In this episode of the Wealth Acceleration Podcast, I discuss the transformative power of gratitude in our financial lives, emphasizing how gratitude can shift our mindset from scarcity to abundance, strengthen relationships, and create momentum even in difficult times. I also share personal anecdotes and insights from my upcoming book, which aims to provide clarity and confidence in financial management. I also share an exciting announcement about the launch of my new book True Wealth: Replacing Financial Fear and Worry with Confidence and Capability to be released on 12/12/25.
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Gratitude Is The Key To Abundance And Book Announcement
What is up, money masters? Welcome to Thanksgiving 2025. This is the day before Thanksgiving, you are tuning in, and I hope you are in a space of gratitude because that is what this week, this special day in our history, is all about. What we have, although meager or abundant, is something to be grateful for. I want to talk about gratitude and how it relates to our financial lives. I have a big announcement that I am going to share with you about my book.
Gratitude As The Foundation For Financial Abundance
I know I have hinted at this over the year that I have been doing this show. I have a really special thing to share about the book. I am excited for you. Let me get into this. I put together some scriptures, some quotes, and some talking points. I just want to share with you. Let us talk about gratitude in terms of its most potent form. It has been said that gratitude is next to godliness.
This has been studied. There is a book, Power Versus Force, which talks about different vibrations that words have. Gratitude was the highest vibration, literally up to the word God. When we think of God and its powerful nature in our lives, the space that we have of life that we live in, and the godly creation that we live in, to be grateful for something is to be, in a sense, next to godliness.
Why gratitude? Gratitude is something that shifts our mindset from scarcity to abundance. This is a big talking point in all of my teachings over the years. Scarcity is something that is derived from fear and worry, and concern. Those are low vibrations. Those are places that put us in darkness and despair. We are on a path downward when we are in that space. We need to be able to shift out of that. I had a recent podcast episode with my friend and mentor, Kim Butler, where we talked about her book, which is about ways to get out of scarcity into abundance.
When gratitude increases, fear decreases. It interrupts the “I do not have enough” narrative that fuels poor financial decisions, guys. Here is a Bible verse for you. “In everything give thanks.” That is from 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 18. A quote from Lao Tzu, a famous spiritualist. “When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
Do we ever get into that space where we are just so grateful for every little thing? My toes right now are touching some carpet. It is really comfortable. Grateful for that. Grateful for the sensation to be able to touch the carpet. To recognize it as a thing. To not be numb to it, but to feel. That is something to be grateful for. Whether it is pain, whether it is joy, just the fact that we can feel, we ought to be grateful for that.
It sharpens our awareness of what is already working. Guys, when we are in gratitude, we recognize things that are working despite the things that are not. You might find in your financial lives, there might be a little win. Maybe you said no to a spending decision that you would have otherwise said yes to. Maybe you said yes to something you would otherwise say no to.
Sometimes we are holding off, and we are never willing to buy ourselves something. We need to do that from time to time. We need to permit ourselves to use some of the financial resources we have been earning from the hard work that we are doing to create value for society and actually do something for ourselves from time to time.
Another point that I want to talk about is that gratitude expands what you value most. What you appreciate grows. My wife loves to say that what you focus on expands. This is a true principle that is timeless and universal. It is called the law of the harvest. What you sow or plant and cultivate, you then will get to reap or harvest later.
When we are thinking about the stewardship over our monetary resources, our relationships, time, and business opportunities, if we want more of the things that relate to financial resources and the things we can get with the use of money, we need to plant more of it. We need to sow more into those things. We need to put in the effort necessary in order to reap the benefits that we are trying to get. “To him who has, more will be given.” That comes from the book of Matthew, chapter 13:12. There is a parable related to stewardship in the Bible where he who manages his resources well, the man who gave that person the resources to manage.
The businessman, the entrepreneur, gave more to that manager because he managed it well. I think God is like that. The more that we manage the resources that we have well, the more we will be able to receive and the more we will be able to continue to do good in the world. Here is another quote from Eckhart Tolle: “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation of all abundance.”
Think about the assets that you have, big or small. Do you have money in the bank? Be grateful for it. Do you have a place to stay? Do you own a home? Do you own a car? Do you own multiple cars? Do you have clothing on your back? Do you have lighting in your home? These are all assets that we ought to be grateful for. Even the little things, the fact that your light switch functions.
Gratitude As A Discipline That Shapes Financial Behavior
I find that when I am grateful for small things, I am also grateful for big things. Gratitude is also a discipline. It is not just an emotion, but a discipline. You do not have to wait to feel grateful to practice it. Oftentimes, it is the opposite. When we express gratitude, we start to feel the feeling of gratitude. Gratitude, the verb, the action, leads to gratitude, the feeling, which then leads to a sense of happiness, contentment, joy.
Wanting What You Have: Redefining Financial Freedom
Here is another Bible verse. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” That is from Psalms 118:24. A quote from Aesop. “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” You guys have heard me say this before, if you have tuned in to my show for very long, one of my favorite definitions of financial freedom is having what you want and wanting what you have.
Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
Often, guys, we buy stuff because we think we want it, then we buy it, and it goes by the wayside. How many people have purchased clothing that never has the tags taken off? How many of you have purchased your dream car, and then you are like, “It is expensive to maintain, it is maybe not as comfortable as I thought it was,” and then you end up not really wanting what you have?
Maybe it is the shirt on your back that you like, it was the expensive, cool shirt. I did this once. I bought an expensive white dress shirt, $250 for this thing. I had never paid that much for a shirt in my life, no more than $20. I want to see if it helps me feel wealthier, if the quality is better, or something. A $250 shirt got pit stains from sweat faster than any other white shirt I have ever owned, and ended up not really being appreciative of it.
I thought, “What a waste.” I did not really want what I had after that. There are times when that happens to all of us. We get what we want, but then we do not want what we have. I invite you guys to get into that place of gratitude where you choose the small things. The gratitude turns what we have into enough. Guys, we have an insatiable appetite for more.
We are designed that way as human beings to seek more, and that is a great thing because it keeps us motivated to continue to progress. If we do not take a moment to look at what we have and just be grateful for it, it can keep pulling us from finding joy in life. Number four, gratitude strengthens relationships, which is a part of our greatest wealth.
I think maybe that’s true. The relationships are our greatest wealth. I talk about four aspects in my book, and I talk about all my teachings, actually. There are four main areas of wealth. There are our physical, mental, spiritual, and social. I remember distinctly one time, I was with my grandma, she was in her early 90s, and her health was okay, but it was starting to decline. Her husband had passed a few years prior.
Relationships As A Core Form Of Wealth
She was at my aunt’s house, and I asked her how she was doing and just chit-chatting with her. She said, “Wade, I am just so grateful to have people around me who love me and who will care for me. Grateful I have children who love me, who are around me to support me.” I thought that was probably the greatest wealth we can ever have. It is relationships with people who care about us and whom we care about.
Think about this in the context of financial resources. Why do we have financial resources? We can have more time with relationships and create memories with people that we love. Oftentimes, the financial confidence we are seeking comes from people. We listen to podcasts like this, and hopefully, my words help instill confidence in you. I am a relationship in your life that helps you feel more confident and excited about your finances, more motivated to take the right actions to manage them well.
Mentors, clients, family members, community members, of course, siblings, parents, whoever it is you look up to can really support the progress you are trying to make. Here is a Bible verse. “Two are better than one, for if they fall, one will lift his fellow.” The idea of that is that when you are in a relationship with somebody, you often lift each other out of difficult times. That is from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 4:9 and 10. A quote from Socrates. “The greatest of all riches is to be content with little.”
Gratitude Through Hard Seasons + Book Announcement
You do not have to have a lot to find joy and contentment in life, guys. The fifth point I wanted to make today, gratitude creates momentum, even in hard seasons. True wealth is not the absence of difficulty. It is the ability to move forward through it. I have seen this over and over, guys. Wealth is not really in the monetary resources that we have. It is in what we do with it.
True wealth isn’t the absence of difficulty; it’s the ability to move forward through it.
It is in how we manage it. It is in the relationships we cultivate, the way we manage our physical health. The way we manage our mental, emotional wellness, and intellectual pursuits. It is in the spiritual connectivity we have with a higher purpose, with God, with a meaningful reason for living, or raison d’etre, as the French put it.
From James chapter 1:2. “Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds.” That is hard to do when we are in trials like “Why me? Why is this happening?” We can start to shift into “Why not me? How is this happening for me? What do I get to bring to this circumstance and difficulty that can help me learn, but also help others learn and grow?”
That is a place where, when you are out of the trial, it is a lot easier to think that way. When I am talking right now, it is easier to say it. If we can work toward that, man, what a great place to be. A quote from a man named Neale Donald Walsch. “The struggle ends when gratitude begins.” I have had many difficult circumstances in life.
I share in the opening to my book about a time when I was in my early career in personal finance, and I was just devastated emotionally about the difficulties that I was experiencing. I had dropped off my daughter at her babysitter, and I knew I had to go out and try to find somebody to talk to about life insurance because that was the career path I had started down.
Life insurance was a very important thing. I had seen many young families whose spouse or loved one had died and did not have any life insurance at all. It was just shocking to me that it could be the case. I had a reason to do this type of career in personal finance as a life insurance specialist, but I really did not have the confidence in it. I was out this one particular day, and I was just distraught. I felt unbearable emotional stress about the burden of providing for my family.
I had no new leads in a long time, and I was just struggling. I was sobbing, actually. I was feeling overwhelmed with darkness and the impossibility of providing a good living for my family. I cried out in prayer, “God help me.” A little whisper came that I should go talk to a guy named Greg, who was in my life, who had become a mentor. I went down to the southern part of the valley area, and this man happened to be available.
He talked me out of a difficult place. Back to relationships, mentors. I have a God-fearing relationship in my life. I have a very strong relationship with my God, my Father in heaven. I know that He hears my prayers. He did that day through this man, who became a great resource for me to overcome the difficulties of that time, and moved me into a place that I have become as a result of that one particular, really difficult day, this dip. If you can imagine a trampoline, I love this little analogy. When you get on a trampoline, there are springs that get loaded.
When you step on it, they get loaded, so you can put pressure down into the mat, and then you can start to get air off the trampoline. The more pressure you put into the mat and the springs, the higher you can explode up off the mat into the air. When we go through really difficult dips in our life, emotionally, financially, we can then spring out of that to an even higher place. This is what happened for me. As a result of that really difficult time, I was invited to go to some trainings, and these trainings then trained me out of the scarcity mindset that I was in, into a place of abundance, and gave me tools and resources that I could use as a mentor moving forward. I still use those today.
When we go through difficult dips in our lives—emotionally and financially—we have the ability to spring out of them to an even higher place.
I aligned my viewpoint on the difficulty I was in with a godly perspective, with a place of gratitude, and it helped me shift. The book that I am releasing, I have an official launch date for you to share. It is going to be December 12th, 2025. I am in pre-launch mode right now, so if you are tuning in to this show and it is not yet December 12th, 2025, you can get on my pre-launch waitlist, and I have got some freebies for you there.
I am going to give you a free chapter about getting out of debt. I’ll tell you something. I have come up with this concept I call the financial money fog. When we are in that fog, it is not so much that we are just not skilled at managing money. It is that we do not know what to do. There is so much chaos out there, so much hearsay, so much “you should or should not do this or that.”
It feels like we are in a fog. I want to dissipate that fog for you in this book. I want to give you the clarity and the confidence that you need by giving you the right information in the right order. My framework, the AWESOME framework, is organized, systemized, optimized, and maximized. I lay that out. I take all the lessons I have learned and all the practical things that I have learned over the past twenty years, and I put them into this book. It has been my life’s work, my magnum opus. You hear the back story, the practical ways of managing money and being successful with it, and you get some really cool case studies from clients I have worked with over the years.
I cannot wait for you to read it, and I invite you to go to the link in the show notes here to get on the pre-launch waitlist, get the free chapter of the book, and get the money mastery prep kit that I have prepared for you to help you get organized financially. I am going to do a live discussion about the principles in the book as a part of this bonus for being on the waitlist. Please go do that right now, and I cannot wait to have you get a copy of this book when it launches on December 12th, 2025. Guys, have a great Thanksgiving. I love you all. Take care.