The Secret to Happiness Nobody Talks About || Masterminds Podcast EP53

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Everyone is chasing happiness. Very few people understand where it actually comes from.

In this solo episode of the Masterminds Podcast, Richie Mensah breaks down one of the most powerful and most overlooked mindset tools available to every single person, gratitude. Not the surface-level version, but the kind that rewires your brain, transforms your relationship with pain, and shifts the lens through which you see your entire life. Backed by neuroscience and brought to life through the remarkable story of William Kamkwamba, the boy from Malawi who built a windmill out of scrap metal and lit up his village, this episode will change the way you see what you already have.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why gratitude isn't about ignoring pain, it's about transforming it
• The neuroscience behind gratitude and how it physically rewires your brain
• Why your brain cannot tell the difference between a real moment and a remembered one
• How to use your past memories to create happiness in the present
• Why you need to be grateful for the struggle, not just the good times
• How to build a gratitude journaling practice that actually works
• The story of William Kamkwamba and what it teaches us about focusing on what you have

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Masterminds Podcast where the mission is simple to help turn you into a mastermind. My name is Richie Menta, and I'm going to be your tour guide on this excellent journey as we explore amazing ideas and concepts that will shift your mindset to that of a successful person. So before we continue with the episode, something interesting just happened in the studio right now. After shooting one of my usual solo episodes, somebody asked me questions, which made me realize that sometimes your questions actually allow me to give better feedback and better information. So let's do this. If you've ever felt like you've wanted to ask me questions or further clarification on anything I've said, you can drop it in the comments and I'll use those questions to do special episodes just to answer you. I may even shout out your name so that you understand that I am answering you. And also, do me a favor. I see so many people who are watching my episodes who have forgotten to hit the subscribe button. You know, we're trying to grow this community, build masterminds like you and I, who can acquire wealth, who can build their mindset and become more wealthy financially, physically, spiritually, and especially when it comes to health. So please do me the favor and subscribe. Now let's go back to the episode. Today we talk about one of the most powerful secrets to happiness. Gratitude. So gratitude isn't about having everything, gratitude is about observing the beauty in the small things. Gratitude doesn't ignore the pain, it transforms it. The fact that you chose to be here and watch this video today tells me that you are somebody who is already looking to see more beauty in their lives, to find a way to appreciate the simple daily things that happen so that they can have a broader and brighter perspective for what their life is. And having a gratitude mindset will do exactly that for you. Now, for most people, when you ask them to be grateful, when you ask them to think about the good things in life, they instantly look at all the pain in their lives, everything that's going wrong, and think, how can I be grateful when I'm going through so much? But it's just about changing your lens. Because trust me, there's so much to be grateful for. The fact that you can watch this video already tells me that you have eyes, you have ears to hear what I'm saying, you have internet to be streaming this, you are watching this on a device, be it a TV, a phone, whatever it is, even if it's not yours, you have access and a way to find more knowledge. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure if you look in your life, there's so many things, so many beautiful things you can actually look at and be grateful for. A loved one, an opportunity, the air that you breathe. In fact, one thing that we cannot ignore that we need to be grateful for every single day is the beauty of nature. The skies, the beautiful singing of the birds. Have you ever gone barefoot and stepped in the grass? Do you feel the earth connecting with you? There's so much to be grateful for every single day. But what happens is that our pain tends to be louder than our pleasure. The struggles tend to cloud our judgment and make us feel there's nothing to actually be thankful for. It's not a coincidence that as kids they had us saying, Count your blessings, name them one by one. Because it actually changes everything for you. When you start to realize that so much is going for you, that the life that you are living, the life that you hate and believe is the worst thing that could have happened to you, is a prayer point for somebody else. The meal you had yesterday that you thought wasn't salty enough, the shower you had that you felt wasn't hot enough. The Uber you took that you thought he was driving too fast. The job you have where you think your boss screams on you every day. All these things are things that somebody is praying to have the same opportunity to get. You shouldn't even just be grateful because you have opportunities that others don't have, but you should be grateful because even in the dark moments, even with all the pain that surrounds you, you still have so many blessings. And let's get even deeper. You need to be grateful for the pain. Because one thing to know about pain is pain and struggle build character. Pain and struggle is the process that takes you to pleasure and success. So change your perspective. When you are going through a tough time, let it teach you a lesson that you will use to move out of those dark days. When you have no money and you have to live on a budget, let it teach you how to save money, let it teach you how to live beneath your means so that when you make money, you will be able to save enough and invest. When you are working out and you are going through severe pains and your muscles are tearing and you feel like you can't keep going on, let it give you grits. Let it build your discipline. Be grateful for the fact that you have the opportunity to go through the pain. Now, gratitude being a mindset shift is not even just spiritual, it's actually scientific because it affects your brain in three ways. Practicing gratitude repeatedly strengthens neural pathways that are linked to positive thinking and emotional regulations. So studies done using functional MRI scans actually show that gratitude activates the medial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision making and empathy. And it also activates the ventral striatum, which is the brain's reward system, and is usually linked to feelings of pleasure, love, or winning something. So this tells you that just by practicing gratitude, you become happier. Your body actually makes you happier when you practice gratitude. Because what happens is, you know, our brain is very funny. You can actually trick your brain all the time. Because the brain sometimes cannot tell the difference between reality and an illusion happening in your mind. So when you go through the thought process of gratitude, when you remember a good time you had, when you remember something good someone did for you, when you smile because of the good things in your life, your brain feels as though it is experiencing those moments again in real time. So why not choose to remember the good times? You know, there's one thing you guys have to always remember about the past. The past does not exist. There is no place like the past that you can go to. The only place the past exists is in our minds every time we recollect a memory. So you choose your past, you choose to relive moments. So you can either choose to think about the worst things that happened in your life and be sad and create all these dull moments for you now in the present, or you can choose to trigger your happy memories. It doesn't matter what that happy memory is, it can be something as simple as waking up this morning, feeling the sun on your face, sitting in the car and feeling the wind blowing against your face. Something as simple as that will make you smile, will make you happy in the present because you will relive the moment. So meta-analysis actually shows that practicing gratitude consistently reduces anxiety by 7.8% and reduces depression by 6.9%. Are you hearing all the power that you have in your hands? And all you need to do is be grateful. Smile. Be happy that you get to watch me right now. Isn't that a beautiful thing? So the way to practice gratitude, you need to build it as a habit, as a discipline. So you can start by journaling. Okay. I know most people will keep it simple and just make a list. Like maybe before you go to bed, make a list of three to five things that you feel grateful for today. But let me challenge you to take it a step further. Don't just make a list. Make a list of the things that made you happy and then make a list of why. Explain it to yourself why you felt good. And then maybe even add who helped make this happen. So that you can be grateful for the moments, grateful for the things, grateful for the people. When you start to practice this regularly, you will start to appreciate those in your life more. You'll start to appreciate the opportunities that you've been given. And you will naturally focus on them and attract more of those good things into your life. One true example of the gratitude mindset is a boy born in Malawi known as William Kamkwamba. The village William lived in was struck with poverty. Things got so bad his parents couldn't even afford school fees for him and he had to just stay home. And when famine struck, most of the village was given up because they were in serious despair and couldn't find a way out. But William didn't stay down, he didn't let this situation push him to a point of thinking things would never work out. He took advantage of a library, of a small library in his village, and started to read books about physics and get as much knowledge as he could. Then out of metal scraps, and then out of metal scraps, he was actually able to build a working windmill which brought electricity and water to his village. By being able to focus on what he had and what he had to be grateful for, he built something which ended up being bigger than himself and affected his entire village. Now, through his TED talk and the success that he had achieved, he now has a movie which has been shot after him called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind on Netflix. This is just a perfect example of someone who saw the brightness in a very dark situation and through that created a beautiful world. So I know one may ask that how did gratitude make this happen? Because you'd be looking at lessons like resilience and grit. Yes, he had that, but if you watch the story carefully, you realize that he was able to focus on the little good things he had, like a library where he could find books for free to learn physics, and he focused on the small good things and magnified that into something good. Had he focused on everything that was going wrong, instead of being grateful for the opportunities he had, he would never have achieved the greatness he did. So just bear in mind, you don't actually need to change what you have first. First, you need to change what you see, and that's what gratitude does for you. Because whoever you are, whatever situation you are in, there is something good in your life, and the more you focus on it, the more you attract good things in your life. So every day, put a smile on your face for all the goodness in the world. Even if that good situation is somebody else, something I always say is that when I see something good happening for the next person, it makes me feel good because that could be me one day. When I watch a Ghanaian buy a Bugatti and a private jet, it makes me smile because it means if I work hard too, one day I can buy a Maybach and a private island. So be grateful, smile today, look at your life, see what is good for you, and grow that into more. And of course, remember that if you keep having such a mindset, one day you will truly be a mastermind.