As we enter this season, we’re gratitude becomes almost an obligation, but certainly sometimes a perfunctory exercise for a month or a week or just a day it’s good to think about what it would look like if it were a discipline. What if we practiced gratitude every day? Not only would your perspective change but your whole life could.
The speaker welcomes viewers, notes this is week four of the series, and frames the session around Thanksgiving and gratitude. This orients listeners to the intent of the talk.
The speaker argues that gratitude is more than an attitude—it's a deliberate discipline that changes how we perceive life, contrasting that with consumer culture. He references 12-step traditions and explains how regular practice cultivates lasting appreciation.
Practical advice encourages making a nightly gratitude list focused on the day's positives and sharing lists with others. The speaker emphasizes consistency and treating the practice as a discipline regardless of feelings or circumstances.
The speaker explains he avoids labeling days as 'bad' and recounts losing a contract to illustrate responding without drama, linking this stance back to gratitude. He ends by wishing viewers a meaningful Thanksgiving and holiday season.
All right, everybody. Well, I think this is working. Sometimes I can't tell. But yes, I'm sorry to say it's a beautiful day here in Los Angeles. I have a short sleeve shirt on, so I know some of my friends, especially those in Minnesota, may not be too excited about that. But you know, what I wanted to do, I didn't get a chance to title this, or let me say that differently, I forgot to title this, I forgot to title this, this session, but this is week four, right? And so that's when I talk about conscious living.
And I thought, and I'm gonna hopefully be able to do this post, I'll put some information in about this live stream. And hey, Luke, how are you? So here's the deal, right? We're coming up on Thanksgiving. We're coming up on the holidays. And I thought I wanted to share a little bit about gratitude from my perspective, right? And the thing about gratitude for me is that it's a real discipline, right? You know, always say gratitude is an attitude. And, you know, there's a lot of little kind of happy sayings we have around gratitude.
And but what I've found is how important of a discipline that it is in my life. And this idea of conscious living, right, that I talk about on the fourth Saturday of every month, you know what what is how does gratitude like really fit into it well-being in the 12 steps 12 step programs you know gratitude is a really important thing a lot of us we send gratitude lists to each other we're on gratitude lists you know like listservs where everybody sends their gratitude lists and we read those gratitude lists and like for me that practice which I've done off and on, but lately for like the last four years, I've been very disciplined about it.
And the guys that I sponsor, I encourage them to do it. It's a discipline of gratitude that really shifts my perception. And I think that's the key, right? That's the key. When it's a discipline, it's like, Because you know, you can you can do the things of like once a year we practice gratitude or even November is grateful month and we do that. And I'm not dismissing that or even meaning to minimize it. But what I am saying is that Our society, right? Our society, our mass market consumer society is predicated on the idea of people not being grateful, people not being satisfied, of people not having enough or being happy with what they have.
That's like, that's how the Pistons roll, man. Like that's how everything chugs along in this economy is it's predicated on this idea. that you need something else in order to be okay. You need something else in order to be happy. And what gratitude says is, I've got everything I need right now. Now that's a beautiful thing. Can everybody say that? Not necessarily, right? I believe it's really important for those of us who can, and I think the vast majority of people, when they look in the moment at what they have, can always find something to be grateful for, can always find numerous things to be grateful for.
And I think that's the discipline is it shifts our perspective. There's a great saying in AA that says, if you're not happy with what you have, you'll never be happy with what you get. And that's what I really try to practice. That's what is meaningful for me. So as we move into this season of gratitude, as we move into this practice of gratitude, I really encourage people, as I do with every live stream, something to work on. If you don't already do a gratitude list, whether it's two items, five items, or 10 items, do it and share it with others and get them to share theirs with you.
And then maybe even start a practice where you share them all the time. It's really powerful. And what I can tell you is like, I work hard when I do my gratitude list to focus on this day. So I do my gratitude list at night and I focus on the day that was, and it forces me to remember everything that I have to be grateful for, for just this day, just this one day. So, um, That shift of it being a discipline and not just a perspective. And I was talking to a guy earlier today and I said, you know, when something is a discipline, it doesn't matter how you feel.
And when something is a discipline, it doesn't matter how things are going, you just do it and you have that gratitude list and you share that gratitude and I will tell you I have found gratitude on days where there were reasons not for me to have gratitude and I will also tell you this and I'll end with this because this has been important to me as of late I've talked about the pause in numerous of my live streams because it's so powerful for me these days but here's the other thing that's really important for me personally and that is I do not have bad days.
I do not have hard days. I don't have good days. I don't have amazing days. I don't qualify the days that I have and if I do, it is an amazing day. It is an awesome day. But I really, truly work to ensure that I don't use language such as, oh, this is a really bad day. This is a really bad time in my life. This is that, this is that. And I've had some things happen in the last two weeks or yeah, last two weeks, two days in particular that I could talk about where I could easily have said, oh, that was a bad day.
I will not use that language. And that's very, very important to me. It's another part of the discipline and it's connected to gratitude. I lost a work contract. I was fired from that contract in a, I believe, in a fairly disrespectful way. I didn't do anything wrong. I lost a lot of money as a result. And guess what? That wasn't a bad day. And And that's important for me. The more I feed the drama that wants to kind of show up in my life, then the more drama I think I have in my life. And the more I don't do that and I don't give language around that, the less energy it has.
And for that, I am truly grateful. So I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and a wonderful holiday season.
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