The Ridiculous Bumper Sticker That Matched My Ridiculous Gratitude

November 2024, middle school drop-off. The bumper sticker on the car ahead of me made me pause and made my morning.
It read…

I laughed out loud. Hard. The kind of laugh that shakes your shoulders. I wanted to honk so bad — but since I didn't have to go at that exact moment, I held back.

Then while laughing hysterically, I thought: “Wait a minute! I don't have to poop right NOW, but I DO have to poop as a human being. So I CAN honk!”

By then, the car was gone, so I didn't honk. Still, I smiled, thinking…

That's something to be grateful for.

It Was Funny, AND Serious.

My youngest son has had gastrointestinal issues since he was a few months old. For over a decade, we visited a surgery center for digestive tract monitoring three to four times a year. We'd just done it two weeks before I saw that bumper sticker.

Sometimes at the center, I'd see kids in even tougher situations — kids who couldn't use the bathroom unassisted. Laughing at that bumper sticker, I thought about those kids and realized: being able to poop independently is a blessing we usually overlook.

So I didn't just smile and move on. The next day, I wrote a poem and sent it to the family group chat.

One of my nephews responded: “shakespeare could never…”

My oldest child responded: “pure genius.”

My mother-in-law gave the 💩 emoji — which I took as her sign of approval.

And my wife said: “That's my man and I'm going to stick beside him.”

Their reactions were all the ‘approval’ I needed to share this far and wide. The poem was a joke. But I was serious about smiling when you poop.

This Sounds Ridiculous. It Is. Here's Why That's Good.

Life stinks sometimes.

And not just in the bathroom…

Work gets stressful. Relationships get complicated. Health falters. Money gets tight. Plans fall apart.

This book won't remove life's challenges.

But it will teach you how to be grateful even when life stinks — not by pretending problems don't exist, but by training your brain to notice what's still working while you deal with what isn't.

This isn't toxic positivity. I'm not telling you to “look on the bright side” or “be grateful for the lesson.”

This is truth-based gratitude. It acknowledges the raging storm and the roof that keeps you dry.

Both things can be true simultaneously: some things are scary, suck, or simply broken, AND some things are working just fine or maybe even great.

Ridiculous Gratitude

A few years before I saw the bumper sticker, I started practicing something I call ridiculous gratitude. At first, I didn't have a name for what I was doing. I was just noticing weird things to appreciate. Usually on long walks. Eventually, I realized my gratitude fell into three patterns:

• Ridiculous Stretch: I began stretching my mind to find gratitude in situations or things that didn't seem to call for it. When my water bill was five times normal, I appreciated the workers fixing things I didn't even know existed.
• Ridiculously Small: I was spotting and appreciating tiny things or experiences I was ignoring before. Toilet paper, doorknobs, the fact that gravity keeps coffee in my cup. These helpers are usually invisible until they break.
• Ridiculously Proactive: I started seeing reasons to be grateful. I wasn't waiting for good circumstances. I was noticing what's working instead of hoping gratitude showed up.

I didn't know it then, but this practice was preparing me for what I'd later call my “season of chaosity.” That story waits in Chapter 5. First, the practice.

By practicing gratitude during ordinary moments, your brain learns to find solid ground during hard times. Like muscle memory for athletes — you practice thousands of times, so you default to automatic gratitude under pressure before you even realize it.

By the end of the next chapter, you'll be ready to start your new gratitude habit today.