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Welcome to the 100xLife Podcast! This is the place for anyone who desires to not just hear the words of Jesus but to live them fully. Together, we’ll explore what it means to experience the abundant life He promises, a life of purpose, growth, and transformation.
Each episode is designed to inspire and challenge you to put in the work of following Jesus, equipping you with practical insights and encouragement to align your life with His teachings.
Whether you're just beginning your faith journey or looking to deepen it, the 100xLife Podcast helps activate your next step toward the life you were created to live.
Rob Dayton (00:00)
you
Welcome to the 100X Life Podcast, where we activate people who desire to live the words of Jesus and experience the abundant life He promises. I'm your host, Rob Dayton, and I hope this podcast inspires you to put in the work of following Jesus.
Rob Dayton (00:37)
Hey, 100x lifers, welcome back to the podcast. Happy Monday. my gosh. Thanksgiving is upon us. This is the week. This is the Thanksgiving week. Christmas will be following before you know it. It'll all be over and it'll be January 2nd. We'll be into the challenge before you know it. It's all gonna go so fast. How do we slow it down and really maximize these two milestone events?
their celebrations, and they're going to include lots of family, way more family than you have experienced perhaps during the year, there's going to be family there. And then when there's family there, that means greater challenges, as we navigate family members and past hurts that are going to rise in the in the moment. like you you'll just be having this time with your family and all of a sudden trigger and your emotions are discombobulated.
You're moving in the wrong direction. You're not responding the way you want to respond. And that Thanksgiving or Christmas time becomes a train wreck. How many times has that been true for you when you're driving away from your family going, why, why, why did I even go? So how do we have the best family time ever? How do we up our relationship capacity?
How do you maximize your ability not to be taken out by past hurts? So for the last two weeks, we've been talking about this. We really want to give you the the Jesus mindset abilities to conquer the family issues. How do I actually practice the Jesus mindset? Jesus said, repent and believe this is his strategy for transforming everything. Paul says,
Be renewed by the transformation of your mind in Romans 12. So these two things, word of Jesus, number one, repent and believe, and Paul, Romans 12, be transformed by the renewal of your mind. These are things we want to put into practice specifically for Thanksgiving and Christmas week. So we talked about mindsets two weeks ago. If you missed that, if you did not get a chance to spend 30 minutes is such a small amount of time.
to up your game for this season. Go back, listen to that podcast, spend the 30 minutes coming up with a new mindset, a Jesus mindset, one that you can believe and then change the way you think so that you can treat and show up for your family members in a powerful way. And I'm gonna actually talk about today how you can show up for yourself in a powerful way. There's gonna be so many benefits to you if you do this.
Last week, Nancy and I shared our own challenges with family and how to navigate them. And I hope you enjoyed that. You know, they are real. These things that happen in our childhood are real. And what I love about Tony Robinson, I know I've said this before on the podcast is One of my favorite quotes that Tony says is it's never too late to have an amazing childhood. That is simply a perspective on the past. What if
that challenging time you had with that parent or that brother or sister, even if you were hurt very, very much in childhood, how has God worked all things together for your good using those circumstances? He didn't cause those circumstances, but he definitely used those circumstances in a profound way to transform you and bring you to the design, amplify the design and
effectiveness, your unique core genius and who you're created to be. He used everything that happened, even the negative, even the stuff that the enemy was involved in. He used that to maximize you. So gratitude is a powerful way to change the way you think. would actually think of gratitude as one of the superpowers of transformation. It's one of the superpowers of repentance. It's the way we focus our mind.
And when we focus our mind on gratitude, we actually renew the way we think. reprogram our brains. Remember, your brain is a part of your flesh. It's a part of your body. the purpose of the brain is to automatically, very quickly, do the right emotions, say the right thing, to pay attention to the things that are most important to you. All of that is being programmed.
by your mind, which is outside of your body. And if you focus with your mind on gratitude, it is a natural pathway to reprogramming your mind or your body. So we're going to transform emotions into a joyful spirit. Like who does not want that? Who does not want emotions to be transformed into joy? That's what we want to have happen naturally.
Gratitude is that pathway. The other thing about gratitude is it's so good for your health. So I'm looking at you guys know perhaps that I'm a whoop advocate. I got whoop whoop is just the brand name of the heart monitoring device that I do. some people have Apple watch. Maybe you have or a ring. Maybe you have a Fitbit. The thing about whoop is we're actually
putting in data every single day. So every single morning I'm waking up, answering my journal, what happened the day before? And then whoops, scientifically analyzes how those things that are happening yesterday over 60 days are impacting my heart health. How are they bringing my vargas nerve into alignment to make my heart sing and beat better? Well, that...
gratitude as it turns out for me and you know, it may not be the same for everyone. But if I if I get up in the morning and I remember there were three distinct moments in the previous day that I I just was focused on gratitude, I will check the box gratitude yesterday. And turns out so it's all these things are measured on whoop all the things I'm journaling turns out gratitude is the number one driver for me for
heart health and I can imagine for you, it'll be the same thing. Gratitude is aligning every cell in your body. I remember what Caroline Leaf says in her book, switch on your brain. If you, if you only knew what a negative thought does to your body, you would be diligent not to have one. gratitude is the antidote to complaints or just bad thoughts.
So it's going to be great for your body.
It's powerful for your marriage. It's going to transform your marriage. If you're thinking, speaking gratitude with your wife with your husband, it's going to up your game. It's going to bring health to your marriage. It's great for relationships. it's interesting how scientifically we want to be around positive people. Positive people are constantly thankful, expressing gratitude and hope.
And we want to be around those people because they up our game. They actually that's relational health and body health. So we want to be around those people. How about you becoming one of those people? Why don't you become a professional at being positive through gratitude? Here's your opportunity. You know, Paul says that we are seated in heavenly places and he's not talking about later. He's talking about right now. This is Ephesians 2:6 And let me reassure you your spirit.
seated in heavenly places is full of thankfulness. Your spirit is rejoicing. So being thankful is a pathway to connecting with our spirits because that is the tune. That is the harmony of the spirit is a thankfulness, rejoicing harmony. The body leads, interesting, the body leads with complaining. It's usually the flesh that say, I don't like this or I'm not comfortable
I want that or I'm hungry for this. The body is complaining and that's what gets us to do the thing maybe we don't want to do or prevents us from doing the thing we want to do. Your spirit is leading with rejoicing. Your mind has a choice. Your mind is in the middle. Remember, this is a very specific 100xLife concept of how Jesus and repentance works is we're choosing with our minds to take authority over our flesh and hand it to the spirit.
Well, handing authority to the Spirit looks like thankfulness. It looks like rejoicing. And the irony, this is the crazy irony, is if you follow the lead of your Spirit, if you practice gratitude, if you practice rejoicing, your body loves it. The body loves positivity. it may be complaining about other things, but when the...
the feelings and emotions of positivity and thankfulness come upon your body. It loves it. So here's another thing. Gratitude is a pathway to the answer to your prayers. What Rob? Can you, can you give me some scripture on that? Absolutely. Jesus is talking about moving mountains. say to this mountain, jump into the sea and believe in your heart that it will happen. It'll happen. That's what he says. This is in Mark 11.
And then Mark 11:24 he says, therefore, so based on that, you know, here's how to, here's how to move them out into the sea. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Okay. Let's break that down. If you ask for something in prayer and then you take Jesus' advice and you believe that you've already received it. And I want to just, I just want to say, probably you haven't
He's talking about you haven't received it, but you start believing that you've received it. Well, how do I believe that I've received an answer to prayer gratitude described to me, your behavior, you commonly exhibit when your prayers are answered. I guarantee you it's gratitude. So practicing.
thankfulness over your prayers is a good strategy to have them fulfilled. And you might be praying. I bet you there's people listening right now who are praying that this Thanksgiving, that this Christmas, that they would be protected from their families that they'd be able to endure it. What if we flip the script on that? And we actually got grateful and thankful right now for the answer to those prayers. And we started working in a thankful mindset.
that is going to obliterate any of those bad emotions. It's going to really train us to, to show up the way we want to show up the way we want to be heard, the words we want to use, and then also protect us from those triggers from our past. So let's talk practically about how this works. It's very, it's a very simple,
We're going to talk about meditation, journaling, and then we're to talk about actually texting or writing letters of gratitude and then speaking gratitude. So just four things that you can focus on to maximize your gratitude. Remember the goal here is to create a thankful mindset towards your family members. How do I do that? Okay. Meditation meditation is kind of one of these things where it's powerful. It's one of the
Gifts God has given us to transform the way we think. we're just gonna focus on a thought. And here's the deal, when you focus on a thought, your mind decides to focus on a thing, you amplify it. And when you amplify a thought, you program your brain. So when Jesus says, repents, which is transform the way you think,
Meditation is a powerful focus of the mind to enact that repentance to actually reprogram the neuroplasticity between your ears. Your brain matter is constantly being programmed and reprogrammed. Meditation is going to be a way to do that. How do I do that? Well, for me, you know, I sit on my prayer pillow and I do a little travailing, which is kind of a Jewish thing. We're kind of going back and forth like this.
You know, if you can't see me, I'm just going back and forth to subtle. you've seen this in pictures in Israel, ⁓ where Jews are praying at the wailing wall. They're travailing You know, I don't know if there's something to it. It really helps me engage my mind and stay focused. don't know. Maybe it's because my body's entertained or my body's working on something else so that my mind can be clear. I don't know. It helps. And then we're going to, we're going to think specifically. So let's just say.
Let's just say, okay, I'll practice. So I'm going to think about, my wonderful sister, Patty, in Newport Beach. I'm going to think about her. So if I'm meditating on Patty, I'm just like, God, thank you for Patty. Wow. She is so amazing. And then you think about, I just love the way she's done life. I love the way she's been so generous to me. I love her compliments are so wonderful. And I want you to hear right now that I'm meditating on the good parts.
I am not thinking about the bad parts. So of course meditation is going to sound just like I demonstrated for you. All good. Are there things that are challenging with my sister and I? Yeah, I think there are. I think they're primarily in the past because both of us have been really good at being thankful for one another. there's other family members. I'll talk about my mom. My mom's passed away. I have to continually work.
about my mom because the story I will tell if I'm not focused on gratitude is I will speak highly of my dad and poorly of my mom. when when we're let's say we're around the Christmas table or the Thanksgiving table, the thoughts that come up triggering and I'm kind of choosing my mom because she's not around and I could talk freely about her is that you
the thoughts come up that are negative. And if I speak them and start saying, well, mom did this and mom did that. And this is the way I am. That's just not going to be helpful for me. It's not going to be helpful for my attitude. So then let me, let me watch here. I'll just meditate. So, you know, she's not alive, but let's pretend she is alive. Thank you, God for my mother. Thank you for how she sacrificed to raise me, how she's done everything the way she thought was best for me, how she would have never betrayed me in any way.
consciously, but always was in my favor, always was looking after me. Thank you, God, for my mother. I cannot wait to see her. I cannot wait to thank her for everything she's done in my life, all the meaningful things she's provided. Thank you, God. So you can just hear that I'm just meditating in prayer. This can be a repetition. This can be just continuing on.
Holy Spirit, we ask Holy Spirit to engage with our thoughts and give us great, thankful ideas. I'll tell you, with me, and I think that this is common, it takes a bit to open the joyful gratitude spigot. In other words, you can start and it feels really awkward. And I don't know if I can do this and why am I traveling in my living room? Whatever you you with time, the fountain will start to flow, the spigot will open and you'll get
better at thankfulness, you'll get the ideas will flow better, you'll see more areas of thankfulness. Remember, when you focus your mind on thankfulness, your unconscious mind will show you things to be thankful for. When your conscious mind can choose to focus on complaining, your unconscious mind shows you more things to complain about. let's just put this together like us in a very super selfish way.
What are the feelings of complaining? Like when your brain keeps showing you things to complain about, what emotions come with those? Anxiety, stress, frustration, that can kill our day, that can kill a moment, that definitely can kill a relationship. We might say the wrong thing to our family members. The opposite is also true when you're focused on gratitude and thankfulness. Now your unconscious mind
is showing you more things to be grateful for. So the spigot gets turned on, now your brain is working for you, it's showing you those wonderful things. And then with those thankfulness things, the emotions of thankfulness manifest. You feel good, you feel joyful, you're smiling. Just the smile itself on your face is going to change the physiology of the moment. It's going to be a very positive thing for you.
So if I was just thinking about this selfishly, which do you want to enjoy more? Are you gonna, do you really enjoy wallowing and being upset and having those emotions of stress? Or would you love to experience moments of joy, moments of thankfulness and gratefulness and having those feelings overcome you? It's just a choice on what you think. Jesus says, repent and believe for a reason.
transform the way you think to believe a thing and it will happen. We are focused on gratitude and this is changing the way we're thinking through meditation. How long do I do it for? I don't know. You sometimes it lasts 20, 30 minutes for me. Sometimes it's five minutes. if you speak in tongues and you have that ability, I would say intertwine tongues. Your tongues tend to be
straight from the spirit, right? I believe they're straight from the spirits seated in heavenly places. And then interpretation of tongues, your mind will interpret those tongues and give you more thankfulness. So if you have that ability, Holy Spirit ability, employ it, leverage it, practice it. Okay, you can go in meditation for every single family member. I think it would also be a good idea to picture yourself
around the Thanksgiving table, meditating on that thought, looking into the eyes of the persons and the family members, particularly those who you're not going to be very, you know, there's going to be challenges and practice thankfulness, practice thankfulness, anything you can grab from this year that they did that was great, anything that Holy Spirit is saying, that's going to be our journal prompt about them. We want you to focus on that.
Okay, so first one meditation, second one, journaling, always going to be journaling, whatever you're writing, where is where you're going, right where you're going. And it's going to reprogram your brain more effectively. Something about the writing is a little bit more powerful than typing. So if you can get your journal, here's the journal prompt. Holy Spirit, what are you most excited about? Choose a family member. So, what are you most excited about, Patty?
right now, Patty, my sister, what are you most excited about, Patty, and then journal the answer in the first person from Holy Spirit on exactly what he's saying about that person. And then then next is based on what he says, write that you believe this about them as well. And that you practice thankfulness.
for this. So you're writing thankfulness, I come into agreement with you, Holy Spirit. Wow, that's really cool what you showed me. I too love that about them. You're writing this out. Journaling. Okay, so meditation journaling, you can do these at the same, write one before the other or whichever order, maybe it's, it's cool to journal first and get some intel from Holy Spirit and then meditate on the things he tells you that could be a great strategy. So that's what you do.
Number three, we're going to do gratitude texts. If we were living four or five centuries ago, I would say gratitude letters. And actually a gratitude letter is even more powerful. If you sent a note handwritten to a family member of gratitude, my gosh, that would be over the top. Some of us can't even write anymore. Your cursive.
Whatever it's not even legible. I've worked so hard and try to get my cursive back up to speed in the recent decade. But for whatever reason, now we have texts. And my opinion is that the text was invented for the purpose of encouraging others and what better way to encourage others than to be thankful for them. So grateful, gratitude texts to people, family members. Hey, I was thinking about you sister the other day and
I just want you to know I love you. I can't wait to see you for Thanksgiving. So crazy. Everyone's coming to Bend for our Thanksgiving. all our family from Newport Beach, they're all coming up. Kendra and Jed and their spouses are going to be here. Yeah. So sending that text to them. I can't wait to see you. Looking forward to seeing you. Maybe there's something you're thankful. I was just thinking about you or a lot of times.
I will pray for a family member. then Holy Spirit or Jesus or Papa will say, this is this is something I'm excited about them. Then I can text a encouraging text, which is full of gratitude. Hey, I was just praying and I feel like Papa is saying this about you. my gosh. Not only is that that's like a double whammy because it's gratitude and it's also encouraging. And it's got a love
transaction because it's including the Trinity on that one, your body's gonna feel good, your heart will come alive, hopefully that they receive it. And and even if they don't say, let's talk about that. Because sometimes as we move to the number four, which is speaking gratitude, sometimes people around us just don't receive it. And that's where in our meditation in our journaling, we have to counterbalance that and say, say in the meditation, even if
they do not receive it, it's still true. I'm still thankful. In other words, don't let your gratitude be contingent upon them receiving it well. They might not receive it well. You know, we can't control their behavior. We can't control their thoughts. We can love the hell out of them. You've heard me say that so many times. That is the practice we do with our family.
We love before proselytizing, if they can't see love on us, it doesn't matter what you're saying about Jesus is just, in some cases repulsive, because it's like, I don't want that. You know, does that mean I'm going to be like you? No, we practice love and in the family, how much more powerful is that? So when we speak gratitude, what you're going to do is you're going to actually get on the phone.
You're going to call somebody you got maybe call a family member before. Hey, I just want to let you know, I'm excited for you to come. Hey, I just wanted to let you know that thing we have planned. the Daytons have this pickleball tournament that we have got two courts reserved. We've got a pickleball tournament where all the families are going to be competing and it's just going to be unbelievable. got shirts for it. It's like, Hey, Hey, let me call somebody. Hey, I'm really excited about our pickleball tournament. It's going to be so good to see you.
on the court, I can't believe the laughs we're going to have. Anytime you can just get on the phone and let me, let me just say something about the telephone because I have implemented a practice in my life that has absolutely been transformative. And here's what that is. In our society, we tend to be transactional. So when we're calling someone, it's usually because we want something from them.
And you know, some of us are really good at hiding that I'm actually really good at hiding that I will wait until the last moment to do the asking. Well, here's my rule that's transformed my life. And this happens in real time. When I'm calling someone, I'm calling them, let's say calling somebody to borrow their truck. And I remember the last time I called them was also to buy it, borrow the truck.
The rule I've instilled in me is now I cannot ask for that. I have to spend the call asking about them, seeing how they're doing. Why did you call? I just called to see how you're doing. When is the last time you called a family member to just say, I'm grateful for you? I mean, just that in itself will just blow apart. It'll just amplify all the goodness.
in your spirit transported to your body. It's going to be so good speaking gratitude when you're actually there on Thanksgiving or you're in Christmas. Look at you know you see people, look them in the eyes, try to hold their gaze with big smiles. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so grateful you came. I mean these people are coming to Bend I'm just like I'm so grateful you traveled the Bend to be here and then I'm going to work.
my hardest to make sure that they have a wonderful time. I'm going to be a servant. Remember, remember we talked about one of the mindsets could be, I'm just going to be a servant this Thanksgiving. I'm not going to be here receiving. I'm going to be here serving. Hey man, if I got served or something good happens, that'll be gravy, but I'm here to serve. And what we talked about that is that's the boomerang effect where actually when you just decide in your mindset is I'm going to serve.
then it just boomerangs into all these good things, because you've nullified the expectation of being served. Gratitude is a great way to position yourself for service. I'm so glad you're here. We've prepared this for you. We prepared that for you. You know, on Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's a lot of gift giving. even on Thanksgiving, sometimes at our practice, we go around the table and we speak what we're thankful for.
Maybe you're the one who leads that off this Thanksgiving and you say something and say, look, we're just going to do a popcorn around the table. We're just going to spend time being thankful for another person. I'll begin. And then you, you speak across the table and you say, Hey, I just want you to know, say their name. Don't don't say as if they're not in the room. How would we talk as if they're not in the room? I'm just so thankful for Judy because she's this. No. Hey, Judy.
I want you to know I'm thankful for you. I don't know why I picked Judy, but hey, maybe you have a Judy around your table. Hey Judy, I'm thankful for you. And I want to say how much I love you. And I'm so appreciative of you in my life or that I get to be a part of your life. Thank you so much. So we can speak gratitude around the Thanksgiving table and then make sure if you're giving gifts that the gifts include a card. So
cards actually can be it's when you're writing, you're to write a gratitude letter, and then you can speak and support the card. the more meaningful that card is spending a little extra time saying the thing that you want to say that is full of gratitude for that person is going to really move the needle on you and the way you think. And it's going to bless them so radically.
I got a birthday card. Some of you know, it's my 60th birthday this last Saturday. my gosh, I'm 60. That's gonna be another podcast. But I got in this card from a friend in San Luis Obispo. And he said, he said, I just want you to know that you your worth is truly found in God. And he didn't say this, but that's a complete reference to him remembering my new name in Christ, which means he's his worth is found in God. And so
That card became the most precious card because it was a remembrance of something that's very special to me. Can you remember and be thankful for something that's special for another family member and put it down in a card and put some detailed language? Don't just wing it. Don't just flow it. Think it out. Make that be the zinger and and regardless of the way they respond, speak.
in congruence with that, what you wrote and be thankful for them and manifest the feelings and emotions and reprogram your brain to love them, love them. Well, okay. So meditation, journaling, gratitude, texts or letters or cards I had at the end there and speaking gratitude could be a phone call, could be in person. Those are all going to be powerful ways for you to reprogram your mind, repent, transform the way you think.
and actually be transformed in the way you act and the mindset becomes the way you are it is a way of being a mindset a new mindset and a gratefulness mindset is a beautiful way to be in this world and all the manifestations the goodness the feelings that come with that are just so blessed for body health for heaven health to practice love guys I've got huge
faith that you can do this a little practice. Yes, it does take work to follow Jesus. This is a great way to follow him. So I pray a blessing over your Thanksgiving. I pray a blessing over your Christmas. I pray that this year would be the most fabulous year you have with your family, because you put into practice a new mindset and gratitude that overpowers any work the enemy wants to do.
I pray your prayers answered because you're already believing that they have happened and you're grateful and you're practicing gratefulness for them. I pray these things in Jesus name. Love you guys and I will see you next week.