A. Conrad Deas II
Smile When You Poop
How to Be Grateful When Life Is Hard... The a 10-Second Gratitude Practice That Sticks Even When Life Stinks.
This book won't fix your problems. But it will teach you how to find solid ground while you're dealing with them — starting with the most ridiculous trigger you can imagine.
"When you can find gratitude in something as ordinary and ridiculous as going to the bathroom, you can find it anywhere."
— Conrad Deas
Some gratitude advice tells you to "count your blessings."
But when you're dealing with real challenges — financial setbacks, health scares, relationship struggles — being told to feel grateful can feel dismissive of genuine pain. There's a reason for that. And there's a solution.
This book teaches ridiculous gratitude — not gratitude for difficult situations, but gratitude in difficult situations. Proactively noticing and appreciating small things that might even be a stretch to appreciate, while you navigate what's uncomfortable.
Starting with one of the most reliable triggers in your daily life. Something so ridiculous, you won't forget it.
This Book Is For You If...
You've tried gratitude before and it felt forced, fake, or like toxic positivity.
Parents navigating chaos
Keeping your kids stable while you're not. You need your own private anchor before you can be anyone else's.
Leaders under pressure
Your internal state is your team's external environment. Gratitude isn't soft — it's the foundation of steady leadership.
Pastors and caregivers
Carrying others' pain while processing your own. You can't pour from empty, and this practice refills in 10 seconds.
Anyone in a hard season
Job loss. Health scares. Relationship struggles. Whatever hard means to you right now — this works even then.
What's Inside
Six chapters. Each one a deeper layer of the same practice.
Be Grateful for 10 Seconds
The bathroom habit that makes gratitude unavoidable. Uses your biology as a built-in reminder — 3 to 7 times every single day. By the end of this chapter, you can start your new gratitude practice today.
Be Grateful IN, Not FOR
The one critical distinction that changes everything. You don't have to pretend problems are blessings. Grateful IN means noticing what's still working while you deal with what isn't.
Be Grateful for Toilet Paper
Training your eye to see the invisible army of helpers making your life work — the doorknobs, light switches, and plumbing you only notice when they break.
Be Grateful for Your Heartbeat
Your body runs 100,000 heartbeats today without a single reminder from you. Developing gratitude for the organic automations that keep you alive — including the ones that fire every bathroom visit.
Be Grateful Until You Don't Have To
The science of habit formation — and Conrad's season of chaosity that tested everything: job loss, a blood clot, his grandmother's death, and a T-bone accident. All in a few months.
Be Grateful Out Loud
Your private practice creates public ripples. How 10 million people each practicing 100 seconds of gratitude daily creates 1 billion seconds — 31.7 years of gratitude — every single day.
A. Conrad Deas II
I'm a writer, husband, dad, lover of God, growth, gratitude, and dry humor. I'm also an ordained pastor and have served as a Christian minister for about a decade. But long before any titles, I've always been the guy people feel comfortable “opening up and spilling their guts to.” So I've learned a little about navigating hard (i.e. uncomfortable) seasons.
I wrote this book during what my wife and I affectionately call our “season of chaosity” that included losing:
- my “perfect bill of health”
- one of my favorite jobs ever
- my final grandmother
- a small SUV I didn't appreciate until it helped save me from serious bodily injury
- among other things I talk about in the book
The gratitude practice I built in years prior helped me not spiral into internal chaos. Now I'm sharing it so it can hopefully help do the same for you.
Start Today
Read the Introduction & Chapter 1 — Free
No credit card. No commitment. Just the introduction and first chapter — enough to start your first bathroom gratitude today.
Read Free Chapter →