🔤 Gratitude is Bullshit Armor

Life is full of BS, having armor for it is handy

Hey there! I’m Robert. Welcome to a free edition of my newsletter. Every week, I share 1 piece of advice 📖, 1 breakthrough recommendation 🚀, and 1 challenge 💥 to help leaders in tech achieve a growth mindset, transform their communication & influence, and master their emotions. Subscribe today to become the person and leader that people love, respect, and follow.

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The morning after my bike accident in 2021, I woke up in a hospital bed and realized I couldn’t lift my arm—or my life—the way I used to.

One minute, I was tearing down a mountain trail, sun in my face, tires humming on gravel.

The next, I was on the ground in searing pain.

Went over the handlebars. Was bleeding out in the middle of the desert.

I didn’t know what internal bleeding was like, until I felt a slosh inside my body in that moment.

It’s the weirdest feeling.

1 helicopter ride and 2 double surgeries later, I learned:

My left elbow was completely broken.

My left kidney was shattered.

My life?

It felt like it would never be the same.

For a month, I could only sleep for 1-2 hours a night because I couldn’t lie down. I had to sleep upright because of my shattered kidney.

I couldn’t walk my dog.

Couldn’t even bend over to fill his food bowl.

For someone who prided myself on action, independence, and strength, it was such a challenging time.

I reoriented around this epiphany: “Accept where the mind and body are in the current moment.”

Slowly, I began to notice the tiniest victories: a moment of relief after hours of discomfort. Nibbler laying next to me. My mind being in tact.

The feel of fresh air and sunlight when I limped my way outside.

I had hit rock bottom, and everything I once took for granted became a huge win.

It felt good to intentionally see them as huge wins.

I learned a big lesson: life’s chaos doesn’t take away our joy.

Joy is hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to notice.

Gratitude became my way of noticing.

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🔤 This Week’s ABC

Advice: How I learned to put on gratitude as my armor against life’s bullshit.

Breakthrough: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande—an extraordinary perspective on life, death, and finding meaning in the small moments.

Challenge: A simple gratitude practice to transform your perspective—start today.

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📖 Advice: Practice Gratitude Always

“Sometimes, the things you take for granted are the things someone else is praying for.”

Our minds play tricks on us.

When life flows smoothly, we don’t even notice the good stuff.

When chaos hits, we forget we’ve been through worse.

I call it the complacency demon.

The complacency demon is part of being human: you get sick today, and tomorrow all you want to do is be healthy.

The complacency demon grows… from complacency. It shrinks from gratitude.

You’re healthy today, and all you want is everything in the world.

You forgot you were sick 3 days ago, wanting to just be healthy.

The only thing you can do to keep the complacency demon away, is practice gratitude.

It’s a tool.

A weapon.

Armor.

Life is chaotic.

The older you get, the more responsibilities you have. The more responsibilities you have, the less stable everything is.

I think of gratitude as an armor against life’s chaos.

I like to think of my gratitude practice every morning, as a habit of putting on my “gratitude armor” against the day’s bullshit.

Life throws lots of bullshit at you.

And gratitude is my anchoring practice against it—it’s insanely effective.

It’s a mindset that turns tiny moments into durable resilience.

It’s what I used to get through some of my most difficult times—including coming back from my near death accident.

3 Actionable Gratitude Strategies

Strategy 1: Put On Your Gratitude Armor

Before you get into the daily grind, name three things you’re thankful for.

Put on your gratitude armor, it’ll protect you from the bullshit of the day.

It can be as big as your family or as small as breathing.

Gratitude grows wherever you let it.

My Example:

• The feeling of tea warming me up.

• The cuteness with which my dogs’ tails wag.

• The easiness with which I can breathe.

Strategy 2: Grateful Eating

I used to just eat while I worked.

Sometimes I do that still—but the amount of times that I eat with gratitude has increased drastically.

It’s such an easy life optimization. I always feel so much happier and less stressed eat gratefully.

What is eating with gratitude?

My Example:

As I begin to eat, I savor the taste, and I think about where the food came from.

I imagine the farmers that grew the vegetables.

I think about their lives.

I imagine the supply chain required to get here.

Trucks, vans, warehouses, grocery store shelves.

People around the world I’ll never meet.

All helping me eat.

I’m so grateful for them.

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Strategy 3: Growth Edges in Everything

This one is simple.

Whenever I have any problems, I ask myself: “What can I learn from this?”

My Example:

I failed my first startup.

For a few days I felt like a total failure, and was depressed about it.

I ended up writing about 30 pages of where I went wrong and skills I picked up from the journey.

30 pages of learnings.

This was a cathartic turning point for me.

I kept looking at the 30 pages of learnings and eventually regained my confidence.

Because I’m grateful I had the chance to try.

And I’m grateful for who I became from the process.

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🚀 Breakthrough Recommendation: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Oddly enough, when I think about death it gives me gratitude for life.

This book reinforced my very real experience brushing up against death. The author examines a study by Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen, that challenges the colloquial notion that “The older you get, the wiser you get”.

The key insight from the research is that a person’s relationship with time fundamentally shifts their priorities and perspective.

It’s not about being older—but in general the older you get the more you realize that your time is finite.

The young (that have not dealt with death, or have not had near death experiences) haven’t had enough time to realize that their time is finite.

They feel like most young people do: immortal, full of life, “there will be extra time to call mom later” type thinking.

The elderly don't necessarily possess superior judgment—they simply operate with an acute awareness of their time being limited.

This naturally orients them towards what matters most.

I have a very different view on time after my own brush with death.

Hence, my gratitude practice for the smallest things.

Isn’t it?

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100 Birds In A Nursing Home

There was a very memorable story from the book that underlined the importance of purpose (and gratitude for the small things).

Dr. Bill Thomas was lead physician at a nursing home.

He was determined to combat what he called the "Three Plagues of nursing home life: boredom, loneliness, and helplessness”.

He introduced an unconventional solution…

He brought in two dogs, four cats, and 100 birds to a nursing home. A small zoo, relatively speaking, for the environment.

The results were astounding.

Animals can give unconditional love. They require responsibility. That brings purpose, which can bring happiness.

"One has to decide whether one's fears or one's hopes are what should matter most."

The residents, once listless and disengaged, suddenly found new purpose.

They established feeding shifts for the animals and walking schedules for the dogs. They gave daily reports on the animals' well-being to the nursing home staff.

This lifted their spirits and sharpened their minds.

The impact was quantifiable.

Over two years, researchers studied the effects of this experiment and found that the number of drug prescriptions required per resident fell to HALF of that in a control nursing home.

HALF.

One resident, Mr. L., admitted after a suspected suicide attempt, experienced a remarkable turnaround after accepting a pair of parakeets.

Before this experience, he had given up on walking, and refused to eat.

After this experience, he began dog walking, and eating.

Three months later, he was able to move back to his own home.

The program really seemed to save his life.

If you have a sense of purpose, you will be happier.

The purpose can be your life’s work, it could be a regular yoga session or coffee with friends, or taking care of an animal.

Make your own purpose, be grateful for it, and you will be happier

It doesn’t matter what it is—having it is what matters.

Have that purpose. Be present with that purpose.

Be grateful for that purpose.

It’s the little things in the end, that matter most.

"You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them."

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What I Did This Week

This week, I went for a hike with my dogs.

I thought about how just a few years ago, I couldn’t even bend over without pain to fill up the food bowl.

I couldn’t walk without pain.

After that thought, I was basically skipping with joy the rest of the hike.

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💥 Challenge: Pause & Appreciate

This week, spend just five minutes a day noticing the small things that make your life brighter.

Here’s how:

1. Set a Timer: Find a quiet moment to pause.

2. Breathe and Reflect: Think of three small things that made today better. Sunshine. A favorite song. Even a moment of quiet.

3. Write It Down: Capture it in a journal or your phone. Share it with someone. Make it real.

Example:

• The way sunlight filtered through my window today.

• The stranger who held the door open for me.

• The fact that I have a home to live in.

Gratitude doesn’t have to be about big moments.

Gratitude is the strongest in my experience in the tiny moments.

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