The Power of Thank You Cultivating Gratitude When Life Gets Hard

The Power of Thank You Cultivating Gratitude When Life Gets Hard

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] In a world filled with challenges and uncertainties, how do we cultivate gratitude even when it feels impossible? Well, with Thanksgiving just days away, we want to take some time to explore the thought with our friend and returning guest, David Pascalone, who's no stranger to adversity himself. So whether you're facing challenges right now or just looking to deepen your appreciation for the good life you have, join us as we uncover actionable strategies to practice gratitude and shift our mindset.

Even when life gets hard, David, welcome back to the fallible man podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey, Brenton. It's great to be here,

D Brent Dowlen: David. We're going to hit right in today. Why do you believe gratitude is such a powerful tool, especially in tough times?

David Pasqualone: I mean, it shows it's like when we have children for your listeners, you have children, this will be easy, but for anybody who's ever given a gift, When you give a gift to someone you want them to be blessed you want them to be excited you want to like, you know [00:01:00] Reward them or not just reward them, but just you do things and you give gifts because you love people Well, that's how god is to us.

He just wants to give us things because he loves us. No other intent, no other manipulation, nothing but love. But when you give somebody a gift, if they complain, if they don't say anything, if they demand more, or if they're just like, eh, you kind of lose motivation to give. Now we're not without sin. We're not holy like God.

But at the same time, if we're not grateful for what we have, probably not going to give more right? The Bible says too much is given much is required. So there's also a level of not just acknowledgement of thankfulness, but also accountability. But when it comes to what we consider small or great, If we're not thankful to God for it, he could just shut off the funnel because he wants us to learn and grow.

Not because he's vindictive or mean or angry, but because he wants us to be [00:02:00] appreciative. Just like when we give a gift to our children, we want them to be thankful and we want to share the joy together and we want to give them more because of it. That's how God is to us, but even better.

D Brent Dowlen: My name is Brent.

And today, my guest is David Pascalone host of the remarkable people, podcasts, entrepreneur, and more importantly, my friend making his return to the show. David, welcome back to the foul man podcast. Who is David Pascalone in your own words?

David Pasqualone: I'm a son of God. I got two amazing, uh, kids. They're not kids.

They're not goats. They're teenagers. No, they're 20 and 22. And, uh, they're thankful to God for them. I do sales and marketing consulting. I have the remarkable people podcast, which I'm just privileged to be the host of and just help people grow around the world, meet remarkable people and guests, and I love just, um, enjoying a life that God gave us and [00:03:00] being productive, like I don't want to sit down and do nothing.

I like to get things done. So that's who I am. I enjoy cigars, even though I don't do it much lately. I enjoy jujitsu and wrestling. And, uh, yeah, I'd rather be working, talking to you, smoking a cigar while we build something, then sitting down doing nothing. So, you know, let's get something done.

D Brent Dowlen: I love the, I'm not the only dad who makes the goat joke about his kids.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's a bad habit. We, we call our kids, kids, but they're not goats. If anything, we want sheep, right? Or lambs. We don't want goats. So wrong, wrong association.

D Brent Dowlen: What is something that everybody needs to know about you before we dig in? They show

David Pasqualone: something people need to know about me before they get it.

1. I say this when I taught at a college the first day, I'd say you may love me or hate me, but I'm the same jerk to everybody. [00:04:00] So hopefully I'm not a jerk. I try to be kind to people. Um, but I treat people the same. I hold myself to the highest of standards and I'm very misunderstood. So a lot of people, for whatever reason, throughout my life, they don't get me.

But the more time we spend together, They, they figure out that it's like, Oh, this is real and sincere. And you may be, you know, focused and opinionated, but it always has a true good intent to help people want to glorify God.

D Brent Dowlen: Guys, we've been getting to know David just a little bit in the next part of the show, we're going to dive into gratitude as it is the season of Thanksgiving.

You see every year, I like to sit down with one of my friends who exemplifies gratitude in their life. Uh, as I said, at the beginning of the show, David is not just someone I know, but he's a friend of mine. And I know David well enough to know that he employs gratitude in his life. And so I wanted to sit down with him [00:05:00] as we approach Thanksgiving and share some perspectives with you guys as we approach this holiday, because I think gratitude is entirely important.

It's something you need to live with all the time, but more people are aware and in tune about talking to it and about talking about it now than any other time of the year. Guys, we're going to have some fun. Uh, I always love doing episodes with my friends. It makes my job so much easier and David and I talk all the time.

So this should flow pretty easily. David, what are some common misconceptions about gratitude you think people should be aware of?

David Pasqualone: I think common misconceptions, like we were talking about earlier about the father and giving gifts. I think a lot of times people have false gratitude and they say things out of rote, out of obligation.

I think they're like, Oh, you know, we need to pray before we eat. Well, every meal is a blessing. And especially in the [00:06:00] United States, we grew up so privileged That we take it for granted that we can walk into a grocery store and there's food, right? We take for granted that we don't just eat three, four meals a day, but we snack in between.

So when we actually pray and thank God, we need to be sincere and genuine and God knows our hearts. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions about gratitude is people just puke out words and they don't mean them. So that's, that's wrong and that's damaging to you and it's insulting to God.

D Brent Dowlen: I think when I, when I was putting the show together, I thought, you know, one misconception people have is you have to be happy, like totally happy about the situation to be grateful.

David Pasqualone: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, you gotta be real. You gotta be honest. You gotta be transparent.

D Brent Dowlen: No one's happy when life sucks, when things are going wrong and it's suffering, but you can still be grateful [00:07:00] without being all like joyful. You kind of thing. I think people miss that sometimes.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And it always, that's why God gives us the Bible, the new Testament, the old Testament, make up the Bible.

Two thirds of it's the Old Testament. The Old Testament's like the stories that are true, but it gives us such depth and explanation. And the New Testament, so it's like basically before Jesus is the Old Testament, after Jesus is the New, and the future, read Revelation. But, you know, like Job, most people even who don't go to church know about Job.

But his evil wife and friends are like, curse God and die, right? Well, he's like, no, like obviously this stinks, losing everything, being sick, losing our children. All these things are horrible, but he wasn't going to renounce God. He was still thankful and grateful to his God. He didn't understand what he was going through or why, and he was genuine about what he was feeling.

It wasn't good, but he was thankful and grateful that [00:08:00] God's with him. And that's how we need to be.

D Brent Dowlen: How do you think gratitude influences our mental and emotional health? Especially when we're facing challenges.

David Pasqualone: A hundred. It's like, you know, God gives us a strength, but it says commit that works unto the Lord and I thought shall be established.

So I know at any time in my life, when I was in a rut, when I was in a bad place, when I had the wrong attitude, when I had the wrong desires, when I was like desiring things in the world, instead of things of the Lord, you just start doing the right things and then God changes your mind and your heart.

But when you're not thankful, when you don't have gratitude. You become completely selfish and self centered and you're a waste of life. Myself, like we, meaning us, you, me, all of us, humanity. Um, so by not having that mindset of gratefulness and thankfulness, we just feel sorry for ourselves usually when we're just, you know, wow, [00:09:00] people, crappy people.

But when you have that paradigm shift, like, okay, for instance, I remember once when I was critically ill, um, back in my thirties. I was dying and literally dying. And I was dropped down to like 140 pounds and I felt terrible. And I saw this kid in a wheelchair who had mental. You know, uh, mental retardation.

I don't know what they call it these days. You know, for the snowflakes, if you're listening, I'm sorry if I offended you, but he was, when we grew up, I was mentally handicapped, mentally retarded, great kid. God loves him. We love him, but I don't know how to classify it. Anyways, he's in a handicapped wheelchair his whole life.

His mom's pushing him her his whole life. And I thought, man, who cares if I die? I'm saved. I'm going to go to heaven with God for eternity. I'm going to, I've had kids, I've had experiences. And even though right now I've been in pain for the last three years, I [00:10:00] had some good days while I wasn't in pain. So that right there was a paradigm shift.

I was thankful for what I had and what I was giving experience in the past and what I learned and that shift changed my whole mentality. And when that happened, I started getting better because all the stress, all the pressure, all the anger, all the bitterness went away and then God allows you to heal.

So that kind of burden isn't what God intended us to have. That's what Satan tries to put on us. But what you asked about mindset, when you flick that switch and you're walking with God, the rest just falls away and you can heal. And that's what happened to me.

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D Brent Dowlen: How do you think gratitude nurtures relationships?

David Pasqualone: It's like anything else, when you love people, you want to give them gifts. You want to spend time with them, you want to give them gifts, you want to do nice things for them, you want to talk to them, you know, that intimacy of relations.

Uh, when you [00:12:00] are in a relationship and you give someone a gift because you love them and you're excited for it. You know, how many times have you bought a gift for somebody and it's their birthday or Christmas and you can't wait to give it to them, so you give it to them early, right? But the thing is if they are not appreciative or grateful for it It makes you not as excited to give them the next gift And I I believe that's just a small window of how it is with god in us that like we he gives us gifts every day Like right now you're not thinking about your heart pumping or breathing You're not thinking about regulating your temperature you cut your thing.

I hit my finger the other day I don't think about it healing or sending extra energy to cut to fill the hole, right? God does all that for us It's seriously the beauty of sight, of sound, of taste. We take so much for granted every day. So, in relationships, if we take the other person for granted, And we're not thankful for them and their good qualities.

You know, most divorces, most divorces because people focus [00:13:00] on the three bad things instead of the 300 good things. Satan gets in their head and jacks them all around. So you get all these people who are disgruntled with their spouse when it's their the problem. I mean, it's just, we all, nobody's holy, nobody's without sin, but most people these days are just so selfish and so focused on themselves, that instead of looking at somebody and seeing the 800 good qualities, they see two or three bad ones.

And instead of working through it and staying, keeping to your vows, they quit and they betray and there's all these affairs. So to answer your question, I think a lot of all of that goes back to just being thankful and grateful.

D Brent Dowlen: How do you, does practicing gratitude start to shift your perspective on life and influence decision making, especially in the hard times?

David Pasqualone: So One of the things that I do personally is I journal, and not like journal, I write Dear Diary. [00:14:00] Like, the Bible says, you know, excuse me, Jesus says like, Cast your cares upon me for my burden is easy and my yoke is light, right? So when my mind is consumed and I'm feeling stressed, my blood pressure goes up, I can't sleep, or I wake up from sleep, I jot down everything that's on my heart, everything that's on my mind.

I just dump it. It doesn't have to be sentences. It's between me and God, but I dump and I physically write down everything that's bothering me. And then I pray and I give it to God because he says give it to me and I'll take care of it. And then I go back to bed and I usually sleep like a baby. When we're talking about gratefulness and thankfulness, It's the same similar type of process instead of thinking about you know I mean you can pick anything like literally pick any aspect of life my car, you know Oh, man, I really want a better car.

My car's older. Well, okay. I'm thankful for a car that runs I'm thankful for a [00:15:00] car that gets me from A to B, I'm thankful to a car that doesn't have a payment. I'm thankful for a car that, you know what I mean? I had a lot of fun years with it. You got to find the things you're thankful for, and then God will bring you more.

You know, again, there's the verses in the Bible that talk with the windows of heaven shall be opened unto you. Um, but there's also the verse in the Bible that says to whom much is given, much is required, right? So required isn't always servitude. It's sometimes just gratefulness, just thankfulness. You know, and if you're not again, if you had five friends and you take each one out to dinner One's really genuinely thankful and the others are just like, hmm I eat out here all the time that next time you go to dinner who you call enough to take out The one that's most grateful.

So I think gratefulness is Massively important to where you're at. So if you have a crappy job work, really, sometimes you get to really think [00:16:00] push past the bias and the years of evil saying, tries to shove in your brain, but you got to think, okay, well, what's good about this job? Cause you know what? How many people hate their job?

They say statistically 70 plus percent. How many people love that job when they got it? And they were so excited because they hated their last job, right? So they hated their last job. They got the new job. They were so excited. Now they hate that job too. The cycle is going to continue unless they're thankful.

They should be thankful. They have an opportunity to learn and grow and become better. And then they move on on good terms. And then, and that's something I'm not really sure God just. I think God taught me that by observation of the opposite when I was a kid. You know, the people around me weren't like that.

And I saw really fast that I don't ever want to leave a job unless I'm on top. I don't ever want to leave a job or be fired. I want to leave a job on top. So they're like sad. I'm gone, not upset or happy. I'm gone.

D Brent Dowlen: It's hard to be thankful for some of those [00:17:00] jobs.

David Pasqualone: It is. Okay. But, okay. I, I gotta be very careful.

I was in a role. early in my career and the owner ended up on American Greek and watching that episode 20 years later, I know that that was like a fraction of what really happened. It was way worse. I was in a very intense situation and under a lot of stress and duress and Implied harm, but I'm like, man, I learned how to work with government contracts.

I learned how to deal with people all over the country and the world. I learned how to do engineering of a very specific. Uh, necessity, but like very few people in the world did it, let alone in America. And I was going through [00:18:00] all the good things. I came in as a marketing assistant and I left as the marketing director, you know, so I just looked at the good, but I could make a big list of quote unquote bad.

And even if it's like, this person was a complete butthead and they treated you bad. And every day was a nightmare. Sometimes you just got to think, Hey, I survived. You're going to be there tomorrow, but I'm moving on. So you, you just got to find truly what is genuine, but you can be thankful for what did you learn from it?

How did you grow? Did you simply survive? Um, I'll be frank. My mom was really hard to deal with at times and abusive when I was growing up. And my ex wife. I didn't realize it, but you know, you marry who your mother is, they say. So all that abusiveness, I didn't consciously see it, but subconsciously I saw it in this girl, I ended up marrying her.

So we go through years of abuse [00:19:00] with her. Nobody knows what's going on. I'm even thinking, Oh, it must be me. Right. And then one day when everything came to the surface. That my ex wife had fully derailed. Um, my mom says to me on a phone call laughing and she said, well, she said, I don't remember the exact words, but Hey, at least I got you ready for it.

I'm like, what? She's like, yeah. She's like, if you could withstand me, you can withstand this. And I'm thinking to myself, you're priding yourself on being a horrible human to your son. But at the same time, there's truth to it. If my mom didn't torment me for like 20 years and mess with my head, I wouldn't have been equipped to deal with the, uh, what do they call it?

Uh, gaslighting and the twisting of my ex wife. And to this day, you know, I know the truth. God knows the truth, but there's very few people who saw the truth and they think I'm the bad guy. But when I got to heaven, I, today I can [00:20:00] pull my head at night. With clear conscience when I get to see God in eternity clear conscience She's not going to have the same thing, right?

But I got stronger for my mom to deal with my ex wife. I got stronger With all humanity after dealing with my ex wife. So even though those were a nightmare twilight zone meets the good son Type meets Jerry Springer type situations at the end of the day. I'm stronger

D Brent Dowlen: David. What does it mean to practice gratitude in the hard time?

David Pasqualone: I think that's where a test that's like the reveals who we really are. It's easy to praise God and be thankful in the end. Good times quote unquote the easy times But to be thankful and grateful in the hard times is what matters because it really reveals [00:21:00] who we are Like I can tell you right now going back.

I had a horrible prideful selfish attitude when I went through a lot of trials in my marriage And it was terrible, and I'm ashamed of it looking back, like the attitude, the cussing, the yelling. That's not who I actually am, and that's not who God made me to be, but that's who I allowed myself to become.

Right? And so, how important is it, your question is, to be grateful during the hard times, and how do you do it? It's again, just keep going to your, it's not a joke, like go to your Bible and you're going to be okay. No, read your Bible. And like, it doesn't matter if it's one verse that you read over and over again, read slow and make sure you understand what you're reading.

Cause if somebody reads through the Bible in the year and doesn't remember, understand anything they read, that's useless. But if you read just the book of John and you really got a handle on God's love, you're going to be golden for [00:22:00] life. Right? You keep going. Right. But for us to be grateful and thankful during the hard times, it's essential because if we can be grateful and thankful at hard times, then to the abundance, it's just icing on the cake.

Does that answer your question? All right. Rephrase the question. I don't feel like I'm getting it.

D Brent Dowlen: What does it actually look like? Practice gratitude in the heart and it's hard. Um, I think a lot of people don't understand that like there is a demeanor, there's action, there is actual, like, it's not just going, Oh, I'm grateful.

Yep. I'm good.

David Pasqualone: No, it's getting to, okay. I see what you're saying. So, okay. So for instance, someone's stroke, you pick the topic and I'll kind of do a role play through it. Pick any kind of life challenge.

D Brent Dowlen: The loss of income. [00:23:00]

David Pasqualone: Okay. Loss of income. So, You're hurt. Like someone's hurting for money. They're looking at their house being foreclosed on.

They can't pay their bills. Collectors are calling them. It is a tough situation, right? Got to be real. You can talk to God and say, God, I need help. What do I do? What's my next step? You don't have to think about, you can see the over the vision. And then after we plan the vision, which direction we're going, we're just like, okay, well, what do you want me to do today?

And God will fill in the blanks. We just have to worry like, okay, this is the direction I'm going. That's the vision. What do I do today to achieve that vision? But when the creditors are calling and when money's tight and when all these things are happening, you're like, okay, this stinks now. But man, we had some good times.

Remember that vacation we took, or remember when we didn't have to worry about money. Those were good times. Those will come again and there'll be better. And [00:24:00] you have hope from it. You're not just thinking about the past like, you know I feel sad when people are like the high school was the best time of my life If your life isn't continually getting better overall It's like the stock market goes up and down up and down up and down, but that trend line should go up If your life isn't getting better and better and better every day, then you need to reevaluate what you're doing.

So if you know that you've had times where income's been better, then rest assured it's going to come again. What happened to get you in the hole? What can we learn from it? Okay, thank you God for those lessons. And then go apply it. And become more successful. And you, if you talk to anybody who's lost everything and then regained it and lost, you know, regained it every time they regain it, it's faster and more.

So even though it's hard and even though it's terrible and it's not easy, find the things you are thankful for. And what's really cool is you might be able to say, [00:25:00] we just had the best birthday party my son has ever had. He had so much fun. He went to bed grinning, his cheeks hurt from smiling all day.

And we just did it for 20. Cause that's all we had, you know? So it's, it's, that's what I mean by it's different for everybody and every situation is different, but we got to just make the most of what we have each day and, and find the way to find what to be thankful for. And sometimes it does take writing things down in a pen and paper, but it doesn't take long.

You pray to God, you write, you pray to God, you're joyful. It really works.

D Brent Dowlen: How can you practically incorporate gratitude into your daily routine?

David Pasqualone: It [00:26:00] definitely needs to become a habit in everything we do. Like some people say, uh, some people say get up and the first thing you should do is read your Bible and spend time with God. That is great advice, and I don't disagree with it, but I know for me, if I just get up, I am not, like, all there. I am not, I'm a slow mover.

I'm like slow twitch muscles, right? I'm not the fast twitch muscles like an Olympic athlete. There's people who can shoot off the block, and there's people who get faster as they go around the track, right? That's me. So in the morning, that's not my best time. And if me and you were hanging out, like you said, we're friends.

There's nothing like publicly around the world. I don't care. People can know that all day. So you and I are friends. We're going to have a much better conversation now or at 10 o'clock tonight when we smoke a cigar on the patio, then we're going to have at 6 AM. Cause it's 6 AM. I'm like a zombie, right?

So you need to bake into your day time with God. And you can have conversational prayer. [00:27:00] Prayer is when we talk to God and then He talks to us when you're saved from through the Holy Ghost, through any, you know, anybody through the Bible. He talks to us through nature and all these different ways, but you can be talking to God all day long.

Like, oh wow, God, thank you. Thank you that somebody just gave me a cup of coffee for no reason. Or maybe it's just like, Oh, I almost just got an accident. God, thank you for that half a second that I got delayed back there, that I was cussing that I got stuck at the light. Thank you. That at this light, I didn't just get hit by that tractor trailer.

So. Each day you just kind of be grateful and We can learn from the past and we should learn from the past And learning is good the again two thirds of the bible is the old testament All of the bible to us is history. So god clearly has value on history and accounts and Learning from people's mistakes and successes, [00:28:00] but you don't want to dwell and just torment yourself with it You Like, man, I remember when I made 4, 000 a week and, and I could buy wherever I want when I want.

Okay. That was nice. And you're, you're probably going to get back there maybe even more, but right now, think about what was good from that. Think about what's good today and then move forward with the plan and just keep working the plan. Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be established.

The more you do the right things, the easier it is for your mind to think the right way.

D Brent Dowlen: So David, what are some practices? What are ways you exercise gratitude in your life? You said you journal, is that just for your head? Do you have like a gratitude journal or anything? That's one of the things I have a gratitude journal on my phone.

Like I, I'm really bad about actually physically writing stuff. So I have a gratitude journal on my phone. I just randomly pop open the app and type something in. Uh, [00:29:00] What are some of the ways you practice gratitude?

David Pasqualone: And just, uh, I, again, I try to make it a habit of just being thankful and me, everybody can fail.

It's not like, you know, I'm, I'm completely holy like God, but I, if you think about what you lack, that's usually no good can come with it. Right. So I usually try to think about what do I have, where am I going and you know, what's God want for me next? Like what am I to do today? Uh, so. A prayer journal is a really good way to see God.

Because I remember I used to be very, very diligent at like praying and writing down my prayer request, date asked, date received. And man, it's so encouraging to see God answer this prayer, because it may be a prayer, it's just not the right time. We want it now, but it's not God's will for 30 years. [00:30:00] But being able to go back and look at that and see all the prayers answers building over the years, a prayer journal is a great way.

And then a gratitude journal is all the things you're thankful for. Um, but sometimes when people are in a low, they don't fill out so much on their gratefulness journey. So you have to find a way. To be honest and real and be grateful like, you know, one of the biggest pains The pains to my heart is when people pray over their meal dear god Thank you for this food.

Amen. If a hundred people pray that how many people actually need it, right? So we don't pray for our food necessarily to cleanse the food because it says it's not what goes in the mouth that defiles I mean, it's what comes out So we pray The concept of prayers and just be thankful and acknowledge god gave it to us same thing with the tide God doesn't need money.

He has everything ever created. It's his You But we tithe, uh, [00:31:00] you know, we ask for 10 percent because it's just saying I acknowledge you gave me the other 90 and thank you for it, right? So, Things to be grateful, practical things is just throughout the day. Out loud, thank God for them. As they come to your mind, thank God for them.

And it'll happen more and more and more. And your attitude will change for the better, for the better, for the better. And seriously, you know, it's proven like you, I'm sure you've had helped people on your show, right? And they talk about diet and exercise and eating, and it's proven in Study after study.

If you just chew your food and enjoy the flavor, it's physiologically digested better and more nutrients are pulled from it. So mindset and thankfulness and gratitude has so much to do with relieving the pressure, the stress from our bodies [00:32:00] and, um, keeping us in order. So yeah, but it's hard to answer that question because it's like, unless you shadow somebody and walk around with them and slap them in the head when they say something stupid, it's hard not to, but it's just like if you go and look in your car and you're like, well, that right there shouldn't be throwing a red flag.

It doesn't matter if it's pretty be like thankful for it. You don't have to walk in the rain to work. You can get to work. You don't have to take a bus. You don't have to ride a bike. You have a car and that's better than nothing and you just got to find ways to be thankful.

D Brent Dowlen: One of the things I, I threw into my life, uh, you'll, you'll like this is I started looking at my prayer life and I switched up my prayer life.

I realized how often people like, you know, approach God like a genie, [00:33:00] right? We have the lamp and God makes it happen. Um, so I actually switched up my prayer life and this is the way I've taught my children to pray. And we start with gratitude, all, all of our prayers, the way I've taught my children to pray is we start with actually thanking God for the people in our lives and the things he's doing in our lives and the amazing day we had and just going through and saying thank you for all these things that matter to us, right?

Because by the time you actually get to All the, like, actually try, like purposely intentionally try to stop and thank God for each thing, right? For a day, by the time you get through that day of thinking, God, you're like in a totally different place in the rest of the prayer, right? All of a sudden, all of a sudden those wants or what you think are needs are a lot [00:34:00] smaller because you realize, Oh, look what all God did in my life today.

Right? Or this week, or, and I found it puts my, my mind in a better place, both in the latter part of my prayer, but also just in general, if I start with focusing on thanking God for all the incredible things in my life, all the things he's doing, all the things, and I specifically pray and thank God for the things I don't see yet that I don't understand that he's doing yet that I know he's doing, and I believe he's doing.

Right. And it changes my outlook entirely in the rest of the day or the evening or the rest of my prayer. You know, just focusing on that first has changed a lot.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And that's just it. And it's being, you're being genuine and that's like so key. Um, you actually remind me like with our [00:35:00] kids, if we teach them it now, it'll be second nature to them.

And I remember when I was raising my kids, my daughter and I came up with a little song like a jingle and you know You have like Like, uh, like Bible time songs. Like you go to church and you sing songs and, you know, they have a message. It's like, you know, as a, as a flawed human, I think me, I hate to say something that's not biblically sound, but we came up with this song.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And it's, uh, joy means Jesus, other than yourself. Joy means Jesus, others than yourself. Joy means Jesus, others than yourself. If you pray this way, then you'll be happy every day. Hey, and we made that little jingle cause I was trying to teach my, I didn't share it.

I didn't tell anybody. I did have one of my college students put like, put it to very fast paced piano music so my kids would have fun with it. But I was just trying to instill in them that first, when you pray, you thank God for who he is. [00:36:00] Not about you, what you have or what you don't have. It's Jesus first.

Then you pray for others and then you pray for yourself. And what I taught my kids that, you know, it didn't fit in the song, the only thing you do before all that is if you have sin in your life, known sin, you confess that first so God can hear you, will hear your prayer. Not can, he can, but will he. So basically, you know, you know you're in gross sin, get that right.

And then you praise God for God and Jesus and all he goes and you got others and then you have yourself so teaching our kids this, you know, we may not necessarily have been taught it or instilled it or seen it a lot of times people teach something but they don't display it. So if we're living in and showing our kids this and exhibiting it and it's second nature to us.

Maybe it was third nature. Then it'll be second nature to our kids.

D Brent Dowlen: When you're having a hard day, what is just the easiest way to put you [00:37:00] back in the mindset of gratitude?

David Pasqualone: Me personally, is that your question or people in general?

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah, that's the question.

David Pasqualone: Oh, no, I'm saying, are you asking me personally what I do? What does David Pasquale do?

D Brent Dowlen: I am. I'm asking you, what do you do?

David Pasqualone: Okay. So if I'm having a hard day, And I typically tend to my hard days, like you and I've talked about, I get, I feel less internal stress and then my blood pressure goes up. So what I do is I will go for a run or a walk. And then if I'm going for a walk, even around, I talk all the time. So, you know, maybe, uh, somebody will come with me, run on my own, just be with God.

And then at the end of that, usually that's when I'm like, God, you know, help me with this. And, you know, whatever it is, please provide, um, let me know what my part is, take care of it. And then after that, I feel better. So that, that's probably my number one thing is like [00:38:00] kind of leave it all on the mat.

Like I grew up, I loved wrestling in high school and you know, boxers and people who fight. It's just like, if you win or lose, that's secondary to giving it your all. Like Rocky's not a movie about boxing. It's about the heart of man. And if you go back and watch Rocky, it's not about beating Apollo Creek.

It's about going the distance. Can I just go the distance? And so when I'm really stressed or worried, I'm thinking about clients and bills and things that have to be done. And it's like, blow it off, run, exhaust my body. Cause for me, I'm, Not necessarily a runner. So I have to put all my attention on left, right, left, right, left, right.

Right. Keep breathing. Keep breathing. Don't pass up. So it's like I'm putting so much attention to just keeping my body physically motivated. I can't think about the rest. And now that I have that break, I'm not kidding. I've gone [00:39:00] on, I've had high blood pressure at times. Go for a run. I come back, it's 120 over 65 and, and like, you'd never think I had a blood pressure issue, but an hour before you're like, Hey, maybe you should go to the ER.

So it's like, mine is definitely emotionally based and mental based, but that's how I handle it. Go for a run, go for a walk, uh, do some kind of physical activity. I used to love hitting a heavy bag. I don't know if you've experienced hitting the heavy bag. I don't care if you're a seven year old grandma. I mean, don't hit it till you break your wrist, but that's a fantastic way to punch yourself out.

Just get all your energy out. And again, when you're physically exhausted, that part of distraction can't be in the equation. Then you talk to God and that God, what do I do? How do I do this? What's next? And it all works out.

D Brent Dowlen: I love things that give clarity. I'm a motorcycle guy and

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Oh yeah. So some people that's huge. [00:40:00]

D Brent Dowlen: Right. And, and it's just me and the road and you have to be a hundred percent focus people who focus on other things on their motorcycle die. That's, that's what happens.

David Pasqualone: Yes. And I haven't worked Cerner is a country where you, it's gorgeous, but where I live, it's like, you have a huge population of college kids and retirees, motorcycle riding is not safe, so that does not de stress me, but where you live, I'd rather you do that too, so it just depends, it

Audio: really

D Brent Dowlen: depends.

You know, on the open road and just be present on the motorcycle, because you have to be, it kind of lets everything else melt off, gives you some calm and some clarity. Because you have to be in that moment. It's like running for you, right? You have to be in that moment. And let everything else kind of slide off, or are you going to end up turning your ankle or, you know, getting clipped [00:41:00] by a car because you didn't look before you went across the road or you got to be.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. My main thing is just don't quit. Like, dude, you said you're going to run two miles, three miles, whatever it norm. I'm trying to work up to it. I haven't really worked out since 2018. So it's like, do it, do it, go. All right. No, you're not there. Keep going. One more step. One more step. One more step. So yeah, but on the motorcycle, that's the same thing.

Checking your left, checking your right.

D Brent Dowlen: David, tell us about the Remarkable People podcast.

David Pasqualone: So the Remarkable People podcast, we launched back over five years ago. We did it with the sole intent to help people grow and glorify God. And now five years, 10 seasons later, we're actually about to go into season 11.

We've had, uh, listeners. We have listeners over a hundred countries regularly, um, each week. And we've been up to, you know, we've been ranked pretty high. I don't really try to go with [00:42:00] numbers or talk about numbers, but we've been able to reach a lot of people over the years. I'm super thankful. And what the show does, it doesn't just highlight.

guests who are famous or guests who are obscure and highlights remarkable people and our logo. This shirt doesn't have it, but our normal logo is normal everyday people with the shadows of superhero. And it's like, shows the greatness that God put inside of us. And it's not a fake superhero. It's real.

It's the Holy ghost. So when people listen to our show all over the world, they don't have to be Christians. But I unashamedly tell them that's my goal. My goal is for you to see that all truth comes from God and all this power and all this success comes from God. So if you don't believe in God, the Bible is still going to work for you on earth.

Two plus two is always four despite what the government tells you, right? So our show not just highlights the guest life journey, but we take what they succeeded in or overcame in their [00:43:00] life. We reverse engineer it to break it down to the practical steps of how they did So our listeners can too. So if we talk about depression, the guest talks about what they did in their life to overcome the depression.

So you have at least a catalyst as a listener to start or to reach out to them and continue the conversation or to say, Oh, that makes sense. I need to look for more information and help. So that's remarkable people podcast. In a nutshell, we have guests come on a show, share their life story. They talk about what they faced, how they overcame it.

And then we try to help as many people as we can around the world. Please God and help people grow.

D Brent Dowlen: David, where's the best place for people to connect with you?

David Pasqualone: Uh, DavidPascalone. com That has the podcast, that has my contact info, that has a boat, it has an old video of me, but it's the message that never changes.

The most important 45 minutes we can spend [00:44:00] together. It's a message I preached in Alabama one time and it was, DavidPascalone. com It's just about honestly, God's love for you and not quitting and salvation. So you can get any kind of resource on our website, a bunch of business tips if you're trying to grow your business and if you want to reach out to us for help, you can reach out to us, um, if you want to talk about marketing consulting or sales coaching.

So yeah, David passow moon.com and, and if you go to the remarkable people podcast.com, that that forwards to davidow.com.

D Brent Dowlen: And for all of you watching on YouTube, it's up on the screen for everybody listening today. It's down in the show notes. Of course, we'll have all the ways you can connect with David down below on the podcast notes.

Are the description, whatever platform you're joining us on. We are closing in, coming out two days before Thanksgiving. So people are leaving from this and going [00:45:00] into their Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully where they want to be, hopefully with the people they want to be with. Some people not with everybody they'd want to be with, but we're heading to that holiday of Thanksgiving.

What is the most important thing you want people to hear today?

David Pasqualone: So statistically some of the most oppressive times in our lives are around the holidays. Cause in our minds, that should be the epitome of family and love and joy, you know, we, and everybody together, but the brokenness, the other 364 days a year keeps us from that on those special days on the holidays, the holy days, right?

So when you have like Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, people, myself included, may find themselves in a situation that it's like, well, this isn't ideal. If we think about. Where we think we should be and [00:46:00] where we're at. That disappointment is what causes sadness and depression. But again, the mindset.

When we're in these moments is look at the good like I am here with these people, you know You may have eight people there, but you miss your kid. Your kid's not there your son or your daughter Not kidding. We talked about the goat, right? But um, you may talk You know, you love your child and you're thankful to god that they're Your child and unfortunately can't be with you, but you maybe be grateful for all the years They were but be thankful for where you are now today And if you're all alone in a chinese restaurant It sounds like, okay, I'm at a low, but I'm eating food.

I'm warm. I'm clothed. What brought me here? And even if you were the cause of all the terrible decisions. Or if you were honestly the victim of other people's terrible decisions, use that as the moment for, [00:47:00] okay, what can I learn from this? So I'm never in this place again. And not in that bitter, I'll never be poor again.

So you do anything unscrupulous to, to be rich, right? No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying to have a balance, you know, it says a false balance is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. So anything in life, if you go overboard left or overboard, right, right. Liberal, conservative.

If you're too much one way or the other, you're crazy. God wants balance, and that's what the whole Bible illustrates. So, for this holiday season, just really look at where you're at. Be grateful for it. And if you No, it's not where you should be. Or you want things to change, ask God to show you how set the vision, start moving towards it.

And then in just one short year, you might look back and be like, wow, look how fast things changed, look how far. I've come [00:48:00] through Christ in this last year, and it'll be a whole different situation.

D Brent Dowlen: Guys, for David and myself, happy Thanksgiving, be safe, enjoy your time, and as always, be better tomorrow because of what you do today, and we'll see you on the next one.

David McCarter: This has been the Fallible Man podcast. You're home for everything man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www. thefallibleman. com for more content and get your own Fallible Man Gear.