108. Real Gratitude And How To Use It

Foreign. Movement Podcast. This is your host, Al. In today's episode, we're talking about gratitude and what it actually means and how you actually use and apply it to your life. If you cycle through the last 110 odd episodes or thereabouts that I've done over the course of the last couple of years, you will find trinkets and little traces of gratitude and showing that having that from one angle, one point of view, which is perspective. And they're great, they're awesome. And obviously as we evolve, as I evolve, as we adapt and improve, we start to just screw it in a little bit more, dial it in a little bit more. Just really getting a stronghold and tightening up with depth. What certain things mean in your life that you've been conditioned to believe that you don't quite know, you're not aware of. We'll talk about self control being a scam, discipline being a scam. Willpower. All the different moving parts around, habits, systems, processes, all different words, right? It's why I love. And my skill set is continually diving in with the data, the feedback, the facts and the feelings I get from the fathers that we work with, coupled with the modern world to find a creative way to shift the way you see things, the action you take, and the value in how you're using your time. Perfect example. 24 hours in a day. What does that even mean to you anymore? Means nothing. You've heard it before. Yeah, we've all got 24 hours. That's sort of like painting everyone with the same brush and also saying, hey, you've got 24 hours. But then it's also saying, hey, you've only got 24 hours. Great, awesome. How's that working out for you so far? By just saying that. Whereas when I look at a creative way to help you shift the way that you think and how you think by saying, I don't care whether you get six hours or eight hours sleep a day. When I tell you that you get seven hours and 20 minutes of sleep a night, which isn't a bad average, most people get between six to eight and a half actual sleep times. Relevant to how you track the data on that. I mean, we use OURA rings and they're amazing, but you know how you're tracking your actual sleep time. But if we just say rounded off to seven hours and 20 minutes, it gives you exactly 1,000 minutes a day, how does that change the way you think about the bullshit that you're wasting your life on? Not your time. Your time is your life. You're wasting your life on. And when you're not, applying your focus and efforts are the most important thing either when you're away to time block what's important to get back in with your children. So I'm away from my kids, working, all right, what am I going to do when I get back? And then when you are present with them, are you truly being present? Are you turning up? Are you going all in on your children? You may think that this isn't relevant to the session of gratitude. It is. Everything is. Because this is what gratitude is. It's an action. Gratitude isn't sitting down, getting your pretty fucking planner out and writing down 400 lines on what you're blessed for in your life. That shit's past that ship has sailed. And that's ultimately something that you can look back on, reflect on not as a measuring stick, but a point of reflection, like I said, to see where you've come from, not where you've been. If you focus on where you've been and focus there too long, what you're doing is applying a higher level of percentage of effort towards the lower version or the older version, sorry, of you, which is probably a higher version. When you do it that way. When you look at where you've come from, very slight, very subtle change. I don't look at where I've been because when I'm looking at, I'm focused on the older version of Al and looking at that. And yes, there were some amazing things that I did when I was younger, just like there will be when I get older, just like I am right now in certain areas. And there's areas where I fucked up and I will when I'm older, and I will right now. But when I look at where I've come from, I'm using that to chart lessons forward into who I am now and then using a measuring stick of bridging the gap of who I was, who I am, who I was to become, to get there. You can't do that by doing all these motivational wizard things that say you've got to be grateful and show gratitude and blah, blah, blah, blah. But just sitting down and thinking about it or feeling it as feelings are fleeting, or writing it down and looking at it once a week or once a month or more often than not, never. I've got my journal. I'll write my gratitude. Awesome. Did you wind back, you know, 37 days ago to check your gratitude post for the day? Did you have a good read of that? Or was that something that just lasted for three to 15 minutes. I'm not, and this is the thing. Yes, I'm unconventional, but I'm not castrating methods. What I really expose and bring the bright spot up on in all areas of how I deliver what we do and what we deliver in our message is really applying focus to the generic bullshit. Terms that aren't really either intricately delivered or they're not interpretive in a way that's going to actually benefit you. This is the hard part. When people just jump on the bandwagon or they all do the same courses, or they all do the same shit and then just speak the same gibberish. There's no real way to articulate it and in our circumstance, articulate it. For a father entering or in the second half of his life trying to get his shit together in family softened service to get in front and win, how's that going to help you? You should be gratitude. Sorry. You should be grateful. Practice gratitude every day. Awesome. How we'll sit down and write the best three things that happen for the day. That stuff's great. I'm not saying it's wrong, but is there a better way? Don't just sit on your hands and think that has to be the way. Because if you just stay in the same spot, you will stagnate. You will become disconnected, you will fall down and pull away. Always. Always. Anyone on the inside who's been with me since day dot and fathers have been with us for years. They have seen monstrous amounts of evolution at a scaled rate. Just like the world. All right, The Industrial Revolution. Look at us now. We're entering the jet age. Crazy shit, right? We are the same. We are continually evolving and rapidly adapting. 20. I thought 2020 was a big year, man. 2021. Five months in. Holy fuck. It's been unbelievable what we have created and the tenacity that we've applied to getting after life. And you know how we've done it? And this is how I've done it. By using gratitude, by being grateful, like truly grateful. I'm going to break it down. You'll get some amazing value in this episode on what it actually means and how you can apply it to your life. Like I said, I'm not here to hack you on the old outdated systems that people try and use or still stick to or clutch to thinking that that's their saving grace. Especially for you as a father. Let's be honest. The reality is out there in the world, they don't really apply this sort of methodology in a Personalized format for fathers. It's a very vanilla approach, which is why when you see courses, get togethers and functions and events, they love to sit on the tag of people from all walks of life. That's awesome. All walks of life though, how are they going to connect with you on your path if they haven't walked it with you? What have you got? Look at people from kids, teenagers, adolescents, couples, individuals, married couples. And then you've got family, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands, wives. There's a lot of paths, right, all walks of life. You don't think that I can't run a real mum movement or a real kids movement, or that shit will distract and interrupt the calling, the path, what we are on and for us in continually evolving and developing the pathway that continues to get greater and greater for fathers to win the second half. The right way. The right way. That's important. What's winning to you? Money in the bank, Spending all your time with the family and you fall into shit with your body or other areas of your life. No, no, we do it the right way. We do it all. The right way. And all is three things. Family, self and service. Gratitude. This is one of the best practices you can apply to your life and apply it properly by first understanding what it is. We've got it in our journals and we've got it in a specific way that doesn't actually have the word gratitude. It's got different lines of perspective to help you set your intentions, apply your actions, review and reflect. Were you a leader? Did you do what you said you would do? Did you turn up? Or did you just talk shit? Or in this instance write shit and not follow through. When you have this, and I have this in our journal as I'm just looking through it now, it's an amazing approach where. Rise to win. That's our war cry. That's our hashtag. Thoughts, plans and goals. Three lines. Rise to win. What are you doing today? Why? Where are you at? Where's the head at? What's flowing through you? Then we've got our most important thing. What is the number one thing, the myth, most important thing? Family, self and service. Doing your internal review on your alignment, energy and immersion and time for reflections and revelations. When you have this, you're building a cadence into your life of gratitude. Because what gratitude is is a series of three different elements that make your life more and help you evol perspective, action and time. That's what gratitude is. So when I talk about being grateful for your life, it's not sitting back and going, I've got an amazing family. I'm such a blessed man. And it's so awesome. I am really lucky. Life is a miracle. There's death every day. There's crazy shit that happens. I love my kids. It's awesome. I really love it. Look, truth be told, I'm getting goosebumps right now because as I'm saying that, I'm living and breathing the experiences I've just had coming back from a holiday in Noosa with my family. It's not really a holiday when you've got three young kids, is it? It's actually hard work. It's harder than being back in RDM hq, pumping out some amazing stuff and spending time with the family, traveling by plane. Three kids under five. Yes. Lots of moving parts, very little control. It was awesome, though. Had a great time. So when I'm speaking these, I started to get goosebumps on the left side of my body because I'm like, man, it really was. It's bringing back the memories of spending the last seven days with my family. I live in an amazing place. I love my life and this is what I loved most. When I reflect, I fucking love my life. Yes, I live near the beach, preferably, I prefer farms and land, which we'll be looking at for the RDM ranch in the next few years. But I love our lifestyle, what we're doing, my family, everything is fucking amazing. And there's so much shit that happens. There are so many different challenges and hardships, but our life is fucking amazing. When I do that, it's not that I'm delusionally optimistic. It's not that I'm trying to sugarcoat things. My life, in retrospect, from where I was, where I continue to become in myself, in my family and where we continue to go, is epic. It's the journey. I love it. It's great. I can get these feelings and I can get. They're gone now. I can get these goosebumps just talking about my three children and how awesome they are and just buying a little ukulele for Lillian earlier today so Kryn could go and do a hearing assessment with Stella. Our daughter, just giving her this ukulele and watching her play. She loves singing. She's nearly breaking the strings as any two year old would. It's awesome, man. Like, they're great. They're memories that are banked for life and I love that. And I feel blessed for the opportunity. I am grateful that I have children. We did IVF for our first Two very hard. Third was a surprise. Very challenging. Very challenging. But worth it. Absolutely worth it. So I am grateful. But if I just sit back on that feeling and it just stays inside me and I have that level of perspective, I have that level of action, which is, you know, your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, they're all actions. Actions aren't just the physical things you exert in the real world. In your internal world, you're applying actions. I mean, your thoughts are faster than the speed of light. That's pretty fucking epic, right? It's a pretty powerful thing, especially when you can have. There's different studies, but 30 to 90,000 thoughts a day, most sort of go towards that. 60 to 90,000 thoughts a day. That's a lot. That is a lot. That's why we talk about autonomy, which will be another episode shortly, and the autonomous parts of the brain and building the right subconscious recordings inside of you, but that's another time. So, yeah, the action's there, the perspectives there, and the time's there. Spent 60 to 120 seconds being grateful, so to speak. Open closed speech marks perspective. Yeah, yeah. Just got a good realignment with our perspective there. Action, yeah. Thoughts, feelings, emotions. Had a little bit of goosebumps on my left leg just thinking about the holiday I had. That's small. It's good. Feelings are fleeting. They will go. They'll disappear right off this podcast. I've got more things that I need to do. I've got my family tonight. I've got food, I've got meal prep, I've got training. There's always a moving part that takes your focus from one thing to the next, one thing to the next. Multitasking is a fucking scam. It doesn't exist. You can't. You can't do it. You cannot do it. You only do one thing at a time. If you don't go deep on that, you're shallowly, shallowly doing lots and lots and lots of little things sporadically, almost at the same time. By having a rapid transition from one to the other to the other to the other to the other, you will never get anywhere. Nothing there will get the love and nurturing it needs to have depth, impact and results. So trust me, mate, when the women, when the wife, if she brags about multitasking or maybe you can hook her, you can trigger in and say, you know what, great multitasker, I wonder why you're better than that at me, and just throw that little hook in and maybe be careful of the battle that might come. But when they proudly wear that badge of honor, let them fucking have it. Because you don't want that. Here's my point. Just going through that small level of gratitude, then it's small. Small equals small. You want to show a large amount of using the skill set you can have from past, present, future, your life, your experience, what you desire, the actions inside, outside of you. Show that on a large level. Use gratitude, but use it the right way, man. There's three things that make up gratitude. One's your perspective, how you're seeing things past and present. I'm grateful to be here, right here and now, delivering this. This is fucking awesome, man. I love what I do. This is what I live for. People sound passionate. I'm like, thank you. That's my fucking standard. Like, I'm not trying to be passionate. This is my standard. What's the alternative? I'm gonna fucking blink, man. I'm gonna be 80 years of age, looking over my life, about to die. Or 90 or 57 or 43. Like you don't know when your time's up. When we went up to Noosa, we went to Australia. Zoo, perfect example. Steve Irwin, man. People thought he was putting on a show. That guy was fucking here to live. He was here to live life. He was such a fucking hero and a champion. Like, look at what that guy did in the time he had, what he did and the legacy he built. And maybe somewhere deep down, he knew he was on borrowed time. You just don't know with these sorts of people, you know? And I get a little bit emotional about it because he is fuck, man. What a champion. Yeah, you can look at some of the goofy stuff he did all sort of shit. Who cares, mate? That's him. He lived on his terms. He did him. And he did it in a phenomenal way. Absolute fucking legend. You really think you got time to fuck around? You really think you have time to waste? This doesn't mean. Right. This is how to think, not what to think. There's absolutes, sure. There's foundations and principles of I dm, sure. But this doesn't mean that just because I said that. Al's absolutely right. I've got to go 100 miles an hour. You're living your life through the body. I'm not talking about that. Things are binary. Other things aren't. The principle of not wasting your turn and not fucking around, yes, that is binary. Yes or no. But the fluidity and the rhythms and cycle of your life. Recharging the batteries, sleeping, restoring the body, nourishing the body, your mindset, your environment. Environment. Application to leadership through actions. Yep, they flow. They always flow. I've done fuck all work in seven days. I've been away with my family, but here I am, straight back in, hooking in. You don't need to live what people perceive to be a balanced life, but life is a balancing act. And you juggle them. And when you're juggling these balls, sometimes they're glass, sometimes they're stone and they're heavy, sometimes they're rubber. You can drop them, they'll bounce back up sometimes. You can't drop them. You can't drop that ball. Whether it's family, whether it's self, whether it's service, this is life. So when we're talking about gratitude, being grateful, showing that you're grateful, showing gratitude, it's got to be large. And by large doesn't mean the big home run. Large can be frequency, lots of littles, and they can be in different ways. I'm showing gratitude by doing this right now. I don't have to show gratitude by writing down my three best things for the day at 9 o' clock tonight. I don't have to show gratitude by calling my wife and telling her I love her, or calling my kids or putting on a video while I'm at work. And screen time with the kids and hey, daddy loves you, can't wait to see you. It can be so many different things, man. But the foundations of actually showing true gratitude in your life are three different elements. Perspective, action, and time. How are you choosing to see things consistently? That is showing you turning up as a man, as a father, as a husband. To go, I fucking love life. And I'm out the hunt. I'm here to hunt life and win and live and having that mental approach, that behavior towards anything in front of you, good, bad and the ugly. Because of what's happened in the past and because of what you determine, predict and desire in the future. Use the now, chart your north, learn from the south. If we're looking at past and future and live in the now with the way that you see things, your perception, your perspective, your mental approach, and then action. Don't just take that action, mentally writing it down. We've got the amazing 8. The amazing 8 inside of RDM. The amazing 8. You can tell I'm hungry. The amazing 8 inside of Rdm. Think it, feel it, speak it, write it, read it, act it, believe it, reinforce it. Like when you've got that and you can do them in different order. Like it doesn't matter. Like, act at first, then believe it, then write it, read it, speak it, think it, feel it, reinforce it as truth, repeat it. The Amazing 8 is phenomenal because when you apply this to different areas of your life, it's in and out, inside you, outside of you, inside your internal reality, in your head, your heart, your soul. And then you can take that into the real world and express life. What an amazing simulation life is, right? Literally creating. I look at rdm, and yes, I came up with the name, but when I caught up with these men in Noosa, it was fucking amazing, man. Like, these guys sharing their stories of themselves, their families, like that. That's their. They are rdm. Like they are the embodiment of rdm. Not me, not me alone. I'm humbled and privileged and inspired by them to continually lead and steer the ship. But it's not a little dinghy where I'm just sitting at the back with a rudder or, you know, steering it in that respects. A full crew, cabin crew, we do everything. We are all part of it. Perspective, action. How are you showing gratitude? Are your actions enough? Is it enough that you just write it down on a piece of paper? Or how about you fucking show how grateful you are in your life by turning up for your family, turning up for yourself, and turning up for your work or your business, and giving all that you've got to give. And if that isn't enough for you, build that gas tank to be able to give more. Which is why we always say, give to yourself first. How can you not see that as a father yet when you jump on these shitty fucking planes and all the time it goes through your head, if something happens, I'm going to look after my kids. What do they say? Put your own oxygen mask on first before you can help others? It's always there. You've got to see it, man. You want to give more, be more. First, you want to be grateful. Show that in your actions, not just in your mental approach and your mental actions and the words that you speak, or that you write, or that you feel action. When you go large, you get large. And it could be small, frequent things. Like I said, this isn't home runs when I'm talking about large. You've got a thousand minutes a day. You got 7,000 minutes, you got 28,000 minutes, roughly for the month we're about to enter. June. Awesome. You've got 30,000 minutes. 30 days in June, spend 1%. If you've got a thousand minutes a day, what's 1%. It's 10 minutes. 10% is 100 minutes. 1%. If you can spend 10%, an hour and 40 minutes, or 1%, 10 minutes, you can combine the two hour 10% of my days for me. I go and train or I walk the dogs and then this is what I do. I've got my music, I do my championship journaling, my high performance father journal. I'll roll that out for the public shortly. We're currently getting them published. They're going to be fucking amazing. But this is what I do, Al. Or it could, you know, shit, it's a fan in life and you're busy. All right, 1%, Al. Ten minutes, that's all I need. Ten minutes every day. And it's not the same thing. Don't spend 10 minutes writing in the same book. Do other things. Be resourceful. Open up the scope of how you see life, how you show and express gratitude. Large equals large, like I said. And that can be lots of little frequents. We track and trace the victories. I've got a screen recording and I do it all the time. We get so much, it's really hard to keep up with, to be fair. And that's not being arrogant. This is the fathers. I did a screen recording made of dozens and dozens of posts before 9am of dads getting up motivational quotes showing their food, showing their training sessions, showing the temperature, but they're still outside walking in some of the parts of Tasmania and Victoria where it's pretty fucking cold at the moment, doing their hashtag risetowinourwar. Cries like it's incredible, man. And I'm screen sharing or screen recording it on my phone, just scrolling through slowly, which I'll post in our social media platforms. Just like, fuck, look at these blokes. This is life in motion, man. This is true energy. This is real perspective, action and time. How much time are you spending showing this gratitude? It can be said, this is it out. I'm super grateful, no worries. So I'm going to go home, I'm going to give my wife a bunch of flowers. I'm going to spend 30 seconds telling her how much I love her and how much I appreciate her. And I'm going to go sit on the couch and watch TV with the kids. Well, yeah, okay. Well done, mate. Your perspective was pretty short, the action pretty small, right? Thank you so much. Awesome. The action was quite small. Why? Time. That's the third element. You've got to invest time in this, man. You want to really be grateful for your life. I Fucking love my life every single day. It's why I do this. It's why I enjoy these coaching pieces. I am the alignment coach on the inside of rdm and I love being that because every Sunday we do our live coaching session with the crew. Our Sunday charge up. We set our targets, we set our actions, we set the version of who we must become. That's our weekly tav. Then we dial in the mitts. What's the most important thing with that? And we get jacked up on the week ahead of living and hunting and winning at life. When you do that frequently through many different mediums. Coaching environment, videos, words, thoughts, actions at home, actions at work, actions in yourself. Creating space, music, using your sensory perceptions, touch, taste, sight, smell, sound. When you're using those the right way, this is what's moving you forward as a leader. This is what evolution is. That, my friend, is showing gratitude and being grateful. Not kicking back and signing up for some course or going to an event. And they talk about gratitude this, gratitude that. Of course it's a fucking movie. Have a look at our life, right? What is it, 400 billion? Or is it 400 trillion sperm? You're the one. You won. You've already won the biggest race. Don't waste it, right? You've already stood up on the podium. Then what do you do? You enter the arena, you win, you're on the podium, you exit the arena, you jump in the car, you go get fucking McDonald's and you go back to your shack and live the next 80 years. Come on, mate, you've already won. Have a look at the miracle that life is. Which is why when we talk about creating space, we talk about getting in the outside environment. Because what you see, the external environment, nature, you see massively significant things. Go and look at a tree. It's 120 years of age. It's fucking pretty crazy, man. Photosynthesis, how it works with the sun, the tree and the water like that, that's pretty insane. When you invest and immerse yourself in external environments, you see the significance. What it then does is pulls away the little. The little insignificance of the issues, troubles or traumas that you're currently facing. To look back and go, is it really that bad? Am I really fucking whinging about this sort of stuff? And here's just the key thing as we wrap this up. When you're facing hardships and you can't find a way to be grateful or show gratitude, just ask yourself a few questions. We've all got Stuff, we've all got a list. We've all been through shit and we will go through more shit as will. Don't do the five minute rule. You know, I'll give myself five minutes to be angry and that's it. You can't put a time on this. But if you do want to bring perspective into play with perspective, action and time to reinforce gratitude when you're under the pump and your back's against the wall. Yeah, maybe do ask yourself this question and manipulate and leverage those three elements by saying this situation A's hit your life. Alright? This is an ideal. Like, am I really in five years time, is this really going to rock me as much as it is now? In 15 years time, is this really going to be an issue? This doesn't take away from the sensitivity of what you're going through right now. I'm a human. I'm going to run through these emotions, I'm going to acknowledge them. They're a part of my life. I'm very fucking angry. Like when we're late for me to do a consultation while we're in Noosa because my wife gave me the wrong turn. I said, woman, please give me space. Just please don't speak to me for the next 20 minutes. Let me get this out of my system. Because the rage was real. And I used to have some very bad rage when I was young. She respected that. She understood that. We just had silence in the car. I got back to our resort, I did the consultation and everything was okay. So it's not taking away the time that you need to communicate. Be clear with those around you that you connected to so you don't fuck shit up either. Because we didn't after that. Boom, Beautiful. We're awesome. Respect, mutual understanding, let's move forward. But it gave me the opportunity in that 20 minutes to run through this and go, all right, all right, I'm going to be a little bit late. I don't like being late, man of my word, so on and so forth. This doesn't matter. This won't matter in five hours, let alone five months, let alone five years. Let it work through your system. Feel the anger because that gives you control, that helps you feel control and significance. That's a default for a lot of men. Let that shit pump out of your body, realign and then move forward with your life. Move on with your life. Use the time, use the action, use the perspective to ask yourself a series of questions. Okay, what can I do now? These emotions won't let leave. How Can I change them? How can I change my situation or environment? Is this something that really matters? Or should I pull my fucking head in, get over it and move on? And you know, what if I can't? Okay, cool. This is serious, Al. This is a big thing. This is hard. Like, I've just gone through some pretty heavy shit with my family, mate. That's okay. Like, I'm not telling you to shortcut anything. Live through that. But don't beat yourself up over it. Like you can't let it run its course. Don't think that there's something wrong with you either. If you can't find gratitude, if you don't show it at times, don't think that you're the problem either, mate. This is life. You will go through it for a period of time. It might take half an hour, might take half a month. That's okay. This too shall pass. I need you to understand that as well. When you do go through heavy shit or trauma, this too shall pass. But what will be, and this is my point as we wrap this up, what will be, I promise you, man, what will be your rod and staff through those real heavy moments are the massive victories. You've gotten through, the small victories consistently over the last three months, three years, 15 years, by turning up being a true leader and showing true gratitude for the gift and miracle that life is. It's not what you're going to be consciously thinking because your head will be all over the place, especially when there's heavy shit with your family. Your head will be all over the place. But what will subconsciously realign, reorganize and help you stay the path and not go down into the pit or fall away or feel like you're being pulled into the minus? A the lesser version of you is what you've subconsciously been building out by being a real fucking leader. By showing real gratitude in life, not by writing down 20 lines every day in the same format. Not having something to think about and you're clutching at straws trying to find, find a way to be grateful. But actually showing it. Show it in how you turn up. Go all in on your children, go all in on your marriage. What have you got to lose? You've got plenty to lose if you don't go all in on life. Understand when you're tired, understand when shit hits the fan, understand your feelings and emotions, understand your triggers. But don't take away the fact that you have a choice. And your identity is a choice reinforced by truth. That's all identity is to bounce back up, get back up on your feet and then go all in on life again. You do that, mate, I promise you when the shit hits the fan, you'll really know what gratitude is. I hope you enjoyed this episode and got a lot out of it. Find an area right now and find your groove, find your tools. I've got Spotify playlists I'm happy to share with you. Runs through Relaxation Perceptions. I've got a few different ones that really work well. Alexildownmovement.com if you want that I'll email you so you can have a copy of my Spotify playlists to just realign and reset you but really put you in a position to go. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, higher version of me. I'm back. Now let's. Let's get to work. Rub your hands together. It's time to fucking win. Let's go out, let's hunt and let's get back in front again.