Gratitude: The Easy Method | Episode 2

Gratitude is one of the most researched, most ancient, and most misunderstood practices in human performance. In this episode, I explore the history of gratitude — from the Stoics to modern neuroscience — and why it's not just good for your wellbeing, but genuinely self-fulfilling. The more you practise it, the more you train your brain to notice what's worth noticing. I also share my own honest relationship with it: why every conventional method failed to stick, and the simple ritual I developed that changed that. A Moleskine diary, one highlight a day, and a lesson I didn't expect — it's always the little things.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to talk about gratitude today. Now, gratitude won't be a new concept to most that are listening, but I feel like it took me a while to develop my own relationship with gratitude and I think for me I've nailed it, which I'd like to share with you. Now, I still believe it is one of the most single, most important things that one can do for mental health, for resilience and performance, and it costs nothing. It takes less than two minutes a day, and it's been understood by human beings for thousands of years. Now, you know, gratitude isn't a wellness trend. It's ancient. The Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, um, wrote extensively about noticing what you already have rather than perpetually reaching out for what you don't. Aurelius opened his meditations by cataloguing what he was grateful for in the people around him. That was roughly 170 AD. Before them, Cicero called gratitude the mother of all virtues across cultures from Buddhist practice to indigenous traditions to the Jewish concept of Hakkarat Hatov, which I'm so sorry for my pronunciation, but it literally means recognising the good. Human beings have long understood something intuitively that science has since confirmed. And the research is remarkable. I was hearing about Dr. Robert Emmons at UC Davis, who's one of the world's leading researchers on gratitude, has shown through multiple studies that people who regularly practice gratitude report higher levels of positive emotion, better sleep, more compassion, and stronger immune function. And they also show lower levels of envy, resentment, and depression. Neurologically, gratitude activates the brain's reward pathways, dopamine and serotonin, the same systems involved in motivation and MOOC regulation. And here's what's particularly interesting: it's self-reinforcing. The more you practice it, the more your brain becomes wired to notice the good. You're not just feeling better in the moment, you're retraining your perception. Which brings me to the part I find most compelling, that I found that gratitude does change what you see. When you train yourself to look for good, to actively seek out moments worth holding on to, you start finding them everywhere, in the ordinary, in the overlooked. The quality of your attention shifts, and when your attention shifts, so does your experience of being alive. It's not pretending everything is fine, it's the deliberate act of noticing that something is always fine, even when much isn't. And that act, repeated consistently, becomes a lens, a way of moving forward. Now, as I mentioned, I want to be honest with you here because I think this matters. Um, I heard about gratitude practice for years, and you know, there's advice everywhere. I had some of my best friends talk about the fact that at the end of each day they would tell each other three things that they were grateful for. And you hear about people having a gratitude journal and reciting affirmations. And personally, I tried versions of all of it, none of it really stuck. It felt kind of performative to me personally. It felt like I was a filling in a form um rather than actually feeling it. And it took me a while to develop a way of practicing gratitude that felt authentic to me, and it's actually very simple. So here's what I do and have done for many years. Normally in the morning, I open up my battered moleskin diary that I um reserve specifically for deep work and work on myself, and I simply write down one highlight from the day before, and what's happened over time is quietly extraordinary. It's so fun now when I look back over months and years of these entries that I've realized that it's almost never the big things, it's the little things that matter. And these were written never to be really shared, but I'd actually like to showcase to you a few genuine entries that I've made. So let me see if I can just rifle through. You might hear the pages rustle. So one of them was 5th of March 2026. I made croissants for the first time. 15th of April 2026, I guested on the podcast the deck show. Let's see another one. 25th of December 2025. I spent Christmas with my fiancee. I'm so grateful for his gentleness and kindness. 13th of January 2026. Silly dancing in the pool at the Ritz Barley with Edward, who's my fiance. Let's go right back into COVID and see how it goes. I'll have to go back some time now. Okay, deep into COVID now. 14th of July 2021. I received a sweet get well card from mummy. That's when I had COVID. 16th of July 2021. Realising my sense of smell has slightly improved and feeling like I'm through the worst of the COVID virus. 18th of August 2021. Just feeling like me, felt productive and fast again. 25th of August 2021. Walked to Waitrose in the morning while chatting to Dad. 12th of September 2021. Went for a huge walk and thankful my knee supported me. 30,000 steps. 13th of November 2021. Mum bought me a beautiful Louis Vuitton perfume, Curbatante. 25th of December 2021. Called Dad and he told me how proud he is of me. It was very sincere. 16th of May 2022. Started my morning with a good two mile run. 18th of November 2022. Landed safely back home after the most wonderful trip to Singapore and Bali with Edward. 21st of November 2022. Chatted to Mum for two hours on the phone after my trip and just felt very heard. 1st of September 2023. Doing a Barry's class with Edward and despite feeling exhausted and achy, really tried and felt fit. And one more. Not because of the contents, but just to showcase to you how simple they can be and how they've changed over time. Even if I was stuck at home self-isolating in COVID, there were still there were still highlights. There is always a highlight. So if you've tried gratitude before and it hasn't landed, I'd invite you to stop trying to do it correctly and start doing it your way. And if the way I've just shown you is useful to you at all, I'd love to hear it. But you know, just find the format that makes you want to return to it and make it small enough that you'll actually do it. And then when you look back in a year and in years, see what you find. My bet is that you'll find a life that was richer than you realized, hiding in plain sight. And one thing that I really enjoy through practicing gratitude in this way is that now when I'm living in the moment, I sometimes know when I'm living through my highlight that I'll be writing down the next day, which is just a beautiful way to savor moments as I live life. That's it. I'll see you next time.