238 | How Gratitude Can Help You Stay Resilient During Your Trauma Recovery

Show Notes:

Can gratitude really make a difference when you’re hurting—or is it just feel-good fluff?

In this episode, Michael shares how gratitude—once dismissed as “too soft”—became the foundation of his recovery journey after trauma. Whether you’re struggling to find hope or just overwhelmed by everything that feels broken, this mindset shift can help you see what’s still good, still true, and still yours.

Takeaways:

• Discover how gratitude interrupts survival mode and opens the door to healing.
• Learn why gratitude isn’t about ignoring pain—but sitting beside it.
• Explore how to practice gratitude without journals, apps, or pressure—just presence.

Take a deep breath and learn how the simple act of noticing what’s still standing can move you one step closer to feeling whole again.

Transcript:

 This episode is sponsored by the letter G.

Since her first TED Talk, I’ve been a fan of Brene Brown. I bet you have as well. And I love this quote from her. Gratitude doesn’t deny the darkness. It simply chooses not to live there. Over the last several episodes of Whole again, I’ve hinted that I would share my Grace model with you. It was instrumental in my recovery and I recently just sent a text to another podcaster Rich Roll.

I happen to be on his podcast in 2024, and he is in the process of feeling like us whole again because he just went through a pretty extensive back surgery. I shared my grace model with him, so I thought as we come into July and I celebrate the anniversary of my accident, we’ll talk about the grace model and we’ll start with gratitude.

Now, at the time of my recovery, I didn’t know a thing about gratitude. I didn’t even know it was a practice. It became the practice along with mindfulness that changed everything for me. And I know in some circles when you mention the word gratitude, it can feel a little woowoo. I definitely picked this up when I talk to the executives I coach, because they’re more hardwired to look at what’s wrong so they can solve something.

So taking a moment to practice gratitude seems a little soft. Gratitude isn’t fluffy. In fact, there’s some real rigorous science behind the value of gratitude. And what I discovered during my recovery and the practice of gratitude is that gratitude doesn’t erase the pain we’re experiencing. It simply sits with it.

It’s not about pretending that everything is okay and fine, or thumbs up. It’s about recognizing what’s still true, what’s still beautiful, what’s still yours, even after all that you’ve been through. When I first discovered gratitude, my focus was on everything I couldn’t do anymore. Everything I didn’t have anymore and gratitude helped me see what I still had and what I could do For a moment, I’d like for you to imagine that the body and mind are like a garden after a storm.

There’s mud, there’s probably branches, there’s leaves all in the garden. The garden’s littered. It could even be damaged. But if you look closer, if you shift your perspective just enough, you might see some green. Maybe it’s a single flower standing tall, and that one flower, well, that’s gratitude. You notice that things that are still around, they’re still good.

And when we practice gratitude, especially. Small ways, and as we go through messy stuff, our mindset shifts from being in a survival loop, a doom scrolling loop, if you will, into a place of possibility. Gratitude can be a portal into hope and optimism. And here’s the really cool thing about gratitude. You don’t need anything in order to practice it.

In order for it to become part of your life, because here I like to share things that you can weave into your life and they become a natural way of how you show up as opposed to the next transactional thing to do during your morning routine. To practice gratitude, you don’t need a special journal or a pen, although many people do love to journal about gratitude.

You don’t need a particular app, although. There are some apps out there that can help. All you need to do is simply notice. In fact, you can be grateful for this breath. When I was in my third hospital, I was simply grateful for the ultra processed guava juice they would serve at breakfast. There was something about that juice that just made my morning.

The truth is. There’s so much to be grateful for even when we go through so much.

So this is the G in my Grace model. A little gratitude will serve your mind, body, and soul well.

And here’s the thing I’ll stress. You don’t need to be grateful for your trauma. Although you can be, we can be grateful for our most difficult things. I am grateful for what I went through, but that came with some time.

But let’s say you can’t get there. You can still be grateful for your strength, your clarity, your connection with others who are helping you through what you’re going through. Those are all things that can counterbalance all the things that are front and center for you that are difficult. They are the beauty of healing through grace, not force.

And next week I’ll share the R of our Grace model, but until then. I invite you to practice gratitude and let me know what comes up for you. As always, thanks for being here and thank you for being a fellow survivor.