The Motyv Podcast · Shayden J. Bertagnolli MS LMFT Men's Mental Health Expert

The Motyv Podcast | Gratitude vs Bitterness: Transforming your perspective

·24 min·1 clip

He says bitterness is a state of heart focused on what isn't, what wasn't, and what won't be.

1. The Motyv Podcast episode focuses on gratitude versus bitterness and the way Shaden Bertinoli connects that contrast to men’s mental health. 2. Shaden Bertinoli identifies himself as a marriage and family therapist who specializes in men’s mental health, which explains why he frames gratitude as a practical mental-health issue. 3. The episode asks what gratitude is for: a “baseline attribute,” a “state of being,” and a focus that helps people see what they ought to see. 4. Bertinoli says he felt humbled while preparing this message near Thanksgiving and realized “how ungrateful I actually am.” 5. He describes praying, repenting, and asking Heavenly Father what gratitude means, then sensing peace that gratitude is foundational to the “state of mind” and “state of heart.” 6. He proposes that bitterness is the opposite of gratitude, though he says he is “not going to sit here and say that I know the exact answer.” 7. He defines bitterness as a state where someone wants life to go a certain way, loses things, loses agency, or loses relationships, and then locks the heart up in pain. 8. He says many men focus on “what isn’t” in the present, “what wasn’t” in the past, and “what probably won’t happen” in the future. 9. He argues that this pattern is not good mental health because the past trains the brain to predict the future. 10. He points listeners to scripture study and says to look for “the opposites of things” rather than only the storyline. 11. He discusses prayers from people who think God is not helping them because they still struggle, and he says that disappointment can build entitlement. 12. He says some men, including men who served missions, can begin to feel like God “owes” them healing. 13. He recommends Eddie Jaku’s book The Happiest Man on Earth as a November read that can “shake your complacency” and build perspective. 14. He describes Jaku’s Auschwitz survival story and says Jaku found meaning by using intelligence, skills, and purpose inside severe suffering. 15. He recounts the Dunkirk beach scene where a soldier on the beach chooses dignity over stripping a wounded man’s clothes, and that decision becomes a moral turning point. 16. He reads Luke 17 and highlights the ten lepers, the one Samaritan who returns, and Jesus’ words, “thy faith hath made thee whole.” 17. Bertinoli says gratitude is an act of worship and that ingratitude is an act of fear, which turns the episode into a spiritual framework rather than just a self-help talk. 18. The tone is reflective, confessional, and sermon-like, with extended pauses for scripture, personal prayer, and repeated emphasis. 19. People interested in faith, men’s mental health, and gratitude. 20. Listeners wanting fast entertainment or no religious framing.

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