DOD96: Gratuitous Gratitude Special!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's thankful for being thankful. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Live, laugh, love, gentlemen.

0:00:39 Eli: Crochet it on a pillow.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hey! Tom, I don't know how to be grateful yet. You need to teach me. Teach me your ways.

0:00:45 Tom: I'm going to try. I'm gonna try.

0:00:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:45 Eli: We're gonna learn for just $99 .99 per session. You're gonna attend Tom's Gratitude Bootcamp. This is the free session that gets dropped on his TikTok. And then at midnight, As a Black Friday deal, Tom is gonna kill himself. Hey, who had 51 seconds before I ruined the possibility of this being a show for everybody did we have 30, 53 seconds

0:00:57 Tom: My TikTok.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah?

0:01:05 Tom: Wow. That's, whoo, yowzers. Wow. Wow, that is Black Friday.

0:01:13 Thomas: I, too, was trying to intentionally ruin the show and was not just accidentally doing that by sucking. Yeah,

0:01:19 Eli: Sure.

0:01:20 Tom: Yeah, my Bootcamp has a lot more burpees than you'd imagine, though. I just want to give everybody that fair warning. Like, way more, shockingly, weird.

0:01:26 Eli: Yeah, No, I get it.

0:01:25 Thomas: Yeah, like, in between suicide attempts, you're like, okay, you don't hate life enough, I need you to do more burpees. Yeah, yeah, it's working. Geez,

0:01:33 Eli: Yeah, for me. That's one, one and I'm drinking whatever's under the sink.

0:01:35 Thomas: Yeah,

0:01:35 Tom: That's the way any, any burpee is too many. And Eli, is there anything worse than burpees?

0:01:41 Eli: Oh, the only thing worse than the squat thrusts of cardio is the auto ads. The auto ads, which, if you haven't heard them already, prepare to hear a truly ungodly number of them. Sure, the first one you'll ignore and think, good for the guys, they're getting that money for the podcast they give away for free. But the ninth one? The ninth one you're wondering if this podcast shouldn't be called Dear Old Auto Ads with Occasional Bad Takes from Eli. Lie, but there is one way and one way only to interrupt this chicanery, and that of course is to pledge to be our patron over at patreon.com/dearolddads. For just a dollar a show you'll get a commercial-free extended version of every single episode of the show, except for the one where Tom couldn't be asked, and you get it all for as little as a dollar over at patreon.com/dearolddads. Dear Old Dads, sitting in a chair instead of doing burpees.

0:02:44 Tom: Right. So, I um, wanted to do this episode, obviously in advance of Thanksgiving. Um, and there's this weird thing. I don't know if you guys have ever had this as part of what made me think, think about this, so analing this is not a weird thing that's a delightful thing

0:02:53 Eli: Analingus. Two minutes and 42 seconds. There we go. Sorry. I felt like I was too welcoming again. I feel like there were a couple.

0:02:59 Thomas: Yeah, Tom at what point should we really be worried that he is trying to just get out, like, it's a cry for help?

0:03:05 Tom: This is how he leaves the show, it's not just it's it's a, it's

0:03:05 Thomas: Yeah, that

0:03:07 Eli: It's been seven years, guys. It's been seven years and no one tried saying I'd fuck kids.

0:03:09 Thomas: Used

0:03:10 Tom: Not a graceful exit it's not a graceful exit, so

0:03:12 Eli: None of it worked. None of it worked.

0:03:16 Tom: Have you ever gone to a Thanksgiving, um, and had the thing where you go around the table and everybody kind of says what they're thankful for? Has that, are you familiar with that trope at the very least?

0:03:23 Eli: Yes, we do that every year at my Thanksgiving.

0:03:24 Thomas: To be the most annoying

0:03:25 Eli: Giving, yeah.

0:03:25 Thomas: Thing my mom would do and now, now I get it, now there's no horrible influence of my dad, being so annoying, well, he just wouldn't even come to Thanksgiving, so yeah, same.

0:03:34 Tom: Hated that when I was a kid, like when we would go around the table and everybody would have to say, I would felt like super on the spot. And then everybody would say, like, there was only one or two answers. Right. People would say some like ridiculously cliched, repetitive thing that is like basically what Aunt May just said. Right, like, I'm thankful for my family, okay, great, and you, then somebody else would actually say something like genuinely fucking profound, like they got like one of those, and you're like, great, thanks for setting the bar like really fucking high, and then, then it comes to you and, like, your palms are sweating and you're like, fucking, I'm grateful for the green bean casserole and, like, like, you, don't know what the fuck to do.

0:03:37 Thomas: Yeah,

0:03:52 Eli: We ruined

0:04:00 Thomas: We didn't have any of those

0:04:02 Eli: It, yeah. You're right, because

0:04:10 Thomas: This was was really setting up like your mom and, you know, no, you never, never let it go. I was really getting pumped for this Tom's story here.

0:04:15 Eli: Yeah, yeah, there's Here's the problem with that dynamic, there can only be 1 joke answer, and if someone takes it early, you fucking hate that person, right, if that person says cranberry sauce, you're like, oh, okay, cool, cool, cousin Steve who had a baby this year and had a fucking layup, no, go, you, you go ahead and take the funny answer. Then there's the family member who turns into a gibbering idiot, which I love, right? There's always one person who, like, is perfectly capable of a normal conversation, but when all eyes are on them, are like, well, oh gosh, um, oh man, oh god, um, wow, um and you're just like, hey, can we fucking skip you and I can drink something under the sink? Like, what the hell's happening here? And then my favorite, and this is my grandma Betty, may she rest in peace, is old person who it's just their turn to talk for a little while. It's got nothing to do Oh man, when great, when it was grandma's turn, she'd be like, I'm grateful for family, you know, when I was a girl, and you were just like, what are

0:04:24 Tom: Right.

0:04:51 Thomas: This is awesome. I don't have any of this. This is fun.

0:05:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, the you know always the odd

0:05:17 Eli: You gonna You can't be like, hey, shut the fuck up, you said your thing, right, you can't do it. So it's. Oh, it's it is a perfect demonstration of dynamics and family, like, everyone just puts right out on the table who they are, um,

0:05:17 Thomas: -out. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's so fun.

0:05:32 Thomas: Yeah. Well, dynamics of waiting for old person to shut the fuck up, because it's like you're all seeing each other, how long your timer is, like your personal timer of like, mine's zero seconds, I'm like, all right, fucking get this person in the ground right now. Like this is, but but other people are like, nicer, nicer, and then sometimes they go long enough to where even the nice people are like, what

0:05:51 Eli: Right you need that one cool aunt who everybody likes to be like, you have to shut her up. If you don't, do it. A gong, perhaps.

0:06:00 Tom: You got to have a vaudeville hook. Fuck, you got to appoint somebody to have a vaudeville hook to like pull them off the stage.

0:06:04 Eli: Yeah, yeah.

0:06:05 Tom: Yeah.

0:06:07 Thomas: The you have to wait for your time input for a joke, and then a joke interrupts, and then everybody has to pray that she forgets what she was talking about while you move on. It's the best. I love that.

0:06:16 Eli: Also, and this is me, so, like, I want to own this. There's the oversharer in that moment who is like, all right, I'm grateful for mom and dad, and then this person's like, well, as you know, it's been a tough year, and you're just like, hey, keep it fucking light. And I know this because a few years ago, I don't even know what I said, right? I was just horrible, me, right, in whatever horrible form I particularly took, and my cousin came up to me after dinner, was like, Eli, is everything okay with your health? And I was like, yeah, you know, fat, but other than that I'm fine. And he was like, oh, because you said, like, the thing you said, it made it seem like you were had cancer or something. And I was like, oh god, like, the level of self-pity that I had for like fucking who knows what podcast drama I was talking about, that my sweet sweet cousin was like, that guy has butt cancer. There's no way a full-grown adult would be talking about his life like that unless he has bud cancer, right?

0:07:02 Thomas: Well,

0:07:09 Tom: Well, So I was thinking about that tradition, that going around the table, and I was thinking about, like, well, what is being thankful, and thankful is just like another, it's just another way to express this idea of gratitude. Like, I was got to thinking a lot about gratitude. And, you know, of the reason for me that I hated the going around the table thing is that it sort of puts you on the spot to have sort of this like big overarching answer.

And it kind of, you get all this advice, these like admonitions now, which I think are very well meant, but very missing in all of the important details about how gratefulness is an important part of our everyday mental health practice, at the outset. That's a thousand percent true, and is also live, laugh, love useless.

If you don't follow that up with some real exploration of what it means to be grateful, what that word means in practice, not as a feeling, not the feeling of gratefulness, but the practice of gratefulness. And we don't do that part.

I think we're bad at that part, and so we get to the Thanksgiving table or we get this like admonition to, well, you gotta, you know, you need to understand there's a gratefulness practice that needs to be a part of your daily, you know, mental health check-in or whatever.

And it's like, yeah, okay, like, I totally get that, that's like a meaningful and generally well-meant and scientifically backed, actually positive thing that will help all of our mental health, but it's likes, thanks for not explaining anything about what any of that means. And

0:08:29 Tom: So I spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks thinking about this, but before I do, I'm curious if you guys have encountered that same admonition, and if you have, gratefulness as, as something that lives like in the back of your mind or in your daily practice as something that that you've begun doing or have thought about.

0:08:29 Eli: Exactly. Um,

0:08:46 Thomas: First off, it's gratitude, but other than that, mainly

0:08:48 Tom: Gratitude, gratefulness. I'm sorry. Yeah, it is gratitude.

0:08:50 Eli: Just the opportunity to correct other

0:08:52 Tom: It is gratitude, thank you. Yeah, I am. I am grateful.

0:08:52 Eli: People's uh participles and tenses, uh,

0:08:51 Thomas: Because I was going nuts. I was like, am I crazy? I think it's gratitude, but I don't, I'm always wrong about things like that.

0:08:59 Tom: Is. Gratitude. It is gratitude. Thank you.

0:09:04 Eli: I've talked about this other places, but I meditate for my mental health and there is yeah, and there, There is gratitude meditation, which is specifically, it's not meditation per se. And I actually think it's maybe a little problematic to be like, you can do this flavor of meditation. But a practice that I indulge occasionally, which is just sort of focusing on gratitude and loving kindness and, you know, various other positive things that you let take your focus for a meditation session rather than your breath or the feeling of your hands or where you're

0:09:04 Tom: It

0:09:07 Thomas: Are you still doing that? Nice.

0:09:35 Thomas: Oh

0:09:35 Eli: Sitting or, you at, candle flame, whatever it is, people uses their focus. And so that, that is sort of my gratitude practice, adding to that. And I know I've talked about this before, so the thing that Anna and I do every night, team, uh, uh, a is appreciation. And so there is always a, I appreciate you moment between me and Anna at the end of every night.

0:09:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:56 Eli: Yeah. We do that literally every night

0:09:55 Tom: Night you do that, that's intense. I think that's great. That's fucking intense. Tense, I don't know that I would be able to keep that up every night

0:10:01 Thomas: You do yoga with Haley every night? You both have said you do something every day that I've have not stopped thinking about cause I'm like, fucking, ah, we suck.

0:10:07 Tom: We don't do yoga every day, we did yoga for a while until our yoga instructor left and we did not like the new yoga instructor so I am that bad, I am terrible at are you, oh my god yeah I'm

0:10:16 Thomas: You were that bad, huh? Damn. I can't, I can work with this. I've had enough. The bug. I've never seen a human body like this. Yeah.

0:10:25 Tom: A dried up spider on a windowsill

0:10:28 Thomas: It's just a barrel. It's not a human. It's no, it's just one barrel. That's the body. It's impossible. No.

0:10:27 Eli: Yeah, I know, I get it

0:10:33 Tom: Look, I can't reach my own seat belt with one hand, okay, I need to use the other hand to push my other arm into position to get my seat belt, that's it's pretty bad, it's pretty bad that's not wrong

0:10:39 Eli: Yeah exactly it's like those click clack balls, that's what you got to do, but it's with your arms

0:10:46 Thomas: So I, I think I stumbled into, um, sort of practice, like what Eli's describing, but about my kids. Cause I found myself over the last, you know, six years. God, it'S been that long since I've had Phoebe.

Be, um, find myself like, I'll just not full -on I don't sit there and meditate and do the you know, the hands, you know, and do close my eyes, but like I spend a lot of my time thinking about how much I love my kids and how lucky I am. Like I really do it, like, oh, you know, once a week, it's no, like probably like 10 times a day, I'm just like, this fucking rules, man, this fucking rules.

And you know, I was going to say, this morning, if I haven't said it already, amazing is we record this show at rock bottom of me in terms of kid enjoyment, because weekends are the worst thing in anyone ever invented. They're actually, it's amazing. They used to be the only thing you live for. And then when you have three fucking kids, it's hell, it's literal hell. Like, tried so hard yesterday, the kids decided to start the day the 8 a .m. at like level of done that they usually end the day with. It It was just the most intense thing, and so they're fighting, they're doing, so I just want to say, like, Monday morning when we record the show, to pull back the curtain, as Eli says, is literally, I'm exhausted from the worst first part of having kids, which is like them fighting all weekend and trying to deal with it.

And, you know, the many, many, I have a lot of stories for another time from this weekend specifically that were really bad. And I still hopefully come across as very much enjoying having kids, because it's the best. I'm truly grateful.

And so I've, think I've accidentally stumbled upon, you, that same sort of practice that Eli's talking about, but in a less formalized way, um, I, I think, and I hope it makes me happy, actually, one more sentence to go out on, what I'm trying to do with this, or what I've, what I've tried to do is, will be no reason ever at any time ever for anyone to ever tell me, well, enjoy it while it lasts, hope you enjoy when they're, when they' re young, this time, because i' ve already done that, whatever the maximum of like, enjoy it while it lasts, or this time when they're so young is the special time that you bet, whatever that is, I have done the max that, like, that's what my goal is in in this entire thing, is just if somebody ever says, I'll be like, oh, way ahead of you, I've already enjoyed this 5,000 points, you can't beat my high score of enjoyment of my kids being this age, because I fucking love it every day.

0:13:14 Eli: Didn't even know that moment could be a competition, Thomas, I'm really, I'm, I'm genuinely just impressed I'm impressed, that's Heath Enright levels of competitive that you were like, oh, Oh, be grateful while it lasts? May I introduce you to my gratitude chart? You'll notice here I've graphed my gratitude versus the average American gratitude. And on the Pew reports, assuming you're 25% higher than the average, and I think we both know you're not, you're still losing by a significant margin. So shut the fuck up, Aunt Catherine.

0:13:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:47 Tom: I want to come back to that a little bit, Thomas, but first I want to kind of offer my, my sort of definition, I'm curious if you guys follow with the same thing, and kind of go into some, some tools I think that have been helpful for me to think about gratitude, um, as more than just a feeling. So importantly, I think the first thing is, like, gratitude has got to be more than just a sort of generalized feeling, right? Because then it doesn't work as an an admonition, so, like, when we tell people especially

0:14:11 Thomas: Sounds like someone who didn't get the high score, I'm just saying, like this... No, the grit, you don't understand, it needs...

0:14:14 Eli: Yeah, it sounds like someone... Let's not keep score at all. Let's just... Let's just be grateful for fun. That's what you sound like. That's what you sound like. Tom, we're not playing ping pong in our basement with our niece.

0:14:18 Tom: All Right.

0:14:28 Tom: All Right, I'm caught.

0:14:28 Eli: This is gratitude, okay?

0:14:28 Tom: I'm caught. I've caught. This is Olympic-level gratitude. I didn't realize that.

0:14:31 Eli: Yeah, obviously.

0:14:32 Tom: I was, I was playing JV. I was playing JV, and that's on me. That's, that's definitely on me. So, like, I think I, I think the admonition to practice gratitude doesn't work if gratitude is just a feeling, right? If the idea is just they feeling, because then you're sort of like searching around desperately to like feel something because you were admonished to feel something. So what I think that gratitude really is, is an intentional observational practice. That's kind of the conclusion that I came to in thinking about this in preparation for this episode. And what I mean by that is like we have to spend the time and attention with intention with rather to find those things where we see what we have rather than see what we lack if that makes sense.

0:15:15 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:15 Thomas: Oh.

0:15:16 Tom: So gratitude is, is an intentional moment where you say, okay, in order for me to feel grateful, I need to look around and need to search for the things that, that I have in this moment, the things that are not, not ignore all the things that are lacking, ignore the ways that I hurt or that I've been disappointed or that I don't have, you thing or that thing, or that I'm unable to perform, you for my know, kids the way I want to, or for my job the way I want you. You ignore all of that stuff, all the sort of niggling details that like kind us down because we have a negativity bias as human beings. We all have a negativity bias, and gratitude to me seems to be the antidote for that negativity bias, it's an intentional refocusing.

0:15:52 Thomas: God. God. If we get started on high score on negativity bias game, I am, man, I am fucking, you guys, undefeated. I'm undefeat, over. Here, yeah.

0:15:59 Eli: World champion, yeah.

0:16:00 Thomas: But

0:15:59 Tom: So I think, like, when we do that stuff, when we, when we say, okay, I'm going to spend time building habits of intentionally refocussing my thoughts, my, that look for what I have, and, and I really think, to get away from the thanksgiving dinner table platitude bullshit, the live laugh love, you know, nonsense, like it's really the most useful to look for really small things, like really specific and detailed and small things, to like find those moments of minutiae that just appreciate in the moment and that you can just have and that can be transient, and they don't have to be these like giant overarching, oh, you know, I have so much gratitude for you, the love of my wife, you know, like I do, of course, but like, kind of too big to hold all in one place.

And it's repetitive to do over and over again, but I can look and say, like, wow, you know, I'm, I'm really glad that I remembered to buy jam for Donovan this morning because I know he's going to want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I usually forget this stuff, for whatever reason I remembered. That's the kind of gratitude, like, that I'm talking about. It can be these internal things, are like, you can be very motivating, so, like, I think about this all the time.

So I've got people in my life that are very sick, and I'm like, you know what, I can do this today, and I really, I'm fucking thankful that I can't do this work today, so that's why I'm gonna go do it because I can, and I know so many people that can't.

And then it changes my whole outlook on, like, fuck, I don't want to fucking get on that fucking thing today, or I don't want to lift that weight today, or I don't wanna do, like, whatever, I'm tired, it changes your whole focus, like that, because it's like, wait a minute, I can, so

0:17:33 Eli: Yeah.

0:17:34 Tom: It's this intentional refocusing, I'm curious what you think about that concept, that as a way to think about gratitude.

0:17:39 Eli: Yeah, I love it. I love it. I think it's super duper important. It's incorporated into a bunch of really helpful mental health things, like obviously CBT and, and ACT, even more so, is about sort of observation of the good and reinforcement of the good. So, yeah, that is all deeply borne out. I think the other thing, too, that people don't really keep in mind when it comes to our negativity bias is we also have a story bias, right, is that we think of our lives in terms of a story. And so we are, we hesitant to indulge in gratitude until the story we tell ourselves reaches its conclusion.

0:18:11 Tom: Right

0:18:12 Thomas: It it never ends, fucking thing never ends yeah this

0:18:14 Eli: Right. But it never ends. Right. We just keep adding to the list. We keep adding to the thing of goals, which is good and healthy and should be a thing that you do. But if you refuse yourself appreciation, gratitude and pride until at last all your enemies are at your feet, they've lain waste to the nations that oppose you, then you never actually get to enjoy those things. When, and you instead stop along the way to understand that there is a much more complex explosion of events in your life rather than a narrative, um, can be part of changing your outlook of that, right? Because the truth of the matter is, and this is the thing, I think too many people think the negativity bias is a honesty bias or a realism bias, right.

0:18:32 Tom: Yeah It's fucking not, yeah.

0:19:00 Eli: And, only, and I'll speak for myself, right, spent a really, really huge chunk of my life shitting on things that should have been joyful and happy for me because I thought I was like the only one who was ready to see it the way it is, right, and, like, I tell it how it is, and I'm honest with myself, and, like, don't I let anybody butter me up or blow smoke up my ass, and now, as an adult, looking back, I sort of realized that actually what I did is I, they sort of rejected a lot of joy out of a form of self-protection, usually because the people who hurt me told me that they were being honest. And I think that's another thing that we have to admit about ourselves, is that you didn't come up with the idea to shit on yourself. Someone shat on you and told you it was love.

0:19:15 Tom: Yeah

0:19:43 Thomas: Is interesting thing

0:19:43 Tom: And you didn't protect yourself, right. That idea that you do this to self protect only hurts you more, right. I totally understand that, that idea, and you hear this, like, you know, expect the, and you'll never be disappointed, that kind of like platitudinal sort of nonsense, and it's all built into that same similar language, right, like all of that stuff does is reduce the joy of your human experience. That's all it can ever do. It doesn't make you happier, like, around with constantly lowered expectations for your own joy and other people's, like, place in your world, doesn't mean you walk around happier, like, it doesn't protect you at all, it means you live when, like, a trough all the time rather than like the peaks and valleys, right. It means like I'll just stay in the trough, and then nobody can like drag me down any lower. It's totally there with you, like that shit just hurts you, like one that suffers is you.

0:19:45 Eli: Right.

0:20:34 Eli: Yeah. To speak to the theme of our show of sort of toxic masculinity and men, I think a lot of men grew up thinking that, like, a real man never brags. A real man bends his hat to the sunset and gently walks away. And it's like, no, no. That's all toxic garbage. Like, the real, real, that fucking means, also right, enjoy moments of happiness and don't need to, like defer or diminish when they're supposed to be happy. Right. That's the image that we have so often is the stoic who don't I don't know much about all this.

I love your business, but I suppose if you're my gal and I'm you, and it's just, it's all fucking toxic garbage, man. Right. Like whatever image we've imposed onto ourselves that, like, men can't feel ecstatic or joyful. You know, I think all the time about the Tom Cruise moment on Oprah, right, he was jumping up and down on the couch, and, like, look, he's all hopped up on niacin and be it for me to say don't make fun of a cult member when they're all hoped up on niacine, but, like, that wasn't the joke at the time. The guy of the time was like, you believe this guy fucking loves his wife

0:21:09 Thomas: Yeah oh

0:21:40 Eli: Idiot, got him, I hate my wife.

0:21:29 Tom: Right yeah yeah Well, and it's funny, Eli, because, like, I remember you made a joke, and I know I'm not trying to call you out, but I'm just saying it's like, it's so embedded in all of us because I hear myself in a lot of what you were describing about that stoicism. But, like, I remember you making a joke, like, when you found my wife's Instagram page that has some of the love poems that I wrote to her, and you're like, I would rather see you guys fuck than have read these things yeah yeah but, like, all they are is just, like, private, they were private expressions of, like, my affection to her, and, like, they make us uncomfortable, right, seeing that from other men makes other men uncomfortable for sure

0:22:02 Eli: So much more, yes, absolutely.

0:22:05 Thomas: Is that

0:22:19 Eli: Yes and ourselves uncomfortable, deeply.

0:22:26 Thomas: He already was sent, sorry, I guess, are you golem right now? What is it like?

0:22:32 Eli: Ours.

0:22:32 Thomas: It makes us uncomfortable, yes, and I can't do golem like you can do go to a god, yes.

0:22:38 Eli: Makes us hate it, we do not want anyone to see that we love our wives, I think. If anyone loves their wife more than the way they love like a cat or a dog in front of me, I'm like, okay, why don't you just fuck like, and I'll say people have fucked in front of me and I've been more comfortable than when people like do love poems for each other Like as I Said

0:22:44 Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

0:22:54 Thomas: Like Well They're Not doing a Love Poem Thank God, yeah, oh, don't have to spend too much time on this, but I do to at least express like I Think

0:23:01 Eli: No My Wife in front of you Guys, yeah

0:23:07 Thomas: Yeah I think that like I might be coming from a little, I'm realizing I didn't know it at the beginning, but I think I'm coming from a little bit of a different place that I imagine some of the listeners will be as well. And this is due some amount of privilege because my dichotomy isn't between, oh, woe is me and oh, I love my life and my kids and everything. Thing.

Um, my dichotomy is between, you I'm being grateful, if I'm having that good positive experience in the moment and thankful for my kids and what I have, the other thing I have is, oh, the world is full of so much suffering that I can't care about anything. It's like so depressing that I can't like enjoy anything I have because it's so awful out there. And so that's my dichotomy.

And the only reason I bring it up is for me, that is still being there's realism tied to that, you know, like I so I appreciate what you're saying, Eli, in that it's like, oh, it's it was about, you lying to yourself and being real, but it's not.

And it's like, well, for me it kind of is because when me to be happy, I have to say, you know, I'm not going to think about the tens of thousands of people who are dying right now in Gaza.

0:24:16 Thomas: I have then I have to like think about what I have and I have to think about what I have in a way that's not like haha my kids are alive fuck all you like, I don't, it's like it's so hard for me to even do that, you think in those terms that it is hard, but I still think it is necessary because you can't like, me tell you from experience, you can not really go through life that effectively if you are not able to stop thinking about those negative things for some amount of time. Well,

0:24:43 Eli: And and not to talk specifics, but like whenever someone says like, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just too upset about X, the, that comes up the, I suspect that might be sickness brain rather than like realism brain is that that person rarely says, and you know what, the 20,000 people who die of tuberculosis every year, I really am upset about that too. Like I just, I stay up at night and I just really can't think about anything other than the people who are dying of tuberculosis, or if it's about form a particular of politics, right? Right. If it's one thing and not the other, especially if one sort of like an ongoing assumed conflict and the other one is like new and spicy. I think a lot of the time, again, in the same way that we tell ourselves that like self-criticism is honesty, I think we often tell ourselves like self-defeatism about the quote-unquote state of the world. And we should talk about the truth value of like the world is so bad right now because, because it's also better than the world has ever been before, there's never been a better

0:25:07 Thomas: It's A very

0:25:44 Eli: Time In History to be a human, but it's true, right, graph points up and to the right and we have a Standard

0:25:44 Thomas: Low bar Yeah Jesus Are You you Steven that Pinker What did we get an Idiot No Wrong

0:25:51 Eli: Hey Steven Pinker is more In The, I mean Steven Pinker's general point in that book is weirdly true, all of his examples are so, stop whining about gay rights, right? Which is, it's very, very clear what the agenda is Um, yet the, the fact that the graph points up and to the right, when someone is like not satisfied with that, right, then what it becomes about is like a thought distortion about what the standard of happiness for them personally should be and what part of themselves is invested in the idea of like, well, I am a moral person because I feel these things, things, right?

We self-sabotaging or are we actually um concerned with stuff, a, right, is this an excuse my brain makes, or is this how I dedicate my life, right, because I, I believe that there are people out there for whom the suffering of the world is too much, right, people who like jump on and join the Peace Corps and Doctors Without Borders and that kind of stuff for whom it's just like, hey, like I am aware of this low sort of undercurrent of suffering in the world, I cannot bear it.

And so I dedicate my life to it. I think for Western people living in privilege, a lot of the time it is mostly about someone, and I'm not saying this is you, Thomas, I'm of course broadening this out like much, much wider into sort of the general idea.

I think most of the time that is a person who has learned that social justice and privilege are hierarchical in their mindset, right, and that they are towards the top of the pyramid, and so rather than sort of learning de-isolationalist um social justice techniques or like deal with found family and all that kind of stuff, instead they, they either lower themselves in the pyramid, that's the rush to innocence, right, that's, that's a whole different topic, or they'll just be like, but trust me, I'm really miserable up here, right, like I hate

0:25:59 Thomas: Yeah, yeah Yeah Yeah Right Yeah Yeah

0:27:43 Eli: It up here, and my, my deep and abiding passion is the, you know, ongoing going war in Yemen. And that's why I can't be happy. And so, to downplay what you're talking about in any way, shape or form, but it's something that I see as sort of like a slightly different flavor of that misery is honesty ghost.

0:27:59 Thomas: I hope, I you're, hope you're being honest when you say that because I actually do think all your observations are, are things I've seen in the world. But I also, that's not me because this is something I've had my whole, I've been depressed my whole life. I've been 12 and I read about shit that happens in history. That's horrifying. And I'm like, I can't believe this is the world we live in. I hate it. Like it's true.

That's been my personal mental health battle for literally as long as I can remember, is it's not like, oh, it's only the thing that's happening now, so therefore that's the thing I'm latching on. It's like, no, that's just latest greatest example that came to mind.

And I don't want to dwell too much in it because it's not pleasant, but the one I wanted to give from it, and again, I am actually agreeing with a lot of what you're saying, just as like you said, I mean, I do see that and I do feel those impulses and I think you're dead on in terms of the strategies of how people deal with that very thing.

But for me, this has been my problem that I'm only finally doing better at, like because of, in my opinion, honestly, the drugs I'm on that help my focus. I think it helps me not think about those things all the time. But anyway, though,

0:29:01 Eli: No, I want, I want to speak to that because I think that's really valuable for those who do have depression. And if you haven't done any reading about depression, I, you have, Thomas, I'm talking, talking about the audience, um, it's really really interesting because that um world generally, like everyday things, but also the news upsets me more than it upsets other people is like the very core of thought distortions that cause depressive episodes, right? Um, and basically, I mean, aside from brain chemistry, which is largely debunked, and I don't want to get into the whole, like, what brain chemistry means to doctors and scientists versus what it means in the layman understanding, but at the core understanding we have of, like, how our thoughts work, because I'm a depressed person as well, right? Depressed people think about sad things.

Generally, what they find is that we reach conclusions that are not true about specific situations. And one of the really difficult things to do is train your brain to, one, recognize that other people do not make those conclusions after they hear bad news, right? So I'll use a silly example, right, for myself, just to get it away from news in the world, because I think people are very precious about how they feel about the news and might not necessarily be open to it.

But I'll give a really good example. I weigh myself every morning because I'm on a weight loss thing right now. And when I gain weight, right, if I've, you know, hit a plateau or I gain a pound or two, my brain goes into thought distortions about that. I'll never lose the weight. I'll always be fat. I'm going to die young. I'm gonna do this. I'm to do that. And I think, as a depressed person whose brain has always done that, it really takes concentration.

This goes back to what Tom was saying. It really takes concentration and recognition to realize, a, that those are thought distortions, right? That those are not true things, right, even if they feel true, even if they might be true, that they're not true things, especially if they're unchangeable or if there's nothing thing I can do about them, is a really important thing to recognize. But more importantly, recognizing other people's brains don't do this about this specific scenario.

So yeah, we veered slightly into the sort of mental illness thing, but I think that's actually part of the importance of a gratitude practice is retraining your brain away from the habits you might have.

0:29:20 Thomas: Yes.

0:31:18 Thomas: Yeah, I, I think, again, I think these are totally valid. It, I don't want to, you too much down this road. I just, I have a difficult time with gratitude because, in you know, it's the classic, like the Peter Singer thing, where it's like, if you saw a child drowning, you'd obviously help them.

But if you child needs a mosquito net and you, you know, instead we buy a nice thing instead of doing that kind of thing, I have a hard time with all those things because I find my like so precious to me that I can't, it's hard for me to be like, well, yes, there are kids dying in any given thing right now that I you to fucking read about, but like, it's okay because you have your kids.

And I just can't, I fundamentally think that's bad for the earth, if since everybody takes that mindset, and I think it, it makes the planet worse. And I have a hard time doing that. I, but do still think everything you're saying is valid.

Like, in order to be happy, you have to be able to spend some time not, you know, doing that stuff, and even to be productive, by the way, like to even actually help anybody, like you can't be stuck in those kind of awful, depressive episodes,

0:32:21 Eli: Right.

0:32:21 Thomas: You know, like it's very important.

0:32:21 Eli: Yeah, And media reinforces that to ourselves, right? Are we told, look, either you are caring all the time or you're selfish, right? There is no middle ground. You know, the narrative we have is like, if you have a thing someone doesn't have, it's because you don't want that other person to have it. If you're experiencing joy while others are experiencing suffering, it's because you have some undeserved things. So it's, it's incredibly natural for our brains to create those thought distortions because we're told them over and over, over and over again.

0:32:30 Thomas: Yeah,

0:32:51 Tom: So I guess, I, I would offer a perspective that gratitude, the practice of gratitude, is not, or should not necessarily be comparative in that way. Right. So It would be a bad practice, I think. And I think that whole conversation is important. I just want to let you guys kind of have that because it's a world I don't, I don't experience personally, so don't think my voice matters too much in that. But like, if we're going to talk about about gratitude, like, one thing that's important is not to contrast, gratitude with a practice as something that is a natural and healthy thing for everyone to do regardless of their mental health status, right? But like, to not, to it be comparative, "I am grateful because I have this and others don't" is, right, bad practice of gratitude, and that is not, that is is not what I'm intending to, like, offer. Here is my insight.

0:32:59 Eli: Yeah.

0:33:00 Thomas: Oh, of course. Yeah.

0:33:36 Tom: So like, if we're going to offer our kids, for example, the idea, and I, it's something I've been thinking about, like, like how do we get through this Thanksgiving thing, but also how do we incorporate gratitude as a daily practice of life, like for our kids, and express this and like model it to them. We have to show them, like, okay, like we're going to be grateful for, first, all the little things, we're gonna find, like, one or two little little things.

Grateful that we have leftovers today so that we can have a nice quick lunch because we're busy and we have a lot of other things to do. And how nice is that, that I didn't have to spend time working on lunch? It's really small stuff like that.

And doing it over and over and over again helps us to retrain and reframe our attitude and our mindset, and do that for our kids, so that over time, the natural plasticity of our minds will push us further and further into habits of thinking that are focused on that same gratitude. And at first, it's going to have to be an intentional thing. So one of the things to do to make that a part of your life is to journal it. Is

0:34:39 Tom: To literally write it down. Or if you've got kids, to have a daily gratitude practice where you ask the kids, like, tell me something that you feel lucky about today. Today I feel lucky that my meeting got canceled and I got to do this other thing instead that I wanted to do, right.

0:34:39 Thomas: Yeah, that's a really good idea.

0:34:57 Tom: Small moments.

0:34:57 Eli: Yeah, we do that with Max. We do. We call it bedtime sweet talk or or as he calls it, my favorite part of the day.

0:35:03 Thomas: Oh yeah. We do favorite part of the, Oh, we haven't done that as much lately. We used to do it every night and then like we, it's actually been different since Lydia started working with me. Cause now we're both working all the time. And so it's like, usually we haven't had as many dinners together altogether and we should, but anyway, other day, Phoebe, and she often does this, she's where at all in trouble, like if she has done anything at all wrong, she'll find a billion ways to deflect. You know, it's really interesting. And the other Day, one of the things she did was she's like, can we do favorite part of the day? I was like, yes, actually, let's do that. It was out of nowhere. We haven't done it in a month. Like it was just totally out of no where. And I was 100 percent. Yes, let us do that, yeah.

0:35:05 Eli: Yeah. Oh,

0:35:34 Tom: That's great. Yeah. That's Yeah.

0:35:44 Eli: It's it's probably its own episode, but kids deflecting is its own fucking thing, right? Right. Because they will just be like, you know, Myanmar is really fucking breaking me up these days. And you're like, You hate your brother. And they're like Myanmar.

0:35:49 Tom: Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah,

0:35:50 Thomas: Yep.

0:35:59 Thomas: It's, it's Like I can't even tell you how much of my life is this specific thing with Phoebe. It's a who?

0:36:04 Eli: Right. Or just insane the thing they'll accuse you of at the slightest discipline. Right. You'll be like hey, you can't slap the nun who comes by for the eggs for the orphans. And they'll be so so

0:36:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yep, yeah. I want a new dad every day.

0:36:16 Tom: You

0:36:17 Eli: You hate me and wish I was dead.

0:36:19 Thomas: Yep? Yes. Phoebe, that's, did you put Phoebe on the phone? That's literally what she'll do the second anything like that happens.

0:36:25 Eli: Yeah. No. Um, I, you know, when my sister was little, she would, I mean not necessarily that, but she would use very extreme language, and it really took a lot, um, us to learn, like, she hasn't, you can just ignore that, you don't have to pay attention to that at all because

0:36:37 Thomas: Yeah. But it's hard because anyone listening is like, uh, what? You know, like she's like, yeah, exactly. And you're like, no, it's literally every day that there's 10 times a day this happens. Sorry.

0:36:42 Eli: That's an emergency yeah Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:48 Tom: Thing that is very useful with once you get into this sort of like habit or this like active practice of gratitude, then with the kids and then also with ourselves, is to then intentionally focus. That is what I want to circle back to you, Thomas. So, like you, it sounds like have a lot of gratitude internal practice that you perform, transform, around like your kids and your relationship with your kids, but is also like a really important thing to do in a really intentional way, in a really intentionally observant way, you know, for all the other pieces of our life that have an impact on us, like think about, like, you know, intentionally practicing gratitude in all of our other loving relationships, you thinking about the things that we're grateful for again, on that, that really small micro level with, with your, you know, and with your work, you like there

0:37:07 Thomas: Do you mean my one other loving relationship? Yeah. Okay. I'll try. I do try that. Yes. No, actually I do seriously do that, Tom. Like, I know we both, I think we bonded over this before, but I'll, I'm not as good at the gratitude, like, every single day with this stuff, butI do do it if I'm, I'm not feeling great, or if more, most often I do it when probably the kids have done something incredibly upsetting that I have to try to not be too mad about.

Like, like this weekend, Phoebe ruined several things that were expensive, like, and important, that the most frustrating ways possible, and I had to really try to pull myself out of not being upset about it, you know. And one of the ways I do that is I do try to quickly, like, think everything into, like, what I'm grateful that I have.

And, for that example, but for other stuff I do, like when I'm physically not feeling well or something like that, I switch to the, like, well, I'm still incredibly lucky that I have this, like, healthy body, and I can play hockey and I can have fun in that way. A, Like, that's, that's the fortunate thing.

Like, moment that could change, you know, like at any time, I could also just age out of being able, able to do that kind of thing that gives me a lot of joy with my body. So, like, that's something do try to keep in mind

0:38:37 Thomas: A lot.

0:38:37 Eli: Thomas standing behind you with a bat right now. Could change any second.

0:38:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:39 Tom: Yeah, You know, one other thing I try to practice is like, I have a tendency sometimes because of the way that my life is structured is, I get a little frustrated at how how little wiggle room I have. So Right. I have very little space and time and wiggle room. And like, that is something that can like really frustrate me from time to time where I'll be like, God damn it. Like, I just wish I had fucking like a little bit of time to breathe, you know? But like another way for me to like reframe that is to pay attention. Like look, I know that being of loving service is an important part of my identity. And today I got to be of loving surface to all these people, these different ways. And my day would have had so much less meaning for me if I didn't get to do that. That reframing changes my outlook immediately. Like that takes me out of that. Like, I just, I'm fucking tired.

And I wish I had an hour that was just mine. Selfishly. It changes that for me. It it makes a demonstrable difference in letting me continue to like do the things that I have to do tomorrow, with the same, you know, attitude of like, I am grateful to be of loving service, because that is part of how I gain meaning and purpose in my life.

So that practice, that of gratitude, is something I look at my kids and I'm like, I need to teach them this, right? I need to like get this out of me and like out of Haley, because she's also exceptionally good at this, and she's grown to be exceptionally good at this, you, honestly,

0:39:01 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:40:00 Eli: Sounds

0:40:00 Tom: Through being sick but

0:40:01 Eli: Like someone's challenging Thomas to a gratitude contest.

0:40:04 Tom: I want to figure out how to get this into the kids, you, how do we like, like move that into our kids and make it a part of their daily practice? Because I see like, especially as kids like age into teenagers, there's that like, for granted kind of element, and that sort of like, woe is me, and that teen angst and that ennui, right? All of that stuff. There's an antidote for that, there's right. Some of that that's natural and that's good and that's okay. But there's also some of THAT that's like, all right, but you need some some tools so that doesn't get entrenched. And you need some tools so that when you don't want to feel that coolness from being angsty, that you can dig yourself out and you can take yourself out easily and comfortably. And that's one thing for me as a 45 year old man to have a gratitude practice that works. And I think I do. But it's another thing for me to be like, how do I get that gratitude practice out of me and into the kids and incorporated into part of their daily life?

0:40:05 Thomas: Lose.

0:40:22 Eli: Yeah, just angst. Yeah.

0:40:57 Thomas: Your gratitude privilege.

0:40:57 Eli: Yes. Yes. And how does it not become like another weird thing my dad wants me to do? Right? Yeah. No, it's, it is. Teen angst especially is really hard. Or angst, if you speak English instead of fucking weird German.

0:41:02 Tom: Right. Is it angst? There's no one's ever said angst in my whole life.

0:41:11 Eli: No, I don't know why

0:41:12 Thomas: You say that every time

0:41:13 Eli: I am pronouncing it that way. It's psychotic. I don't think I've ever pronounced it that way before. I think I'm having a stroke, and you can't tell because we don't have video on.

0:41:13 Thomas: Yeah Well, I'm grateful for the cranberry sauce.

0:41:28 Eli: But I think teen angst is especially hard because they're this little person, and they're your favorite person in the world. Or Tom's, in case, top 10 and you, you top 15 and you're like, hey, you're my little buddy, and just so you know, like, this is where the focus is, and other stuff going on, yada yada, but like, it's about, it's you, and then they're like, Ashley in math class is dating Kevin, and you're like, I'll fucking kill those people, what's happening, how do I make you feel better, and especially when you do your reading and you realize, like, hey, this is a healthy part of it, and all you can do is like model good behaviors and communicate, it feels fucking insane because

0:41:38 Tom: Fifteen.

0:42:07 Tom: It does feel insane.

0:42:09 Eli: Got to be like, oh, you're gonna go sob hysterically in your room over Ashley and Kevin, and I'm gonna nod and then continue to live my life, chill and cool, cool. And chill. Of

0:42:17 Tom: It when like and you don't want to be like, I don't want to gather them around the Thanksgiving table and say, tell me something you're grateful for.

0:42:25 Eli: Course.

0:42:26 Tom: Right. That's The worst. But also I recognize how important an element of that is and how meaningful that is. And like, useful it is. And I'm at this place where I'm like, okay, I know all this stuff about gratitude. I've put a lot of thought and effort into like practicing it personally, and thinking about where it comes from, and think about what it means, and knowing it's an observational practice. And I got all this, and it's like, all right, well, how do I get it to Finn specifically?

0:42:21 Thomas: You,

0:42:26 Eli: Yes. Yes. Right, right.

0:42:49 Tom: Like, how, how do I cram this into Finnegan Curry specifically? You know, we're like, how do I get this into Aislinn? So, and also, like, how do you build that gratitude for kids that are, like, you know, bluntly, like, for my kids that our upper middle class, and I don't want them to grow into being like ungrateful dicks. I want them, like, look around and be like, yeah, like, have a lot and this is great. And I, like, the things that, you know, like, how do you build gratitude to there, and I, I'm not 100% sure how to, like, turn that into something from something I want into something that I've taught. Do you know what I mean?

0:43:23 Thomas: I'll tell you, as, as on the other side of that, where, literally, the few times my mom would try to do that, by the way, my poor mom, after making the entire Thanksgiving dinner, is amazing, it's the best tasting thing I've ever had, working all day on that, she dares, for like one time on the, around the table, to be like, can everyone say one nice thing once in the year? And then we're all like, no, fuck you.

0:43:44 Eli: Right.

0:43:45 Thomas: Like everybody makes fun of her. That was to give you a peek into my poor mom's life. But another reason that, that it was so rejected by my family was it was so discordant with the rest of our lives. I think that one thing, Tom, that may help is doing that more consistent practice as you're doing makes that not such an annoying, insane thing to say. Because in my family, that was like telling the most negative possible people ever to exist for one time of the year for no reason. Hey, can you be nice? And we're all like, what? Why? We don't even understand what you're talking about. Why would we ever do that? That's not the way to go.

0:44:17 Eli: Yeah.

0:44:19 Tom: Right. No, and I'm, I'm struck by, Eli, I'm stuck by your, your, like, daily check-in practice with Anna, as, like, you said that, and it's funny, because, like, literally last night Hailey and I did it, like, a check-in, we've never actually called it a check-in before, we did a check-in, and I thought afterwards, I was like, god, it is so nice to have a relationship where I can do a check-in like this, and everybody feels good, even about, like, feelings they have that aren't positive. Right, because that's not, that's, I've ever had in my life before, and now I have a relationship where I can do that, and I really felt like, god, what a fucking awesome conversation that was. It, I may be, some version of that is how you do that with the kids. Like, maybe some version of the daily check-in is how you get that fucking gratitude practice into the goddamn kids. Like, maybe it's just got to be that around the dinner table piece. I mean, maybe that is just as simple as that.

0:45:09 Eli: Think, seriously, if anyone has not tried Team, do it five days in a row, it'll blow your noodle, it'll below your noodle where you think someone is versus where they actually are, um, I can't recommend it highly enough. Oh,

0:45:15 Thomas: What are you talking about sorry I don't think you said what that was

0:45:23 Eli: I, I thought I had mentioned this before, so there's a thing called Team that we do for the check-in, Touch, which is like physically touch the whole time you're, you, doing it. And you're like, yeah, no, I touched my wife all the time. And then you're like, oh, holy shit, like the amount of physical contact we make in a day is wildly limited to, like, "Here, quick, you hold him." Right. And so you're touching the whole thing. Educate is what, what's a thing you will learn to that day. And again, that's the thing that I'm like, I don't, fuck, why would I possibly? And then all of a sudden you realize, like, this person's having their own lived experience of knowledge and change and transformation, and you get to be a part of it, if you ask, but that I would never fucking experience. Right, give you a great example, Anna's gotten super duper into sumo wrestling, and so all my wife is a sumo fanatic.

0:46:09 Tom: Excuse me, what? That's amazing. Yeah. That is...

0:46:11 Thomas: We couldn't have predicted the next word there forever

0:46:16 Eli: Fanatic, fanatic. I know so much about fucking sumo wrestling now. The most irritating football fan in your life has nothing on, so much so that like she's doing inside jokes that no one else gets. She'll be like, kind of like Yasumi Hamako coming out in the third. And I'm like, nobody knows you're speaking, you're, you are in the podcast diverse. But like, one of the things that's been really amazing about Educate is be like, well, I learned this thing about Matsumo.

And I learned this thing about this wrestler. And like, I get a peek into her world where I get to genuinely appreciate her and the things she's excited about. Appreciation is a gratitude process. And then metric is what you're working on, right? And that can be things that are going badly, but it's basically just like, here's what I'm working on right now. And you, will say again, I think I'm a pretty good husband.

I think I'm a pretty good listener and I'm pretty attentive, but I have found myself completely caught off off guard with her metric multiple times where I've been like, oh, she's having a pretty good day, and she's like, yeah, no, I'm really struggling today. And I'm like, oh, all right, well, I'm glad I fucking checked.

0:47:13 Tom: Really?

0:47:22 Thomas: Jesus

0:47:22 Tom: Realize it was so systematized. That's interesting.

0:47:23 Eli: Systemize, it, get in there with the system, Team it up all right gentlemen, uh, of gratitude. Yesterday, my wife told me I'm the cheapest guy she knows, I don't buy it,

0:47:43 Tom: I

0:47:49 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

0:48:28 Eli: Us. Hate it. We do not want anyone to see that we love our wives. I