When you hear that someone is living in gratitude, immediately we start to think of them as

a monk sitting on the top of a high mountain. To say, we need to live in gratitude sounds

like hippie-dippy-ooey gooey stuff, but that's exactly how Omar Branson lives his life. And

he is not a monk, he is a businessman and an urban planner, and he's into all kinds of cool

projects with architects like Frank Gary, but he learned the hard way that his high stress life

was hurting him and hurting his family and gratitude was the solution he found. This is a bit of

optimism. Omar Branson, before we start an episode about gratitude, I think it's probably

important that I start by asking you, what are you grateful for right now? What I always come to

is just this moment, being able to take a breath, pause, and just notice that there's so much to be

grateful for, whether this moment with you getting to meet you, the spontaneity, and yeah, I'm

overwhelmed. When somebody says, do you have a gratitude practice? You know, it sounds a little

hippie-dippy to a lot of people, and I think we just change the words instead of saying, do you have a

gratitude practice? Simply ask the question, what are you grateful for? The thing that I've taken away

since I've met you is to ask myself that question when I'm feeling good, that's obvious. I think we

all sort of feel gratitude we're in a good space. You know, my God, I love you, you're the best,

but I think what I've taken away from you, since I've met you, is the ability to say, what am I

grateful for in times when I'm struggling, in times when I'm not feeling my best? Is that part of

a gratitude practice? Well, what does gratitude practice mean? Well, I think that's absolutely the time

when gratitude counts, and I think as you said, anybody can be grateful for when times are good,

and things are going your way, the wind is behind your back. It's when you're facing the

headwinds that I think the gratitude really kicks in and the power of it, because it's, you know,

the brain has a biological bias to see the negative, and so learning to not be reactive to the brain,

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