Dhru Purohit Show - Super Charge Your 2024 Goals and Intentions with my Step-by-Step Gratitude Workshop

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Today on the Dhru Purohit Podcast, I share a simple gratitude practice to help supercharge and accelerate your goals and dreams.  At the end of the year, many of us set New Year’s resolutions or intentions for how we want the next year to go. I see an interesting pattern as people start to list their goals, dreams, habits, and the things they want to give attention and energy to. But this process often involves focusing on what is lacking and the areas where they feel they are not enough.  Today, I share three questions to ask ourselves before we set our goals, which I call a palette cleanse, that will help us remember that no matter how we feel we did at the end of the month or year, we did the best we could. It also allows us to remember how supported we were and what we did to help other people. Here is the practice  No matter how big or small… 1) What’s something tough or challenging that I did this month? 2) Who’s someone who did something for me? 3) What’s something nice I did for someone else? Remembering these three things changes your vibration for what you think is possible and takes you out of negativity bias into positivity bias.   In this episode, Dhru dives into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Why this gratitude practice is key (1:09 / 1:09) Negativity bias (10:45 / 8:10) Threats to our mental health (12:25  / 9:55) Deprogram negativity (13:10 / 11:30) Our brains as detectives (16:27 / 13:55) Gratitude as mediation on the goodness in our lives (17:51 /15:00) The Science of Gratitude (22:22  / 17:45) Deep diving into the Gratitude Protocol (27:15 / 22:57) How to implement the Gratitude Protocol (40:20 / 35:58) Also mentioned in today’s episode: Episode with Dr. Tara Swart Episode with Bruce Lipton Episode with Gottmans Newsletter on Gratitude and Research For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and YouTube @dhrupurohit. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Birch Living, and JOOV. Access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests with Rupa Health. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com today. To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Right now, Joovv is offering an exclusive offer on your first order. Head over to Joovv.com/dhru and apply my code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Today I'm going to be giving you three questions, three questions that you can ask yourself today to help you step into a deeper state of gratitude, peace, and joy. What am I talking about? I am talking about my gratitude hack workshop, something that I deliver fresh and new at the end of each year to my audience because I've seen it have a profound impact on people that go through it. And I'm going to take you through it on today's podcast. There's a light version I'll take you through. And I'm going to share the heavier version, which you can do with someone you love, a friend, a family member, a spouse, a girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever it might be. Most important, though, I am walking you something that I've done and that I've stress tested. I've done it for the last 15 years. And it's radically transformed my life for the better. So let's jump in and talk about it, my gratitude hack workshop.

So first of all, what is this magical thing that I've been doing for the last 15 years? Well, before I tell you what it is, let me tell you why I'm such a huge fan of it. Number one, it's totally free and anyone can do it. Always a plus. Anytime something's free and the fact that's accessible, that's always a huge win. Number two, doing it can supercharge any goal or intention you might have for yourself in life, whether you want to make improvements in your health, whether you want to start a business, whatever the goal is for you doing this gratitude hack workshop will supercharge all those goals and all those intentions.

Number three and most important, after doing it, you can't help. but to be filled with a deep sense of joy, peace, and of course, gratitude. If that sounds good to you, let's go on the journey. And what I'm talking about here is not something crazy. I'm talking about the act of intentionally sitting down and practicing gratitude as a mechanism for reflecting on our life, seeing how far we've come, and reminding ourselves of just how much love, joy, meaning, and potential

surrounds us. Now before I walk you through these three questions, these three powerful questions, I want to give you a little bit of a background. And the background that I want to give you is the state of information and the state of people being hard on themselves. What I'm talking about specifically is we are inundated with all sorts of incredible information. Even on this podcast, every week, twice a week actually, I have somebody amazing that comes on and share, a list of things that you could possibly be doing to improve your health, wellness, or mindset. And if you listen to other podcasts or you follow some of these people on social media, there's no shortage of things that you could be doing.

You could be doing a lot. Now, in my experience, what I've seen is when there are so many things that we can do, our tendency is, especially if we feel like we have not achieved our goals or we're not on our way to achieving our goals, whatever those might be in our life, I've seen that people get hard on themselves. They get hard on himself. And especially at the end of the year,

as they're preparing for the new year to come, we're at the end of 2023, getting ready for 2024, there's this general sense of going into goal setting with a sense of lack. What I mean by this is this. When I talk to my friends, when I talk to my family, when I talk to you, many of the listeners, that I keep in touch with.

And I say, what are the things that you want to get a chance to focus on? What do you want to give love and attention to into 2024? I'll hear about a bunch of different things. But often, not always, but often, the subtext of many of those goals that I hear is a little bit of here's where I'm behind. Here's where I'm not enough. Here's what I haven't achieved. And the thing is, is that if you set your goals and the,

intentions that you have, whether they're macro big picture goals or micro goals that are there. I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions. I've chatted about them in the past. If you set these new goals and intentions based on this lack, the list of things that haven't been working well, you are less likely, in my experience, to actually make progress on the things that you want to make progress on. This is why gratitude is. such a huge component of helping us do a little bit of a palate cleanse, a palette cleanse to remind us of just how far we've come in life. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health. When it comes to achieving optimal health, my philosophy is test, don't guess, and I'm sure

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I absolutely love my Birch mattress and right now you can get your own for 20% off plus two free eco-rest pillows at birchliving.com backslash drew. So get ready for the best most eco-friendly sleep of your life. visit birch b-ir-c-h-l-I-V-I-N-G dot com slash drew that's d hrU to get 20% off plus two eco-rest pillows today you know the last few years in particular have been super challenging for many people and there's no denying that there's been a lot of change stimulation just everything that's going on in the world and the amount of news media that we're inundated with you would that if you're not intentional about it and you don't practice turning off the news,

you would think that we're heading in the wrong direction as a species. I'm not going to get into that conversation, but I know this. For all the things that are going wrong in the world, and there's plenty, believe me, I know that. There are so many things that are going right. It's just that those things that are going right don't make the news every day. and they don't necessarily lead in the newspapers. We get the opposite.

We get destruction, the terrible stuff. Essentially the news is a list of everything that's wrong in the day. So we need that reminder and gratitude is that reminder. We need that reminder now more than ever because it's too easy to get distracted by all the negativity and the momentum, which is perpetuated by, you know, traditional media and even on social media, right? And if we get stuck in that distraction long enough, we run the risk of projecting all of that negativity that we're subjected to every day on the future goals and dreams that we have. This is why individuals like Dr. Tara Swart, who's been on this podcast before,

neuroscientist, she said one of the number one things she recommends is that people do not regularly watch traditional legacy media. Some people call it mainstream media. Let's call it TV-based news. It's one of the biggest things. In fact, she was so, such a strong believer in this. She said that the neuroscientist colleagues that she have, she can't think of one that regularly watches the news because they know how influential the media that we're listening and watching can influence our brains. I know I'm going on a tangent here, but just bear with me. Another individual, Dr. Bruce Lipton, who was just on this podcast, said the same thing.

He said our subconscious mind is always listening. So if we are constantly subjecting ourselves to what's wrong in the world, instead of the positive programming that is helping us uplift ourselves and remind us of what's good in the world and in ourself, we start to project that onto situations. everything becomes a battle. Everything is us guessing and wondering, is this thing good? Is this thing bad? We're very skeptical of the world.

Now, this is one of the reasons that I've created this sort of gratitude hack workshop because we need that reminder because it's so easy to forget. Now, one of the reasons that it's easy to forget is that also our brain has a negativity bias. For millions of years of evolution, our brains have been conditioned to focus on the negative. It's truly how we survived. And our brains are wired to pay attention to the negative.

If we were confronted by a life-threatening situation, you know, the classic examples that people talk about, the tiger or the bear chasing you, and came out alive of that situation. We lived to, you know, we lived for another day. That experience was programmed in our brain forever. It was programmed in our brain forever. And the reason why,

because if it were to happen again, we would know exactly what to do to keep ourselves safe. Whether it was hiding, running away, creating a distraction, that survival behavior was stuck. inside of us, stuck in our brain. If things were good, that didn't necessarily contribute to your survival, because you got to have a hundred good things happened to you in a day. But if you had one bad thing and really bad thing happened, that could mean that you no longer existed. So it's no wonder that our brain has a negativity bias. So fast forward to the present day. I'm going to get

back to the gratitude workshop here in a second. We fast forward to our present day. And we're still using a lot of those survival skills to keep us safe, but this time around, you've heard this from so many people on this podcast and others, the threats to our mental health and emotional well-being are the main threats that we're experiencing. Most of the world today, not everybody, but most of the world today is generally their physical safety is guaranteed on a day-to-day basis. Most of the world, not everybody. Again, I know there's starvation. I know there's war-torn areas, but most of the world, but it's the threats to our mental health and our emotional well-being that we are being inundated with on a daily basis. This is how we're being programmed to hold on to the past to

protect ourselves from pain or disappointment in the future. And again, whether it's news, whether it's social media, that programming is happening all day. You know, in fact, a past podcast guest and really incredible thinker, a psychologist, author, really great. all-around guy. His name is Dr. Rick Hansen. He has this great quote about this idea. He says, the mind is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. We just don't remember the good things that happened to us as much as we remember the bad. We're programmed to prioritize bad experience and deprioritize our good ones. And this, of course, comes up in so many different areas of our life. The negativity bias affects our relationship. It affects our work,

our perspective on the past, and our outlook, most importantly, and this is why I'm doing this episode today, our outlook for the future. So as you start to think about what you want to give love and attention to for 2024, my argument here with this gratitude hack workshop is that if you want a true palate cleanse, bringing in gratitude is one of the key ways to to help deprogram some of that negativity. We tend to focus on the negative stuff that happened, and we need to give intentional time to think about the positive things

because our brain is designed to forget them. You know, doctors John and Julie Gottman from the Gottman Institute, they illustrated this idea in their work with couples. Here's a great example that I'd love to share with you. And they've been on this podcast before. we'll link to them in the show notes. Dr. Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman found that for every one negative interaction a couple had, it needed to be offset by five positive ones for them to have, in their definition,

from the Gottman Institute, a happy and fulfilled marriage. That's five times more positive interactions that needed to happen just to counteract the negative interaction. Negative thought, negative statement, not thought, sorry, negative statement, negative gesture, cold shoulder. That's what they mean by a negative reaction. Positive, a handholding, a gesture, something kind that you say to somebody. So it took five positive to cancel out the negative. That goes to show you just how much more negativity sticks with us, even in our relationships. There needs to be at least a five to one ratio of good to bad experience just to overcome it. You know, the other thing is that negativity is so deeply rooted in us that in most cases,

it's holding us back from setting out on the path. I truly believe this to becoming the best version of ourselves and living our best life. But here's the thing. We don't have to carry the negativity and energy of the past, which may have to carry. not may or may not even be true fully, we don't have to carry that energy from the past or our perception of it into the future. We can look for evidence, truly. We can look for evidence to prove our brains wrong by focusing on what's right in this world. You know, our brains are like a detective. They're constantly on the hunt to either prove us right or prove us

wrong. So if our brain is wired for negativity, the negativity bias, if our brain is like Teflon, you know, which hopefully nobody's using Teflon these days, but if our brain is like Teflon for positive experiences, meaning it just falls right off, it doesn't stick, and it's Velcro for like negative experiences, we have to go out of our way to pay attention and find the evidence for positive experiences. We have to hack our brain. by focusing on positivity. We do that by looking for evidence. And when we do it, it changes the vibration of what's possible.

It changes the vibration around our goals. It changes the vibration around our energy. It's one of the best ways to do it is by practicing gratitude. Now, I want to talk a little bit more about gratitude. And again, we're going to get into the workshop here in just a second. Gratitude is the act of acknowledging the goodness that exists in our life. That goodness is constantly happening. We just don't always remember it.

We just don't always focus on it. So gratitude, you could say, is a meditation on the goodness that exists in our lives. Think about that. Gratitude is meditating on the goodness that's there. Our body is constantly taking in all sorts of different inputs. And a lot of that input is not important for our daily survival. and our body and our brain will naturally forget a lot of that input that's there. So when somebody does something nice for you, it feels good in the moment, but then a few weeks

later, when you're dealing with an angry email from your boss, you might forget about that moment and that time. And gratitude is really reminding your brain that this goodness exists in our life. And also, this is something big that I've learned from Andrew Huberman, where he did an incredible episode called the science of gratitude and how to build a gratitude practice. The other thing that I will say about gratitude is that thinking about gratitude is one thing, but also expressing gratitude not only makes a difference for the people that we express the gratitude too, but it actually makes an impact in our brain as well. So gratitude isn't just thinking about here's the great things

that have happened to me today and making a list, which a lot of people make a list at night, it's actually whether you're expressing it to yourself, but also preferably you expressing it to other people, that is a huge part of how gratitude works. That's how it helps us cherish those deep feelings of connection, satisfaction, fulfillment with ourselves and other people in our lives. The positive energy that's produced from expressing gratitude is so powerful that it actually imprints on our DNA, rewires our brain to focus on the positive, and changes the trajectory of our lives. I truly believe that. There are so many people in my life, successful individuals who have gone on to achieve different goals and dreams that they

wanted to do, that swear that gratitude and the regular practice of it was one of the ways, one of the main ways that they supercharged themselves on the path and, made sure that they didn't give up on the journey. And the best part about all this is that doing this is free. It's super effective and anybody can do it. This episode is brought to you by Juve. One of the easiest ways to boost cellular health naturally is red light therapy. I'm sure you've heard about it. It's all the craze right now. Juve has been my go-to device for harnessing the power of red light therapy for years and let me tell you why I love it. With over a thousand scientific studies supporting its effectiveness to date, red light therapy has been shown to help strengthen

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10 minutes of just sitting in front of a red light, not doing anything other than just enjoying your life. If you're ready to get Juve, today you're in luck because Juve's holiday deals are now available. Juve is offering big discounts this holiday season on all juve devices, including their popular Juve solo. But act fast because this amazing sale ends on Friday December 22nd. To get this deal, just go to juve. J-O-O-V-V-V-V-com,

J-O-O-V-V-V-com slash D-H-R-U. That's me, Drew, to take advantage of these holiday deals. That's J-O-O-V-V-V-com slash D-H-RU to get access to this limited-time offer. Sale ends this Friday, December 22nd, act fast. Now, I want to share some of the research that I've come across about the science of gratitude. And I'll link to all these inside of the show notes. In fact, I actually wrote an entire article that you can follow along that we'll link to below that has all these references that's there. So here's one of the first ones. Super interesting.

In a randomized control trial, participants asked to write a daily gratitude list for two weeks, had a higher subjective happiness and life satisfaction than those that were told to focus on the negative or neutral experiences. As an added bonus, the gratitude group also expressed, less negativity and overall depression. This was from a paper called Positive Psychology and Gratitude Interventions, a randomized clinical trial published in 2019 in Frontiers, the journal Frontiers, in psychology. That's fascinating.

In another study that I came across, individuals practicing gratitude had a better emotional regulation and self-motivation than those fixating on negative experiences. This effect was seen in the study by using magnetic resonance, imaging that showed that changes in the connectivity of brain regions that are responsible

for emotional and motivation-related behavior. That means that regular gratitude practice can actually help us rewire our brain. I'll link to this in the show notes, but this was a paper that was called, published in 2017, called The Effects of Gratitude Meditation on neural network functional connectivity

and brain heart coupling. Fascinating. Fascinating. Another study that I came across was on sleep quality. So sleep quality, blood glucose control, and inflammatory markers were also positively affected by gratitude. This was a study published in 2020 called a systematic review of gratitude interventions, effects on physical health and health behaviors. gratitude is physically altering your body, changing sleep quality,

which is why so many people are a big fan of at least saying or expressing to their partner. You know, three things I'm grateful for today. It's a simple hack that you can do, especially you have a loved one. Even if you don't have somebody that you sleep in the same bed with and you can express to in the middle of night, you can text somebody. You can text a partner and you can tell them, hey, a friend, a best friend, you know, hey, I just want to say thank you so much for X, Y, and Z. expressing and giving gratitude makes a difference.

It rewires our brain, but it also makes a change in the body. You know, this could be due to the lowering of our stress levels. You know, gratitude is reminding our body that everything is safe, our nervous system. And that naturally lowers blood pressure when practice on a regular basis. And all this is to say that it's also protective against heart disease, you know, gratitude as a regular practice in our lives. if that wasn't enough to double down on what's good in life, expressing gratitude to the people that we love

can actually improve the quality of our relationships. Even if you already know how grateful you are for your partner or loved one, family member, whoever it is, taking that extra step and expressing it can have a greater impact than you might think. Here's an interesting study that I came across. In this study, couples found that individuals who expressed gratitude for their partners felt more positive and comfortable expressing concerns about their relationship. That was from a study that was published in 2011 called expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior.

Basically, the more you express gratitude to your loved one in a relationship, the easier it is to get through the tough patches and the easier it is to express concerns about anything that you might have in your relationship. Now, one last paper I just want to give a shout out to. This was a paper published in the Brain Behavior and Immunity Journal in 2021 and Andrew Heumann featured it in his episode that he did on gratitude. It's called Exploring Neural Mechanisms of Health Benefits of Gratitude and Women, a randomized control trial. In this paper, researchers found just to jump to the conclusion, is that there seemed to be a strong impact between gratitude and reducing the inflammatory response in the body.

That's how powerful the brain is, that actually expressing, receiving, giving gratitude had an impact on lowering physiological markers, things like interleukin-6, a marker inside of the body that's associated with inflammation, that those who were expressing gratitude actually had a bigger difference in the pre-to-post reduction in interleukin 6 and another biomarker that was also featured inside of that study.

So all to say, there is real science behind this aspect, and that's the reason that it makes the difference. Now, that's all to say, let's jump into my protocol for the gratitude hack study and what these three questions are. Now, I'm going to give you two versions of doing this. At the end of the year, for the last like 10 to 15 years, I've done the heavier version. The heavier version of this protocol is something that will take some time.

It could take an hour to two hours to do. And then there's a lighter version. There's a lighter version of the protocol that I'll also cover, which is something that you could probably do within 10 to 20 minutes. All right. So let me give a little bit of background, and then I'll give you the light version first. Then I'll explain the heavier version.

So let's jump into the protocol. So just a reminder, and chances are if you're listening to this podcast, you are somebody that wants to make a different. in your life and you want to make a difference in your life of your community and you probably want to make a positive impact in the world right or at least leave it better than when you came in reflecting on how far we've come no matter how big or small is the key for bringing energy to those goals that help us make our life better and the world a better place and a reminder if we don't take the time to retrain our brains to focus on the good then we'll run the risk of projecting

the negative experiences that we take in from the media or something that we went through from the past onto the future. We expect the future not to be great because we're carrying over the energy of the past. When we only see what's wrong or what's not possible, we end up artificially limiting our potential. And that's how most people set their New Year's goals. They don't practice gratitude before setting a goal. Not that I'm again a big fan of New Year's goals. I just know that people do it. They don't do gratitude as a pallet cleanser. The gratitude hack workshop is a pallet cleanser that's designed to help you transition from the negative bias to a positive one. All right. So there are three questions. I'm going to cover the three

questions that are here, the basics of how this works. And then I'll jump in with sharing the light version of how you do this and the heavier version of how you do this. All right. So what you'll need to do this is you're going to need at least a pen and paper. And ideally, you want to find somebody in your life that you can do this with. Even if it's the light version, you can do this with one other friend. You can call them up and say, hey, I was listening to this crazy podcast on gratitude. It just made me think, you know, I missed you. And we should try to answer these questions together and share this with each other, right?

That's the magnification of this. Sure, you can do it on your own. but so much of the research shows that expressing gratitude to others and hearing other people express gratitude, even if it's not necessarily about you, it's just something in their life, that activates the regions of the brain that start to begin to rewire, right? Now, I've created a template. I've created a little worksheet that I've linked to in the show notes. And in my article, you can use this worksheet if you want to.

The worksheet is for the heavier version of the, this exercise. For the lighter version of the worksheet, you can just copy the first page of the template that's there. So what are these three questions? Here are these three questions and I'm going to walk through them. Talk about why I picked these questions over the years and now explain to you how to do the light version and the heavy version. Question number one. You ready? No matter how big or small, what is something tough or challenging that I went through that I'm proud of or accomplished recently. No matter how big or small, repeat that.

What's something tough or challenging that you went through that you want to acknowledge yourself for? That's question number one, right? Let's go to question number two. No matter how big or small, who's someone that recently did something for you? No matter how big or small, who's someone that recently did something for you? recently did something for you, supported you, had your back in some sort of way. Question number three, no matter how big or small, what's something that I did for someone

else? What's something you did? Again, no matter how big or small, what's something you did to support somebody else on their journey? Can be something tiny, can be something big. Doesn't matter. What did you do for something? someone else. So the first one again, what's something, no matter how big or small, tough or challenging that you recently made progress on or accomplished that you want to acknowledge. So something tough or challenging you went through that even though it was tough, even though it was challenging, you made progress on it. You accomplished it. You had some forward initiative in it. Question number two, no matter how big or small, who's someone that

did something for you. And question number three, no matter how big or small, what's something you did for someone else? Why these three questions? The first question is acknowledging that even when something was tough, even when something was challenging, you still made progress. That doesn't mean that you accomplished it completely. Maybe you didn't have that goal, you know, achieve that goal 100%, but you still made progress

on it. Or maybe you did accomplish it, but you never really patted your back, self on the back for it or you've forgotten about it because you're caught up in the latest drama that's there in your life. This first question is designed to remind you that you've gone through something tough or challenging and you still made progress. You still accomplished it. We tend to forget those moments. We tend to just move on in our life and not remember them.

And we forget how strong we are when we don't remember these moments. Question number two. Who's someone that did something for you? So many people have this story in life, primarily. that came from the programming of how they were brought up, that they don't have support, that nobody has their back, that they're doing everything in this world on their own by themselves. And I'll just tell you, there are varying degrees of support that we all have, but we all have some level of support. Sometimes it's not even direct. Sometimes we read something

that somebody wrote and it made a difference for us. Sometimes it's something tiny. Our neighbor dropped off a package for us when we were out of town. Like it does not matter how big or small. It just matters that these are meaningful and they meant something to you. When you remember that there's people that had your back, no matter how big or small, it starts to remind you that you have a support system around you. It's just that we forget about it. We forget that we have that support system.

When you start to notice how much support is. around you, what do you think happens to your brain? Your brain starts to pay attention to additional support systems that you might have that you might not have taken advantage of. Maybe there's a problem, a situation in your life that you're stuck on. But if you really thought about it, maybe you've been scared to ask for help with that problem. But if you really thought about it and made a list of the people in your life that have supported you in some way, shape or form in the past, I can almost guarantee that at least one of those individuals, even if that's just hearing what you're going through,

which is very supportive, is going to be able to help you out with this problem, just by even listening to you. And some of them, who knows, maybe they have some good advice. The last question, question number three, why this question, no matter how big or small, what's something I did for someone else?

This question reminds you that you are, no matter how big or small, you're making an impact in the lives of other people. So many people. forget that their life matters, that they are making a difference. We don't have to launch some big project to make a difference. And sure, we might want to launch some big project or initiative or nonprofit or whatever, but it's paying attention to the microways that we're making a difference in the lives of other people

that, again, we forget about what happens when your brain forgets. When your brain forgets that you are making a difference in the lives of other people, it starts to think that our lives don't matter. When your brain forgets that there's people that actually have your back and that supported you, when it forgets about that because we're not retraining our brain to remember it, we think that we're not supported in our goals and we're all alone. We're doing this all by yourself. When our brain forgets that we've gone through something tough or challenging and that

we made progress on it, whether we accomplish it or not, when we forget that, we think we're not as strong as we should be. imagine taking all the baggage of that into your intentions for the new years, whether you're formally setting goals or whether you're not. And forget about the new year. Just at any point in time in life, if you are going to say that there's a delta between where I'm at and the goal that I want to achieve or the thing that I want to create in my life,

whether it's improving your health, improving your finances, improving your relationship, having more friends, if there's a delta between where you are and where you want to be, imagine if you took all the baggage of the negativity, which is what most people do. I'm not supported. I haven't made the difference in a lot of other people. Why should people like me anyway? And I haven't really accomplished a lot.

You bring the baggage of all that into your goals. And it's not you doing it consciously. It's in your subconscious. You bring the baggage. It's no wonder so many people give up on their goals and dreams. So these questions are written below. And in the article that I referenced to, now the lighter version of this is literally just calling up a friend, maybe even having them listen to this quick episode or reading the article, if they're a reader, and then saying, let's do this together. Let's just do this.

Let's do this for, you know, the month of December or something recently. And between you both writing it down, you read the questions out, and then you both write your answer, and then what I've found is really impactful is you reflect and share. After asking all these three questions and writing down your answers, you take a moment to reflect. You share your answer with each other. You go one by one. So question number one, no matter how big or small, what's something, you know, tough or challenging that I accomplished, you know, recently. You guys answer that question after having written down your answers each individually for all three questions.

Question number two, no matter how big or small, who's someone that I did, who did something for me, you both share your answers with each other. And question number three, no matter how big or small, what's something I did for someone else, you share your answers with each other. And then you reflect. One of the best ways to do this is to share what you wrote with your loved one and friend, but then also why you wrote that. What's the meaning of the situation?

Some of these things are going to seem so simple, but they're meaningful to you. And I'm a huge fan of us speaking out our answers out loud and not just letting them live on paper. This is something that I do with my wife. I'll read the first question out and then I'll give her time to answer and share what she wrote. And then I'll go and do the same. And sometimes after she shares, I'll ask a follow-up question. or I'll acknowledge the power and the beauty of what she shared and communicated. And after she's done, then she'll do the same for me.

Again, I detail this out inside of this article that I wrote below that you can reference. Now, the light version of this is you just do this with a friend or loved one and you just answer all three questions. And you just do it once. The heavy version, which is what I built the template on, is you take a moment. to carve out some time on your calendar, probably a good two hours, and you use the template, and you go through each month of 2023,

starting with January, then February, then March, April, May, June, July, all the way to December, and you ask that question for that month. So for January, if I was doing this with my wife, which we plan on doing soon, we're going to go on a little vacation end of the year, and we're going to be going through this gratitude hack workshop for January, we would literally ask ourselves for January of 2023, question number one, two,

and three. Now, some of you are asking, well, how do you remember what the hell happened in January? And the thing is, you often don't and you need a prompt. And here's two ways to go through and create a prompt. One way is if you're like me and everything is on your calendar, you bring up your calendar and you go through your calendar and you reflect a little bit and you ask yourself the first question, no matter how big or small, what's something tougher challenging that I accomplished in this month of January 20, 23.

And I go through my calendar. I'm like, what the hell was going on in my life? What meetings was I taking? What was I going through? And simply by looking at my calendar and seeing, oh, wow, I did this workout. That was really tough. And I achieved a goal in my deadlifts or I made some progress on writing this social media post. And that was something tough or challenging.

You try to use your calendar as a reminder of what was happening in January. If you want another prompt, which is for a lot of people who don't carry a calendar, go to your photo album, especially for those of you that have iPhones. And if you don't, you still have a photo album on your Android and go and scroll back to, you have the ability to scroll by month. And you can go to January of 2023 and see what were you up to at that time in life. You're trying to have a few reminders of what were you going through, what were you thinking about, what sort of thing were you focused on in your life?

What was something you were giving attention to? And your photo albums, if you take enough photos, is a good prompt and a reminder of what you were up to then. Not that you would have a photo of something that you accomplished. Maybe you do, but it would remind you of what was happening at that point in time in life. The light version, something you can do in 15 to 20 minutes. You can call a friend up and you guys can all go through the three questions and at the end, reflect and share with one another. It's easy, peasy, 15, 20, 30 minutes,

and I promise you at the end of it, you're going to be filled with a deep sense of gratitude. The heavier version of this is something that truly is a workshop and is designed to completely energetically change your state of being. Every time I complete this workshop, I'm filled. The heavy version.

The light version is nice too. I'm left with a deep sense of joy, peace, and gratitude. And when I do it, as I've done with my wife in the past, shout out to Yasmin. She has a great podcast, by the way. It's called Behind Her Empire. She interviews some of the top women entrepreneurs and talks about their journey in building their empire. Check it out if you're interested in entrepreneurship and building business and hearing incredible stories of women. When I do this with my wife, there is such an energetic change in our relationship. Our relationship is generally filled with a lot of gratitude.

But when we do this, we have so much more appreciation, joy, understanding. It's such a palate cleanse for our relationship and a supercharging. And it also gets us plugged into what matters and what the other person is working on in life. So if you have a time and there's somebody in your life that would be open to it, try the version at some point in time. It doesn't have to be at the end of the year. It could be sometime mid-year next year. You could start off with a light version. But I've always traditionally practiced the heavier version. It's just that I created a light version because so many people told me this takes a lot of time, which it does. It takes about two hours, right? Sometimes a little

bit more. But the light version you can do in 15 to 20 minutes, text a friend, call a friend, shoot a message to somebody. Put this podcast on pause for a moment. After you hear what I have to say, text a friend and say, you know what, I'd love to go through this gratitude practice with you. And for those of you that are thinking that that's weird, you can't just text somebody and say that. I promise you, the friends that have asked, they have been super excited to do something new. How often does somebody contact you, a friend, a family, a loved one, and say, hey, do you want to try this, you know, gratitude workshop together? Do you want to try something new?

You want to try something different? Most people are just waiting for an opportunity to step in that gratitude. they just don't know what to do, which is why I've created this protocol and sort of modified it over the years. And I've had so many people do it. I do this with my, I've done this, the light version of it. I've done it with my men's group. In fact, my men's group called Man Morning that meets every Thursday morning. These three questions are going to be the topic of discussion for us to just share the light version. We'll go around the table. The light version that we can all accomplish in about an hour of walking with like six or seven or eight guys.

and I can't wait to hear what the individuals have to share and have to say. All right, I've been babbling on. That's it. Those are the questions. It's super simple. And yet you'll find that answering these three questions, whether you do the light version or the heavy version, is something that makes a massive difference when done, especially on a regular basis. If you try this workshop, please, please, please, reach out to me. through my website or on social media and let me know how it goes.

I want to hear about it. And I'll share a few of the testimonials from some of the individuals that go through this process. And hopefully some of you will hear those testimonials and be excited to actually go and do it. Check out the links for more details, the template, as well as the article and the references to the studies that I mentioned below. Drew Proet, signing off. See you next week. Hi, everyone. Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter.

And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday. 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.