Having Gratitude Can Save Your Life

Did you know that humans have a survival mechanism that does a great job of keeping us alive in environments where our lives are threatened?

Have you ever noticed that you have this instinct or instinct or this sixth sense, like something doesn't feel right? The hair on the back of your neck stands up. You get that spy sense where you're like, what? Something's not right here, and you become hyper-alert.

Nine times out 10, when you get that instinct that it was there was something wrong. Have you guys ever found that? Have you ever noticed that you, as a person, have this knack for seeing when something's wrong or it's out of place? Someone doesn't seem right. Something doesn't seem right.

We, as people, have this pattern recognition where when we're in familiar or safe environments, and something moves, or something changes, we can almost sense it right away, and it's a good thing. This is a survival mechanism that's intended for us as human beings to be able to feel hostile threats before they come.

That sense and instinct keep us alive. But in the world where we live today, most of the time, we're not facing those hostile threats, are we?

And when we're in a situation where we're not facing hostile threats, or there's no threat of violence, death, or a predator, that same sixth sense and instinct that forces us to look for bad things, is part of what makes us as human beings so miserable.

Have you ever found yourself in a place where you notice when something is wrong before you realize something is right?

Have you ever found yourself in a place where you had had this grass is a greener mentality where you look at somebody else's life and what they have and the things that they've accomplished or their material belongings, and you wish that you had what they? Or things aren't going so great in your relationship, and there's a particular aspect or facet of your life in the way you live that you're unhappy with.

And because you have this survival mechanism that forces you to look for the wrong things, you often forget about all the good stuff.

I'm sure you've seen it before, that's happened in your life. You lose that perspective, that sense of gratitude, and you're no longer thankful for the status quo.

So when something changes outside of what you're comfortable with, or you don't like it, or it threatens you, you immediately pounce on it. I'm sure you've seen it where you have this friend on social, and that friend that you have on social media only seems to show up when they have a comment on one of your posts that they disagree with.

They'll quickly throw out any gratitude or thankfulness for what you've done for them just because of one specific situation or circumstance, and we see that all.

We have this sense that everything in our relationship is correct, but there's that one thing with our wife that we can't stand, and we allow that one thing to negate all of the positive things we have in our life.

We, as human beings, are naturally ungrateful.

We naturally have a way of taking the things that we have for granted. I can tell you that even my young children, 2, 4, 10, 7, and 9, are not entitled by any stretch. I make sure that I try to do my best to raise all of my daughters and my sons the right way so that they understand the value of a dollar and know that they need to earn the things they're given, but they still have this.

One of the biggest challenges I have as a parent is teaching them to be grateful and understand that there are people who have less. Understanding there's a degree of work, blood, sweat, tears, effort, time, and experience must be invested in enjoying the life they've been given.

Some people have died and put their lives on the table so that we and our children. We can enjoy the freedoms in the life that we have. Some men sacrifice their time with their families so that they can have time with yours: first responders and military. I've spent Christmases deployed and combat protecting our freedoms so that you could be miserable having Thanksgiving dinner with family members that you are ungrateful to have.

Some wives will spend their holidays before a grave site wishing their husband didn't make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the freedoms this country affords while you wish you had more. This doesn't just apply to the sacrifice of time. I told our soldiers and first responders that a man was lying on his deathbed, begging God for more time.

While you are looking at your time as spare time or telling yourself that you don't have the motivation, time, energy, desire, or drive, there will be a tomorrow, and you can do it. There's a man without legs wishing he could walk while you look for every opportunity to sit on your fat ass and squander that opportunity.

There are men, and there are women who cannot have children. But you look to get away from yours for everything you struggle with. For every problem that you have, there's either somebody out there who's had it worse, or there's somebody out there who has demonstrated that the world that you've created, where you've convinced yourself that it's too hard or you can't do it, has shown that you're a liar because they beat it, they overcame it.

So, for the last couple of weeks, I asked you guys what the most significant challenge you've ever overcome was in your life. And then earlier today, coach James in the Facebook group asked what your biggest struggle was, and it seems like those, those questions, those posts, every time one of us asks you what your challenge is, what your struggle is, what you're having a hard time with.

You quickly let the world know how hard your life is. But of all of the men who commented on that post, I can tell you right now you are more privileged than most of the world because you have a job, you have shelter, you are alive, you have food to eat, you have a family, and yet here you are, focused on that struggle. Here you are focused on that challenge.

Instead, you should be waking up, looking to your left and right, and being thankful for the life given to you, grateful that God has granted you another day, another opportunity to go out and pursue greatness.

Thankful that you have food to eat. You have a roof over your head. You have a vehicle, a phone, any, and access to the wealth of information available to man. You have every opportunity in the world to pursue and become whatever man you want to become. Nothing is stopping you from except for yourself.

You are the only one. The story you are telling is what's preventing you from becoming the man you want to be. And there are there, and there are countless thousands upon thousands of men who are in the world.

Who would trade seats with you in a fucking instant? Who would beg to have your problem in problems in exchange for theirs?

And so, instead of asking yourself, what is your biggest struggle, what is your biggest challenge? Start your day and end your day by asking yourself, what is it that you are thankful for? Why should you have gratitude?

So I have a story for you that will give you some perspective on this.

One day on New York City's busy streets, a young woman traveled down the street. She came across a man begging for money on the side of the road. There he was, seated with his jacket on. You can tell he is freezing. He's got a bull next to him, holding a cardboard sign. She read the sign, and it said, blind, please help.

And as she looked up around the busy, crowded downtown street, she noticed that nobody seemed to be stopping. Nobody cared. Nobody was helping him. They were so busy focused on themselves. The last thing that they were worried about doing was helping this blind man. So she decided to take action into her own hands, and she took a pin out of her pocket, grabbed that sign out of his hand, flipped it over, and wrote a message.

The blind man could hear somebody writing something on his cardboard, but he was curious. So he let her continue.

She finished writing the message, put the sign back, threw some change in the bowl, didn't say a word, and walked to the blind man. Surprise, he heard more change and money filling is bull. And the longer he sat, the more it changed, seemed to fill his bull to the point where he reached over with his hand and started feeling this change bull, and he could see it was overflowing with coins and cash, and he was confused.

He didn't know what to think. So finally, he was so curious about what he wrote on his cardboard that he pulled a man aside and asked him, can you read the sign? Tell me what it says. The man looked down and said, today is a beautiful day. And I am so happy you have the privilege to see it.

Do you understand the shift that occurred? Blind? Please help.

This man was focused on his problems begging the world. He was a victim. He's blind. Please help me. There is no one coming to save you, gentlemen.

There's no one coming to save you. The world does not fucking care about your problems. They do not feel sorry for you.

But what he did or what she did for him is she shifted that message.

And instead of giving them perspective, instead of asking them for help, he gave them perspective. That sign gave them perspective to realize that they have the privilege to see the beautiful day.

Like every one of you sitting here listening or watching me, you have the privilege to struggle with the things you're working with. Those struggles you're facing with your life today are forcing you to become the man you were meant to be. Those obstacles are tempering you to be firm with Fort.

And the power to overcome so that you can teach, create impact, and pass that lesson on to your legacy. Your children can see you overcoming those challenges. Your wife can see you overcoming that challenge. They're going to respect you more, and they're going to learn through your failures.

You do not have problems. You do not have challenges. You do not have struggles. You have opportunities. So rather than asking God why he's putting you through this, you should ask him what he is trying to teach you.

Because God will not deliver your prayers and answer them by giving you what you want and what you ask for.

When you pray and ask for God to give you something, he will give you the challenges or experiences that will forge you into the man that deserves what you ask for. So the more complicated, the more complex, and the more challenging your life are, the more you are called to become and the greater of a man you have been called to be.

But because you choose to falter and bend and break under the pressure of being tempered, you will never become the man you are meant to be. You will live disappointed with regret because I'm here to tell you.

A man on his deathbed doesn't look back and regret what he did. How often do you hear a story of a man dying, wishing he would've done something more? He regrets what he didn't do. No man regrets taking the leap of faith toward becoming the man he was called to be. There's only the regret of a man who failed to take action and sat comfortably back with his feet up in his fucking comfort zone.

Comfort is a victim of the problems that he asked for through.

One of the things that they teach you most in sales and marketing training courses is to sell more, and you have to understand your customer's pain points. What is it that they're struggling with?

We sell not by selling to the features of a product but to the benefits. How is this going to change my life? How is this going to change how the world perceives me? How is this going to change how I feel?

How is this going to change what I see when I look in the mirror? How will this change my relationship with my wife, job, friends, or kids? That's what I'm selling you. I'm not selling you 30 pounds of weight loss or a new skill set on learning how to eat. I'm selling you a change in your life.

We understand how to invest your money or invest in your relationship. I'm selling you how to wake up in the morning and be the fucking.

And it's because I understand that to underdeliver to you the thing you want most, I have to know what hurts you the most. More pain means more value. If I can solve that problem, I'm saving you thousands of dollars. You can hire someone other than me to be a coach if you understand that you don't have any problems. You either lack integrity, discipline, work ethic, or a combination of the three.

If you have integrity with yourself and you're a hundred percent honest with who you are and what you want, if you have the discipline to be consistent and stick with living in the truth of your core values and what you believe to be true as a man and not compromising those values for comfort and if you have the work ethic to show up as the best version of yourself and everything you do, it's impossible not to find fulfillment in your life.

You're sitting here thanking or searching and chasing this magical fairy called happiness and thinking that you're not happy, you're not fulfilled, and you're not. It's not happiness that brings us gratitude. It's gratitude That brings us joy.

And it's because the life that you're not leaving, the life that you're leading is not what you want to be, or you're not where you want to be, or you're not the man you want to become.

The fact is, you have a family, you have children, you have a wife, you have a home, you have a job, you have everything you could ask for, and instead of being grateful and praying and thanking God for the gifts that he's given you, you tell him that you're not.

You don't want the things that you have because you're not grateful for them. So how do you expect him to give you more if you are not even thankful for what you have?

If you have a child who's not thankful for what they give you, what you give them, are you going to provide them with more thinking that they're going to be grateful? If you have a woman, a wife who shows up in your life and has no appreciation whatsoever for the things that you do for her and what you provide, are you going to give her more, hoping that she's going to be grateful?

You may do that initially, but eventually, you're going to come to a point, come to an end where you give up. You decide it's no longer worth investing in that woman because she doesn't practice gratitude and appreciation for what you do.

Instead of spending so much time focused on what's on the other side and the grass is green or over there, maybe you should look up to God and thank him that you even have a fucking lawn and start watering your grass. Every moment that you spend here today on Earth and enjoy the life that has been given to you is a gift, and every day that you fail to maximize.

The value of that gift by being the man that you are meant to be, you are squandering it.

Be grateful, man.

I spend a lot of time talking about what it is to be masculine and what it means to be a strong leader in men of men. We've talked about this before. Part of being a man tells you you need to be competent. You need to be strong, and you need to be healthy, and you need to be fit.

You need to be capable of protecting and providing for your family. You need to be able to dawn your armor, get your sword and shield, walk out into the world, defend your home, defend the honor of your name, and fight Dragons.

We're a lot of us men who are watching this tonight. We're good at going out and fighting dragons. We're good at shielding our family, our wives, and our wife and our children from the burdens of the stress we deal with facing the world's evils. But instead of protecting them from those things, we bring them home.

One of the parts of masculinity that many forget is that he is a strong, powerful, masculine man who's genuinely standing his power in that space. It is also kind. He lives in a place of gratitude. He's compassionate, and he loves. I'm not here telling men to be weak and vulnerable. I'm telling you that your family, your wife, and your children should bring you peace because you get them peace.

You should raise your family up and through the process of protecting them from the evils of the world. You can also give them a version of you that knows that you've done your job because they are safe. You do not need them to validate you or pat you on the back or tell you you did an excellent job because they don't even know what you saved them.

And because they don't know what you saved them from and what they're, they're being protected, and there's no way for them to truly understand or be sincerely grateful for the sacrifices you're making for them because you did your job so well. Have you ever noticed that you don't realize how much your parents did for you until you become an adult and have children?

You're like, God damn, my mom is a saint. That's what I'm referencing here. I did a video a couple of weeks ago where I said how men, you need to stop looking for validation and appreciation and a fucking gold star and a pat on the back from everybody just for doing your job.

It's about a lot more than that.

Be grateful that you have that job and you've been blessed with the responsibility to be that man, a protector, a provider. To be the foundation of your home and have the power to elevate your legacy and leave a lesson behind where your children don't have to start from scratch like you did because most men today don't have an example to learn from.

Right now is a phenomenal opportunity for each of you to rewrite the fucking story and instead of doing that, you're continuing to write the story of your father or your father's father and being a fucking victim and allowing the world to dictate your outcomes in the man you are.

You are meant for more, starting with being grateful and living in a place of gratitude.

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