The 4 G’s Daily Practice: Gratitude, Goals, Growth, Grace

Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Do you ever feel like you're one decision away from changing your life, but Aren't sure which way to turn? Today we're breaking down the secret formula that so many top-level achievers use to untie their knots and activate crazy momentum. We're diving into Denel Delgado's four Gs: gratitude, why you need exactly ten specific items every day; goals, the simple three-goal method that stops overcomplicating goal setting. Growth, how to turn learning and growth into action with daily training sessions. And finally, grace, the antidote to pain that stops your past from slowing your progress. It may sound simple, but this daily practice will change your life. If you're ready to go all in on your potential, let's get started. This is starting year 5 of me doing this practice using Danelle's 4 Gs, because I genuinely think that they've had such a tremendous impact in my life. I want to take a deep dive into why these 4 are so transformative, starting with what I think is the core, gratitude. Now, let me preface this with saying that if you already have some of these habits, then this might offer you some additional tips or tricks, or maybe some tweaks that you can use to make the habit better for you. If you're starting on the ground floor and you've never done any of these, or you've only done them inconsistently, Then we're gonna cover multiple arrays that you can apply to cement them as daily habits that you can grow, tweak, and change over time. The first one's pretty simple. Gratitude. Write down 10 things you're grateful for every day and watch them stack up. A lot of people oversimplify this because they think they're always gonna write down the same exact things every day. You know, for example, my wife, my kids, my dog, my house. And those things are great to be thankful for. Don't get me wrong. My advice is to keep it fresh by Writing the things that you're grateful for that happened in the last 24 hours. Some people like to do gratitudes in the morning so they can start their day right. Other people like to do them in the evening so they can reflect on their previous day. I do them in the morning. My wife does them in the evening typically. And so it just depends on how you want to do it. Now, if you're going to be doing them in the morning, I do recommend Glenn Lundy's advice of doing them first thing before you even pick up your phone. Because believe it or not, sometimes if I go too long into the day, I start having difficulty remembering the previous day and the specifics of the things that I wanna be grateful for. So it always does me best to do them first thing in the morning before I have any additional information flooding into my brain from social media, from texts, emails, or anything like that. So by reflecting back on the previous 24 hours, that gives you a little bit more nuance into not writing things that are extremely repetitive that will potentially dilute the effect of the practice itself. Now, like we talk about often on this channel, reps are important. So I'd rather you just get started, look at the last 24 hours and just write down 10 things. And if you're looking to ramp that up into being more specific, there are some additional things that you can do to kind of focus in what to maximize this habit even more. The first one is detail. The more you can write, the more you can reflect and the more you can grow. In fact, Michael Cirillo, when he was talking about gratitudes, is he loves to put reasons in his gratitudes. So for example, if he says, I'm grateful for a conversation I had yesterday with someone, he'll often write a because as a part of the gratitude as well, because that helps him connect the emotion and how he felt to the thing he's grateful for, because it made me feel seen or understood or heard, whatever. So the thing you're grateful for, and then the reason why. That why is really a powerful thing if you reflect on it 10 times a day, every single day. Additionally, I believe that a detailed gratitude is gonna be way more powerful than a super generic one. My house. Why your house? What are you grateful for in your house? Or maybe you write down your spouse. Why your spouse today? Did they do anything specific? Did they make you feel great today? What did they do? Why did they do it? How did it make you feel? So just ask some simple questions on the things that pop up in your mind and then write them down in a little bit more detail. Now, we all have days that aren't ideal. So if you're one of those that's like, well, I never claim a bad day, well, good for you. But you're gonna have days that aren't ideal, right? So because of that, what do you do when you have a rough day? Well, this is exactly what gratitudes are meant for. So this is gonna be a thing that especially initially is gonna stretch you beyond what you're used to, because I don't think humans are naturally wired to be grateful when things aren't great. So when you have a rough day, it's even more critical to find things that you're grateful for. And over time, that will start to transform your mind and reframe even the worst day as a day that can stretch and grow you and make you better, essentially unlocking the lessons of that day, sometimes even helping you not repeat them depending on how much control you have over the things that happen that day. Either way, it's a great reflection tool. Now, Danelle has some tips and tricks of her own that she's said to us over the years, and these can get a little intense. So for example, If you're someone that has some areas of challenge with the way you view yourself, maybe having grace for yourself, maybe thinking you're less than or you're not good enough or any of those things that are pretty common with insecurity and battling with one's past, then you might not think super highly of yourself. In which case, she would encourage you every single day for 30 days to write down 10 things you're grateful for about yourself. Like, Attributes, physical, mental ability. And here's the kicker, you can't repeat yourself in those entire 30 days. It's brutal, but so rewarding. What are you grateful for about yourself? What are your gifts? What are your talents? What are you good at? And how can you use those to help others? It can really be a powerful tool to reframe how you see yourself and maybe allow you to see yourself how others do, especially the ones you love and trust. And if you're a person of faith, Maybe how God sees you. And just how powerful that is, it can also be super powerful when you feel stuck with somebody else. If you're currently at odds with somebody, very powerful thing you can do is write down 10 things in the next moment you can of why you're grateful for them. And I would argue it's probably a great thing to do because it's absolutely the last thing you wanna do. And because of that, you should do it. And like we said earlier, reps are the key. So James Clear talks about in his book Atomic Habits, that reps are even more critical than daily. So because of that, Danelle has told us, if you have an absolutely wrecked day, write down 100 gratitudes. That is absolutely intense. But if you want an extreme level up, go for it and let me know how it goes. I think this is the first step in the 4 Gs because it is the single most transformative one, in my opinion, especially if you do it daily. Especially if you do it over years, it can really reframe how you approach things, circumstances, people, and challenges. And over time, you can help others who feel stuck and bring them alongside with you. The second G is goals. Now, if you're anything like me as a recovering perfectionist, I didn't write down goals for most of my life. And I think there were a couple things tied to that. Fear of failure was definitely one of them. If it wasn't written down, you can't fail it, right? If you don't commit to it, then it doesn't matter. But also I was scared of setting, especially time boundaries. They'll tell you SMART goals are ones that have an expiration date. You have to accomplish said goal by what date and time. And I don't know why, but that always just freaked me out. But I can tell you, 5 years ago I started this and I am so thankful that I did. Now, so many people when they start this out really overcomplicate it. Like, what should my goal be? Like, what's my aspiration? Like, I don't wanna think too far ahead and then get stuck or not see what I should have known before or whatever. Sometimes thinking that far ahead scares people. Then other people don't wanna write things that seem super silly. They're like, well, I feel like if I'm gonna write down only 3, like they have to be ambitious and intense and very forward-thinking. And they discount anything that might be a daily goal. And I think that's a mistake. You have flexibility here. You can certainly write down something that is ambitious and maybe a little long-term thinking, And you can absolutely write down something that is very short-term. So for example, we're still in February, almost at the beginning of the year. So you may have a fitness or a weight goal by the end of the year. You wanna lose X pounds. That's a pretty far-thinking goal. But by that very same token, you could also have a goal that you wanna complete for a single day. And then moving on, you wanna do it for a week. Maybe you wanna do it for a month, depending on where you're at and what you need to do. It's completely acceptable to have goals like that. Now, I always like to say that it also depends on your mental situation. For example, a therapist for somebody in deep, deep depression is gonna have them start with extremely small goals. Their mental state is typically pretty fragile, and failure can be something that causes someone to spiral even further. Therapists know this, so they set really, really small goals like, hey, Today, I want you to change outta your pajamas. So for example, they might set goals for a particular week. Say, hey, next time we meet, I want you to have accomplished all 3 of these. One day, you need to change outta your pajamas and just get dressed for the day. Another day, I want you to go to the store. You don't even have to buy anything. Just get out and about, get some sunshine, get some movement. And then finally, send one encouraging text to someone you love and see how that goes. These are goals that are very specific to that individual in that state that they're in. So have some wisdom, look at yourself and reflect where you are in life, where you are mentally, and what might be the best thing for you from a goal-setting perspective. Remember, you're starting this out. If you're starting this out fresh, you don't have to start with home runs. Just start getting some reps. In Danelle's goal setting, you will notice that there are specific headers in the goals. There's going to be why, when, Who, sacrifice, result, and reward. Now let's run through those. Now, why is gonna be your motivation? Why are you doing this to begin with? So for example, fitness goal, it's easy. I wanna lose weight. I wanna feel better. I wanna move better, whatever. My health, my kids, being around longer, being around for my daughter's wedding, whatever that reason is. The more you can tie it into something specific, something that pulls on your heart, obviously, The more motivated you would be to accomplish that goal. The second one is a dreaded one. This one was the one that again kept me from writing down goals. And it's the when. You got to have a deadline. When are you going to accomplish this by? Now, one of Danelle's principles is assets always adjust. So listen, this isn't set in stone and concrete. Okay? So if you decide to set a quarterly goal and you get a month in and realize, Hmm, I greatly misjudged this. Sometimes you'll misjudge it in the other way where you're like, man, I'm over halfway there and it's only been a month. Maybe I need to reevaluate this. And sometimes it'll be the opposite. So just because you set a date doesn't mean you can never change it. And if you change it, it's failure. That's dumb. So have enough grace for yourself to understand that changing the deadline isn't Armageddon. But you do need to write a date when you plan on accomplishing this. Now, who is identifying the key players for you accomplishing this goal? Who can help you? Who do you need to rely on to accomplish this goal? So for a fitness goal, it's going to be obviously you, maybe your trainer, maybe your family in supporting you, or maybe even going with you. If you have nutrition goals, sometimes your family needs to be somewhat on board with those goals so that maybe you don't have that kind of tempting food in the house, right? And next is sacrifice. We all We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and there's so many things bidding for our time, and empty space gets so easily filled by entertainment, our smartphones, and things like that. So you have to be willing to recognize what you're willing to give up and not give up to get to your goal. So this might mean knowing what you're going to say no to during this time so that you can accomplish this goal. And identify your non-negotiables. No, I will not bend or sacrifice this. Something for me was that I hit a period where I was trying to accomplish so much I was willing to sacrifice sleep to get things done. Long-term, that's obviously not a great idea for optimizing your health. And I had some health issues because of it. So that made me realize there's definitely things that you can sacrifice to get to a goal and to accomplish something you want to do. But there are definitely some things that you shouldn't give up. So you got to know what those are. And if you write them down every day, you're not going to forget. Now the last one is lumped together. It's result and reward. Unfortunately, a lot of people get these 2 confused 'cause they think they're the same thing. So for example, a lot of people will write under result and reward for a fitness goal. They might write down, well, I lost the weight, which that's great, but a result and the reward aren't the same thing. The result is what you gain from achieving the goal, which is gonna be you lost the weight, you're fitter now, you gain knowledge from reading a certain number of books that you targeted, learning a new skill, learning a new language, whatever. And while those things might be rewarding, That's not the point of the reward. The point of the reward is to play on a little bit of the brain science behind achieving a goal, chasing after something, and achieving the goal. There's dopamine circuits that you activate in the chase and ultimately in the accomplishment. And the reward is a huge part of that. So you wanna start practicing now recognizing what you're going to reward yourself with when you accomplish whatever it is. Now, granted, only you can determine what is appropriate for you and what is a proportional reward for a particular goal. If waking up and brushing your teeth is your goal, no judgment, the reward being a Rolex Submariner probably isn't the right proportional choice, you know? But if you have a crazy goal that you've written down for a long period of time that has a tremendous amount of meaning, then a really significant reward like a vacation is totally acceptable. This is also an area where you can get your family, friends, and loved ones involved as well, particularly if maybe they could play a part in the reward. Danelle talks about this often. She'll get her kids involved in saying, hey, if I accomplish this goal, we're going to take this vacation to this place. Naturally, they get all excited and then they're interested. They're always asking, hey, you know, how many more deals have you closed? How close are we? What's the number? Are we on pace? Those kinds of things. It's really exciting to get your entire family involved. So I highly recommend that you do that. And what you'll notice is the more you follow through with rewarding yourself for accomplishing goals, the more excited you'll be to continue this habit. It's an extremely powerful thing. And I'll tell you from personal experience, I've not always rewarded myself, and it's a type of cheapening and can even be a lack of integrity with yourself. I had someone call me out on that once. I kept moving the goalposts for myself on a reward, a goal and a reward. And someone said, man, you value integrity quite a bit, but it's weird that you keep lying to yourself. And I was like, all right, I gotcha. So be mindful of that. Don't cheapen yourself. If it's something that you need to do anyway, and you maybe feel like, well, I need to do this goal, and maybe there's even a degree of self-punishment involved with trying to achieve the goal. I've seen that happen sometimes. And people are like, you know, I don't feel right about rewarding myself 'cause this should just be what I should do anyway. Well, then maybe you need to rethink that goal. I'm also not a huge fan of the negative emotions swirling around there. So you need to kind of do a little self-assessment there. And I think you also need to get over yourself and set that reward, whatever it might be, whatever's proportional to it, you probably need to do it. Let's just go ahead and do it. The third one is growth. Simply put, this is 30 minutes a day, at least, of some kind of learning. This can be reading, podcasting, videos, even chatting with AI on a particular skill and something you want to get better at. Honestly, when you get in the habit of this one, it can be one of my favorites. And it changes for me. There was one year where I wanted to get through as many books as possible. So I asked a bunch of people that I knew, I made social media posts of like, hey, what have been the top 3 most impactful books in your life? And people just flooded in with their answers. This was at the beginning of a year. And I just bought all of them on Audible and just went to town. I think that year I read 20 to 25 books. And it was a super powerful year. Since then, I've done things like courses in Peterson Academy, learning new skills, and finding a bunch of ways to grow. And honestly, podcasts and YouTubing are 2 of my favorite things. But what I love about this is that's not where it stops. In fact, you have to identify one thing from that session that you're going to implement moving forward. And what's great about that is it takes the things that you learned and allows you to identify how you can leverage that in the future. And all of this plugs into the daily anything changes everything, because if you're growing every single day and finding one thing to implement from that growth, then by the end of the year, can you imagine how different you might be? So this one gives you some creative license. What's something that you've been wanting to learn about, but just haven't had the time? Well, this habit cements you having to find 30 minutes at least to dedicate to that one thing. And like Glenn Lundy said a couple episodes ago, scientists have discovered that if you commit yourself to one thing for 17 minutes a day, every single day for 365 days, you will be better than 95% of the people in the world. Remember, that's 8 billion people. You'll be better than 95% of people. That's still a lot of people in that 5%, but that's still pretty significant statistic. You're not going to be world elite, but that's okay. If you practice piano for 17 minutes every day for a year, you're not gonna be in a symphony orchestra, but that skill's probably gonna be pretty impressive. So let's do it. 30 minutes of growth every single day and watch and see what can happen. The 4th one is grace. Now, this is identifying one pain point, which can be something like a mistake, a hurt, a frustration, releasing it and writing it off. It's a way of using forgiveness as an antidote every single day. Now, for me personally, there's 2 ways I like to frame this step, and I like to look at it from the past or the future. I'll explain what I mean. So for the past, it's easy. It's what most people would associate with something like grace and forgiveness. What's something in the past that is affecting you in the present that you need to release, that you need to forgive? Now, a couple notes on this. This is obviously a difficult thing for people because they feel like if they forgive, they forget, and some things you just can't forget. Now, I don't think forgiveness is forgetting, but we might need to get into that in another episode. But from a top overview, we do know that if we hang on to bitterness against someone else, it's equivalent to drinking poison to try to hurt them. It is not a long-term strategy for mental health. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But in practice, it's harder to do for sure. And because of that, I think daily focus in this area is super critical. So for me, I reflect back. You know, what's something in the last 24 hours or in this week, or if you've never done the practice, it might be going back years or maybe even decades. What is something that keeps nagging at you that would benefit you to release? So that would involve putting people's names down. If you're really hard on yourself, maybe putting your name down. Again, recovering perfectionists, I had to put my name down quite a bit. And when you do that, you are releasing that. You are giving that person grace, which you may not be ready for. But that's what we're trying to get to. And when you get in the habit of doing this every single day, maybe you're not ready to write down a name that continually pops up in your mind. That's fine. I get it. But the hope is someday, you'll be ready to put that on the altar of that line and actually write down their name. The final detail about looking back and forgiveness is that it can be a cycle. I say a lot of times that forgiveness is similar to grief. It comes in waves. And so have some grace with yourself. And I've heard people say, man, I thought I released that and it's just come back. Yeah, for sure. Just release it again. It's no big deal. Don't be hard on yourself, especially depending on the severity of the situation and what it was and what you're trying to release. It could take some serious time to get in that habit and to truly free yourself from the grasp of that situation. Now, I said I also sometimes focus on the future. Now, this one I always kind of joke about, but it can be something that can be really transformative for you as well. So for example, if I know I'm going to spend the entire day with my wonderful wife, I might choose to write her name down for grace. Why? Am I saying that she's that hard to be around? No. However, being in close proximity to somebody for 8 to 12 hours increases the chances that that person might frustrate you, get on your nerves, Or whatever. And so sometimes I will preemptively write her name down because that proximity might require me to have some additional grace for her, not because she's a basket case, but because I need that grace. And I can tell you, I loved it because it reframes my mind from the beginning of the day of having grace for my wife from the start. And combined with all the other habits we've talked about of using the law of positive intent, it can turn what could have been an average day To an incredible day. And that wraps up all 4 Gs. Now, you can certainly do this on a blank piece of paper, in a notebook every single day, in an iPad if you're into that kind of thing. Yet out of respect for Danelle, I also tell you she has a journal. It's about an inch thick, has pages for every single day of the year. And that journal is a handwritten one on purpose. There's a lot of neurological evidence to prove that writing things down on pen and paper activates different parts of your brain than typing and can have a significant significant impact on how something like this, a practice like this, like journaling, can affect your growth and optimize that into the future. If you're going to do something, you kind of want it to have the maximum impact, right? You're like, if I'm spending the time to do it, I want it to be as effective as possible, right? If you're going to invest money into a stock, you'd like it to go not just kind of high, not just mildly up, you want it to go to the moon, right? Well, the same thing with this. Why would you do a habit To only get half the benefit. If you're into typing, I get it. So am I. I'm a techie guy. However, I've handwritten this either in pen and paper or on an iPad with an Apple Pencil. So she sells the journals. They're mostly blank structure. There's not a lot of reading or anything like that. There's just blanks with simple prompts that you just fill in every single day. Super, super powerful. I'll link those in the description for you if you want to pick one up. But I just love how powerful and transformative these 4 habits have been in my life. And I wanted to go into a little bit more depth to explain why, some of the tips and tricks on how, and hope it can be a blessing for you as it has been for me. And what I love more than anything is people in my life that I care about have seen this bless me over the last 5 years and have jumped on board, including my wife, other people really close to me, and even my colleagues and employees, and some people I don't even know really well, and so many others. So if you're looking for a way to optimize your mind, do this for a year and tell me how you feel. Thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into action. Until next time, keep moving forward because daily anything changes everything.