Practicing Gratitude: What you need to know (#1)

02/28/20 • 47 min

On this adventure series, we are challenging ourselves with Practicing Gratitude. Those who practice gratitude report feeling better, find it easier to express kindness and compassion and clinical trials have indicated dramatic and lasting effects in a person’s life. According to Robert A. Emmons, professor of psychology at UC Davis, practicing gratitude can lower blood pressure, improve immune function and facilitate more efficient sleep.

The benefits of practicing gratitude seem too good to be true. So this month, we are putting it to the test.

So, how do you join us? That’s easy! Join our EMAIL LIST via our website so you don’t miss the challenge steps. Join our FACEBOOK GROUP so we can all learn from each other as we go along. And follow us on the socials, specifically INSTAGRAM, where we plan to share our progress every day of every challenge and hope you will too. Finally, SETUP AN ACCOUNT ON STICKK. It’s free. They have an Android and ios app, and it will provide our daily reminder and accountability so we stick to these goals! It’s super handy and seriously works. I recently completed 50 pushups a day for 30 days because I was being held accountable by my friends and reminded to do them every day by the helpful notification. Now I feel incomplete if I DONT kick out 50 pushups a day. The habit has been created. It’s awesome. Also, bonus feature, you can create an accountability metric by putting up your hard-earned money as an incentive to check-in. Say you make it $5 a day. If you miss a check-in, you will be charged $5. But that $5 will go to the Give Well Foundation. So we will do good for ourselves and for the world. Win-win. This is totally voluntary, but we encourage you do so, as it is proven to help you stick to your goals, and it’s the most good you can do.

Next, choose your adventure. We will be establishing 3 levels in which to participate. We are doing this because we want to standardize the challenge somewhat while acknowledging that everyone feels different levels of participation work for them. There is no right or wrong, this is not a competition. Just choose which level feels right to you.

Level 1:

Keep a journal every day

Level 2:

Keep a journal
Post your gratitude on social daily
Smile before every meal

Level 3:

Keep a journal
Post on social daily
Smile before every meal
Write a letter to a friend, loved one, co-worker, barista every day and deliver.
Create a Gratitude Station in your home.

We will cover these levels in depth next week, but we will share them this week so you can start preparing which level works for you and give you time to prepare.

What you'll need to participate:

So, obviously, you'll want to sign up for all the previously mentioned apps and socials and such. It's not mandatory, but it's proven to be more effective in helping you stick to this challenge. The one thing you will need regardless of the level you choose is a gratitude journal. Obviously you can pick up a blank notebook, use your phone or computer, however you like to jot things down. We really like the 5-minute journal, which has built-in prompt questions for morning and night, feels like the right size and weight for daily use and travel and even feels nice. Totally unnecessary, but quite delightful. You may also want to make sure you have paper and envelopes in the house if you choose to participate in Level 2-3. Finally, the Gratitude Station can be as simple as a jar in a designated area of your home. You’ll document gratitude and add it to this jar or vessel.

That’s it! Most people won’t need a thing to participate, but you may want to get crafty so we will leave it to you!

We want to see what you plan to use, your gratitude station, and what you are grateful for! So, we ask you tag us and use the hashtag #playingwithfire when posting!

The benefits of practicing gratitude seem too good to be true. So this month, we are putting it to the test.

Level 1:

Keep a journal every day

Level 2:

Keep a journal
Post your gratitude on social daily
Smile before every meal

Level 3:

Keep a journal
Post on social daily
Smile before every meal
Write a letter to a friend, loved one, co-worker, barista every day and deliver.
Create a Gratitude Station in your home.

We will cover these levels in depth next week, but we will share them this week so you can start preparing which level works for you and give you time to prepare.

What you'll need to participate:

That’s it! Most people won’t need a thing to participate, but you may want to get crafty so we will leave it to you!

We want to see what you plan to use, your gratitude station, and what you are grateful for! So, we ask you tag us and use the hashtag #playingwithfire when posting!

Previous Episode

Let's Get This Party Started

Each month, we will explore a new mental, physical or fiscal challenge, together. With beginner, intermediate and expert level tiers and built-in accountability, there will be something for everyone. It's time to uncouple our self worth from our net worth so we can all live a rich, happy and fulfilled life.

I’ve teamed up with my beautiful wife and friend, Taylor, to take on these challenges and experiment together. I should let you know, she is reluctant, slightly nervous and maybe a little annoyed about this whole thing. So, this should be a good time. We are committing to 12 months, 12 challenges, 21 days a piece. We are going to test new ways to live better, together.

So we hope you join us each week as we learn, improve and break things. We will take inspiration from many sources, but we’ve leaned on James Clear and his lessons from his book, “Atomic Habits” to guide us in constructing these challenges.

Starting next week, we will be announcing the first challenge. Here’s how this will work. We’ve modeled each challenge around the Habit Loop. There are 4 phases of the Habit Loop, The Cue, The Craving, The Response and The Reward. According to James, “The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits.”

So, we will cue up a problem you likely face in your daily life, motivate you to crave a solution, develop the plan to respond to this problem with a solution and by accomplishing this response, reward you with a new habit! To be more specific, I’ll cover each week in more detail. We will use the first challenge we have planned, “Gratitude” as an example.

Week 1, we will setup and discuss practicing gratitude, how it works, how it applies to our lives, why it’s important, and various experts take on gratitude. This is known as the Cue. We will make it abundantly clear and obvious why adapting gratitude habits will be a good use of your time. We will discuss what we are looking forward to, our concerns, how you can join us, what, if anything, you’ll need to participate, and additional listening and reading opportunities on the topic at hand.

Week 2 will Cue the challenge, rules, specific levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert), tips and strategies and announce our personal plans for the challenge. We will also kick off the challenge on social and Stickk, our preferred accountability platform. This is the kickoff!

Week 3, we will bring in an expert or discuss our own findings, or both. We will cover how we feel, what’s working, what’s not, and ask you to weigh in as well!

Week 4, the final week, we’ll celebrate our success! Review our pros and cons, and decide whether to make it a habit or not, discuss what we’ve learned from the experience, how we’ve benefitted (or regressed). All the things! We will also share ways to continue with the challenge, and turn it into a lifestyle choice if you so choose.

Each challenge will run 21 days, with a week break in between. 21 days is widely misinterpreted as the length in which it takes to develop a habit. The reality is, a habit can be formed anywhere from 18 to 254 days, depending on the person, environment or habit in question. In other words, we likely won’t be developing these habits into action in 21 days. This whole experiment is meant to be a launching pad. I keep hearing about new ideas, trends, diets, practices that are designed to improve your life, but I often feel these go in one ear and out the other and end up as a stack of “I should be doing this”, eventually making me feel even worse about all the things I SHOULD be doing, but am not. This podcast is aimed to take that pressure off, and gives us a place to give those things a shot. Eventually, we hope to redefine ourselves as fear facing, norm busting badasses.

Join our Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/playingwithfire/

Create an account on Stickk at https://www.stickk.com/ and join us as we take monthly challenges head on!

Watch our documentary today!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2vLnbrt
iTunes: https://tinyurl.com/yxxvgnql
Google Play:

Next Episode

Practicing Gratitude: Challenge Accepted (#2)

The benefits of practicing gratitude seem too good to be true. So this month, we are putting it to the test. We will begin this challenge Thursday, March 5th. If you are listening to this later than March 5th, no worries at all! These challenges will always be available for you to engage. If you catch us halfway thru one you are interested in, simply sign up and start your own 21 day challenge. You’ll still enjoy some weekly info from us, or be able to go back and listen to the episodes as you go through the 3 weeks of each challenge.

So, how do you join us? That’s easy!

SETUP AN ACCOUNT ON STICKK. It’s free. You’ll setup a profile and commit to our gratitude campaign. This is where you can choose which level you want to participate in. Once you’ve chosen, you can set your stakes..You can put up some money to go to the effective altruism approved Give Well Foundation, our preferred charity, if you miss a day, and set the amount you’re willing to lose each day to help you stick to your goal. You can also lose that money to a friend, foe, to Stickk, or even an anticharity of your choice. We ask that you don’t choose the anticharity, as effective as it might be to help you commit. Stickk is working on an option for us to opt out of that option on our campaigns altogether. Lastly, you can select “no money at stake” to opt out of this option. It’s totally up to you.

Next, you can set your referee. This can be “on your honor”, or an individual. This can be a friend, relative, spouse, etc. and you’ll enter their email or if you’re participating in this challenge with someone you live with, consider using each others Stickk username.

Finally, you can add supporters who will help cheer you on! (with this challenge, it doesn’t seem super important, but if you were doing something much harder like quitting smoking, this could be an amazing feature and might come in handy if you find our challenges difficult.) You can also auto-accept supporters directly from Stickk, which allows us to support each other with ease. You can also invite friends on Facebook, or through email addresses or stickk usernames. And again, you can skip this altogether if you aren’t in need of external support.

That’s it! Stickk will send you a daily reminder via email, phone notification or both, to help you remember to stickk to your commitment! It’s very easy to setup, and it can be as complex or passive as you want it to be.

Again, go to Just go to stickK.com/playingwithfire or download the app and our activation code is gratitude (all lowercase).

Next, choose your adventure. We will be establishing 3 levels on Stickk in which to participate. We are doing this because we want to standardize the challenge somewhat while acknowledging that everyone feels different levels of participation work for them. There is no right or wrong, this is not a competition. Just choose which level feels right to you.

Level 1:

Keep a journal every day

Level 2:

Keep a journal
Post your gratitude on social daily
Smile before every meal

Level 3:

Keep a journal
Post on social daily
Smile before every meal
Write a letter to a friend, loved one, co-worker, barista every day and deliver.
Create a Gratitude Station in your home.

Join our EMAIL LIST via our website so you don’t miss the challenge steps. Join our FACEBOOK GROUP so we can all learn from each other as we go along. And follow us on the socials, specifically INSTAGRAM, where we plan to share our progress every day of every challenge and hope you will too.

What you'll need to participate: