yeah, and so what if you could cultivate this practice of gratitude in your day-to-day life when you encounter everything so that when those big challenging moments come through, rather than having the first response be rejection, frustration, anxiety, whatever it may be that we have, our first response is gratitude because we know we will be better on the other side of that thing, whatever.

[00:18:07] It’s

[00:18:07] Joel: totally, actually, there’s statistics and studies that would bear that out, like. When we express value for other people. Mm-hmm. We experience a positive reward for that, basically. Yeah. And what that looks like practically is things like couples who express gratitude are more likely to stay together.

[00:18:25] Employee engagement improves with gratitude. In fact, one study found that employee engagement rose by 81%. With the expression of gratitude in the workplace. Wow. It increases relational satisfaction and trust. And if you think about what actually helps make the world work, trust is kind of the grease that makes everything move Well.

[00:18:46] Yeah. If there’s no trust, everything grinds to a halt. And gratitude is an instrumental part. It’s an ingredient in trust.

[00:18:53] Marissa: Well, and it’s also an ingredient in success.

[00:18:57] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:57] Marissa: And I think that if we think about gratitude as expansive. It’s just going to like biggie size everything that you’re trying to accomplish in your life, which is pretty amazing.

[00:19:08] Yeah. It’s obviously making our relationships much better. It’s increasing our trust with, with each other, and it helps facilitate our success, so this is pretty cool. One study actually found that students who are practicing gratitude we’re closer to reaching their goals after 10 weeks than those who didn’t.

[00:19:26] Joel: Hmm.

[00:19:26] Marissa: They essentially concluded that gratitude enhances effortful goal, striving.

[00:19:31] Joel: What’s great about that is we all have goals

[00:19:34] Marissa: and we’re about to have more because we’re approaching the new year.

[00:19:37] Joel: Yeah, totally. Everyone listening to this, even if you’re not a goal nut, you’ve got goals. Like we all want things in the future for ourselves.

[00:19:44] So however defined or undefined that is, we all want things and. A study like that helps demonstrate that there is some instrumental value if even if you only looked at it from that angle.

[00:19:56] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:19:56] Joel: There’s an instrumental value in expressing gratitude in that it will help you get what you want. That’s kind of shocking.

[00:20:02] Marissa: It is. And even more, it actually helps us be more patient.

[00:20:06] Joel: Okay, tell me more about that.

[00:20:08] Marissa: In one study, they found that gratitude increased financial patience.

[00:20:13] Joel: Like the ability to wait.

[00:20:15] Marissa: The ability to wait. Yeah. To stay in it, rather than kind of bailing quickly. And I think that’s true, like if we think about this in our own lives, when we sit there and we practice gratitude, first of all, gratitude often is a reflective moment.

[00:20:28] So it actually encourages us to slow down.

[00:20:31] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:32] Marissa: Be more present in the moment, and therefore more comfortable. Usually when things are not going super fast or we’re not able to jump from one thing in the next, because we’re literally slowing down enough to be present in that moment. We’re not necessarily thinking about what is or isn’t or what’s to come or any of those things because we’re, we’re immediately sucked into the present moment.

[00:20:53] Joel: Right. Back to that idea of interdependence. What you also find is that gratitude cultivates humility ultimately. Hmm. And humility. Ariana Malloy talks about this. Uh, Michael and Meghan interviewed her on the Double Wind Show, but humility actually protects us from burnout because instead of having the attitude that it’s all on us, like if you’re in that scarcity mindset, the default is, it all depends on me, right?

[00:21:18] Like I’m the one who has to come through. I’m the one who has to deliver and. There’s truth in that. Like we have agency, we have to contribute. That’s part of what’s going on. But if we think that it’s all on us, we’re headed to burnout because there’s no backstop to that. There’s no end to that. And if instead we have this mindset of abundance, if we have a mindset of gratitude, then we can recognize that.

[00:21:39] Our success actually depends on the success of other people. And when that happens, we can be grateful for the success that we do experience. We can help other people enjoy their own success. And all of that comes back to just recognizing that we’re part of a larger whole, rather than imagining that it’s all on us.

[00:21:56] Marissa: And how beautiful is that? How sad would it be if it was just us? Everything truly did depend on us and in order to get this cup of coffee,

[00:22:08] Joel: I love

[00:22:08] Marissa: it. Yeah, it would rarely me. I mean, it wouldn’t be possible and I think, you know, I didn’t expect us to just kind of keep going back to this idea of the humble cup of coffee, but so many of us rely on this every single day.

[00:22:23] It’s become a ritual, and yet there’s no context. For the majority of people in the world, 99.99999% of people that we could have this without other people.

[00:22:35] Joel: Absolutely. I, I don’t grow coffee beans. I don’t even live in a place that can grow coffee beans. Exactly. You know? Um, and even if I did, I would be spending all my time raising them, harvesting them, roasting them, grinding them.

[00:22:48] I don’t have time for that.

[00:22:49] Marissa: No.

[00:22:49] Joel: But I do have time to brew a cup. That is possible because of these thousands of other people that have helped bring it to my door.

[00:22:57] Marissa: It really is humbling, and it really is beautiful and rare that we slow down enough to realize how beautiful and how rich our lives are, even in the most difficult times of our lives.

[00:23:13] We’re so lucky. I know everybody who’s listening. I mean, we are in a beautiful, incredible place of privilege.

[00:23:20] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:21] Marissa: What it takes to be able to allow us to live the life that we live is just astounding, not the least of which are the people in our lives who we get to engage with, that we get to connect with.

[00:23:33] And even when those relationships are challenging or people are having a difficult day and they’re not coming to the best, or maybe that’s you, maybe you’re having a difficult day. It’s so simple to shift everything. Mm-hmm. And all that is required is gratitude. And I think that that to me is the most encouraging part of all of this, is that it doesn’t require a heavy lift.

[00:23:57] Joel: Well, I mean, like I said at the very beginning, at the top of the show, it can improve your mood, it can improve your performance, your relationships. It’s got instant results and it costs absolutely nothing.

[00:24:08] Marissa: Absolutely nothing.

[00:24:10] Joel: This is a bit of a turn, but. I’m gonna stump you with a listener question. Okay.

[00:24:15] This listener is also stumped, so the two of you’ll be stumped. I’m always stumped on how to use the weekly preview blank calendar pages. It’s really a blank canvas, a thousand ways to use it, but it often just stares at me. Now, before you answer this question, I actually want to ask you to do it through the lens of gratitude.

[00:24:33] Marissa: Yes.

[00:24:34] Joel: How would you think about an open calendar with gratitude in mind?

[00:24:37] Marissa: I’m totally tracking with you, Joel, on this. And this actually doesn’t have me stumped because I think one of the best ways that you could use those pages is specifically for gratitude. We, in the Hyatt household growing up, I’ve talked about this I think on the podcast before we cultivated a practice in our house called The Best Thing.

[00:24:57] So the, the question that we were answering at the end of the day was, what is the best thing that’s happened to you today? And Joel, I know you and Megan have taken this a step further to say, what is the best thing. That happened to you today? Or what are you most grateful for today? Yeah, because sometimes you’re just having a hard,

[00:25:11] Joel: we call it the gratitude report, and everyone at the table goes around and does it.

[00:25:14] Marissa: I love that. So one of the best ways that you can use these pages is to do just that. Write down what you’re most grateful for. What are the best things that happened today that you feel like, gosh, that was an amazing moment, or That was an amazing thing that happened. Even if it’s as small as the sun.

[00:25:32] Peeped out today.

[00:25:33] Joel: Yeah,

[00:25:33] Marissa: that was one of my best things today, was just seeing a little bit of light in my day. It doesn’t have to be big. It can be something so small, the fact that you have coffee in your cup today, you know? Right. And

[00:25:44] Joel: how small is that? But how wonderful.

[00:25:45] Marissa: So I, my encouragement would be take those pages and do that each day.

[00:25:49] That could be part of your morning ritual, your evening ritual, your workday, startup or shutdown, whatever, wherever it fits for you in your day. But I think cultivating that habit is in incredible, and that’s a perfect place to do it.

[00:26:02] Joel: Well, that takes us to the tip of the week where we talk about like a, a tool in the full focus planner that can help people on their pursuit of their goals.

[00:26:10] And the thing I’m thinking about right now is the weekly preview. And in the weekly preview, there’s specifically a spot to list your wins from the week. And I mean, what do you think about. When you’re listing those wins that you’re actually doing it through a lens of gratitude. It’s not just like, Hey, I did X, Y, and Z.

[00:26:27] Yeah. How cool is that? It is about. Reorienting that achievement towards what you’re grateful for.

[00:26:34] Marissa: I love that. And I think the more that we can do this, so whether it’s in those blank pages or right there on the wins, we also have it built into your daily pages or we have their, your daily win right there.

[00:26:46] Those don’t have to just be about you and your achievement. Those really can be other things that you feel grateful for, that you felt like was a win. That was something that just. Opened you up. Right, right. Again, this whole idea of like expansiveness and abundance, the more that we can do that, the more that we can focus on those things, the more that we’re going to continue creating that in our lives.

[00:27:08] It’s like a compound effect. The more you you practice it, the more it happens.

[00:27:12] Joel: It is a practice, right? Like, like anything, there’s a skill involved, uh, thing here where. You know, like it doesn’t come natural to us ’cause we don’t do it. But if we started to do it, it would be far more reflexive and we would just find ourselves in a state of gratitude far more often because we just were practiced at it.

[00:27:29] Marissa: ’cause we just were, yeah.

[00:27:30] Joel: Yeah.

[00:27:31] Marissa: And my encouragement is, as you’re thinking about this, as you’re looking to create more gratitude in your life, really feel that for a minute. So rather than just having that second and moving on to the next thing, really slowing down, again, I think part of what gratitude invites us to do is slowing down and being present.

[00:27:50] And so having that moment when you’re looking at that person in front of you and you say. Thank you for choosing your profession.

[00:27:56] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:56] Marissa: Or, I’m so grateful that you’re in my life. I’m so grateful that you showed up in this context, or that I’m so grateful for this thing you did for me, you know, earlier or yesterday or or last year.

[00:28:08] I’m just grateful for you and your. It’s when you slow down and you feel that and you’re present, the other person is gonna feel that and the ripple effect is nonstop. So just a quick thing before we wrap up. Um, actually, I. Uh, the other day was commuting down to the office. It’s about 30, 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic and

[00:28:31] Joel: which in Nashville means insanity, but

[00:28:34] Marissa: which is crazy that it takes that long.

[00:28:36] And I have a little bit of road rage, I’ll be honest. Okay. I am a very, um, I’m a fast driver. I don’t like when people drive slow in the left lane or they’re oblivious, you know, it gets me really frustrated and I’m like. You’re clueless, what are you doing? And I had this moment the other day, and I don’t actually know where this came from because this is not something that I was thinking about consciously, but I had somebody cut me off in the left lane and they were going way too slow to be what I would say should be okay.

[00:29:05] In the left lane.

[00:29:06] Joel: They were impeding you?

[00:29:08] Marissa: Yes. And I couldn’t, there was too much traffic, so it’s not like I could just, you know, pass them right and go around them. And I had this moment where all of a sudden, for whatever reason, I had this thought of. What if I’m grateful for this person instead of really pissed off, frankly.

[00:29:22] Joel: Right.

[00:29:22] Marissa: And I just thought, wow. And I was like, thank you for this person who knows what their slowness is actually potentially protecting me from

[00:29:32] Joel: Sure. So true.

[00:29:33] Marissa: And it in an instant shifted my whole being, my whole environment probably shifted how that person their morning was going because I wasn’t being the jerk who was passing them and looking at ’em and the whole, you know, the whole thing.

[00:29:48] So it shifted the whole environment and it, all it took was just going, what if I could be grateful? Instead of angry.

[00:29:55] Joel: I don’t even know the exact quote ’cause I, I don’t have it handy in, in, in my memory here at this moment, but I know the gist of it. And Cormack McCarthy in one of his novels said, you never know what worse luck, your bad luck has saved you from

[00:30:08] Marissa: Oh.

[00:30:09] Joel: And it’s like a really wonderful thing to actually pause and think about, because when things are going badly, it’s really easy to be resentful or frustrated or, or, you know, honestly, ev even suffering, like mm-hmm. We, we suffer a lot in this life. And yet. That suffering may have actually been part of something that saved us.

[00:30:27] It may have been part of something that actually prevented a worse thing from happening to us. Right. And if, if we approached our problems with that in mind, it would probably make them more endurable.

[00:30:37] Marissa: A hundred percent.

[00:30:38] Joel: Yeah.

[00:30:38] Marissa: No question. Not probably. I would say certainly. Well, I think we’ll leave you guys with that and.

[00:30:45] Obviously, you know, here in the United States, we’re in Thanksgiving week, so this is very top of mind for most of us. But I wanna really invite all of you as you go through this week. Don’t just think about Thanksgiving as a day or a moment on Thanksgiving when you go around the table and say what you’re grateful for, but how can you bring gratitude into this week, into your day?

[00:31:09] In unexpected ways, in the common, the, um, mundane moments. How can you bring gratitude into those? So that’s the challenge that I’m gonna leave you with this week. Joel, what are your final thoughts?

[00:31:23] Joel: There’s a Serbian monk named, uh, elder Thaddeus of Nikica, if I’m pronouncing that right. And he talks about the.

[00:31:33] Role of the person. One of their, one of their roles in the world is to spread the atmosphere of heaven, which might be a little esoteric or a little petty in a, in a way, but when I think about changing the atmosphere around us. Being grateful. Does that being grateful just like in a state of gratitude and thanking people and just being, even when it’s not expressed, I think people feel it on us, even when it’s not expressed like we are changing the atmosphere.

[00:32:01] So the experience of people around us improves just by virtue of our own mindset and how we’re approaching what we’re doing. And when we’re in that state, we are actually improving the environment for everyone around us. And I think. You know, we benefit from that, but other people benefit from that. And if we go back to that idea of dependence, interdependence, in a sense, other people are depending on us to show up as our best selves.

[00:32:27] And when we do that, all of us benefit.

[00:32:30] Marissa: What if we approached every or the majority of our situations with gratitude and, and what is the environmental effect of that?

[00:32:40] Joel: Yes.

[00:32:45] Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.

[00:32:48] Marissa: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen or at focus on this podcast.com.

[00:32:59] Joel: We’ll be back next week where we’re gonna get really practical about supporting your sanity this December.

[00:33:05] Marissa: Oh yeah, we need that. All right. Until then,

[00:33:08] Joel: stay focused.