Episode 40 - Reclaiming Mind: Gratitude Revisited; Thanksgiving

Perfect timing - unintentionally the hosts recorded another episode on gratitude right in time for Thanksgiving!

Transcript

Preston: 0:07

What are we episode 40?

Michael: 0:09

Episode 40. It's amazing.

Preston: 0:13

I know that's pretty

Michael: 0:14

nuts, huh? I love it

Preston: 0:19

So welcome to the reclaiming man podcast, episode number 40 with me, Preston Radomski. And I'm joined today by Michael Beckwith and how are you doing tonight, Michael?

Michael: 0:33

I'm doing really well. I think the, the theme for the past couple of weeks has been these weekly challenges that have given me a little bit of extra something to look forward to and a little bit of, extra team spirit. Yeah. So, yeah, it's been long day in the sense of I just walked in, yeah. And from that jumping into the studio here and recording, but I like that type of, that busyness, right. It, it's not busyness for the sense of overwhelming amount of things that are negative. It's just like we've talked about it before. It's like more of a, sense of fullness. Like there's a lot going on, but my life, yeah. It doesn't feel like that. You're just productive.

Preston: 1:12

You're just making the most of every minute of the day and, but I know it can get con when you're coming home from work all day, it's like, I mean, I love that you're jumping in here and chit chatting with me, but I totally understand sometimes there's the element of I would like half an hour with the wife and kids, but I mean, how old's your daughter now?

Michael: 1:32

11. Yeah. 11. So she's

Preston: 1:34

20. Yeah. They're probably up late ish.

Michael: 1:37

They are for sure. Yeah. So it actually is. It really is. That's one of the, I would say advantages as kids get older and they're staying up a little bit later. It's a bit easier to still get some time with them at night. And so I do generally. With Lucy have a pretty good cadence of just time that we spend together throughout the week in the evenings. It's odd already that Jen and I are half empty nesters and that, Paige is off to college. And so it's just us and Lucy, obviously Jen's dad too, but no, it's just, I'm trying to be real intentional about taking that time. And it's a good segue into what we're hoping to talk about tonight, which is gratitude. And just makes me think about, as I was growing up as a kid. And by no means do I mean this is a negative, but I never really spent time with my dad, just hanging out with my dad at night because he was always coming home from work and then going to something, whether it was, more work or an elder meeting at church or something that seemed like it was. Every night there was things that he was doing separately from us as kids, right. And again, that's not like a speaking negatively of him, it's just a different experience. And so I'm just really grateful for the, for all those little moments in between the rest of life that, they really are filled with the priority of my family and. I was challenged the other day, I was challenged the other day by, by how I verbalize my priority in life and always have the mindset, Oh, God is my priority, my relationship with God and then my relationship with my wife and my kids and just verbalizing that out loud. It always is going to create this sort of tension or sense of competition. Between my wife and God or my kids and my wife, right? And that, that really isn't the intention of that. So I was trying to figure out a way to just reframe it. But, ultimately I, what I've come up with is my relationship with God is what drives my priority for my wife and my family, because it's not that. I could really have in my mind anyways, it's not a competition, but it's easy for us to feel that way as humans. So just a good challenge for me to be thinking about the order of how I say things and just the power of language in general. But yeah, so I mentioned gratitude is something that we're trying to revisit here on episode 40. And I really have over the past year put into practice the gratitude journal. Yep, and so it's it's running out of space

Preston: 4:33

That's it. That's a good thing. You must have a lot to be grateful for that. You've been writing down then, right? That's

Michael: 4:39

exactly what I was getting at Yeah And it's so easy in life when we have a lot of things going on and it feels busy versus full Like negatively busy like oh, we're just there's so many things going on that we don't have it A second to breathe or, a moment to spend time with your family or do the things that you really care about, looking back at that gratitude journal over these past few days, I've just been flipping through it and looking at just the different types of things I've been grateful for because it's not just. People, I don't write just like the name of people who I'm grateful for, although that's a part of the conversation in my head, the internal dialogue that I write out. But it's also just for circumstantially things that have happened that in the moment feel like things that are challenging and hard. And upon retrospection or reflection, I look at those things as I'm grateful that I went through this. Because it's given us the, the perspective, given me the perspective to appreciate, life in a different way and appreciate challenges. So, so something I wanted to revisit and, and challenge our listeners as well as each other to do, from a Reclaiming Mantra perspective is to, keep up the, the gratitude journal and then momentarily, or not momentarily, periodically, take the time to read back through it. When life is getting especially hard, because it's just been a really powerful tool and it's one of those things we've talked about bringing systems, bringing things to our listeners, bringing things to each other. And I think we've done, probably about 70, 80 percent good job of that. Just looking back at the last 20 episodes, I remember, we were saying by episode 20, we're going to deliver the system, right? Oh, right.

Preston: 6:40

I know what you're talking about. Yep. A

Michael: 6:41

system for like a tracking system. Yeah, like a tracking system, something that was going to help us recover from a slip. Right. Correct. Slip becomes a slide. We were trying to help our listeners as well as each other, navigate through those types of moments in life. And gratitude journal is one of those things that I think really should be a firmly a part of that system. Right. Yeah.

Preston: 7:02

Yeah. I. I definitely agree with you, even though I've dipped in and out of the journal aspect. I, I would, it's just something that I've struggled with maintaining as a daily habit. I don't, and it's weird. I'll get on, I'll do it for a week and really enjoy doing that in the mornings. And then for whatever reason, I just, it falls away. You mentioned also too, like the going and looking back on it, that I think it's like a really. Maybe something that folks don't think about when they're writing a gratitude journal, how, how beneficial that can be. Because we all have our, we have our days where our morning routine goes flawless. We have our cup of coffee and like, we're literally feel like we're floating in that car on the way to work. Just like going to take over the day. Yeah. And then there's the days where you feel like. You're dragging a hundred pound weight in your socks or whatever it is. And it's like, yeah, those are the days where you look back on your gratitude journal or even just your journal. If you keep a journal that's maybe not, focused entirely on gratitude, maybe just you, you jot ideas down or things that happened to you. And to just look back on that and reflect of where you were and where you are now and how much you've, you can always see, measure how much you've grown, or maybe you're having a rough time and you're gone the downwards spiral of the slight edge and it's... That realization like, all right, I got to just do this one little thing to just turn it the other direction because it didn't take much to get me plummeting down here. It won't take much to get me going back in the right direction. So utilizing it as a tool to look back and reflect is I think a great way to use it as

Michael: 8:55

well. And that's what I wanted to just expand on a little bit because. There is the original reason that I started to do the gratitude journal actually was a byproduct of the slight edge. And I read that book last year in the early summer or late spring, early summer for the first time, read it again in the fall with my daughter. And in reading it again, I was picking out and realizing that, okay, there's in that book six different areas that they talk about of your life that you can work on improving, or at least. You should consider what are the ideal states for these areas of your life and their health, wealth, personal relationships, professional relationships, happiness and your impact on the world and specifically when it pertains to happiness. One of the suggestions for your simple daily discipline is this gratitude journal and it's connected to a number of different studies, but Sean Acor wrote a book called the happiness. Advantage and in that book is where he talks about how. Society has really fundamentally looked at happiness backwards, where we're anticipating happiness at the end of some journey or after some objective has been reached or a goal has been attained. And he said, if you start with happiness, you're much more likely to experience, experience success in your life. And so that's where, placing the gratitude journal habit at the beginning of your day. The idea is that it's getting you into a spot of. It's gratitude that leads to happiness theoretically, ideally, and, with that changed perspective, that attitude change, everything that you approach theoretically. You have a slightly better chance of being successful because your attitude is better. And this is just as simple as that. And so, I was using it originally as a tool to trigger those feelings that mood change of potentially not wanting to go to work or being tired or, not having completed something that I wanted to do the day before, the week before, whatever from the past is holding me back. It's, a mechanism to, to break free of some of those types of negative thought patterns and get into a And then lately when I read through it and I passed, it was October 19th, actually, so it's a little over a month now that it's been a year, but I pass it. And then I started to more consistently go back and look at it, reflect and, I guess that's probably evidence that like the last month of my life has been harder than the preceding month. And I mean that in a lot of ways, but now it's just, it really is interesting to me and. Hopefully interesting to our audience as well that something that is supposed to start with, I was using it originally to start with start my day with to get to happiness. Now I'm using it to look back on instead of like starting my day with happiness, which I'm still writing it in the gratitude journal. But now when I'm looking back at it it's a way for me to. Contrast those moments of life right now where things are feeling hard and going back and be like, you were going through hard things last year too. You were still grateful in the midst of those hard things. And is there, is there a sense

Preston: 12:24

of like it helping you change your perspective on your current situation to where like, yeah, no, you might

Michael: 12:31

go ahead. No. Yeah, it is. And current situation. As, we're trying to sell my dad's, my father's house and there's just a laundry list of things that haven't gone right. And even today I was. Trying to get ahold of this electrician who did work and basically find out that the company that this guy was operating through is like some sort of shell company, complete shady, non existent company.

Preston: 12:56

Why are like contractors and stuff like that? Sometimes just so like that, it's such a weird business.

Michael: 13:03

It is, but I'm, I was frustrated with myself today. Like beating up myself, like, man, you're so dumb. Like you. You do this professionally, your job is literally sourcing and, you work with fenders all the time and contractors. And so like, it just, it was an example of me making assumptions, my ego just like, Oh, you got this, you got a better deal on this is great. Right. But then not doing the due diligence, but like just reading back and going through some of those things. It's just like, it's okay. We've got a lot of things to be grateful for. I was walking into our house. And walking through my garage and one of my buddies had, just coincidentally had an extra heavy bag. Oh, nice. He got from some job site. And so he's like, Do you want this? And I was like, hell yeah, yeah, I guess I do. So, I got a heavy bag, which no, I'm not into boxing or mixed martial arts yet. Yet, but, it just, it got me excited and I was walking through thinking about that and I was yeah, I'm going through some problems, but look, I've got this gym that I'm building out my garage that I'm going to put a heavy bag in and a golf simulator. And I'm like, what am I really complaining about? Right. And it's unfortunate. Yeah. But it's just the power of gratitude. It amazes me every time I go back to it and. So in that sense, it's like, it feels somewhat meta because I'm grateful for gratitude in and of itself, like the concept of being thankful for things and how easy it is for that to help you navigate through the moments of self doubt or, in my case, I was in that self deprecating, you're an idiot for not getting this documentation and getting a work order and contact information and all the things that I normally would do a contract. Right. But, then I immediately flipped the script and be like, well, what have you got to be grateful for? It's like, I'm tripping over this probably 200 punchy bag that I got. And I'm like, well, I got a place to take out some frustration now, heck yeah. And, I'm walking into a house that I'm just like, man, this is, it feels surreal. It's a beautiful house. It's, these are the things that are going for me in life and life is for me, not happening to me. So those are the things that I mean, from a gratitude journal perspective, I just wanted to revisit that concept and just hear a little bit about. What your journey has been with it. Obviously, you said there's a little bit of a struggle with consistency, but yeah, yeah,

Preston: 15:43

I mean, it doesn't, I don't not think about gratitude though. I mean, I may not be on that consistent path of writing, writing everything down every day, but it's, I, I mean, I find myself lately. I've been, getting, we've been dipping back into that cold plunge aspect since the, well, I mean, I had, you've been doing it all summer, but like, My pool's finally cold enough again to work. I can get in there and I'll get in there. It's funny Like I'll be standing at the door. It's 5 in the morning and I'm cold and it's like I had it I don't really want to go in there right now But then I do and then I I'm I'm find myself out there in the water quite enjoying it and just I think I'm coming up on two years being in Tennessee and two years ago. I was living At my wife's great grandma's house, we had, we owned a condo in California, but it was, we rented it out. It was a little, I mean, it was 750, 800 square feet. We bought it when we were both dating. We weren't even married yet. And, but we just didn't have much of anything. And, and the way that. Anyone who isn't familiar with California's real estate market is just we bought that house or that condo in 08 after the crash So we ended up getting that insane deal on it for California but to buy a house if we were just we're always just gonna be living with our grandparents or something or renting somewhere and Next week's Thanksgiving Thanksgiving week two years ago. We were just had decided to like oh, we'll just go putz around on stuff on Zillow or whatever and Erica found this house one night and by the end of the week We'd put an offer and a month and a half later. We're here in Tennessee And I'm sitting in my pool the other morning cold plunging which is two years ago something I would You couldn't fucking pay me to do that. Like I would never get into a Freezing cold, ice bath or whatever, but I'm in this one and it's mine And I've got chickens in the backyard and two awesome kids and a wife inside sleeping and It's funny that you had mentioned, enjoying, not enjoying the journey, not enjoying the, the end result. And we're on this path of growth, the three of us, trying to change our careers and move up and make more money. And part of that, I'm enjoying all that. The important part is just right now like what you're doing right now What you're enjoying right now where you're at right now. And yeah, that's

Michael: 18:43

that's yeah The word that has come up in my mind lately is enough and in different contexts, but, certainly when it comes to what we're talking about, yeah, we have big ambitions, big goals, and we're going to make progress toward those. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Without question. Yeah. But in the process itself. I'Ve come to the realization that I have enough. I have enough money. I have enough time. I have enough of everything that I need. And that isn't to say that you, you become complacent about what your potential is. And. If I were to rewind last year, when I wrote out my goals on the vision board, my, my sort of product of the slight edge, I had this one idea in my head of what my potential might be. Now, a year later, I look at that and I say, is that my true potential? And I think, no, my potential is greater than I imagined last year. Yeah. And, and what has changed financially? Not much. They're not perceptibly that different, from a, where am I at in life? I'm still working for, a nine to five or seven to five or six to six, whatever the week brings you, whatever the week brings us. But at the same time, like having the huge ambitions and, and those ideals that we're working towards at the same time, being able to say but what we do have is enough from the sense of I can be happy right now. I can live a life of abundance right now. I can give back to the community right now. These aren't things that are conditional upon me getting to a certain level of wealth or a certain level of health or a certain level of career growth. And it's the same thing. Preston you're doing right now. It's like you are now living the dream. You're building Redneck Rodeo. You're getting in into Nashville. You're making connections. We just had Brad Dawson on the show who was, well connected in the Nashville scene. And it's like, he's obviously a big part of what your potential path is there, but you're apart from him, even like building the path forward where, you're already laying the groundwork. And I feel the exact same way, with myself, with Scott, some of the other guys that we've pulled into the tribe, so to speak. And so I'm really excited about it. And I think that it's this interesting tension between saying like what we're doing right now, it is enough, it is consistent. Like we can go to the next level. On any one of these areas, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to apply more effort or more time. It's just that we need to stay consistent at doing what we're doing. And it's just like you mentioned with the gratitude journal, right? It's you were doing it, you're expressing gratitude more in your life. And as a result of it, you're reaping the benefits of it. Even through like Marco Polo, I can tell your attitude is gratitude. And there is a lot of, things that you, you have. And it's at the same time, it's easy to look at our. Our life and feel like, Oh, we don't have something that we need. And I just don't think, I don't think that's true. And again, it's just like Scott talked a while, or we talked about being grateful for the path that we're on and the direction that we're moving. And so I think really just. Wrapping up this episode with the reminder to our listeners and to each other, that that gratitude is not only like how we should start our day, but it's a tool that we can use to look back at and recognize that through everything we've been through, if we keep that through line of gratitude. We're going to continue to make progress towards what our goals are and what our ideals are, and the same can be said of this podcast, and, I was a little bit challenged. I think we both were about, just when Scott's able to be on these episodes, we feel like there's a greater level of energy. And so letting it be a reason for us almost not to have to bring the same sort of challenge and energy to these podcasts. And I think. In the last couple of weeks, I've just been grateful to come back to that, that we've started down this path and we're going to continue going down it. Scott's going to be there. He might be on 50 percent of the episodes. He might be on 10%. I hope it's a lot closer to a hundred, but at some point in life we're on the journey. And, and so just really grateful to have, the audience that we do and the chance to share this time with. To share our stories with you guys and, I just want to make the commitment that, we're going to keep on bringing other people's stories to, so I have some good plans as far as next guests to bring on the show and, yeah, I just encourage you to reach back out to us as well. If, there's anything, we're going to start these weekly challenges. So you should be seeing those come out on a Instagram, Facebook from us. If you have any comments about how they went for you or what your level of. Yeah. Completion or success, or you just want to compare stats, throw it out there. Throw the gauntlet down. If you feel like you're crushing it and you want us to step up, but, or, or

Preston: 24:27

if you need accountability, like leave a comment. So like, Hey, can you post on my wall every day? Like how, how are you doing with that? Like. Like a check in. If you don't have anyone to do that with besides us online, like we'll help you out and keep you

Michael: 24:40

accountable. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not going to make the commitment to myself personally to, to like be really plugged into social media, but from a reclaiming man perspective, I am making that commitment to just being at least, minimally responsive to, to what comes through. So if you guys have something to share with us, please do. And yeah. Again, please, please share this with anybody that you think, needs to get back on the path or would like to get on the path to, to mastery in their life. That's what we're trying to do. Bring as many people as we can with us.

Preston: 25:13

Yeah. Share it with just one person. That's all we ask. It makes a big difference. Well, Michael, it was great talking to you. I think that wraps up, episode 40. That's about as old as I am. And we'll see y'all next week on the Reclaiming Man podcast.