Hey friend,
The rest of the 2022 Soul Searching Adventures are sold out so I'm releasing the first few of 2023. Here they are:
February 2-5, 2023 at Hidden Lakes Ranch, TX
March 20-26 most likely Big Bend National Park
Co-ed: April 13-16 at Hidden Lakes Ranch, TX
I will be leading this one with my wife, Adee.
You can apply here.
Next, I just released a podcast episode with my buddy Andrew Horn. He is the co-founder of Tribute, the online platform that helps you celebrate the people you care about with a video montage of their community telling them why they're awesome. We talk about the power of gratitude, how to give 5 star gourmet praise, and how to build rituals of recognition into your business.
So I've been thinking a lot about Gratitude...
Joe Dispenza says that "Gratitude is the highest state of receivership."
To me this means that I get what I put out in the universe. The more I support my wife, the more she supports me. The more thoughtful and curious I am around my friends, the more they are with me. When I'm grateful, I tend to things in my life more carefully. I take better care of them.
On a recent Soul Searching Adventure, one guy said that "Showing my wife more gratitude has been leading to more frequent extracurricular activities." I think he means secks. That is the HIGHEST state of receivership!
I've tried a lot of "gratitude exercises." Often I have brought to mind something I am grateful for. On my best days I'd feel a warm sensation in my body and a more relaxed sense of awareness. For a while I would even text or call the person I was thinking about to tell them specifically what I was grateful for about them. On the worst days I wouldn't feel anything at all.
The best days were a great way to start the day off on a good note. And yet, it often felt forced. It also didn't seem to have any lasting impact. I didn't feel grateful more often.
For me gratitude has always been transitory just like any other feeling. Lost in the day to day grind of life, I often take my wife for granted. I don't feel or act grateful.
Feelings of gratitude only hit me when she gives me some specific words of affirmation. Or she makes me a bomb meal. Or when I go out into nature and reflect on my life for a little while.
This is part of a regular pattern of discontentment in my life. Sometimes I feel like every important category in my life is going great, but there is still an underlying feeling of "this is not enough."
I often find myself creating a story that if I can just get over this next hill, then I will reach a state of supreme happiness and contentment. Lately I've been telling myself that I'll only be completely happy when I create a co-housing community - think commune without the predatory leader.
This story - I will be completely happy and content when x happens - is something we all tell ourselves. Some call it the hedonic treadmill. It's a bullshit story. The only time we can ever be happy is right now.
So I've been thinking about how I can feel the feeling of gratitude more in my life in a lasting way. In a way that leads to me acting more grateful for the people and things in my life.
First, I realize that my discontentment comes from focusing on the few things I don't have rather than the massive list of things I have. Tim Urban depicts it well.
Another thing that has really been helping me is the idea that gratitude is "a verb that works best when it is embodied, spoken aloud and when it connects you to someone else".
Some examples:
When Shai was born, I noticed that the more time I spent changing his diapers and giving him a bottle the more I cared about him. The more grateful I was for him. During times when I wasn't around him as much I felt more distant and less grateful. The more I resisted being a parent.
I've historically not been much of a "dog person." I grew up with two completely untrained dogs that I just really didn't like. Then we got Otis. I thought he was cute and fun, but for years I didn't have much of a relationship with him. When we had Shai, I became responsible for taking care of Otis. Feeding him. Taking him to the vet. Getting his hair cut. Walking him. Within a week or two I was paying so much more attention to him outside of those responsibilities, and I was so much more grateful for him being in my life.
The most consistent arguments Adee and I have gotten in since having our son have all been around shared roles and responsibilities. At times we both start keeping score on who we think is doing more - thinking we are always the one doing more (in reality it's almost always her). A couple months ago I started leaning into doing some new tasks as a part of my daily routine and really looking for ways of taking things off of her plate. I started paying more attention to her emotional state and looking for ways to help her without being asked. The more I helped, the more present I was to how much she was doing. The more grateful I was for her.
"Gratitude," as William Faulkner once said, "is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all."
The more we take care of the people and things in our lives, the more we care about them.
And when I forget this, I'm trying to remind myself to be generous. This quote by John Wineland can be applied to all relationships.
Generosity is the foundational principle of spiritual intimacy and yet, the predominant problem in relationships today is the pernicious and often self-justified lack of unconditional giving. Most couples I see are downright stingy. We are stingy with our adoration, our praise, the perfect sexual gifting, our attention, our truths, our vulnerabilities, and most importantly, our worship. It is easy for us to open and love when our partners are pleasing; when they are giving us what we think we want. But true spiritual practice requires us to love when there is no guarantee of reciprocity, to trust when we are scared shitless to reveal our tender heart, and to lead when we are exhausted and disheartened.
(Maybe not the sexual gifting. I'm not going to be sexually gifting anything to Otis but you can imagine what it would be like if I did but you shouldn't you sicko)
A couple more things I want to share with you
Invisible Skills
Adee just posted this awesome article on why invisible skills are so undervalued. Things like nurturing and using your intuition. Things that aren't validated like being "productive" or "making a lot of money" but are actually more valuable to the world.
She talks about the journey of her identity changing as a new mother and how she has come to embrace and take pride in her new purpose. A powerful message for anyone that feels like they aren't DOing enough.
We made another offspring
Here it is at the pool
Peace,
Michael