The Non-BS Guide to Gratitude

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to US military veterans and anybody else willing to listen to help them to navigate toward living their absolute best lives. If you find these episodes helpful, please share them out with somebody that you know of that can use them. And if you really like the podcast, please also head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. It really helps us to spread word about the show, and it really helps to get these tools in the hands of others who really need them.

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I hope you get a lot out of it. And without delay, let's get into it.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. That's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

You know, you've read many self help books, or listened to a lot of podcasts that involve success or successful people, one of the things you might hear quite often is about individuals who keep a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal is nothing really complicated. What you do is you essentially write down three things that you're grateful for every single day. And this is something that I've practiced for a while, but I'm going to tell you a little bit of a twist that I put on it. The thing about gratitude is this, gratitude is meant to remind you of what you have in your life that's positive.

It's meant to put you into a place where you see possibility rather than limitations. And I know that a lot of you out there, particularly in this audience, you might think that's a little bit hippy dippy. Right? That writing down three things that you're grateful for probably isn't going to be worth your time and it's really not going to contain much value at all. And I can see where you're coming from.

But I'll see this. One of the biggest problems I see out there, particularly with young veterans, is that they see the world as some unfixable place that has inherently wronged them in some way. They look out at what the news media says and they look at you know, what popular Hollywood's doing, and and they see a world that they think is aligned against them. But the truth of the matter is this. What you're really seeing is a compartmentalized view that's being presented to you by the media. And if you actually take a look at your life, you'll actually see that we live in probably one of the greatest times in humanity.

Things are immensely easier for us now than they've ever been for human beings on earth. And, if you actually take a deeper look at what out what's out there, you take a look at your neighbors, you take a look at your community, you'll see that not everything is exactly as the media portrays. Not everybody's in America hating you know, Marxist who doesn't love the military. In fact, I find that most Americans I come across love the military. Most Americans will thank me for my service, and most Americans actually do love America.

And I say that because again I'm constantly hearing that from veterans. Say I can't believe what time we're living in. I can't believe how weak people are. I can't believe how people, don't love this country and all these different things. And I think in those cases, lot of times, the fact is that your eyes are kinda closed to the world around you.

And you're just paying attention to what what the news says, what the media says. So what gratitude does is it helps you to see the good in the world. Because the more good in the world, the more positives you see in the world, the more you're able to live in a world of possibility. And if you're gonna accomplish anything in this life, you really do need to see the possibilities. You can't see the walls closing in around you, you can't see the world is being aligned against you. And if you do, you're actually contributing to a lot of the things you're complaining about. You know, to to think that the world is aligned against you is actually a very entitled way of looking at things.

Because you're putting yourself into a mindset that says, well, if the world doesn't bend over backward for me, then it's aligned against me. If the world isn't gonna make what I want to do in this life easier for me, then the world's against me, and it's a horrible place. And you gotta get yourself out of that mindset if you're ever going to accomplish anything. So the way I work with gratitude, I write down three things I'm grateful for in my journal. But here's the thing about this exercise.

You can only be grateful for certain things so many times and write those same things down before the exercise starts to lose its meaning. So for example, if you continually write down that you're grateful for your wife, your family, all these different things, which is important, you should express gratitude for those things. But the act of writing it down starts to lose its meaning. So what I aim to do whenever I'm sitting down and I'm writing out my gratitude during the day, and I do it during my morning routine toward the end of my morning routine before I jump into my work. What I do is I try to find a challenge in my life, or a problem, or something that would normally make me angry.

And what I try to do is I try to find a way to be grateful for that thing. Now why is that? Well, it's because when it comes to problems and obstacles and things that make me a little bit angry, I don't want to see them as walls. I want to see them as opportunities. The way you start a business is by finding a problem that needs to be solved.

The way that you develop leadership is by solving problems for other people. And so the more we put ourselves to that exercise, rather than just complaining about the things that make us angry, or rather than just shutting down when an obstacle is put in front of us, the more we actually attempt to be grateful for those obstacles, those problems, and everything that's put in front of us, well, the more we're exercising our minds to see things as possibilities so that we're developing solutions rather than just complaining about the world. That's a big belief of mine. I believe that if you're just complaining about the world, you're somebody who's just posting angry memes or tweeting angry feelings out to the world without actually delivering solutions, that doesn't make you somebody who's actually doing anything at all, even if I politically agree with you, it actually makes you part of the problem. So, again, you could think this is really hippy dippy.

You could think that this is something that's some self help BS. But at the end of the day, it's about putting all of our mindsets into a place to where we're actually developing solutions for this world rather than trying to tear it down. And I've always said that if you don't like the way this country is being run, if you have extreme disagreements with others, well, the way forward is this. You've got to outperform the other side. You've got to out earn the other side.

And then you've got to put yourself into a position to do something about it. And sitting there complaining, tweeting, posting memes really isn't going to do much at all. Hope that makes sense to you guys, and I hope that you try that exercise and you find it helpful. For those of you who are new to this podcast, this is the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and my mission here is to empower The US military veteran community and anybody else willing to listen to live their absolute best lives.

And I do that by delivering tools, tactics, ideas, and strategies that are going to help you to become stronger, more resilient, and smarter in your approach to life. We don't ask for anything in return on this show. All we really ask is that you listen to the episodes, that you let us know how we're doing by writing us a written rating and review on iTunes. The more you do that, the more it gets this show into the hands of other veterans and other people who can really benefit from these ideas. Finally, you could pay us the highest compliment by sharing these episodes out with people who you think could utilize them.

In addition to what we do here on the podcast, the Warrior Soul Agoge is also available for you guys as a source of content. You can head over there and you can listen to our past episodes, read our articles which are based around fitness, becoming stronger, becoming smarter, organizing your life. And you can you can find that over at www.warriorsoulagoge.com and that's a g o g e. Finally, we also work with men. Men who are trying to live epic lives.

Lives worthy of epic obituaries. And that's why we've created the Warrior's Obituary Society. Like I said, this is a group of men that comes together to help to empower each other to go after their greatest goals. And it begins with an eight week development program that helps you to develop your vision, your goals, your personal productivity, your fitness, your relationships, but above all, helps you to understand that you're not alone in this world and that there are people out there who will push you, who will get you to be to put out your best. And so once our members are through that eight week development program, they take their places as full brothers in the society.

And each week and each month, we get together to see how we're progressing on our goals and to hold each other accountable if we haven't done what we said we would do. If you're interested in joining this group this group of men let me know. Send me a DM on Instagram Warrior Soul Agoge on Instagram, or you can email me at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. This is a paid program, but I've intentionally kept it to a very reasonable price. A lot of programs like this are being offered out there for thousands of dollars.

This one is not. So let me know if you're interested. And again, thank you for listening to this podcast. Thank you for the time you're putting into yourself and developing yourself into a stronger, smarter, and more resilient person. And I'll be back at you later on this week with some more awesome content.

With that, get out there and live your best lives while you can, and I am out.