Blaze Your Own Trail - Gratitude Lessons From a Trip to The Philippines at 16 with Jordan Mendoza

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

In this episode of the Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast, host Jordan Mendoza shares a personal story about his first trip to the Philippines in the late nineties, highlighting the importance of gratitude. He reflects on the challenges faced during his stay, such as accessing water and managing daily tasks, which led him to appreciate the comforts of life in the United States. Mendoza encourages listeners to recognize and appreciate the often-overlooked aspects of their lives that contribute to their well-being.TakeawaysGratitude is an opportunity everyone has.Traveling can shift your perspective on life.Access to basic necessities can be taken for granted.Experiences in different cultures can enhance appreciation.An attitude of gratitude can positively impact your life.Recognizing what you have can lead to personal growth.Daily conveniences are often overlooked in our busy lives.Reflecting on gratitude can improve mental well-being.Sharing gratitude can influence those around you.Life lessons can come from unexpected experiences.Chapters00:00 Journey to Gratitude: A Personal Story05:06 Reflecting on Life's Luxuries and ChallengesConnect with Jordan:LinkedInInstagramTikTokOrder a copy of Jordan's new book The Life-Changing Power of AdversityThe Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast is exclusively sponsored by CityGate Studios Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to the Blazorill Trail Podcasts. I'm Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host. And today I want to talk about a topic called gratitude. Gratitude is one of those things that everybody has the opportunity to have, but some of us forget about the things that we're grateful for. And in today's episode, I want to share a story about my first trip to the Philippines. This was in the late 90s. I was 16 years old, and I had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines.

by myself and spend three months there. And at this point in my life, I had really looked at my life and I was grateful for the things that I had, but I didn't realize how rich I was because if you look at our money and our situation and where we live, it wouldn't seem like we had much to those people. As I got into this new country where my ancestors from or my father's from and I got to really spend time with my cousins, I started to realize how rich I actually was.

And that started to truly increase the gratitude I had for everything that I had. And a couple of the reasons why is I was staying at what they call the abatatan, which means old house. It was my grandparents' house. And this house, we had to actually go out and pump our water each day. Anytime we wanted water, you had to walk out about 50 yards to an actual pump. and we had to pump the water, and the water would take some time to come out, and then it would eventually start flowing out, and we'd fill the bucket,

and then we would have to go in and put that water on a stove and boil it, and that would take some time for that process to be done in order for us to be able to have clean drinking water. And it may not seem like a big deal, but in the United States, the way that we got water was a lot easier. I would just go to the kitchen sink or the bathroom sink or go to the hose outside, and I would twist a knob and turn it on and I would have water. And so my gratitude really started to increase as I started to realize how rich that I truly was back home.

Another thing that I looked at was the shower situation. In the States, it was pretty easy. You go into the bathroom, you jumped into the shower, and you turned it off. Well, in the Philippines, the way that I had to do this process was I had to go out to the pump again, hummed the water, which took some time. I'd fill up a big bucket. I would walk back into the vestibule where the shower was, and I would fill up a big bucket,

and then I would take the small bucket, put it into the big bucket, and then dump that over my head. And that was the shower. And so as you can imagine, as you are applying soap to your body and shampoo to your head, the process in which it takes to get that off

takes a lot longer. Another area where I had, this immense gratitude for the luxuries that I had back in the States. Another day, we went out to take our trash to the landfill. And this process actually took quite a long time because we had to load up our jeepney, which is a big 20 passenger jeep. We loaded that jeepney up and then we drove through the rugged roads that, you know, were gravel and mud and dirt.

And we would eventually make it to the landfill and then we would take that trash and we would throw it into the landfill. And that process may not seem hard and it wasn't that it was a hard process, but it was the fact that that's how you had to travel to get it done. But my true gratitude came in when we were taking the trash out and all of a sudden a bunch of kids just kind of came out of nowhere and they started running towards this new trash that we put out, opening up those bags and looking through and seeing was there anything that they can use? because these kids actually lived at this landfill. So I was grateful in so many different ways.

One, that I had a roof over my head, and I wasn't one of these kids that literally was going to see what scraps that they could find out so they could eat their next meal. And I was also grateful that I didn't have to travel a long distance to go and actually take my trash somewhere. All I had to do in the United States. And again, we still complain about that. this stuff. I would have to just bag up the trash, walk out 10 feet to where the trash can is and put it in

there. And here I am complaining back home about all of these things, all of these luxuries that we really had. And so that trip, my first trip to the Philippines in 1997, it completely shifted my perspective. It shifted my mindset on the things that I didn't have or I thought I didn't have versus the things that I actually recognize that I have. And so I'd love to pose the challenge to you. What are some things in your life that you should be grateful for, but you may actually take for granted? And I would love for you to just write a couple of things down.

You know, what are you grateful for? It could be that you have a roof over your head. It could be that you have a working shower, or maybe you don't have to pump your water like folks still have to do in rural areas in the Philippines. And I'd like to leave you all with this quote. An attitude of gratitude expands like latitude and longitude. And what does that mean?

It means the more grateful we are, the more we could show up in the world of that gratitude, and it will start to push off to the people and to the places and to the spaces that you are. So hopefully this episode is helpful today and keep on blazing your own truck.