A dumb sophomore loaded up the bar to test his max squat without warming up, he wanted to just see how the weight felt.  Soon he was pinned under the weight.  The old dude that was in the gym with him came over and lifted it off his back.  The old dude scolded the protagonist of our story.  He told him he needed to learn how to warm up and how to do the exercises correctly.  The old Yoda-like dude then offered to show our young protagonist how to do these things, how to lift correctly.  In a moment or rare humility the sophomore accepted.  Soon he was learning much from his mentor about the weight room and the iron.  I was that dumb sophomore, and I am grateful for all my friend Shane has taught me in the gym.

I was being a gym idiot that day and needed to be rescued from my own stupidity.  Luckily Shane was a cool enough dude to help me out.  I know this early intervention helped me learn a lot of things about lifting that helped me stay safer in the gym.  His lessons also helped me make a little faster progress.  Shane was in his 30s and had no real incentive to help other than being a good guy.  I think that was another lesson that every 16 year old needs to get too.  At that age you can never have too many lessons in being a good guy and how to act properly.

This whole incident was a whole lesson in gym culture as well.  At least it is the kind of lesson in how gym culture should be.  In the gym we should all help each other out.  There can be a brotherhood of iron and a lot of us meatheads love and crave this brotherhood.  Every gym has its lone wolfs that don’t want anything to do with anyone, but that’s not what a gym should be.  The culture that makes everyone better is one of helping, teaching, and training each other.  This makes our journey in the gym more productive and more enjoyable as well.  I got this early lesson from Shane in addition to the lessons on lifting.  It has stuck with me and informed much of what I do in other areas of my life.

I think in my life I have tried to use this lesson other places and it has been beneficial.  Anywhere I am with other people I feel like if we’re not competitors than we’re on the same team.  Part of being on a team is helping lift each other up.  A city, a startup community, a Meetup group is no different than a gym in this regard.  There is the cliché that we can all achieve more this way.  Some clichés do hold true and this is one.  Sometimes we are forced to work together and sometimes we choose too. 

A town is forced to work together to some degree to function as a community.  In the gym it’s often a necessity to work together as well.  You need people to spot you and assist with other tasks in the gym, and in the gym all we got is each other.  This forces some community fast.  We can also be proactive about building this up.  We can workout together and really create partnerships in our pursuit of all the fruits of the iron.  I’ve tried to do this with other pursuits in my life as well.  It can work with career pursuits, family relationships and more.  I see so much opportunity for growth with this way of thinking too.  I have seen communities where no one buys each other’s products, or reads each other’s books.  I can’t help but think there is a better way, and I learned that way in the gym.  The gym is where I have learned almost everything I know about life.

Was this cold morning where I got a weight room mentor a turning point in my life?  It very might have been, it did help push me the right direction.  I got a few lessons and a good example of how to act in the gym.  Shane helped me a lot when he didn’t need to.  We can’t have too much this kind of thing in our life.  So wherever you are and whatever you’re doing Shane, thanks!

Gyms are kind of a weird place right now from where I sit.  COVID has made going to a gym with other people a very questionable practice right now.  I have chosen not to go to gyms for a while longer during all this.  The gym is supposed to be about health and catching a virus isn’t all that healthy.  Despite avoiding gyms my mind and body still want to work out.  I have had to resort to park workouts on playground equipment and garage workouts using an assortment of light weights and bands.  I am grateful that even without having many tools to workout with, I can get so much exercise still.

Having some tools means I can workout.  I have all the tools needed to train my whole body.  I choose to be grateful to have these tools.  The opposite choice is also available to me.  I could be angry I cannot workout in gyms in the manner I prefer.  There is little benefit to this approach, therefor I choose gratitude for the equipment I do have.  I have some of the stuff I want access to, and there is gratitude to be found in having some even if we want all of something.

I am really grateful I had a couple good exercise bands laying around.  These are becoming the base of my workouts.  With them I can exercise things I just can’t easily do with my dumbbells.  A clever person could train the whole body with just exercise bands and bodyweight.  That is one thing about a pandemic is that it can force us to be clever.  I am grateful to have these simple tools, they have been a lifesaver. 

I think being grateful and maximizing limited tools is something we can all try to do.  These tools might be a slow laptop, or a few exercise bands instead of a full gym.  It is all the same.  With gratitude for the tools I have, I have gotten more fit and gotten better.  Without gratitude I would have stayed weaker, and that is never good.

Several weeks ago I got the idea in my head to look online and see if there were any chess sites I liked playing on.   It didn’t take very long for me to find one that was simple and gave me all the chess fun I could handle.  I started playing for a good while that first night.  The next few days I found myself coming back more and more.  I had gotten sucked into being a chess player, and was having a lot of good fun.  Weeks later I am playing nearly every night and still having a lot of fun doing so.  In chess I have found a hobby that is perfectly suited for me.

Chess can be both a social or antisocial game.  Playing with friends in person has always been something I have enjoyed.  With all the online chess platforms, it can also be done at 3am by myself from the comfort of my garage office fort.  I like this flexibility, if I want to play, I can.  Chess is really a game that is whatever I choose to make of it.

I can choose to be serious about winning, or just play for laughs.  I do really enjoy playing random openings or weird strategies just for fun.  This serves no purpose other than my own amusement.  If I am in a mood to win, I can take things seriously and think long and hard about my moves.  I can do whatever I want with the game, and it really doesn’t matter to anyone else.  That is one of the things about chess I like so much, is that it can be so many things.

A game of chess can take a few minutes or a few hours depending on what time constraints you choose.

You can study to get better, or just make it up as you go.

A game of chess can be so many things.  Mostly I am grateful that chess is fun and it’s a good mental playground.  I can use that playground to sharpen my mind.  I can also use it to forget about the world for a little bit.  I’m just grateful that I enjoy this game, and get to use it for all sorts of fun.

I am a meathead.  The gym is where I feel most at home.  Lifting heavy things is how I express and process so many things.  For the past two years I have been injured and not been able to do any workouts at all.  The last few weeks have seen my exile from the gym end.  I have returned to the gym and am rebuilding that part of myself.  My gratitude is endless that I am working out again.

Exile from the gym was hard.  It was one of the hardest things I have had to suffer in my life.  There are harder and nastier things I have had to suffer in life, I will admit that.  Lifting weights is however a key part of what I do, and that was taken from me.  Injuries came for me and I had to pay the price.  The price however was not a life sentence.

Getting something back we love, that is an immense source of gratitude.  I learned how to live without this lifting thing I love so much.  I am however grateful I no long must live without it, I would rather live with it.  Being stripped of things we love, can teach us more about that thing, and more about ourselves.

I was out of balance two years ago.  Lifting consumed much of my thoughts, it was a source of selfishness far too often.  Lifting was a well from which both positivity and negativity flowed.  Through being stripped of it I think I have purged the negativity. 

I am grateful for these lessons.  Now my wonderful obsession with the gym is even more wonderful.  I now know more of what it means to me.  I feel as though I now know how to use this obsession.  I’m grateful to have this this magnificent obsession back.

Currently I am living with my parents during a global pandemic.  This has colored my thoughts about many things and given me gratitude for things that I might not have thought about in the past.  Things that were afterthoughts have become much more important.  One of those things is my garage fort.   In this fort I do the things I do, and it’s a great escape.  I am grateful that I have carved out a few square feet to do my work.

For me these days, my “work” mostly consists of writing.  I could do this any number of places around the house.  I have found the garage storage room to be the best place to do this.  In this storage room, I have a reasonable amount of quiet, and there are not a lot of distractions.  This is a good place for me to hide away.  It is a modest hideout but it suits me.  I have a table, I have a chair, I have an old TV, I have a loveseat, I have a ceiling fan, I have a space heater, I have a lamp, that’s about all I have in there.  Still I am grateful.  I have what I need out here in this little hideaway.   It’s not fancy, it’s not much, but I kind of like it that way.

I treat this table and chair as a place to do work.  What else does a man doing the things I do need?  The truth is not much.  In the past I have enjoyed working from fancy offices and coworking spaces.  These were luxuries.  Luxuries are nice.  Now I am grateful to have just a modest workspace in a garage.  I feel like this is the kind of workspace that the Roman Stoics would have enjoyed.  I am grateful to have enough of what I need to do my work.

I have always felt that modest surroundings connect me in a way to my work or pursuit.  A gym with just the basic weights connects me to my training more than a fancy gym for fancy people.  Food shared with friends sitting on a tailgate, that tastes better than a fancy restaurant.  Modesty can connect us to what matters.  A modest office connects us to the work we are doing in the moment.  I am grateful to have that modest workspace right now that is no more and  no less than what I want.  In some of my more luxurious work surroundings I have in the past been caught up in the lifestyle and routine of it all.

The lifestyle and routine of workplaces can be poison.  Small talk becomes a creeping vine that pollutes the garden of the mine.  Playing with coffee and other perks becomes a focus and a crutch.  Water from a tap is good enough for my thirst, I don’t need a purified office water machine that is just clutter.  I am grateful to have a workspace free from all this.

This garage fort of mine is just freedom.  It frees me to do my work, and removes hinderances to productivity.  I am grateful to have a little spot out there that I have carved out to do my writing.  A simple spot is all I need, more would be nice, but I’m grateful to have a spot that checks all the boxes.  In this space I can write and do great things, its not the greatest place to work.  This is good thing, because it tests my resolve to move forward.  It tests the purity of my soul and my pursuits, and every time I sit here in 95 degree heat sweating, I learn something more about myself.  Mostly though it’s just a nice little garage fort to hangout in and write.

Today I started a new project.  Without going too deep into details that don’t matter to anyone but me, my project is to build up my blog.  I have started thinking about what I will be doing in the coming days.  I started to organize and outline.  As soon as I set a couple goals and turned these ideas into an actual project there were changes in my mind and in my behavior.  I am grateful for all the great things new projects can bring to our lives.

Energy is one of the first things that a new project brings me.  Every time I start one up I get a rush.  The excitement of possibility is real.  This project is a personal project with little tangible rewards at the moment but the rush is still real.  The rush really doesn’t seem to be affected by the ability to make money from a project or some sort of other external motivational force.

New projects for me seem to bring some clarity.  Once I have set myself towards a project, things become clear.  I start to get focused and determined, like the temperature rising in a kettle.  I like this clarity, I enjoying knowing what I am to be doing.

I am grateful these kind of feelings guides me towards new projects.   Through new projects new growth and new successes can be found.  It is awesome when our brains reward us for going the right direction.  I get these rewards from new projects.

As 2019 ended, I was not in a good place in life.  My mind was full of dark and sad thoughts.  Despair was my constant companion.  I was aware changes were needed in my life.  My resources were very limited, there was much I could not do.  However I knew I could seek a beautiful state of being.  Peace was something I knew I could seek.  I knew that there was much to be grateful for in my life.  So I started writing about things I was grateful.  For a while I published a daily short blogpost about something I was grateful for.  This simple daily practice of gratitude unlocked new positive mindsets that is changing my life.

For years I had heard people talk about practicing gratitude.  It is only recently that I started to think about what that even meant.  For me, the idea of “practicing” something means some sort of repeated act.  Practice also to me implies some measure of effort.  I knew I wanted to practice gratitude, but I had to find a way to do it my own way.

I did not feel as though putting a list of 3 things I was grateful for in a journal was the way I wanted to approach a gratitude practice.  That seemed too easy to me and it seemed like I could cheat at that.  A public blogpost, well in my mind that meant I had to put a little bit into that.  Doing a daily blogpost meant I would have to think and really experience the gratitude to write about it.  So that’s what I did, I started to write blogposts about things I was grateful for.

I did this for the first 67 days of the year.  I published every single day during that span of time.  I simply wrote a little bit about something I was grateful for.  These were just my thoughts, I didn’t heavily edit them, I just wrote and published and moved on with my day.  After that first 67 days I stopped publishing daily.  I have published a few more of these gratitude blogposts since then.  I ran out of steam a little bit with the daily publishing, but it is something I would very much like to return to for another long run sometime in the future.  The benefits of these posts have stuck with me fairly well though.  My mind was now wired for a more grateful and positive mindset.

I wrote about so many different things doing this experiment.  Few of the posts were about anything that I possessed of any “economic” value.  There were posts about possessing things like good cheese or blueberries, but no posts about having a super expensive phone or anything like that.  Possession really isn’t correlated to gratitude for me.  It’s not what matters to me.  I want nice and good things, but that is not where my focus is. 

My focus was much more on the simple beauty of this life.  I was grateful for a lot of things I had done, for smart actions I had taken.  I was grateful for the risks I had taken.  It is good to be grateful for making right choices.  My gratefulness extended beyond myself too as I got deeper into this way of thinking.

As I experienced and basked in gratefulness I became more aware and grateful for the gifts from God I had been given.  My thoughts are now constantly drawn towards family, friendship, nature, and community.  These all hold so many gifts and I cannot even hardly describe how grateful I am for them.  God has given me so much, and it gives me great peace to recognize this.

The practice of gratitude has given me many benefits.  It has rewired my brain in a much more positive place.  I feel as though I am constantly getting a shower of positivity.  When I am not having a good day, doing these writings forces me into a more positive frame.  I cannot do these writings without being in a positive place and literally experiencing the gratitude.  The following benefits I shall discus are simple, but have been great and wonderful for me.  These benefits have been what I needed in my life.

More Positivity

The diligent practice of gratitude is a positive thing.  All this writing about positive things has moved my mind into a positive place.  I don’t think you can be focused on both the negative and positive at the same time so my brain is forced by this project to focus on the positive.  This is a wonderful thing.  I have even started to smile spontaneously.  I also feel as though there is just much less weighing on me mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Recognition of The Good

Writing all these posts has trained my brain to recognize all the things I can be grateful for.  Since I was writing every day for a couple months on this one thing, I had to look everywhere for inspiration.  This was great because now my mind does this automatically all the time.  I literally am finding things all the time to be grateful for.  Once I was finding all these things, it was hard to dwell on negative things.

More Peace

Being in a more positive state and being focused on positive things is a peaceful way to live.  My mind has been far more at peace so far this year than it has been in many years.  I credit this peace to this gratitude practice I have adopted. 

I Weather The Storms Better

Life is always going to throw us adversity and trials.  I seem to be weathering these storms a lot easier with my new mindset and positivity.  As I write this, we are going through the COVID-19 epidemic.  This is a huge test, and I am weathering it rather well.  I am at peace as much as I can be with the state of the world.  I would like things to be very different than they are right now, but I don’t allow that to drive my state into a bad place.  I am handling all this pandemic fear so much better than I would have handled it a year ago.  For that I am grateful.

I Learned it’s NOT About Being Happy

Through all this I have learned that you can be positive without being all that happy.  I am not the happiest of people but I can still be in a good place emotionally.  There is much about life I am not happy with.  I still feel that right now I spend much of my time in a very positive place.  There are many ways to be positive without happiness.  Positive does not equal happy, and that is something I am learning.  I can be positive, and not feel happiness, and that is ok.

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These benefits all seem to have stuck with me fairly well even though I am not currently writing these posts daily anymore.  The changes have been made and I am doing enough blogposts still to keep those benefits going.  Some days I will write part of a post and toss it away, I just post what seems right to me. A post every week or two seems to be enough maintenance for me.  I do miss the daily posting, and feel as though I will return to it.

The constant daily writing allowed and even forced me to have a beautiful, wonderful and pure though every single day.  That is something too few of us experience.  By writing about these things I dove deep into them and very much experienced intense positive emotion around thee things I wrote about.  Often when I would finish I was physically tired, I was experiencing that much emotion around the things I felt.

What I wrote about was not everything I was grateful for.  I didn’t write about my friends or family.  I feel so deeply and intensely about them I didn’t know how to even articulate my gratitude about them, and our relationships.  This may change in the future, but so far I have not had the time and focus to really do them justice in my writing.  Many of the things I was grateful for seemed simple, but there are far more things I am grateful for.

Current Status of The Practice

As of May 5^th 2020 I am in a holding pattern in a lot of ways with this gratitude practice.  I am still doing some writing of blogposts around the topic.  If I don’t feel they are good for publishing I simply throw them away.  I am no longer putting pressure on myself to publish often.  I am still very focused on my gratitude though. 

I was very stressed finishing my book I was writing so I deciding to take a break off the daily publishing.  Then COVID-19 hit and my ability to find quiet time to write is dubious at best many days.  I think a break was good, because I don’t thin there is any reason to put pressure on myself right now.  The world is putting enough pressure on me as it is with the pandemic. 

Future Of The Practice

The future of my gratitude practice feels as though it is a bright one.  I feel that I will revisit these gratitude writings and experience the benefits and growth of this habits again.  I feel a pull towards doing these writings.  I feel full of excitement about what gratitude practices can do for me in the future.  I am also left with questions I wish to explore.

Did my benefits level off or could I have kept going and gotten to an even more positive place?

What other forms of practice can gratitude take other than writing?

What is the most practical and beneficial frequency of such practices?

In the future I would like to give 100 straight days of posting gratitude blogposts a try.  I would also like to try and do these posts for a whole year.  I hope I find a good time in life to explore these options more. 

Another form of gratitude I would like to explore is more outwardly expressing gratitude towards others.  I don’t think I show enough gratitude towards others.  I wonder what my state would be if I more outwardly expressed such gratitude.  I wonder if it such a practice would help lift others up to a positive place as well. 

How To Do Your Own Practice

If this all sounds like something you might like to try, I have ideas for you!

First you need to make this all fit your life and personality.  How you express gratitude might be different than me.  I use blogpost writing.  You might want to journal someplace that no one will ever read it.  You might express your gratitude through prayer.  You might just keep a little list you add to and read from time to time. 

I recommend letting this all come natural.  If you’re grateful for the fact you had a good tasting banana this morning and that’s what comes to mind, then go with it.  I feel like this is about letting yourself experience these emotions and states, so if you experience that towards a banana, and towards something more profound the next day like your grandparents, that is cool.  This is all for you and by letting it be for you, you are better for others.

Being in a more positive place will serve you will in so many ways.  It is a more peaceful and beautiful way to live.  Thank you for reading this far, I’m grateful you gifted me the time it took you to read this little article.

Today it was announced that Indiana Beach has been purchased by a new owner that plans to reopen the amusement park.  Several weeks prior it had been announced that the park was going to close after 94 years of operation.  Indiana Beach is getting another chance to go forward.  I received this information as wonderful news.  For ten seasons I worked at Indiana Beach.  The place holds a special place in my heart.  I am grateful that for a while longer that Indiana Beach has life and will remain open.

For ten seasons I worked at Indiana Beach doing every job imaginable in the place.  I was customer service.  I operated amusement rides.  If someone needed to light stunt performers on fire, well I was the guy for that too.  I experienced so much in my summers at the park.  It shaped so much of my mindset and my life.  Eternal gratefulness is the best description of my attitude towards the place and everything I experienced there.

Being 35 years old now I can look back on the past and see different things that have shaped me.  For many people they look at their high school, college, or neighborhood as the place that shaped them.  Those places all shaped me a bit, but Indiana Beach carried so much weight.  I learned about work there.  I learned about community there.  As time moves on, I understand how much I did love working at that place. 

It was an emotional time when I heard that the Indiana Beach was going to be closed.  The news of Indiana Beach closing was like the news of a lost friend.  With all the time I spent there, I left a little part of myself in that place.  I think anytime you spend years of your life in a place, you can end up leaving part of yourself there.  So now I can just be glad this special place is back in business. 

We get special places in our lives.  Indiana Beach is one of those places for me.  I am happy this place is going to continue.  It is such a special place in so many ways.  To list all the ways would take more time than I have tonight.  The place was real, it was make believe, it was a dream, it was hope for those of us that stayed there long enough to get to know the place.  That place is a living breathing thing, it is alive in mysterious ways.  I am grateful that this place that was such a huge part of my story is alive a little longer. 

There was a time when I believed in so many things.  I believed I could do anything.  I believed there was truth to be found in the mouths of political leaders.  I was a young man with the views of a young man.  This has changed, victories and defeats alike have changed me.  I see more of the truth of the world.  I recognize that in many cases there is no benefit to believing in most things.  This could be a catalyst for cynicism and coldness, but it hasn’t become that.  I burn brighter, I feel more warmth than ever before.  As so many of my beliefs fall away, I am grateful for the things I believe in more than ever.

To believe in so many things serves no purpose.  I don’t think it serves any purpose to believe in a politician.  Some believe in athletes or celebrities, I see no point in that.  Others believe in Star Wars, or Netflix, or YouTube, or any number of things.  I view this as misplaced belief, and it serves no purpose in my mind.

Belief is a thing I can place.  I can place my belief in any number of things.  I must choose these places wisely though.  When belief is placed, we create an expectation or a relationship with something.  This is a powerful force not to be taken lightly.  I find it powerful that I can still enjoy or participate in a thing without belief.  When I was younger I had belief and energy put into so many things.  I can’t bring myself to put my belief in many of those things.

The judicious application of belief seems to be on the road to wisdom.  There are so many things that I still believe in.  I believe in these things more than ever.  I have not become the cynic, I have become the fanatic.  I am so immensely grateful that I grow stronger in my beliefs and centered in them as time progresses.  I don’t believe in as many things as before, but I still believe.

I still believe in God.  I believe God has a plan for me.  I believe all the twists and turns and pains of my life have been put before me for a reason.  I cannot say what this plan is, but I believe God has done everything for a reason.  I stay centered in the belief that all of this stuff in my life matters.

Throughout my life family has remained important and central.  With all the love and all the memories, I don’t know how I couldn’t believe in them. 

True friendship is a force so powerful, it begs to be believed in and thus I believe.

I may believe in other things, these are the most powerful though.  I don’t need to believe in much else to make it through this world.  In the darkest of days I am grateful I can rest my faith and belief in this things.  I am grateful I have not lost the faith, and I still believe.