#37 Gentle Nudge: Speak Fluent Gratitude

Ready to supercharge your relationships with a little gratitude magic? 🌟 In this episode of Be the Sun, Not the Salt, Dr. Harry Cohen and Connie Fontaine dive into Chapter 16: “Speak Fluent Gratitude.”

The magic trick? Expressing thanks isn’t just about saying “thanks” – it’s about speaking from the heart with specificity. Harry shares a heartfelt text from a friend that brightened his day, while Connie reveals how a daily gratitude experiment brought unexpected joy to old friends.

Your takeaways:

• Speak it out loud: How verbalizing gratitude can transform your relationships and mood.
• Make it personal: Why adding a few extra words of love and appreciation can make all the difference.
• Gratitude in the moment: How focusing on what’s going right can calm anxiety and stress.

Tune in for practical tips and heartfelt stories that will inspire you to spread gratitude like sunshine! 🌞

Links & Resources

Be the Sun, Not the Salt - book

To explore the book, or for more episodes, information, tips and tools to live a more heliotropic life, visit us at bethesunnotthesalt.com and find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok.

Transcript

Harry Cohen: [00:00:00] Welcome To our be the sun, not the salt podcast. My name is Dr. Harry Cohn, the author of be the sun, not the salt. And I'm joined by my cohost, chief super spreader, Connie Fontaine. And we're going to get into check Connie. What chapter are we going to

Connie Fontaine: Chapter 16 today speak fluent gratitude. This one we can go to town on so get ready everybody. This one has been such a game changer for I think for me for sure as I've learned throughout the years and I know for for you as well Harry.

Harry Cohen: It's such a beautiful thing, which is not that we know how powerful gratitude is, but speak fluent

gratitude. Say out loud that which we are grateful for and to whom we are grateful for. I was sharing with you earlier, I got a text this morning. Good morning. I woke up today with my grateful meter pinned to the far [00:01:00] right.

I thought of you in that very moment. I'm grateful for our friendship and how fortunate I am to have you in my life. Love you, brother. And I immediately, obviously I felt great to get this and I feel the exact same way and I texted him back and I thought, I got to do that more. Not, not, I gotta do that more.

I get to do that more. And it's the, damn, I could do that more.

Connie Fontaine: Well, and even talking about it, you get energized by it. I feel it. Like, I just, I love that idea of how much does it take to do. And we did this, didn't we, for a little experiment. I don't know if that was in January. We said, okay, we're going to text somebody every day.

And I got, I got to do that for friends that I just don't see as often anymore.

And that I am grateful for our friendship is, and especially coming out of the blue for no reason. They didn't just bring me flowers. What a wonderful moment, not just for them because I felt it come right back through the lines to me, but it felt like it to me too. I just started out somebody's day the right way.

Harry Cohen: In this speak fluent gratitude,

the metaphor is we [00:02:00] can become more fluent in the language of

gratitude. What do you mean?

Connie Fontaine: Yep. Talk 

Harry Cohen: You can get right on the tip of your tongue. Thank you. I really appreciate you. Not just for who you are, but for what you do for me and for my family. And for everything you have brought to me in my life, I just wanted you to know that now adding those extra sentences of love and appreciation and gratitude is good and

Connie Fontaine: Well, it's great. It's great. Better than good to me because the specificity that you added in there tells you that this is a genuine, this isn't just a like, Hey, thanks. This is thank you for being you. Thank you for the things you do that are X, Y, Z. And I think that's what makes that expressing gratitude to somebody even more special,

Harry Cohen: It really does. And it's a great practice habit, quote unquote technique. When you praise someone or express your

gratitude, express with specificity that which you [00:03:00] are grateful for. One or two sentences. Are amazing as opposed to I, love you. I appreciate you.

Connie Fontaine: Yeah. Thanks, bro. Yeah. I think for me that, um, I think originally when gratitude, people started talking about gratitude, I think I was turned off because it felt like it needed to have some sort of, again, get a gratitude journal out, write something every morning. And whereas that is a really good practice and I've spent a little time with that now.

Um, it doesn't have to be that hard. Right. 

Harry Cohen: I wrote about from my friend, Bobby, who talked about there's different ways to practice gratitude, speaking fluent gratitude out loud as one, but you can quietly, I can, and I have done this to your point, Connie, just while doing my daily life feeling. grateful for that which I have. Counting my blessings internally. Now I don't say it out loud per [00:04:00] se, but feeling it

Connie Fontaine: Due to, I think I've learned,

Harry Cohen: is something I practice.

Connie Fontaine: in a moment of stress or disappointment, um, being concerned or worried about somebody, to be able to stop and say to myself, in the moment, in this very moment, everybody's fine. Everybody's healthy. Everybody, you know where they are. Everybody's good. And I, that moment of being grateful for, for what I, what is going well, lets you kind of kind of get by that, that moment of anxiety of concern, or at least it did for me.

Right.

Harry Cohen: people who express it, who feel it. Conversely, we don't like to be around people who feel like why is this happening to me and it ain't fair and it ain't right and I don't feel a lot of gratitude. I [00:05:00] feel like I deserve more, you know, just feeling, you know, being around people who, you know, I deserve more is, is like, oh, yikes, the opposite. So let's get back to speaking fluently. Let me just express some to you right now. I love how you have made this work better for me and for the world. There's no way I've said this before. I don't mind saying it again. Couldn't have done this without you.

Connie Fontaine: Well, I equally am grateful for, you know, I often say how grateful I am for this part of my life that I've been able to move into a chapter where I thought I'd be doing less meaningful, less, I knew I'd be doing something. I always knew I would, but this work that you've created out of your, you know, your wisdom that you brought through your life's work has enabled me to live a better life.

Bigger, richer, fuller life of, of not just for myself, for others. And for that, I'm very grateful that you brought me along this journey.

Harry Cohen: thank you.[00:06:00] 

Connie Fontaine: Well, I feel really good. Same to you. And I'm happy to be here. I love that. And I don't know. There's I think the language, the specificity around it. I think we've probably given everyone enough of that.

So I guess I'm grateful for that. listeners. Um, I'm grateful that this work has caught on and has created a little bit of a movement of people who say, I want to be around people who are also heliotropic and I want to be as heliotropic as I can for others. So thank you for listening and please share this work 

And we hope you follow our podcast. Have a great day.