Want to Be Happy Today, Be Grateful

Summary

The Mindset Mentor Podcast: Episode Summary - "Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful"

Introduction

In the episode titled "Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful," host Rob Dial delves deep into the transformative power of gratitude and how it can significantly enhance one's happiness without altering external circumstances. Drawing from a blend of neurology, psychology, and personal anecdotes, Rob emphasizes the importance of shifting one's perspective to recognize and appreciate the myriad blessings often overlooked in daily life.

The Power of Perspective

Rob Dial opens the discussion by highlighting the miraculous advancements of modern life that are frequently taken for granted. He underscores how our ancestors, even just 500 years ago, would marvel at today's technological conveniences.

• Air Travel as a Miracle:
  [04:53] "I'm going to hop on a plane and I'm going to travel to the other side of the earth... We're sitting on a chair in the sky and, you know, 30,000ft in the air, going 600 miles an hour. And we're like, but..."

• The Magic of Smartphones:
  [05:40] "Take your phone, for instance, right? Your phone is basically magic."
  Rob elaborates on the multifunctionality of smartphones, comparing them to standalone devices from the past. He marvels at how a single device now encompasses cameras, GPS, calculators, voice recorders, and more, considering it "the most incredible piece of technology that's ever been made."

Gratitude as a Mindset

Rob emphasizes that gratitude is not about denying one's problems or engaging in toxic positivity. Instead, it's about acknowledging and appreciating the present moment's blessings, no matter how small.

• Setting an Internal GPS with Gratitude:
  [18:34] "You can choose to go, yeah, my life isn't exactly what I wanted. Yeah, maybe I'm dealing with a lot of shit right now, but still, if I look at my life, there's so many things to be grateful for."

• Gratitude Unlocks Abundance:
  [19:02] "You decide how you want to feel."
  [19:33] "And if you sit down and you consciously make yourself focus on what you have, focus on all of the magic, you'll start to see more of it, you're going to start to feel more of it, and you're going to radiate that as well."

Rob posits that by consciously choosing to focus on gratitude, individuals can set their emotional destinations similarly to how they use GPS for travel. This intentional focus can lead to increased joy, happiness, and a more positive outlook on life.

Historical Comparisons: Then vs. Now

To provide perspective, Rob contrasts modern life with that of previous centuries, illustrating just how fortunate we are today.

• Living Better Than Royals:
  [17:00] "You are right now. You're living better than kings and Queens did 500 years ago."
  He points out that the average person's quality of life today surpasses that of historical monarchs, thanks to advancements in technology, medicine, and overall living standards.

• Surviving the Great Depression:
  Rob shares a personal family story about his great-grandfather during the Great Depression. Despite severe economic hardships, his great-grandfather's resilience—learning to garden and fish to feed his family—demonstrates incredible gratitude and resourcefulness in dire times.

Implementing Gratitude in Daily Life

Rob offers practical advice on cultivating gratitude to enhance one's happiness and overall well-being:

1. Conscious Reflection:
   Regularly take moments to reflect on and acknowledge the things you are grateful for, no matter how small.

2. Shift Focus:
   Instead of dwelling on what is lacking or what has been lost, direct your attention to present blessings and achievements.

3. Radiate Positivity:
   As gratitude grows internally, it naturally radiates outward, positively influencing interactions and relationships.

4. Avoid Pity Parties:
   Recognize that acknowledging struggles is valid, but balance it with gratitude to prevent getting stuck in negative emotions.

Conclusion

Rob Dial wraps up the episode by reiterating the central theme: gratitude is a potent tool for unlocking happiness and abundance in one's life. By shifting focus from deficiencies to blessings, individuals can transform their mindset, leading to a more fulfilling and joyful existence.

• Final Thoughts on Gratitude:
  [20:42] "Gratitude unlocks abundance in your life. And so what you focus on, you receive more of."

Rob encourages listeners to make gratitude a daily practice, ensuring that even amidst challenges, they can find reasons to appreciate and celebrate their lives.

Key Takeaways

• Perspective Shift: Recognizing and appreciating modern conveniences can enhance gratitude.
• Gratitude Over Circumstances: Cultivating gratitude can improve happiness without needing to change external factors.
• Historical Context: Understanding how life has improved over centuries provides a deeper sense of thankfulness.
• Practical Application: Regular reflection and conscious focus on blessings can transform one's mindset and overall well-being.

Notable Quotes

• "You might have a life right now that you were praying for five years ago." — Rob Dial [02:53]
• "Your phone is basically magic." — Rob Dial [05:40]
• "It's a great servant but a terrible master." — Rob Dial [08:19]
• "You are living better than kings and Queens did 500 years ago." — Rob Dial [17:00]
• "You decide how you want to feel." — Rob Dial [19:00]

Final Encouragement

Rob urges listeners to share the episode, practice gratitude regularly, and strive to make others' days better as a means of fostering a more appreciative and joyful community.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of the "Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful" episode, providing insights and actionable advice for those seeking to enhance their happiness through the power of gratitude.

Transcript

[Rob Dial]

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[Co-host]

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[Co-host]

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you love this podcast, please do me a massive favor.

[Rob Dial]

Give us a rating and review however.

[Co-host]

You listen to to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, whatever it might be. Because more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that they actually show this and present this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and impact more people. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today we're going to be talking about how amazing life is, how amazing this human experience is, and how we can be happier than by using this gratitude and not by changing any of our circumstances, but just by becoming more aware of what is right in front of us that we don't see every single day. Because we live in a society where we get caught up in always wanting more. And I find myself there all of the time.

[Rob Dial]

And very rarely, or at least not.

[Co-host]

Enough, do we ever take a step back, look at our lives, and see how amazing things are. Like, just take a second.

[Rob Dial]

You might have a life right now.

[Co-host]

That you were praying for five years ago. Like, your dream life five years ago could be your life that you have now. Think about that for a second. And I do understand that when I say life is amazing, I don't mean that it's perfect. I don't mean that there's not a lot of crazy things happening across the world. There always have been, there always will be, because people are nuts. But it doesn't mean that if you just put yourself and be present in your own life and you just be here now and you look at what you have, you can't go, wow, I do have a lot to be grateful for. Because if you're listening to me, you're listening to me through a phone or a computer that's connected to the Internet, that's talking to some satellite that's in space. And you're probably further ahead than, like, 95% of people in the world. Like, no matter where you are, there are some people that are in really dire straits. And you probably have a pretty decent life. It doesn't mean you have everything that you want, that you're worth a billion dollars, that you have a yacht. Not all of those things. I'm just saying that your life, it's probably pretty okay, but we're too busy thinking about what we don't have and what we used to have and what.

[Rob Dial]

We want and what we desire.

[Co-host]

And we're like, but where I am is not good enough. And so the more that we can start from a place of gratitude, the better that we can show up and serve the world to help continue to change the world. And so what I want to do is I just want to give you a perspective shift today. I want to give you a perspective shift. I want to talk about what the world is like right now, today, what amazing miracles we have in our lives today that we just take for granted. So I'm about to go onto a plane in a couple days, and I was just thinking how insane it is to get onto a plane. Like, you have to understand that my ancestors, your ancestors, never a lot of them traveled anywhere further than just the place that they grew up. If we go back 500 years, all of our ancestors, 500 years ago, they usually stayed in the exact same place. I'm going to hop on a plane and I'm going to travel to the other side of the earth, across the pond, and go to a country that I'm going to learn and be with my family and eat and have fun, and then I'm going to come back a couple weeks later. Like, airline flight. People act like it's the worst thing in the world. Like, the most miserable people in the world are in airports. I feel like everybody should be on a flight and be like, oh, my God, this is amazing. You're sitting on a chair in the sky and, you know, 30,000ft in the air, going 600 miles an hour. And we're like, but.

[Rob Dial]

But I have to be close to this person next to me. Oh, my gosh, that person has a baby that's crying.

[Co-host]

You know, you can go from New York City to LA in like, what.

[Rob Dial]

Five or six hours.

[Co-host]

That used to take, like 30 years. And by the time that you got there, half the people died. The other half of the people are babies and children that weren't there when you started. You, like, get to your destination. Hopefully, if you get there and you don't die of dysentery on the way, but you get to your destination 30 years later and it's a completely different group of people. Like, whole generations were lost in the time that it took for now us to, you know what, go to the bathroom, watch a movie and take a nap. Like, how incredible is that? It's a miracle.

[Rob Dial]

Take your phone, for instance, right?

[Co-host]

Most people are listening to me on their phone right now.

[Rob Dial]

Your phone is basically magic.

[Co-host]

If we were to bring your phone to somebody a hundred years ago, they'd be like, what is this sorcery? You can think about all of. Have you ever thought about all of the things that your phone does that you used to have to have an individual product in your house for? Like, if you were to say to somebody 25 years ago, I'm going to take a picture with my phone, they'd be like, you need to go into an institution, right? Like, your phone has a camera, a camcorder. Those used to be two separate things. Back in the day, everybody. It's basically replaced radio and CDs, books, a calculator. It's got a voice recorder. You have GPS flashlights, You have a leveler, a scanner. You can use the compass that's on it, it's basically replace video game consoles. Your credit card is on there, it's got an alarm clock on there, the stopwatch, a timer, a calendar, notepad, photo album, new paper. I have a guitar tuner on mine. Remote control. You could control your TV with it. Car keys, I can unlock my car with it. All of the, all of the things we used to have, something separate and it's got on it all of the knowledge that mankind has ever known. You can google something on the Internet and immediately get an answer. It's insane. It's amazing. It's the most incredible piece of technology that's ever been made. It's a miracle.

[Rob Dial]

But people are like, oh, but it's so addicting.

[Co-host]

Well yeah, you're letting it be addicting. You know, it's a great servant but a terrible master.

[Rob Dial]

So if you're going to use it, you have to decide how you actually.

[Co-host]

Want to use it. You know, if you think about like security. I remember one time I was, I like to put my life into perspective and have moments of like gratitude and be like oh my God, this is amazing because a lot of times I get caught up in the day to day and then I'll get stressed out about something and I'll forget about how amazing my life is. And I remember I was sitting in Italy a few years ago, it was like five years ago. And I remember I got a notification. I was sitting in Rome in a square enjoying some food and I got a notification on my phone that somebody was in my front yard. And we will be right back.

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[Co-host]

And now back to the show. And I'm what, 6,000 miles away? And it was the Amazon guy and I picked my phone up, went to security through the Ring app and I told him where to leave the package. And then I thought about that for a second. I was like, that's insane. The fact that I have security. I can look in my house from the other side of the world. I can go to my front door and tell the person who's at my front door in the moment where I want him to leave the package. That's insane if you really think about it. We have text messages I want you to understand. When my grandparents passed away and we went into their house and we had to, you know, go through Their stuff and figure out what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to donate, all this stuff.

[Rob Dial]

We found letters from my grandparents. My grandparents met.

[Co-host]

They hung out for, you know, a few months and. And then my. My grandfather went to World War II. He was in World War II. And we found all of these letters that they wrote each other. And I remember my aunts were telling me that from their. Their mother, my grandmother's perspective, that she would write him a letter and just send it off and wouldn't hear back for, like, three or four weeks. She would just send him a letter, hoping that he was still alive. And then eventually, three or four weeks later, she would get a letter back. Now you can just text somebody and immediately get a message back from them. You could. And if you don't have, you know, there's new things where even if you.

[Rob Dial]

Don'T have service, you can connect and.

[Co-host]

Send a text message from the satellite if you have an iPhone. Like, that's an amazing thing.

[Rob Dial]

How amazing is our lives nowadays?

[Co-host]

I can send someone a message and say, hey, I'm going to be hopping on a flight. I could send. I sent my mom a picture of.

[Rob Dial]

My son this morning.

[Co-host]

I'm in Texas, she's in Florida.

[Rob Dial]

Do you know how long it would take to send a picture to somebody?

[Co-host]

At least a week back in the day. And so you have to understand, like, I just want to tell you, I'm just trying to give you a perspective shift of how many things are amazing in our life. My grandparents, I remember having a conversation with them about the Great Depression and how terrible it was. And so, like my great grandfather, my grandmother's father, when the Great Depression happened, he had a grocery store and he had a shoe store, and both of them went out of business.

[Rob Dial]

And his shoe store went out of.

[Co-host]

Business because people obviously weren't buying shoes in the Great Depression. But his grocery store went out of business because he felt so bad for the people in his neighborhood and in his area when they didn't have money, that he just gave them what he had. And so that went out of business as well. And he had no money to feed his family of five children. And so what did he do? He found a plot of land that was in their neighborhood and just decided.

[Rob Dial]

To start learning how to garden.

[Co-host]

So he gardened in order to just.

[Rob Dial]

Feed his family because they had no food and they had no money.

[Co-host]

And so the neighborhood got together and started actually planting seeds and gardening together. And then he had never fished in his entire life. So he learned how to Start fishing. So he gardened every day and fished just to keep his family alive. Think of that. How stressed out would you be if you're in that situation? I don't have to worry about that. I can go downstairs and I have.

[Rob Dial]

Food and water and everything that I.

[Co-host]

Need downstairs to keep me alive, my wife alive, my son alive. And so I want you to think of your life and realize that it might be great, it might be good, it might feel terrible right now, but even the terrible can actually be pretty good when you put yourself into perspective. In perspective. Here is the superpower. This is what I'm trying to give you with this. I'm trying to. Trying to help you brainwash yourself, to be grateful for the stuff that you have. Because here's the truth. Your life might be hard right now.

[Rob Dial]

And I get it.

[Co-host]

I've been there. You might be dealing with heartbreak, you might have stress, you might have burnout, you might have uncertainty of what the future is going to look like. But can you zoom out of your.

[Rob Dial]

Life and out of your own head.

[Co-host]

For just a second and realize, like, well, you have clean water. That's pretty amazing. There was a moment in time when people did not have clean water. There's people in this world right now, while you're listening to this, who don't have clean water. They have to hike 2 miles to be able to get water to bring it back to their family. You probably ate today. There's many people that are dying from starvation right now. You have access to information.

[Rob Dial]

You have access to inspiration.

[Co-host]

You can hear this message, which means that your ears work, means you have some form of connection to the Internet. You are alive, your heart is beating. Everything is good. In that moment, you might have great health. You still have time. Once you realize just what I told you, you have more than 95% of people in the history of mankind ever have. Here's what's crazy, right? Think about this, for instance. If you watch old shows of, like, the Middle Ages and like, you know, kings and queens and stuff like that, if you're living just a average life, not anything amazing, not anything terrible, you do pretty good. You have a job, you have a house, air conditioning, food, water, shelter, clothing, you're living better than kings did and queens did. Five hundred years ago, you did like.

[Rob Dial]

You are right now. You're living better than kings and Queens.

[Co-host]

Did 500 years ago. You have access to more food and water and access to opportunity and access to security than your great, great, great, great grandparents ever even dreamed of. I always I always think how crazy it is when you look back at castles, how castles are always on top of a hill because they had to be on top of a hill and because people would just show up and murder people. Like, how insane is that? Like, think about how much better your life is. And just kings and Queens were 500 years ago. And so, yeah, you might be going through some things. Life is up and down and up and down, but it's still amazing. You're listening to me right now. Your quality of life is 100 times better than people's quality of life was 500 years ago. We all have food, water, shelter, clothing, a couple people that love us.

[Rob Dial]

And we're sitting there and we're like.

[Co-host]

But I want more. Shut up. Like, just be grateful for a moment because I really want you to understand that one of the secrets that I found of what I feel is a secret of the universe is, is you will not be given more than you currently have if you cannot be grateful for what you currently have. If you can't be trusted with a little, there is no way that you're going to be trusted with a lot. Like, if a child constantly complains, you're not going to want to give them. If you give them a toy and they're like, oh, I hate this toy, and they throw it across the room, are you going to want to trust them with another toy?

[Rob Dial]

No.

[Co-host]

So the universe or God or whatever it is that runs this thing isn't going to trust you with more until you become a good steward for what you already have. So really, what you want to do is you want to try to use gratitude to set your internal GPS for how you want to feel. The same way that you get into your car and you put in your GPS where you want to go, you do the exact same thing with how you want to feel.

[Rob Dial]

You decide how you want to feel.

[Co-host]

You can choose that you want to be in gratitude and awe and wonder and curiosity and joy and say, that's my destination that I'm trying to get to. And you can choose to see everything as a gift instead of seeing everything as a burden. You can choose to go, yeah, my life isn't exactly what I wanted. Yeah, maybe I'm dealing with a lot of shit right now, but still, if I look at my life, there's so many things to be grateful for. Because the law of life is what you focus on, you get more of. If you focus on your problems, you're.

[Rob Dial]

Going to find more problems.

[Co-host]

If you focus on what.

[Rob Dial]

What's missing, you will find more things.

[Co-host]

In your life that.

[Rob Dial]

That are missing.

[Co-host]

But if you sit down and you consciously make yourself focus on what you have, focus on all of the magic.

[Rob Dial]

Around you, focus on what's working, focus.

[Co-host]

On what you're grateful for, even, like, the tiniest things, you'll start to see of it, more of it, you're going to start to feel more of it, and you're going to start to radiate that as well. Gratitude is basically the gateway drug to joy. Here's the thing about gratitude. It's not about denying your problems or, like, toxic positivity or saying, oh, my gosh, so that terrible thing that's happening right there, it's not. It's not happening. Like, that's not what we're talking about. It's not about any of that. It's about noticing your blessings while you have them. Because if you're stuck in the moment of, like, I need more and I need to hustle more and my life's not good enough and you're throwing a pity party, you're going to have to.

[Rob Dial]

Understand you will not be given more.

[Co-host]

Until you are truly grateful for what you have. And if you keep talking about all that you don't have and focusing on how your life's not good enough and how you're not smart enough and the.

[Rob Dial]

People around your ex and Y and.

[Co-host]

Z, your life is going to be.

[Rob Dial]

Terrible for a while.

[Co-host]

But when you start focusing on the things to be grateful for, even if there's just a few, it's like it will start to expand. Gratitude unlocks abundance in your life. And so what you focus on, you receive more of. And if you sit down, you say, how do I want to feel? Well, I want to feel good. I want to feel joy. I want to feel happy today. Well, let me start from a place of gratitude.

[Rob Dial]

Notice the little teeny tiny things around.

[Co-host]

Me that I can be grateful for. And as you start to do that, what's really interesting is you will be given more things to be grateful for. And you'll just notice that you feel better because life is amazing. You have so much to be grateful for. Just remind yourself at least that a few times a day. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do.

[Rob Dial]

Me a massive favor.

[Co-host]

Please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R the only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. And so if you would share it. More people can find it who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and impact more people's lives. So if you do that, I would appreciate it. And I'm leaving the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

[Listener]

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