The Power of Gratitude: Episode 139

My goal is to start and end my day with gratitude, with God. So when I start my day, the first thing I’m saying to God is thank you. The last thing I say to God every day is thank you. And honestly, for me it starts really small and you think, oh, you know, how do I dare? And I this isn’t natural. I know I can have a continued be a little bit ungrateful. Well, here’s what my gratitude a lot of times sounds like.

Tagline: Created on purpose and for purpose.

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast. And let me be the first, 2nd, twelveth person to say Happy Thanksgiving season because I realize how the dates are working out. You had Thanksgiving lunch, dinner, celebratory times last week. But hey, you’re filling the effects, probably still filling the effects of the leftovers, let’s be honest. Okay, but it’s the Thanksgiving season and we talked about we’re going to do a Christmas episode, a couple Christmas episodes, advent, if you will. We’re going to get official, we’re going to be High church here on the dinner and the Wine podcast this year.

But I talked to Coop, talked to the team, I said, listen, we got to do a Thanksgiving episode, even if it’s after Thanksgiving, because that’s how passionate I am about Turkey. No, not about turkey, because that’s how passionate I am about gratitude, about thankfulness. And we’re going to dig into that today. Thanks for downloading this episode. Thanks. If you’ve taken the time to subscribe, whether it’s on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your podcasts, it’s helping the podcast grow, it’s helping us reach a ton more people.

And so I want to say thank you for doing that. If you haven’t, just take a minute right now, whatever platform you’re on and hit that subscribe button and help us grow the impact of this podcast. So a lot of things going on in my family around holiday type things. I want to let you know what goes on in the Earlewine house. Okay, top two holidays for the Earlewine family, Christmas and 4 July. We love them.

Love them. Christmas number one, 4 July number two at the bottom of the barrel. Bottom of the barrel for us. Halloween, don’t like it. Okay. Don’t like the evil stuff, don’t like the scary stuff. Love the candy. Love the candy. Not a hater of the candy. Love that part. The other part is I live in Indiana and it’s a total crapshoot, Thanksgiving or not Thanksgiving, Halloween, right? It can be 77 degrees sunny. Greatest time ever. This year. No. Snowed. What are you talking about? It’s October 31. Snow like.

No, with the snow. If you ever wanted to know if Halloween was. If it was an evil devil holiday. Right there. Snowing in October. Garbage. See you later. Don’t want to have it. Anyway, here’s what happens in the Earlewine house. November 1, the day after Halloween. For some people, it’s just a new month. It’s just November, right? It’s the month you listen to November rain, right? By guns and roses over and over again, just to get nice and sad and depressed about the fact that the grays and the rain are coming. It’s not how it happens in our house.

Some people feel like there’s a strong. In fact, I was one of these, but I’ve been reformed. Some people feel like there’s some fairly strict rules that Christmas type decor and or exterior illumination, even interior illumination or the soundtrack of the season, Christmas music, that’s a strong no until the day after Thanksgiving. That used to be me, Come on. Be honest. That’s where I was at. It’s hard and fast. You’re not listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving or definitely not turning on Christmas lights until after Thanksgiving.

Either I’ve become a believer or my wife has worn me down. Hard to say. The results aren’t quite in yet, but I can tell you what happens on November 1 in the Earlewine household. Christmas shows up. Christmas shows up, right. That means I’m getting the trees out of the basement. I think this year we’re going to fall somewhere between six and eight trees in our house. Yes, I did say six to eight trees. They are all differently themed.

We’ve got garland or whatever it’s called. Or what’s the greenery all the way up? All the staircases, the handrails, it’s everywhere. Every year something new shows up. My wife loves Christmas. And I have to admit, if you’re going to be in the Midwest and it’s going to get cold, the leaves are going to fall off. Christmas makes me happy. But sandwiching all that is this one day that my kids right now feel like it’s overrated. They say, dad, Thanksgiving is overrated. Right? We sit around, we’re kind of bored. We watch some football. You overeat, before you know it, it’s over.

Why is that? What’s the big deal about Thanksgiving? For me, Thanksgiving comes in at number three behind Christmas and 4 July. And here’s why. Because I have experienced the power of gratitude in my life. It’s so, so important if you’re going to become who you are born to be. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say, stone cold Locke, take this to the bank. If you do not develop and practice the discipline of gratitude, you will.

I won’t say you will not, but you will struggle mightily to become who God has created you to be. Because an attitude of gratitude is the groundwork. It is the bricks on the road to the path of you becoming who God’s created you to be and you becoming the kind of person that might actually love and serve and look a little bit like Jesus. Gratitude is so important. That’s why I love Thanksgiving. And sweet potatoes. Sweet potato casserole, love it. Big fan of that stuffing. Big fan.

Green bean casserole. Absolutely stone cold lock on that green bean casserole, even sometimes good cold. Hotly debated topic, but I would go toe to toe with you. Turkey, eh? I’m okay with it as long as we’re smothering it with gravy, with some mashed potatoes on the side as well. Also a big fan of pumpkin pie. You don’t need to know all these things. I just want you to know how I’m wrapped up around Thanksgiving. Okay, so here’s the deal.

If you ever want to know the importance of gratitude, all you got to do is think about last time you were driving somewhere. Today on my way to the studio, driving, heading down the road, see a police car off in the distance, know that we’re going to have to change lanes. We’re going to merge into one lane. Okay, I’m coming up, and I’m not one of the guys that jumps in the line early. If you’re that kind of person, listen, reach out to me through the podcast. I’ll give you my counselor’s number.

You’re screwing up the traffic pattern. It’s all supposed to work like a zipper, like a weave. We get close up, one after the other, it stops it from backing up. If you’re the kind of person that sees a little situation, lane change ahead and jumps in that lane. We’ll talk later. Okay. So I stay over my lane. I’m not rushing up, though. I’m easing my way up to let everybody that I’m passing know, hey, I’m not a jerk.

I’m not trying to screw up things here. I’m just properly mending in here and merging. Nice guy in a work truck. Slows down, lets me pass. What needs to happen at that point. This is an absolute law of humanity. He lets me in, I get in the lane. Courtesy. Thank you wave, right? I don’t care how many times you wave it back and forth. Two is good. Thank you if you want to. Thank you very much. I don’t know how many times you need to wave, but you got to wave. You got to do a thank you wave.

If you want to know how important gratitude is for me, maybe for you. If I let someone in in that situation and I don’t receive the courtesy, gratitude. Thank you wave. I have thought before about smashing the throttle and running them off the road, right. If it was just bumper cars and I wouldn’t have to pay for the insurance situation. I don’t know that I get more enraged in a lot of situations than that.

Like, I let you in traffic. I served you here on the freeway, and you can’t just say thank you. If that’s you, please stop. Okay, let’s join hands crossed America and stop non gratitude showing thank you wave, people. You do it today. If someone lets you in traffic, bring gratitude to the roadways of America because we need it. And that’s just a little microcosm. And there’s tons of stories that Jesus tells. Think about the one story Jesus tells where he heals.

I think he heals, like, ten guys, lepers, I believe they are. And only one dude comes back and says, hey, thank you. And Jesus says, wait a minute. Weren’t nine healed and only one came back to say thank you? You look through the scriptures, and that would have been way worse than somebody not letting you in traffic like Jesus. Like, hey, you had a terminal illness, and I totally healed you miraculously. And only one person can come back and say, thank you very much.

Are you a person who lives with gratitude displays gratitude, allows it to actually transform the way they think and feel about life. Here’s the deal. It’s easier for some people than others. Some people have what they call trait gratitude, where it’s actually kind of hardwired into you. It makes it a little bit easier if we go with some of the understanding we get through spiritual DNA, the course, if you haven’t taken spiritual DNA, what are you waiting for?

I’m very grateful if you’d go and discover who God’s created you to be, just head over to Spiritualdna.me. Buy the course? Go through it. You’ll discover your enneagram in that which helps you understand your motivations, which is why you do what you do or don’t do. I really think that for types sevens, type threes, gratitude is a little bit more natural for them. People that I’ve been around, my interaction with type threes and type sevens, I think they tend to be more naturally grateful, positive type people.

If that’s you, you go, yeah, you know what? I kind of feel that I feel like for type ones, type sixes, maybe even type eight, gratitude, potentially not the easiest thing. You’re type one. The Reformer. They’re driving to everything to be perfect. They have to be perfect. In that drive, the idea of gratitude could be lost because something could always be better. Something could always be more perfected, and that might be lost.

Type sixes. Right. That the loyalist, a lot of times, looking for worst case scenarios. A little bit of a critical perspective there also could lead to a lack of gratitude. We’re not talking about the Enneagram necessarily in this episode. But I just want you to know it’s important to know yourself, to know, is this Something that comes fairly naturally to me, or is this Something that’s going to be more of a challenge?

Because here’s what I want you to Know. Here’s the first point, is this, is that gratitude is a discipline. Gratitude is a discipline. It’s not an emotion. It’s not a feeling. It’s not something that you kind of leave for when you feel like it. When I’m feeling grateful, I’m going to be grateful. When I’m feeling thankful for something, when that emotion hits me, then I’ll extend gratitude, whether it’s to God or to people, maybe even to myself.

If you leave your practice of gratitude for the times you feel like it, you will not become a regularly grateful person. Discipline. Gratitude is a discipline meaning that you choose to do it whether you feel like it or not. And it becomes a part of your life. Recently been reading a book by Jocko Willink called Extreme Ownership. Phenomenal Leadership Book. If you’re looking for a new book to read, it’s love it.

Challenging me Big time. And one of the tenets that Jocko talks about in his book, Extreme Ownership, is this, right? Is that discipline equals freedom. Discipline equals freedom. And he illustrates this in a ton of different ways in his work as a Navy sEal. But it applies to the practice of gratitude. To be disciplined in offering gratitude and thankfulness in your life. It will lead to freedom. Because an ungrateful spirit. Will have you held captive to bitterness, to anger, to resentment, to depression, potentially.

Right. An ungrateful spirit will bring captivity to your life. A discipline in practicing gratitude will lead you to freedom. Check it out. Gratitude is mentioneD, at least 157 times in the BIble. In the New Testament alone, the Apostle Paul wrote about giving thanks at least 46 times. Right? I don’t know this specifically, but it’s got to be close, right? One of the biggest things spoken about in the Bible 365 times is fear not.

Right? Fear not or don’t be afraid or be strong or courageous. Those are mentioned 365 times in the Bible, one for every day. Closely behind that is gratitude. 157 times, and Paul says it at least 46 times. This is something that God did not want us to miss. Paul says it like this in Ephesians 520, giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God our Father. Okay, says it in one Thessalonians 516 and 18. Like this, rejoice, always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you and Christ Jesus. That’s a strong point, right? What’s God’s will for my life?

Gratitude. Just start there and see where else you go. Giving thanks. It’s a discipline, and the Scriptures seem to think it’s important. I want you to think about this. When you get done with your life or when you’re just in relationships with people, how do you want them to describe you? You look at the actual antonyms for gratitude. They are ingratitude, ungratefulness, thanklessness, unappreciation.

What would you feel like if someone asked, hey, tell me about Daron. What’s he like? And they were like, you know what? Just a really ungrateful spirit. Very ungrateful. There’s a thanklessness to him. It’s like he doesn’t even see that I exist and really underappreciates everyone around him. If someone said that about me, it would crush me. And I’m not saying I’m perfect in this, but what kind of person do you want to become? Do you want to be kind of person that would ever be associated with those words, or you want people to say, you know what? There’s something free. There’s something like, there’s a freedom, there’s a lightness, there’s a joy to her.

And I think it may have something to do with her disciplined practice of gratitude. We got some more to say about this, and we’ll be back right after this. Commercial break. Is it time for you to take your next step towards discovering your purpose, but you’re not sure what to do? Maybe jumping into the entire spiritual DNA course seems just, like a little too much for you right now. No problem at all. That’s why I want you to know about the five day jump start to purpose. It’s totally free and it’s a five day audio course you’re going to listen to just, it’s really short, like five, six minutes a day, but it’s going to help you just let’s call it an appetizer, right? To help you jumpstart this process towards purpose. It’s free. All you got to do is go to daronearlewine.com/jumpstart. It looks like this right behind me on the screen. You’re going to go there and we’re going to send you the course for free. And I’ll help you take your next step because hey, we say it every week. I don’t want you forget about it, right? God’s created you on purpose and for purpose. Let’s jump start that purpose. Now let’s get back to the podcast. All right, welcome back. Thank you for listening to that commercial break.

Want to practice the gratitude right here in the moment. And you know what? It does become that simple. My goal in my life, just to give you a couple tips on this, is my goal is to start and end my day with gratitude, with God. So when I start my day, the first thing I’m saying to God is thank you. The last thing I say to God every day is thank you. Honestly, for me, it starts really small and you think, oh, how do I dare? I? This isn’t natural. I know I can tend to be a little bit ungrateful.

Well, here’s what my gratitude a lot of times sounds like. God, thank you for waking me up this morning and giving me another day of life. God, thank you for coffee this morning. Right when we pray before a meal, those are actually some pretty powerful prayers to stop and say, God, thank you for this food. Thank you for my home, thank you for air conditioning in the summer. God, thank you for my health, whatever it is, at the end of my day. That’s how my prayers start and finish in my day.

Just going over and offering Thanksgiving to God for all that he has done for me. It starts simple, it starts small, and it’s scientific. Check this out. Doing some study on this. This is interesting. They did a study and they involved 300 adults. And these adults were seeking counseling at a local university, and they grabbed as a randomized group, and what they asked them to do was to write a gratitude letter each week for three weeks.

So these are people who, there’s something going on in life where they’re seeking out some counseling, right? So there’s some emotional, mental spiritual struggles they’re going through, right? So times are tough. They’re seeking counseling. They get 300 of these people and they say, we need you to write a gratitude letter once a week for three weeks after they got done, the gratitude group reported significantly better mental health in the follow up.

Twelve weeks after the last writing exercise, another type of written gratitude practice was done where they counted blessings. So there’s two groups. One that was doing a letter a week and twelve weeks after they were still growing and still in a better place mentally. The other group, they had them do what they called three good things. This was a study where they asked them to write down three things that had gone well in their day and identify the causes of those good things.

And what happened was three good things, right? How simple is that? Before you go to bed, you’re going to write down three good things and why they happen that you’re grateful for. Each day they came back and checked on this group of 300 people, and even six months after the study ended, they reported being significantly happier and less depressed. Said, Daron, I feel like I’m in a funk right now. I’m not sure how to get out of it. Gratitude.

Gratitude, gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving. Gratitude. I was reading another study, and the person used these two terms, and I thought this encapsulates this pretty strong. The person said in this article that in life we tend to be too focused on the headwinds and forget about the tailwinds of our life. What does that mean? If you’re in a plane, there are headwinds, right? As you’re flying, there’s winds coming towards the head of the plane.

And in life, as we’re moving towards pursuing what God’s called us to pursuing the future, pursuing our life, we are usually obsessed or overwhelmed with the headwinds. What are the struggles? What are the problems? What are the limitations? What is coming against me? What is in my face right now, holding me back from progress? What are the stressors? What are the unknowns? What are the needs? We tend to be completely overwhelmed by the headwinds in our life to the point where we can forget the tailwinds behind us.

I get it that sometimes when you’re facing great headwinds in life, it’s tough to be grateful for that you lose your job. The Lord just want to thank you for the unemployment. Listen, that’s tough, all right? I get it, right? You get a bad diagnosis. Lord, we just want to thank you for this infertility that we have. It’s great. Lord, I want to thank you that my grandmother has passed. I’m not saying that we’re ridiculous or that we’re not in tune with real emotions. Not saying that what I’m saying is, in our relationship with Jesus, when we get too distracted and too obsessed with the headwinds, we don’t look back at the tailwinds, which is what is the momentum that got us to this moment.

What are the winds that have kept us in the air on this whole trip to bring us to where we are today? And that is why throughout the Bible, again and again and again, we are told to remember the Lord. Remember the Lord and his faithfulness. Remember and give thanks to God. Give praise to God for his love endures forever. Right? We have all of these scriptures littering the entire Bible, telling us to do that.

Why? Because it’s as we look back at the tailwinds of our life and we see, you know what? I’ve got some headwinds right here that are challenging. But as I look back, you know what? God was faithful then, and God was faithful then. God, thank you for your faithfulness. I step into the challenge I have right now with gratitude, a heart full of gratitude for the challenges that are ahead of me, because I’ve seen your faithfulness, and I remember how faithful you are.

That’s how gratitude fortifies and strengthens you for what’s ahead. Okay, let’s go back to the science. They did a research process project, and they actually looked at people that were more naturally grateful and practiced gratitude than those that were not. In one study, a group of college students, they wrote things they were grateful for once per week for ten weeks. So once a week, they just wrote down another thing, like a letter of gratitude. Once a week for ten weeks. Check this out.

They reported fewer physical symptoms, such as headaches, shortness of breath, sore muscles, and nausea. Their actual physical help was renewed and strengthened by practicing gratitude as a discipline. Once a week for ten weeks. There’s science behind it. And I think it could be said like this, and I’m stealing this phrase from Erwin McManus. I always talk about Erwin, my favorite pastor, my favorite author.

In his new book, Mind Shift, Erwin Breaks Down. The understanding of this is that often a sick soul will create a sick mind. And I think a ton of this has to do with gratitude, is that from the depths of our souls, if we are not choosing the discipline of gratitude, what happens is it begins to create a sick mind. Our thinking begins to be overcome with anxious thoughts, with worry, with fear, with things that begin to take away from the hope and the joy that God’s salvation is for us.

But when we’re cultivating the discipline of gratitude regularly, daily, in small minute ways or massive ways, it keeps the soil of our soul healthy, which then allows our mind to be free. Discipline equals freedom. So here’s the deal. This Thanksgiving, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. You’re looking Back on it. Maybe it was stressful, I don’t know. Here’s what I know you can do. You can look back and find things that you can be thankful for.

And what I’d love for you is for the rest of the year is for this. I know Christmas is just around the corner now, but that this would be a season of gratitude for you. And if maybe you can start with just this season of gratitude, maybe it can start to become a disciplined approach for the rest of your life. If you need somewhere to start, say Daron, where do I start? Well, let’s just go to the three things we say every single week together as the podcast, right?

What could I be thankful for today, Daron? That God is for me, not against me. God is near me, not far away. And God thank you that you have created me on purpose and for a purpose. If you’re looking for three small nuggets to start your gratitude every day and every night, it’s not a bad place to start. Listen, if you got questions, maybe you want to argue with me. Maybe you want to tell me what gratitude has done for you. I want to hear from you as the podcast community. You could always email me Daron@blackbirdmission.com.

You can text me 317-550-5070 or you can reach out through all of the socials. I appreciate you. I’m so grateful for you. Have an awesome day.