In this After Action we glance back at the previous interview we had with Griff, Former Ranger and Co-Founder of Combat Flip Flop. Griff's story is a powerful one. What stood out to me most was the profound impact that gratitude and daily journalling had on his life so I decided to deep dive into it in this episode.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
In this After Action we glance back at the previous interview we had with Griff, Former Ranger and Co-Founder of Combat Flip Flop. Griff's story is a powerful one. What stood out to me most was the profound impact that gratitude and daily journalling had on his life so I decided to deep dive into it in this episode.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to this week's After Action, where we take a deep dive into a key principle from the previous interview that we had and I just jumped off with Griff. And what an incredible interview. Just an amazing person doing some wonderful things. If you haven't checked it out, I would definitely recommend go listen to this one.
Speaker 1:Griff is a former ranger. He has done several deployments to Afghanistan, to Iraq and really just doing some amazing things. I mean, if you talk about action, if you talk about doing things that you think about doing when it's like I think this needs to be done, he is a prime example of getting out and getting after it, and one of the key things that stood out to me was once we started going down the path of the different things that has impacted his transition out of the military. One of the things that he mentioned was a highlight for me. It's something that we've talked about before on here, not in the capacity that he mentioned, but it was the power of being grateful and recognizing gratitude, recognizing things that you're grateful for in your life and he mentioned it through the lens of. He always felt like he was grateful, but it wasn't the case. It was very shallow and he didn't feel like he had really nailed it out, and it wasn't until he started journaling every single day that he really spent a lot of time, really spent a lot of focus on it. And once he did that he found more and more things to be grateful. For that his gratitudes, things that he was grateful for, really grew.
Speaker 1:And it hit home for me when he shared how we're always kind of chasing that next thing if only had blank, if I only had this, if I only had that, and that's kind of our society. And I think that it goes bigger than a lot of what was mentioned and I believe he would agree as well. But he mentioned you know that he fell into it that if only had this truck I'd be happy, if only had this house I'd be happy. If only had this blank, then I would be happy. And it just doesn't work because we end up getting those things and then it's so quick on to the next thing that we want in our lives. And I think it even goes more to internal stuff too, if I only felt a certain way, the point is to just circle up and talk about internally what you're grateful for, and that's what he shared with himself that it wasn't until he started journaling and really writing down these specific things every single day that it really changed his life. It changed the way that he lived his life, and so that's my challenge for each one of you is to really step into that.
Speaker 1:What is it that you're grateful for right now? What are the things in your life that you have a lot of gratitude for and take some time each day to write it down? It's really important to take a moment and write it down. I love that he does that every single day, and it was something that he figured out that just worked for him, and I know that one of the powers of writing it down is it's really tough to think about Anything else when you write things.
Speaker 1:It creates a singularity of thought, meaning you cannot think about something else. If you're writing something down, your mind has to get hyper focused on the thing that you're writing. Where is if you think about your texting something or typing something out? You can be thinking about Multiple things at a time while you're typing on your phone or typing on a keyboard.
Speaker 1:When you're writing, there's something about putting pen to paper that forces your mind to truly think about exactly what you're writing and so it creates a singularity of thought. So when you take a moment and you pause, journal every single day and even just in the morning, and you write down the things that you're grateful for, it really granular, get specific what the items that you're grateful for, get really, really specific. And so if you're grateful for friends, which friend? What do they do specifically that brings you joy and gratitude? And that's one of the things that's gonna Really catapulted and really create that upwards spiral of joy and gratitude is getting specific and getting granular with it is where you're gonna find abundance. You'll find a lot of abundance inside of the fact that You've got a lot of specific things you can be grateful for.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that, outside of this, that people usually ask me about is how do you keep it from becoming redundant? If you're writing down gratitude is, if you're talking about being grateful, that it's gonna be a redundant thing, and that's what prevents it from being redundant is the moment you start to get specific with it. There's a really good chance it's gonna change. Tomorrow. That's gonna be something different. Today you're grateful for, for instance, let's say, your spouse. Your spouse did something funny this morning, helped out. There's really good chance that you could be grateful for your spouse tomorrow, but if you got specific, it would be something different, and so on.
Speaker 1:And then what starts to happen is you train your mind actually look for those things, to look for the things that are in your life that you're currently grateful for, cuz it knows You're gonna ask it to recall the next morning, and the next morning, when you do it, you're gonna find that you have more and more and more To be grateful for. And even mentioned that he started out with a few lines and that he would leave himself when you're like he said to, and now he leaves for, yes, more things to be grateful for, it, simply the fact that he's out there recognizing it is my nose that are. We have to recall gratitude, and he's flexing that muscle of great gratefulness, of being grateful, and his mind is now seeking it, knowing that tomorrow morning it's gonna be called upon to represent and say, hey, what were you grateful for? What were the things? And so it's gonna be looking for more, and this is why it's such an important thing Not to mention that.
Speaker 1:But he mentioned, if people are stressed out, other things in your life that you kind of pushed down that if you're going down in the stressful nature, it's really tough to backtrack off of it, cuz that also starts a downward spiral. And so getting every getting up every morning and being very, very intentional about the way that you start your day Really steamrolls and pushes things in a very positive direction. No, we said that it absolutely changed his life once he really dialed in and got specific with it. And that's my challenge for you to step in and get specific, get intentional. I would definitely go back, re listen to it. I know there was very towards the middle, towards the end is where we had that, that moment where he shared how he got down, how he journals every morning.
Speaker 1:He just tells the things that he's grateful for using these little tiny notebooks, nothing in particular. I think he you mentioned the he said it was a c r gibson bulleted journal log journal and fourteen bucks or so on amazon and Write it down and then that's good for a pretty long time. So it's not a heavy investment in order to make this happen, but it does have a huge impact on your life. As my challenge check out the notebook and then start journaling, start writing down every morning the things are grateful. What are you currently grateful for?
Speaker 1:Knowing that it's just like any muscle, you know, if you're gonna start running, start working out, it's gonna be a little sore. First time out you're gonna be a little sore. Second time it might still be a little sore, but give it a week and you're gonna start to feel better heading out of that work out. So Journaling and practicing gratitude and gratefulness is the same thing. First time out might not feel so great, might feel a little different, might feel a little wonky. Second, third time, fourth time You're gonna start to feel good. Give it a month and I promise you you're gonna start to notice things in your life that are already right here, already in within your reach, that you're currently grateful for, and that's a beautiful thing. Until next time.