I Know I Should Be Grateful, But… How to Practice Gratitude as a Man

How are you? Come on in. Good to have you. Today, it's that time of the year. It's the time of the year when we talk about gratitude. Don't worry. I'm going to talk about gratitude the way Scott talks about it, which is a little less touchy feeling than some people do because I'm a man.

I know I'm going to say it out loud. Is that allowed in 2026? And I am. And I think like a man. I act like a man. I am a man. And men think differently than women.

I'll talk about that a little bit. But we're going to talk about gratitude. Naturally, it's the time of year when we think about it because it's the most spiritual time of the year. It is the Daily Boost from MotivationToMove.com sitting right between the race cars and the rocket ships.

Here in Port Orange, Florida, it's me, Scott Smith. Hey, Scott Smith on Instagram. Happy to have you here today. It's a weird time of the year for me.

It always is. It's a good time, but it's very predictable what I do. And so hang on for the ride because this year we'll make some big changes toward the end of the year.

Now I don't know exactly what they'll be yet, but who cares? I know they're going to change and that's going to be awesome. But interesting time of the year for me. And it's amazing how things change and don't change in life.

Maybe that's why I'm thinking gratitude today. Run into some history. things that have happened to me over time. And I think because of the time of year that it is, I mean, November 1st hits and all the Christmas commercials come out and everything changes and we just kind of get into it, right?

Can you join me tomorrow at my school group? FaceYourPassion.com. People have asked me, what's the difference between that and maybe your inner circle or your personal coaching, things like that.

Honestly, it's just a matter of access and how much time we spend on it and the deeper we go. But the Face Your Passion group is a really cool place. And the reason it is because it's based on my concepts that just kind of work.

But we've moved away from forcing you just to go through a course all by yourself and study. You can do that. We have all kinds of workshops and exercises for you. You can do all that stuff.

But ultimately, the power of the group is not even the community. The community is there to support you, but the power is the live coaching calls. The power is you get on with a group of people who are heading in the same direction. And whether you ask a question or not, you're going to learn a lot.

And I'm going to give you every single thing I possibly can in 90 minutes' time based on 20 years of doing this. And the fact that I'm dealing with dozens of people every single week at levels that most people can't imagine.

So if you'd like to join me and we're focused on year-end planning right now, go to faceyourpassion.com, get signed up. We'll see you Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern. If you can't make the call live, that's okay.

We'll give you the recording and we'll take a survey soon and find out if we should shift the call so we can get you on the call live too. Let's get into gratitude today a bit.

Why does it impact me like this? So this natural, I'll tell you it's coming. It always does for me. I think, again, it's a spiritual time of the year.

We move this direction. I go to church. It's like a little bit different experience this time of year as we all get ready for it, right? But if you don't know this, you know, my first wife passed away back in 2006 on December 6th of 2006.

And it was the worst possible thing you can imagine because I oh my gosh, she died during the holiday season. And yeah, I think in retrospect, looking back on it, it has impacted what we do this time of year for sure.

But it wasn't the worst thing. I mean, the worst thing we should die in, the time of year didn't really matter. And in many ways, it actually made it better.

Because it didn't intensify the death experience, it intensified the gratitude. I don't think I told you this in a while, but But she passed away. I made a goal.

It was to celebrate it as the best death ever. And I made it in front of my family. Guys, let's make a goal. It's the best death ever. And the theory was, well, if we're going to do it, let's go ahead and make it good, right?

It was so interesting because they looked at me like you're out of your mind, but we set off on our goal. And this is a little sidebar before we get into today's show.

That was about 10 years ago. So it was 10 years after the death. I ran into, I went to a funeral with my wife's, my current wife, that's weird, current wife, Joy. Joy's been my wife 20 years now.

Her mom passed away. We went to the funeral for her mom. And the pastor that showed up to do it was the same one that was on the hospice team that worked with my wife and our family when we went through that.

And when he recognized it was us, he came up to us. He said, oh, my God. I talk about you guys all the time. You were the most positive people and she was dying.

And we just, I mean, it's really bad to be there, but it was such a pleasure to see how you all dealt with it. I was so happy to hear that. It just, it made, it made such sense to me and it's never gone away from me. I've always had a great time with it.

It was a bad time. Trust me. Trust me. But I try to remember the things that are good. Now I'm a guy, I mentioned that beginning of the program, as most people know that I've got the baritone, baritone voice.

Makes me mostly a guy. Let's leave it at that. But I'm a guy and I think a little bit differently. Now, I've noticed this over the years. This is not me.

But this is just me paying attention to myself and to people I've coached in many, many years of doing this now. Women, it tends to be, are just more naturally grateful.

Maybe it's being a mom. I'm not sure what it is. But women just kind of get there faster. Women, you know, you see them with a baby. What's a brand new baby?

I don't know what it is. Guy's a little bit different. I can't tell you how many times a guy will say to me, and it happens every single week, absolutely every week.

He'll say to me, I know I should be grateful, but I'm just working so hard, man. I mean, I put so much into it. I'm doing great. I got all this stuff.

I know I should be grateful, and I'll stop. Oh, see, yes, go ahead and be grateful. It's fine. There's no qualification to it. Just be fine. And you know the science tells us that.

Counting your blessings makes you feel better about your life. It does. A lot of studies have been on that over time. Grateful people tend to move more when you're grateful for everything going around you.

You know, you'll, you'll actually get up and walk around. You go to the gym, you'll, you'll move your business more. You'll, you'll pick up the phone and call people.

Grateful people sleep better. They do. There's so much going on with this. A lot of people sit down at nighttime just before they go to bed and they write three things they're grateful for.

I've never done that. I'm a, Yeah, no, I never even tried it. I just know better. I know when I'm ready to go to bed, I'm ready to go to bed. So I tend to do it in the morning.

I tend to try to do it throughout the day. The other day, I'm walking the dogs around the block. And I was thinking about a couple of things. And I caught myself for just a moment because I don't know what happened.

We're buying a new car. And I was thinking, I was feeling very lucky to be able to buy what I want to buy. And I kind of thinking, so I wonder how many cars I've had in my life.

And I started counting the cars I had in my life. And what happened was it got to the point that I couldn't count them all. I can't remember what I had when I was 17, sort of. Well, okay, first car was a Chevy Impala.

But I stopped there because, man, that's crazy. I've had a lot of stuff. And very quickly, I began to lean into grandkids. I've got five of them now, and everybody's healthy.

And my kids are nearby, and most of them here. I've got just one out in Portland, Oregon. I began to think about the fact that I've run this business for so many years, and all the tens of thousands of people I've been able to help, millions of people at this point, And I do it in my bedroom.

Well, it's a studio, but it is a bedroom. You know what I mean, right? Couldn't say that before the pandemic. You work out of your home? Oh, no, I got a studio.

Now it's like, yeah, of course I do. Again, I realize no matter how hard it is on a day-to-day, just to kind of figure out that you're grateful for what you do, it's hard to do sometimes, isn't it?

I was a man, though. I had to count the materialistic things. That's what we do. Doesn't matter how much love we have in the world. I've been married to two women in my life.

The first one died. That's not my fault. That was something she chose to do or somebody chose to do. It was her time, right? Turned right around. I met another beautiful woman.

She's been here 20 years. That's it. Not going anymore. I'll stay right there. I said, that'll do. And she's a good one. Got to be grateful for that, right?

But I'm a man. I worked so damn hard. How many motorcycles have I had? Well, I've had six. I knew that right away. Always been grateful that I could just decide to buy it and let my work ethic and

Maybe my luck, I don't know what it is, has allowed me to do that. Maybe it's a good credit rating. Maybe it's a nice wife who allowed me to do that. But that doesn't matter really because it's a beautiful wife who's there who I made sure to make sure it was okay with her as well.

I was grateful to have her on my side. How many boats have I had? Too many is the answer. It's two. I got rid of both of them. And you know what they say about boats.

I'm a guy. I'm looking at that stuff. How many computers do I have? And what kind of impact do I make in the world? Oh, it's all about that. Not really.

It's got to be grateful for everything around you. It's walking on this planet knowing everything's okay. I don't have to fight the battle. Battle's already been won.

I just got to show up and lean into it. I always wonder why people are not grateful and joyful. I fight it all the time myself. It's so much easier just to be joyful.

That's the way we're supposed to be. But you can't get joyful if you're not grateful. What else have I had? Too much. Kind of wore me out thinking about it.

I had a little fun as I'm going around, literally going around the block. It's like, how many dogs have I had? How many cats have I had? That's such a materialistic man way to do it.

But that's what my head was at that time. Listen, I'm not going to judge myself or anybody else. I don't care how you get there, you get there. But it, boy, didn't take me long to come back around to the stuff.

The stuff of being healthy. Being a relatively older guy now and looking around me and I'm like, I'm fine. I'm good. Knock on wood. I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful for you listening today. You don't have to spend your time with me, but you do. I'm a hard guy to listen to sometimes. There's no doubt about it.

I don't know why that is. It's how I am. I'm grateful for what God gave me and how I deliver what I deliver. I'm not going to change now. I'm grateful for that you were given a set of ears to take it in and maybe learn something from it.

I am. But I'm a guy, which means sometimes I got to sit back and I got to force myself to be grateful. I got to force myself to take the time to think about it because otherwise I got stuff to do. Come on, get out of my way.

I got stuff to do. Go faster. Oh, man. I told you we're buying this car. My wife needed a new car. We decided to go electric and buy her a Tesla. And if you haven't bought one, you probably don't realize that they're not exactly quick about getting it to you.

They're not particularly nice about it. They just don't hear you ordered. We'll get it to you when we get it to you. It's very frustrating. And they put me off again.

And literally a day before we're supposed to get it, well, we're not going to get it until another week. I'm like, okay. Mm-hmm. In the moment, it's like so damn frustrating.

But then I just said, well, you know what? Not everybody can just go buy a new car. It's pretty awesome. And I don't know, there might have been an accident blocking the road on my way to get there.

And now I don't have to maybe get involved in the accident. I think I'm just cool to stay home and just wait. But we are coming at a time of the year when some people will lean very much in the materialistic parts of life. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think it's something to be grateful for. there's a little bit more than that. So do me a favor, if you will, if you, if you have the chance to, to start thinking like I was thinking, counting cars and counting boats and counting motorcycles, counting dogs, remember the other stuff too.

You'll get the most out of the year. This time of year, if you do that, I'll see you tomorrow on the daily boost.