Get You Some Gratitude
Hello, everybody, and welcome back in to another episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. I am one of your co hosts. I'm Scott Olson. I'm a retired FBI agent. And in addition to being a podcast co host, I'm a private investigator.
Scott:With me, as always, is the other co host
Shawn:of Hi, guys. I'm Shawn Baker Garcia, and I am indeed the co host of 2 Parachutes Podcast. I am a happy accidental CEO and global security enthusiast. And we're just delighted to be here with you all for another session.
Scott:Yeah, so the way we do things, as a reminder to everybody is we pick a start point and jump like parachutes jump out of an aircraft and see where the wind pushes us. I am pretty interested in this one, Sean, because my understanding is you've got gratitude on the mind. So let's jump out of the gratitude aircraft and see where that gets us.
Shawn:All right, let's go. So in fact, you are correct. I do have gratitude on the mind for many, many different reasons, not least of which just because I recently had a series of just, I don't know, interesting life events, some of them quite mundane and normal, some extraordinary, that have really called to the top of my mind what gratitude as a concept, and why as a practice, it is so essential to thriving as a human being. And so let me just kind of unpack it a little bit, set the stage, and then we can get into it. You know, what are those life things?
Shawn:Well, let's see, I had my stepdaughter just recently graduate from high school, you know, obviously coming to the end of a major chapter of her life journey. Super grateful for all the people who were involved in helping us to bring her, you know, to this point and have her be a successful graduate, and onward to whatever comes next for her. You know, I've got some family members that are going through a lot of struggle. And I personally have been through some struggles just busy physiologically, know, the last five, six years, we've talked about those things. So we don't need to rehash them.
Shawn:But there's so there's a lot of gratitude, I see the world through different eyes right now, I just see it through like, you know, where is the abundance and, you know, not just in a material sense, but in a spiritual and just, you know, familial sense, like, are your people? And then recently, I was watching the series, The Chosen for the second time with my husband, and we're now watching it with my stepdaughter, who we want to get through all of it before she goes off to college, because we think it's a great launch point for her to just have in her mind all those lessons, as you walk through Jesus and his disciples sort of, you know, ministry in the days leading up to and just after his crucifixion. So one of the principal sort of elements that stuck out to me, you know, that I was formerly unaware of, was something called the Dayanu. And I may be butchering that actual word. I'm sure it's Hebrew in nature.
Shawn:But what I can tell you about it is that it is a verifiable practice, or, you know, you could say it's like a prayer, I guess, that the Jewish community, maybe they say this during the Passover holiday. It's really, what it comes down to is it's a gratitude sort of sentiment, where, for those of you who haven't seen The Chosen, or are in the middle of it, you know, just as a little spoiler alert, I'm going to go into a little bit about what this is, so just be forewarned. And then maybe we can talk about it as sort of a great model for how to live one's life, just in general, Scott, and what some of your, if this unpacks anything for you. But the disciples sit around for one of their Passover seders with Jesus in the show, and they each take a turn saying, you know, starting out for something that they're grateful for. And you know, I don't exactly remember the exact order of what they were talking about, but like, we'll just say they kicked it off by saying, you know, okay, here I am going on Peter, and I'm saying, if you had brought us Jesus out of Egypt and not made judgments against our adversaries, Dianu, meaning it would have been enough.
Shawn:And then the next disciple will say Andrew goes, and he says, If you had made judgments against our adversaries and had not destroyed their idols, Dianu, it would have been enough if you had, you know, taken us through the land and, you know, split the waters, the Red Sea, and not gotten us to the other side. It would have been enough, etcetera, etcetera. So you kind of get the idea behind what the point is. It's sort of layered gratitude, saying that nothing is guaranteed, and we're not necessarily entitled to any of these blessings or gifts. But when they occur, we are mindful of them, and we are going to state them clearly and loudly, you know, so that, you know, in this context, our creator God is, you know, aware of our gratitude, but that the community is collectively acknowledging this gratitude.
Shawn:And so, I guess just in a world where there's so much doom and gloom being projected into the universe and into our social media feeds, and among family members, as you know, again, we live in a politically divided world, you know, there's a lot of frustration and misunderstanding and anger and, frankly suspicion on both sides of that political divide here and around the world, I think. I just thought it was a great reminder that in the grand scheme of things, as a human civilization, we still have so very much to be grateful for, regardless of what your religious, or political, or any kind of national affiliation is. So that's what it unlocked for me. It has been a lifted weight off me since really calling this to deliberate mind. And it is, I have a joy about me lately that I just, it's infectious.
Shawn:I want to share that. I want to share it with others. And anyway, I'm sharing it with you now, Scott. So what do you think? I don't know if this unlocks anything for you.
Scott:Well, it it does, and you know, the the problem that I have with our conversations on the podcast here is that listening to you unlock so much that I don't know where to get started and I feel like it would be very easy for me to monologue through the rest of our time together on this, talking about the variables. So what I'm going to do is try and discipline myself to identify two potential pathways that we can take, describe them and see if either one of those resonate with you. The first is this concept of being grateful for receiving part rather than the whole. I think the ritual in the TV show, The Chosen, as you said is, and for those who haven't become aware of it or haven't seen it, it's the current version and it's actually quite good. I've watched all five seasons and I hope they do a sixth, but it is about the life of Jesus the Christ.
Scott:And it's while they're sitting prior to one of the celebratory meals during their year of celebrations, they sit and they do this staged thing where they don't say what they're grateful for. They identify a little sliver of what they're grateful for and then identify what the next thing could be, but say that they're grateful for the peace that they got. I think that in the current public discourse is really important because what do we see right now, certainly in The United States, but even politically and socially across the world. It's this idea of if a person doesn't get 100% of what they want and what they think is correct, then it is morally reprehensible for that person to agree. You have to get everything, and if you don't fight to get everything, then essentially you're seen as a bad person.
Scott:And what does that do? That leads us to fighting all the time because people don't agree and you go back you know, even as shorter time ago as fifty years ago in United States politics, the moral high ground, the most important thing that you could do was to find the compromise, to find the overlap of the Venn diagram, to find the place where we see things the same way and build from there. And what we've gone from is that being the moral high ground to I win you lose being the moral high ground. And so I think looking at that current dialogue that we have and approaching it in terms of gratitude, you know, it's understanding that, hey, I can reach a compromise with somebody I don't like and I'm grateful for that. I can get 60 or 70% of what's important to me and I'm grateful for that.
Scott:In this situation, they can get 60 or 70% of what's important to them. I'm grateful for that. If we approach disagreement through this lens of gratitude, maybe we're going to find ourselves in a better place where I feel good about what I'm doing, you can feel good about what you're doing, and we together can feel good about what we're doing, instead of this idea that I'm going to feel good because I crushed you and I won. So that's one way of looking at it or one approach to gratitude. The other thing that fascinates me about gratitude is my experience and my memories of growing up and when I was young, when I was a boy and when I was a teenager, being told that I should feel grateful for this or that or the other thing, and really being confused because I didn't feel grateful.
Scott:I would sit at the table and my tradition growing up was what I now call non denominational Christian. Parents took me to a congregational church. We went every Sunday until I was probably 12. And then I went to a Baptist church with my grandparents until I was through high school. But we would say grace before every meal, thanking the Lord for the food, but I never felt grateful.
Scott:I never felt entitled, but I never felt grateful. Now, in my mid-60s, it is much easier for me to look around and go, you know, things are still not, I mean, life hasn't become what I expected it to become, and that's a whole another discussion, but it's this idea of feeling grateful for things that are good, it makes me feel good and so the way that I process it is if you get knocked down metaphorically and you know perhaps actually, if you get knocked down and somebody comes along and helps you up, as a young man I was so embarrassed by having been knocked down my attitude was I don't need any help, leave me alone, I'll get up on my own because I decided that being knocked down was a fail and I was humiliated by that and I just wanted to get up and get done and move on. As an older man, it's easier for me to see, okay, this bad thing happened and somebody came along and they could have done anything, but they actually chose to help me and even though I'm embarrassed and I don't like being knocked down and it feels bad, I'm actually grateful for what they did and it makes me feel better as a human being to, in my moment of embarrassment, having been knocked down, to acknowledge that they did something good.
Scott:They did something nice for me. And it's sometimes difficult to accept help. And I think that's the key. If you have a difficult time accepting help then you have a difficult time with gratitude, and gratitude makes you feel better. So unpacking that connection between accepting help versus not wanting to have help is a part of I think trying to understand gratitude.
Scott:I don't know if either of those things are interesting or useful. That's kind of where I am and it's a little crunchy, it's a little, I I'm not feeling a ton of flow here but it's that connection between recognizing that you need help and since you needed help and you got help and you're grateful for it, I think there's something there, but I'm not sure what it is yet.
Shawn:Yeah, I'm circling it as well. I don't know if it has maybe something to do with the fact that when you're around people who are authentically grateful, meaning they're not doing it in a sort of performative manner, but that you, you know, and I think I lost your video, Scott. I don't know if you did that intentionally or not, but I'll continue. At any rate, so I believe that there may be a link there between sort of those kinds of people being inherently easier to maybe trust. And so if you trust somebody's intentions, or just trust what they're saying in general, it may be that you are more likely to relax around them.
Shawn:And then if you do genuinely need some kind of help, even if you're somebody who's not accustomed, like myself, I'm very hyper independent, I later learned that that might be a consequence of, you know, well, of course, everything's childhood trauma, you know, informed But these like, you know, if I learned at an early age to rely on myself more than other children in similar situations did, then that could then lead to hyper independence as an adult, right? So, you know, but if I trust somebody, because I look, like my Aunt Debbie would be a great example of somebody growing up who I, you know, I trusted deeply. And when I think about, or really when I think about any of the people in my life who I was kind of, who were like magnets, like I was attracted to them, because I think that gratitude filled people are magnetic. I think people, you gravitate towards them. And I think that partially that might be the case, because they have a natural joy.
Shawn:Not un- and, you know, to be fair, don't, let's not confuse it. It's not naivete, right? It's not, you know, unearned optimism. I think gratitude is different, but sometimes it presents like that. And so I think sometimes maybe people might say, Well, what do I have to be grateful for anyway?
Shawn:Like, you know, I have all these hardships, and like, you know what I'm saying? So, what I think is that gratitude at a baseline level is just an acknowledgement that I am not granted one, like, minute in this life as a guarantee or a obligation. Whether that is, you know, coming from somebody who's an atheist who simply believes that this is all a happy accident, or from people of deep faith of some sort. Christians obviously included in that, who believe there's a defined, you know, architecture and organization to things. It doesn't matter which camp you're in, or somewhere in between.
Shawn:It's, you know, what we can all agree to is that you're not guaranteed one second longer than what you've got. Right? And so I think practicing healthy gratitude, and not for everything, like, oh, I'm grateful I, you know, got this, like, you know, package in the mail. I mean, you know, obviously there are magnitudes of order here that you're dealing with. But I do think it leads to happier people, people who are projecting more of what's good in the world as opposed to what's bad in the world.
Shawn:But the best people are the ones who can still do that, and also still wrestle with the tough things in life, and say, No, we're not ignoring or turning a blind eye to the fact that these challenges or dark parts of humanity are manifest, and that they're, you know, I mean, I open the newspaper every day and see something horrific that I'm just like, come on, like, we can do better than this. But it surely has to be better to, you know, not over catastrophize, or not to over sort of, you know, hand wring about it to the point where, you know, it's not virulent, you know, it's contagious. If you project doom and gloom, it will not take long to sort of swallow up the people you're around and bring them down. And when people are down all the time, or afraid all the time, or angry all the time, or, you know, anxious all the time, they cannot then thrive and be good. So anything that they could do to bring to the fight to, you know, shine light versus be consumed by the dark.
Shawn:I think in the absence of gratitude, if you're one of those people who just puts out anger and sadness and, you know, catastrophe all the time, it's it's you're not helping your own cause. Like, the gratitude has to manifest. Even if you don't, like, just try it, try it out. Just a little gratitude every day, vocalize it. But don't just vocalize it for yourself.
Shawn:Like, put it out into the universe, right? Because if you're a prolific online poster, or just in your day to day, you know, the guy at the corner who I always see looking for money, you know, who's a panhandler, I've actually, since I've gone through this gratitude sort of epiphany, I have made a bigger effort to contextualize my life struggle with his. And I just say, look, it's, I can't give him money every day, but I can roll my window down, and I can say, hey Charlie, like how are, like, I can learn his name. I can say, I don't have anything for you today, but I'm praying for you. Like, or I'm you know what I mean?
Shawn:And some days I do have something for him, you know. So anyway, I don't know if that means like if that in any way gives us any more direction or focus, but I think we're circling some important ideas.
Scott:Yeah, yeah, I think so. And it's, I think there are some things to be aware of, maybe some warning flags. And then, you know, trying to get to the root of, you know, what does gratitude, that emotion, what does it give us as people? What does it give us as humans? Because it's not, oh, you should have an attitude of gratitude.
Scott:Just a direction that skips over the most important part, which is why. Why is gratitude something that you should consider? Why should you choose it? And if you don't choose it, why do you not choose it? And then the hidden issue is how.
Scott:Everything in life that is interesting and useful has as a component of how. And it's amazing to me how many people don't understand the how. And so, you know, for me, if we start with the warning flags, there are people out there that suffer from insincerity. You know, there are people who have taken this, well I have an attitude of gratitude and they're not thinking about how and they're not thinking about why and so they claim to be grateful for every little thing because they actually don't understand what gratitude is and now they're insincere. I think what you spoke to earlier about balance is a part of that.
Scott:It's, you know, this idea that if you're an unhappy person, just say you're happy and be grateful and you'll feel better. This idea of fake it till you make it. I know a lot of people who have claimed that fake it till you make it works. I've never seen it personally. I think if you try to fake it till you make it, you're gonna end up being fake and shallow because you're not rooted in what this is.
Scott:And I think part of understanding the impact that gratitude makes as I've practiced it is when I feel gratitude, I don't keep it to myself. I share it, I say, and I'll give you an example of what I try to do. And I don't get it 100% of the time, but I'm above 80 of the time. So last week I was at McDonald's and I ordered and this is maybe more than people want to know about the life of Scott Olson, but I like having my burger made a particular way and so I'm on the little board customizing my burger and I want this and I want And this particular McDonald's that's near where I live has been under new management. They're just new faces in this place in the last, I don't know, six months, nine months, and they're great.
Scott:The food comes extraordinarily fast and it's always correct, and so I sit there and read the Wall Street Journal while I'm waiting for my food, and I couldn't get through one article, and they call my number. I just realized that it's a McDonald's, but I really like this place and so I lean over and there are people sitting around in earshot. I lean over and I call in and, excuse me sir, can you come over? And of course he gets this worried look on his face and he comes over and he thinks he's going get yelled at and I said, want to tell you how great you guys are. The food comes really fast and it's always right and I just want you to know how much I appreciate that.
Scott:Thank you very much. And he got this he went from, Oh my god, I'm gonna have to deal with the
Shawn:scary
Scott:angry Some huge guy that has a problem to, Wow, and just, I feel good because I'm saying thank you and it's genuine because I am actually grateful even though it's not world peace, it's a burger but I'm grateful. And this guy, I was able to share with him how I felt and it made him feel good too and what was funny is I turn around to walk out and there is a group of maybe five or six people and they're all looking at me and they all have these huge smiles on their faces and a couple of them are nodding like this. It changes the temperature in the room and I'm not saying we should all do that because it makes the world a better place. What I am saying is that you should consider doing it because it's an extraordinarily human thing to do. We aren't here, in my opinion, to struggle all the time.
Scott:We are here to find joy. And joy isn't on every street corner because we have to find it. It's not that it's rare, it's just not ubiquitous, and so when we find it, it's great. You know, it's warm air when you walk inside after a cold day. It's the cool breeze, you know, when you're outside on a hot day.
Scott:It's that, wow, that's really cool. And that's the why of it, but the ownership part, the how do you do it, my recommendation is when you feel gratitude, and at least in the life of Scott Olson, I haven't always felt gratitude, but when I feel gratitude in the last ten years, I have made a point to share it with somebody, to share how they made me feel grateful for what they did, whether it's a big or a small thing, And what I realize that does for me, in addition to feeling good, is it makes me more aware of when I feel grateful. I'm grateful that I didn't fall completely out of the stream. I
Shawn:agree.
Scott:What I'm struggling with is to articulate how it matters, and I think the reason that it matters is because it's human, and what we see right now with all the anger and the hate, and I gotta win 100 of the time, that requires you to dehumanize the person you disagree with, and dehumanization is not human, and I think the hard work of interacting, and this comes to something that is the term that you have used, which is, you know, humaning. It's not adulting in the modern parlance. It's actually humaning and recognizing that humans feel good and feel bad. They feel grateful and they feel selfish, and you have those ranges of emotion. Owning the human experience, I think, is what makes us human and makes us better.
Scott:It's not bad if you feel selfish, but it's also not great if you feel grateful and you keep it to yourself. Yeah. And the how to do it matters.
Shawn:So let me leap in here. Let me. Yeah, definitely. So I'm going to leap in. And the first thing I'm going to say is I'm going to I'm going to joyfully push back on your assertion that it does not make it, or that maybe it's not big enough to make the world a better place.
Shawn:I would argue it is exactly those moments that make the world a better place, because the world is where we live, and where we live is where we occupy space. And when you were occupying that space in that moment of time, you just made everybody's day better. Here, I'll go a step even further, I don't want this to be taken by anybody in any certain way, but, you know, you don't know what was in the mind of that guy prior to that exchange, if he was an immigrant or a minority or felt just emasculated in some way in his life, you know, because of his perceived station in life or because of what you represented coming in as this robust, like, you know, picture of health's tall American white male. Like, you know, you you don't know what you just unlocked in that person's brain that allowed for him to feel safe and to feel joy and to feel proud. And it gets me a little emotional because I'm like, no, sir.
Shawn:You Pat might have been, you know, the thing that prevented a thing from being a thing, if you know what I mean, later down the line in some other context. So I will just leave that where it's at, because I think that's a beautiful example. And I can tell you all, as our listeners, I live this with Scott Olson every week. He always comes into a conversation. It does not matter who we have been on a call with, or in a meeting with, or the, again, relative station of one's experience or life.
Shawn:I've had all my juniors, my little baby birds that I bring to you. You actively practice what you just said. And so this is not performative for you. It is very organic. And I have often marveled at it because it comes much it would appear, from where I'm sitting anyway, it comes much more naturally to you than it does from me.
Shawn:And so what then I would want to follow-up with and you were exactly following the thread that I was expecting us to go down, which is this it is hard. When we say you need to do the hard work of interacting, which is our sort of 2 Parachutes Podcast informal byline, It is hard to do this, Scott. And I know because I experience that challenge all the time. I want to say something. I have the thought, but something prevents me from doing it or articulating it.
Shawn:Something gets in the way. And I have some ideas about what that might be. But I'm more interested in why what do you think gives you that drive, that impetus? Like, what was happening at that moment of reflection where you're like, you know what? No, I'm going to say something.
Shawn:And maybe you don't remember. I don't know. But like, or at least help us maybe unpack why is it so hard to do this? Because I do think it is hard. And there's a there there.
Shawn:So we've to unpack that to figure out why it's hard for people to do this better and more often.
Scott:Yeah. So let's dive into that, you know, with the understanding that I, much as I appreciate your observations of me, and it really helps me to understand that the path that I've chosen in this little narrow regard, and there are a lot of other things that I've chosen to do just to grow in life, know, that you're giving me great confirmation that my decision making process and that what I'm seeing is actually accurate, and the things that I'm trying, some of them are working, and that's, I really appreciate that. I think the first thing goes back to your flag on the play, which I think is legitimate, but I also think it's important. Expressing gratitude doesn't require the intent to do anything other than just say you're grateful and here's why. It doesn't require you to have identified an issue whether it's you know, you see a person who's having a bad day and you want to make them feel better or you see an issue that is affecting the world and you happen to be positioned where you can say some words and have a part in fixing that.
Scott:It actually, I think doesn't require a global intent. In some ways, having an intent interferes with what you're trying to do, which is being human.
Shawn:Yes.
Scott:And I think a lot of the problem, or at least a lot of the challenge that I've had, is that when you look at a person, particularly a person that you don't know, but it can be a person that you know very well and you tell them how you feel, you're being vulnerable. You are saying, this is how I actually feel. What that opens you up to is being criticized for who you are. And that is the challenge with the hard work of interacting, with talking to another person, is being vulnerable. Why do people go out in the streets and yell?
Scott:If you're out on the street yelling, you don't have to listen. And so you're not really interacting. You're not really being vulnerable. You're being aggressive. And so the challenge with expressing gratitude, with feeling grateful, is that for most people, certainly for me, it's not intuitive.
Scott:I didn't grow up going, oh wow, I'm grateful for this and I'm grateful for that. It was something that I had to learn but it takes, takes, at least for me, took a specific decision, an intent to not only recognize when I was feeling grateful, but then to articulate it, to share it with the person that's there. And of course, what I found is the first time was really hard, the next time was easier, easier, easier. Sometimes it gets harder again. If I'm having a bad day, I don't want to feel vulnerable, you know, all that stuff.
Scott:And so I think that the challenge that comes with, you know, being 64 years old and I still feel like I'm the same guy I was when I was 12 or six or 29 or whatever. But you don't get people don't look at you the same when you're 64 as when you're 29. The challenge I think is to understand that I didn't come to this because I'm this wonderful, caring, grateful guy. I came to this because I'm interested in how people interact and how I interact. And I'm open to letting the world impact me.
Scott:You know, I'm open to letting the world make me feel good, make me feel hurt. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it sucks, but it's the human experience and then it's trying things. Trying things and seeing what you get, and if you get something that you don't like, having the maturity to try something different. So I did not sort of spring fully formed as the Scott Olsen that I am today. I'm the Scott Olsen that I am today because I've been a lot of different kind of Scott Olsens, just like you've been a lot of Sean Baker Garcias in your life.
Scott:But it's recognizing that there are some things that matter when they're shared, not when they're kept. So that's kind of my point is that the decision is to develop and to try things, and then, you know, the growth will come from that. But I really appreciate you observing the stuff that you observe about me.
Shawn:Yeah, no,
Scott:well, me feel human.
Shawn:And it's great. And you know, I want the listeners to also know that I know there's so many different ways that people can can do this and express gratitude. And the great thing about it is that it doesn't matter who you are. Like, you know, I mean, it's like it can be an exchange with literally anybody. So it's a very democratizing sort of expression that, you know, I think, because it doesn't matter whether you're the biggest, toppest ambassador general or CEO, or the lowliest, like, whatever, whoever your entry level grunt is, we all start there.
Shawn:You know, or just a kid, or a high school student. I have a lot of that with, you know, I field manage on the weekends seasonally for a local youth flag football organization. And I will tell you what one of my favorite parts of this last weekend was, you know, it was kind of bittersweet, because we had to say goodbye to a lot of our refs, referees and coaches, because they are young kids, and they go on to college, they, you know, in one case, one of my littles, he's going off to relocate. His dad works for the Pentagon, they're moving to California for, you know, some kind of a detail. And so I thought long and hard, was like, wow, I really enjoyed working with this kid.
Shawn:He's 16 years old, but he had just such great, and many of them did, but he particularly was always asking me, How can I help you? Do you need anything? You know, asking me for silly, ridiculous advice. It's almost like he knew I needed to be a mom. You know what I mean?
Shawn:And so he's like, Do I have enough sunscreen on? Do I have you know what I mean? Should I reapply, Miss Sean? Like, you know, and so I sent him a text message, you know, at the end of the day after I had already got said our goodbyes and gotten home because I said, you know, I really need to tell this kid, like, his quality, you know, or at least he needs to hear it. Maybe he knows it, you know, but but I I feel like it's important he hear it.
Shawn:So I just texted him because we're all on we all have each other's text, you know, cell phones and stuff, and I just did. And and at first, it felt weird because I was like, is it weird that I'm like this, you know, 52, almost 53 year old woman texting this 16 year old boy? Like, I felt weird for a minute, but then I'm like, no. I'm just telling him why I valued him and and to encourage him to do more of that in the world as he goes out and makes his fortune. You know what I mean?
Shawn:Yeah. I just wanted him to hear it and know that I saw it, and I felt it, and I appreciated it. So and he felt good, and I felt good. And, you know, again, it's it's it's it's it doesn't it it it's just it's sometimes it's such a little thing. But again, it kind of takes, it keeps, I keep going back to this thread for me that keeps pulling me in the wind here, which is that, why, I mean, I get the vulnerability piece, and I kind of understand it, but it just doesn't come naturally to humans.
Shawn:It I don't think it comes very naturally to us. I think we're always looking to be tougher and stiffer and more, like, like, well, I shouldn't need to thank somebody for doing their job or, like, you know, and and to some and look. To some extent, there there's some validity in that sentiment. Right? Like, there really is.
Shawn:But again, that's transactionalizing the situation. What you're talking about, I think, which is really getting to the core element of why this matters, is it's you're removing the functional relationship, the transactional relationship you might have with that person, and it's drilling down to just a clan, almost like I'm a human part of your clan, and thank you for that. Makes my humaning better. You know?
Scott:I agree. We don't we're not born fully formed. And I think that it's easy to see the easy stuff. We learn to control bodily functions, we learn to walk, we learn to speak, We learn to make decisions. And we learn in a certain context how to interact.
Scott:But then, you know, some of us think that once those things are done, we are done learning. And I think you have to learn that being vulnerable is a choice, being open is a choice and being genuine, not being insincere is a choice. And the interesting thing about people is we have a tremendous skill to evaluate other people. You can tell when a person is insincere. You may not say, Oh, that person is insincere.
Scott:But everyone that's gathered in the stands watching the flag football game is gonna, you know, I don't trust that ref. Oh, yeah. I I don't I don't trust that guy. I I don't like that one. And, you know, it it it takes some understanding and and, you know, maybe some training to be able to put a label on the feeling you have, but everybody has those feelings.
Scott:Know, insincerity is the hardest thing. Because if you're insincere, you think you may be doing the right thing. Oh, want to be grateful, want to be supportive, I want to tell everybody they're doing a great job. Not everybody's doing a great job. Some people do better and some people do worse.
Scott:That's just a fact. Some people have a good day, some people have a bad day. That's a fact. Get to the Olympics and the gold medal goes to the person who's best that day, not to the person who has the best career or to the person who is overall the best. It's the best person on that day and it's not fair.
Scott:But that's also what an Olympic gold medal is. Saying, well, you're all good is insincere. For whatever reason a person is choosing to be insincere, it's insincere. And that's the hard part of interacting is getting yourself to the point where you can be vulnerable with people you know and people you don't know. And it's not that it's great being hurt, but you know that you can handle it.
Scott:Sometimes that takes time. I mean, am much more resilient at age 64 than I was at age 14. You are much more resilient at age 52 than you were at age 12. That's just the nature of it and I think you gratitude but you also have that supportive communication, the encouragement that is what I would characterize your interaction with the kid. What you're doing is, you know, letting them know it's okay to be vulnerable.
Scott:It's okay to share how you feel. It's okay to be sincere. It's gonna hurt sometimes, but it's gonna hurt a lot worse if you pull yourself off. And it is an actual choice. There are plenty of people that go through their lives being vulnerable or being closed off, being insincere, hiding their vulnerabilities.
Scott:And they don't understand why they're unhappy. And the reason they don't understand why they're unhappy is because the easy thing to see is that when you're vulnerable to somebody, they can hurt you and you get hurt and you think that sucks, so why would I be vulnerable? And that is only a question that the individual can answer. But I think that you can't answer that question at the highest level by yourself. I think that having a conversation like this, having a conversation with people you trust is part of it, but also thanking the dude at McDonald's that got your hamburger right and it's not as easy as it sounds.
Scott:Know, for me a week ago, it was a, am I going to do this? Yeah, this is important. I'm going to do this. And, you know, being in a public place and leaning over a counter and, you know doing this, hey excuse me sir, excuse me sir, can you come over here? I mean that is a tippy place to be.
Shawn:Well, and I also would love to just take this moment to introduce something like an ancillary sort of point to this, or adjacent point, which is that this is also why I think people it's maybe a great way to explain why it is that like forced gratitude or or or sort of required gratitude, systematized gratitude, is so ineffective. Because you in that moment with that guy probably had vastly more of an impact, not only on that person, his mentality, his day, sort of how it went, his attitude, but all the people around you. You performed your ministry by like walking the walk so others could see it, right? Not just talking the talk. When you compare that to increased taxes, or the one that particularly chaps my hide is this whole, you now I don't know if you have to do it.
Shawn:I feel like you actually might have to do it. Well, you don't have to in the sense that if I if I don't electronically tip, I can give cash at the door. But, like, it's obviously more convenient to do it electronically. But, like, but like nowadays, it's like you tip before they even bring you your foot. Why would I do that?
Shawn:Why would I do that? And you're also asking me to make a choice, like eighteen, twenty, 25% or other. And I'm like, well, if the gesture is intended to reward, like, performance, how can I know that in advance? Now you're trivially trivializing that exchange into simply, oh, I make money more than you probably, so I'm going to like give you a tip based off of my perceived earned income. Right?
Shawn:You know what I mean? It goes back to your point about removing the humanity from an exchange. Like, that is automating that exchange. It is not doing anything good for that person.
Scott:Yeah.
Shawn:The person I give a 25 tip to on DoorDash is, that is doing less for that person than what you did for the person at McDonald's, I assure you.
Scott:Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. That I think maybe that's a, you know, an ancillary point, but it's definitely a part of the whole and the strength of what we do here on the 2 Parachutes Podcast is take those in. And you're taking me to some pet peeves of mine. It's the, you know, a kid does something that makes a parent angry.
Scott:And so the parent forces the child to apologize. You will apologize to your sister. And so you have this angry little kid who's not sorry, who's being required to utter the words in a way that meet the standard for the parent. And it's such a missed opportunity in that situation. Did this thing.
Scott:Why don't you feel sorry? Hurt somebody. Am interested in you. I am interested in not just why you did this thing, but I want to know how you feel and I want to understand why you're not sorry. And it's amazing to me, in particular with parents, how parents won't do that or they don't think to do that.
Scott:And part of it is, well, I'm the parent, kid does what he's told, you know, no vulnerability. You go over to the, you know, people should do their jobs for their paycheck. You know, I don't know anybody and this is taking me back to my leadership consulting days. Yeah, I don't know anybody who aspires to a paycheck. There are people who aspire to being millionaires at this point or that point in their lives, but that's not a paycheck.
Scott:That is a monetization, a stock IPO, or doing a bunch of work so that when a company goes public, you're part of the monetization. I think very few people are inspired to high performance by paychecks. And it's funny because my method of leadership coaching and leadership training, starts with where does leadership begin? Where do you have to lead? Because if you're really good at doing a lot of stuff, you can do a lot of stuff by yourself and leadership begins when you have more to do than you can do.
Scott:And so maybe you can't do that much and so you need people to help right away. Maybe you can do a ton of stuff and you need people, you know, when you are truly overwhelmed but the bottom line is leading means you're responsible for more stuff than you can do and so you need other people's help and if other people are helping you do your job, why wouldn't you feel grateful? And so in my leadership training, the very first class, the very first thing we talk about is if people are helping you do your job and you don't feel grateful that they're helping you, why? Why don't you feel grateful? You are the boss of a company and you have a personal assistant who orders your calendar and makes sure you're not late for stuff.
Scott:Why are you not grateful for that person? If you're not. Well it's their job and they you know get a four zero one ks or whatever. Yeah I get all that but they're still doing stuff for you that helps you through your day. Why are you not grateful for that?
Scott:And it's the insight that comes from asking that question that not only develops a person as a human being, it developed a person as a leader. Being a leader is fundamentally interacting with other human beings and it's amazing the switch. I remember running a training class for an organization and the boss of that organization was there. And at the end of the morning, I did a half day for them. At the end of the morning, this guy got up and it was a guy and said, I mean, the hardest thing for me is to say thank you because I don't know what I'm thanking him for.
Scott:And in front of his entire staff, I said, Okay, well, what's your job? And it was some sort of, know, he's responsible for his company's operations in an entire state. And I said, well, can you do that by yourself? Can you go and talk to all the people and run all the stuff by yourself? Oh, no, of course not.
Scott:Well, who's doing all that stuff for you? Are you not grateful? Well, I mean, it's their job. It's actually your job. It's your job.
Scott:Their job is to help you do your job, but they're still I could see the switch drop with this guy. He's like, but it doesn't come natural.
Shawn:Well, I think that's a potentially a good sort of like closing anchor for us for this conversation, which is to say that none of us is a giant unto our own. We live in a community of other human beings in this ecosystem we call Earth. And it doesn't matter if you're that guy who has a team trying to help him do his job to do operations, or if you live in a neighborhood or a township. All, fundamentally, for this experiment to work, we all have to work together on some level. And nobody is the ultimate authoritarian.
Shawn:Like, you know, I mean, even people perceived to be in sort of these top dog, higher echelon statuses in life are not islands into their own either. You know? And they all work. They all answer to somebody, I assure you, you know? Whether it's their shareholders, or their neighbors, or their employees to some extent, you know?
Shawn:And I just, I think the, you know, if I were to, because I think we're coming up at least on an hour, as I understand it here.
Scott:We are, yeah.
Shawn:I just would just offer to our listeners is to just, hopefully you took something out of this and maybe you know, you'll kind of assess in your day to day life where you're practicing active gratitude. And if that is something you could do more of or do it in different ways. And maybe you'll find your own Dianu, you know, that you can kind of recite. That concept, just to close with what we opened, it blew my mind when I saw that scene for the first time. And then they did a secondary scene later on with the women.
Shawn:And and it was just it it it rocked me to my core because it just put everything into such a beautiful perspective. And I said, what an amazing what an amazing prayer to offer God. Or even if, again, you don't have to be, you know, Christian to just recognize the value, you know, of of just this as a mantra or as a state of mind, and to just go into your days hopefully keeping that on the top of your mind, and as you interact with people, maybe you are taking things for granted. Maybe, you know, I know I do all the time. And it's really, I cannot tell you how much it's helped me to be less to be more grateful in the sense that I take less things for granted.
Shawn:I'm now recognizing where I was taking things for granted, and I'm pushing myself harder to do better on an individual basis. You know, whether it's kind of expressing gratitude the way that you're so good at doing with people in, you know, your life, or if it's just me out and about in the community just doing a better job, you know. And it is hard work. I'm not going to lie to you guys. It takes effort and deliberateness and choice.
Shawn:But I tell you, the payoff, it's there. You know, the payoff is there. So I hope you all can take something out of this today. Over to you for final sentence statement, Scott.
Scott:I got nothing. Great session. You always make me think, Sean, and that's a wonderful thing.
Shawn:It is. Same. Everybody, Thank
Scott:go have a great day and we'll see you on the next episode of the 2 Parachutes Podcast. Bye, everybody.
Shawn:Bye.