Podcast - Episode 0189 - The Skill Of Gratitude

In this episode Joel and Antonia talk about building the skill of gratitude.

In this podcast you’ll find:

• Most of the skills we have in life we have to learn. We don’t come packaged with them.
• We come to the world with a talent for love but to have good relationships we have to build the skill.
• Unless we were taught to push through challenges, we often give up in the face of disappointment or frustration.
• Gratitude is a skill we develop.
• Some may have more of a natural talent, but it is a massive characteristic that is desirable to us because it is the bedrock of all of our life lessons.
• If we don’t have gratitude when something crappy happens, we may be so focused on the bad that we completely miss the message or lesson to be taken.
• Gratitude isn’t a nice to have. It is incredibly important to us to avoid replicating the bad situations in the future.
• Gratitude is a narrative tool. “This thing happened, and I am grateful for it because I now have the opportunity to learn.”
• Gratitude gives us a meta perspective with a positive spin on the events we zoom in on.
• Being grateful for positive experiences is easy. It’s being grateful for the things that are challenging that is difficult.
• Gratitude is a muscle we can strengthen through exercise.
• It’s a tool for having a positive life experience regardless of what may be happening in life.
• Louis C.K. wifi on airplane skit. “You’re in a chair flying through the air, and now you are upset that you don’t have wifi.” Perspective.
• Some people can get gratitude for a moment, but it doesn’t stick. They haven’t built skill around it.
• There is a daily practice of gratitude. We go through life, and there are little annoyances that happen, and it is hard to feel gratitude for these annoyances.
• But if you have built up a skill with gratitude you can use it for the big things and the little things.
• Sometimes it isn’t so easy to feel gratitude immediately after news of a tragedy. Often it emerges over time.
• If you have practiced the art of gratitude, it will be waiting for you when you’re ready for it.
• Gratitude will help you see the situation for what it is so you don’t stay in a perpetual state of victimhood.
• Drama Triangle podcast
• As a victim, you always see things in terms of how you have been hurt by them.
• With gratitude, you can see the situation for the lessons you can take away and avoid replicating it if you can.
• Sometimes we have to fight for the gratitude.
• One of the strategies to use in developing gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal. Write down everything, even the mundane things.
• There’s this idea of absolute wealth and relative wealth. We don’t measure ourselves in terms of absolute wealth. We measure ourselves in terms of relative wealth.
• We see gratitude in terms of absolutes when we should see it in relative terms.
• There is no absolute training around this. It is constantly shifting as to how you can apply it.
• The more things you can find to apply gratitude to the better you will get at using it.
• Gratitude skill building involves skill of implementation.
• It’s not about feeling grateful for the terrible stuff in life immediately. It’s about building skill, so it helps you through the hard times.
• Learn to say “Thank you” more often.
• Express gratitude for the bad things that happen because they teach us lessons.
• Express gratitude for the things that haven’t happened.
• When you develop the skill of gratitude enough, you get out of the comparison game and start to see the good all by itself.
• Volunteering can help create gratitude.
• Get better at creating positivity in your life.