The One You Feed - Mini Episode- The Power of Appreciation

Episode Date: February 1, 2015

[powerpress]  We all know that gratitude and appreciation are important but we need to actually do them for the benefit to occur.  Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey everybody it's Eric from the one you feed with another mini-episode.

And I'm doing this one sort of on the spur of the moment. I'm in San Francisco, and I was just about to do an interview with a Buddhist teacher that I really admire, and we had Skype problems and were unable to do the interview. So I'm changing gears here. I am staying with my friend Joe, who has been extraordinarily kind this morning in trying to make this a good interview spot, hanging curtains, doing all kinds of stuff. So I'm grateful for that. And I think that's what I want to talk about for the mini episode is gratitude. It's something that is so overused

these days and talked about so often that it's easy, at least for me, it's very easy to sort of file it under the, yeah, I know about that category, and yes, I've done that before category. What I find interesting about that, though, like everything else, and we've talked about this before, is that knowing about it and knowing that I've done it in the past and knowing that it's good is not nearly the same thing as actually doing it. So I've talked on the show about in the past about the alphabet gratitude game, you know, where you start with an A and try and think of something you're grateful that starts with A, B, etc., which is a great thing to do. And then the other thing that I've done with a good deal of success at different points in the past is to try and keep a just a daily list or as often as I think of it list. I use the word gratitude and I also swap the word appreciation in a lot because gratitude tends to be like I'm grateful that I have a roof over my head. I'm grateful that I have food to eat. Whereas

appreciation tends to be, at least for me, it's more like appreciating beauty. I'm grateful that I have food to eat. Whereas appreciation tends to be, at least for me, it's more like appreciating beauty. I appreciate the sunset or I appreciate the taste of this food or what that flower smelled like. And so what I realized though, is I went and I've got a little app on my phone that I use and I opened it up the other day and I was like, you know, it's been damn near a month since I opened this thing up and did that list. Now I've, you know, these things float through my head. But the interesting thing about doing that consistently in that app is that when I do that, I sort of train my brain to be looking for those things during the day, because at the end of the day, I'm going to be recording them. And it's amazing to me how when I do that consistently, it changes my

mindset from what sometimes is a default. We've talked about the negative default mindset, the mind that is evolutionarily programmed to be looking out for threat. It helps counter that a little bit with a mind that's trying to look for things that are positive, things that I appreciate. And the other thing that that little app, it's called, I think it's called Gratitude, by the way, there's probably 500 of them out there, and they're probably all the same. But it also allows me to take a picture each day that I was thinking about. One was, wow, it's really useful when I do that because it trains my mind to be looking for the positive, looking for more appreciative things. And even though I know that gratitude is a good thing, even though I've done it before and had success, even though I've got the skills, even though I've read a thousand

articles about it, all that is entirely pointless if I'm not doing it on a regular basis. The same way that knowing that exercise is good for me, knowing that meditation is good for me, all those things don't really add any value until I go and do them. And that is a, at least maybe I keep talking about it because it's a lesson that I need to keep learning, but I have a tendency to file those things under the yes, I've heard about it, I've done that category, and be looking for the thing that I haven't done, or I haven't heard of, or I haven't tried, which can often simply just be a way of avoiding doing things that are challenging, because all those things take some degree of effort. And as we've talked about before, Because all those things take some degree of effort. And as we've talked about before, there's a tendency to go for the thing that requires the least effort. So that is what is on my mind this morning from lovely San Francisco. I'm going to have the honor of meeting a few people who are listeners of the show today out and around the city. So I'm excited about that. And we'll talk again soon.

New episode out on Tuesday as always. I say it often, but I want to say thank you so much for listening, being part of the show. It means a lot to Chris and I. Feel free to write us, contact us. We always love to hear from you. It's a special part of our life. So have a great week, and we'll talk again soon.

Okay, bye.