Smile When
You POOP
Without Toxic Positivity
It helps to practice gratitude before you need the practice.
“It’s better to practice before you need the practice.”
Life Stinks Sometimes
And not just in the bathroom.
People get sick. Money gets tight. Relationships get difficult. Plans fall apart. Sometimes life genuinely hurts.
Or maybe nothing catastrophic happens.
Maybe today is just REALLY annoying.
I’m not interested in a version of gratitude that requires you to pretend those things don’t hurt.
If something sucks, you should be allowed to say:
If you’re angry, scared, grieving, disappointed, or confused, gratitude shouldn’t require you to lie about that either.
But whatever is going wrong is rarely the only thing that’s true.
Something can be broken while something else is still working.
You can be hurting while somebody is helping.
You don’t need to manufacture a blessing. You don’t need to find a silver lining. You don’t need to convince yourself that something bad is actually good.
The goal is to notice what is actually good while being honest about what isn’t.
That’s how you can be grateful IN something without pretending you’re grateful FOR it.
I Didn’t Start Practicing Gratitude in a Bathroom
I had been practicing gratitude for years.
Gratitude journals. Long walks. Random people, things, and body functions helping me all day that I barely thought about.
At first, I wasn’t trying to create a system.
I was just noticing.
Eventually, I started intentionally looking for ridiculously small things to appreciate, even when something else was going wrong.
I started calling it Ridiculous Gratitude.
Then life got a LOT less ordinary.
My wife, Jennifer, and I eventually started calling that stretch of our lives our Season of Chaosity.
I had been practicing gratitude for years before any of that happened.
And those years of practice mattered.
Then, later in that hard season, I saw a bumper sticker during middle-school drop-off:
I laughed ridiculously hard.
And somewhere in the middle of all that ridiculousness, I realized:
Being able to poop independently is something to be grateful for too.
That bumper sticker eventually helped me connect years of what I’d been learning about gratitude to one ridiculously simple trigger most of us already have built into our lives.
Bathroom breaks.
Why the Bathroom?
Because you’re probably going to use one today.
And tomorrow.
And the day after that.
You might forget to journal.
You might forget a morning routine.
You might forget some gratitude exercise you read about in a book.
But your body has a pretty reliable way of reminding you when it’s time to use the bathroom.
What if you attached a tiny gratitude practice to something your body was already going to remind you to do?
Ridiculous?
Absolutely.
But ridiculous is part of what makes it memorable.
This Book Might Be for You If...
Gratitude sounds good in theory. Real life can make it complicated.
Gratitude sometimes feels fake.
You don’t want somebody telling you to “look on the bright side” while something genuinely hurts. You want room for the complete truth.
You keep forgetting to practice.
Journals, morning routines, and other practices can be helpful. They can also be surprisingly easy to forget.
Life is hard right now.
You don’t need to pretend everything is okay. You’d just like to get better at noticing what else is true while dealing with what isn’t.
What’s Inside
Some ridiculous stories. A little chaosity. And one ridiculously simple practice.
The Ridiculous Bumper Sticker That Matched My Ridiculous Gratitude
FreeA middle-school drop-off laugh, a poem about poop, and the ridiculous beginning of SWYP.
Be Grateful for 10 Seconds
FreeLearn the SWYP practice and get your first rep.
Be Grateful IN, Not FOR
Notice what is actually good while being honest about what isn’t.
Be Grateful for Toilet Paper
Notice the people, things, systems, and processes making life easier every day.
Be Grateful for Your Heartbeat
Notice what your body is doing for you without waiting until something goes wrong.
Be Grateful Until You Don’t Have To
The Season of Chaosity, the gratitude reps that came before it, and what happened when life tested them.
Be Grateful Out Loud
Notice the people helping you, tell them, and let gratitude move beyond your own thoughts.
Be Grateful When You Poop
You finally get to read the whole poem. Yes. There really is a poem.
A. Conrad Deas II
I’m a writer, husband, dad, and lover of God, growth, gratitude, and dry humor.
Along the way, I’ve been an assistant pastor, Walt Disney World Cast Member, United States Air Force non-commissioned officer, Las Vegas taxi driver, security host, award-winning salesman, and a few other things that make more sense individually than they do in one paragraph.
I’ve also written a few books.
For years, I’ve experimented with simple ways to notice and appreciate the ridiculously ordinary things we usually overlook.
Smile When You Poop is one of them.
Read the Introduction + Chapter 1 Free
Meet the ridiculous bumper sticker behind the book. Learn the 10-second SWYP practice. And get your first rep.