I had a really good friend of mine I went to lunch and he said let me ask you a question honestly right now what are you grateful for and at the lunch I said jack shit nothing brother there's nothing good in my life right now and I'm not exaggerating this to you when I tell you this and this is a factual story as I'm mouthing these words two people walked in with an older man both of them clearly were fighting cancer somehow both had lost their hair one of the ladies had a bonnet on and they were barely moving in both walked by our table and gave me the most warm greeting the warmest smile as a stranger and he goes it's pretty freaking pathetic you can't find anything in your life to be grateful for right now and on the drive home I'm not kidding you I started to stack gratitude because if you can find things to be grateful for in that space man is your life going to be rich when there really are external things to be grateful for so my first mechanism out of that space was honestly to stack the things I was grateful for and I started reinforcing it over and over and over again and what happens is there's this reticular activating system in our brains right and all of a sudden because that's the messaging I was giving myself all of a sudden all these things start to come into my awareness that I'm grateful for I start to magnetize to myself some people that I needed to find into my life and that was the next layer I started to see be grateful for my health my fitness people who loved me what it is it changed my state when I stacked gratitude I changed what I did in the morning and I changed what I did in the evening and so somehow by grabbing control of my morning and by grabbing control of my evening I got some measure of control over the middle of my day I was an out of control person back in those days meaning this I woke up worried stressed fearful and I immediately start thinking about a bill I I'm talking within six minutes of waking up six seconds most people listening to this that's what they do I said I got to grab control of my morning and I set up routines in my morning my morning routines are really detailed I get up and I hydrate the second thing I do every morning is I do something cold something cold taking a cold shower or splashing some cold water on my face or walking out when it was cold it shocks our nervous system our fight or flight kicks in we're in a cellular electric alive state I obviously do some prayer and meditation every single morning I've still not touched my telephone so there's a rule there's 30 minutes I cannot touch my telephone when I wake up that's the hardest thing to do in the world and the thing that can benefit you the most because what's ever on that phone you have to react to and typically it's stuff that's not great and so I don't touch that I I do my meditation and my prayer and I do some stretching I do some breathing exercises and then at that point I allow myself to enter the world after I've got my state control you