Grateful are the great — to be great, you gotta be grateful.
Warrior's Way Mindset — a mentor's songs for men doing the work.
What “Grateful Are the Great” is about
Grateful Are the Great is a song about beating doubt with gratitude — built from a real recorded conversation where Rick answered a friend's “I'm struggling right now” with a sermon in miniature: take a deep breath — we GET to breathe; we're in the middle of blessings all the time. The hook is Rick's own sentence, word for word: grateful are the great — to be great, you gotta be grateful. The song walks his whole argument: the dare to doubt, the list that never lets up, the dark mirror (you don't know air till someone's choking you), and the view that makes it worth the climb. If you're looking for a gratitude anthem for when life feels like too much — thankfulness chosen in the middle of the mess, not after it — this is that answer, chanted until you believe it. Track one of Rick's Why? album. Listen free on Mi.
About “Grateful Are the Great”
From a recorded session, August 2026. Noel opened with the truth — “I'm struggling right now” — and Rick answered with the whole sermon: the deep breath you GET to take, the mountaintop wasted on worrying about the way back down, the gifts nobody prices until they're gone, and the landing law — grateful are the great. The song keeps his argument in his order and his words: the dare, the struggle, the chant, the dark mirror, the gift. The first song of the Why? album — the seed conversation for everything that follows.
The journey
- 01
The Dare
Doubt gets the first word — go on, say the mountain's got me beat. Or climb.
- 02
The Struggle
The honest bottom: the list that never lets up.
- 03
The Law
The chant states the thesis as a question — how blessed are we?
- 04
The View
Top of the mountain, mad about the way down. Am I missing the view?
- 05
Until
Every gift shown by its loss — air, sight, sound, the walk.
- 06
The Gift
How can He give you more if you can't see what you've got?
- 07
The Summit
The dare settled, the view earned — that view makes it worth the climb.
In Rick (Curse Breaker)'s words
“Grateful are the great. In order to be great you must be grateful.” — Rick
“How do I get you more awesome if you can't see the awesome you already have?” — Rick
“We're in the middle of blessings all the time.” — Rick
“Don't forget you get to breathe.” — Rick
Lyrics
Go on and doubt me then Say the mountain's got me beat Or you could climb with me Go on — climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Some people would pay anything For just one step on this mountain To be great, you gotta be great To be great, you gotta be grateful I'm struggling right now — that's the truth, I won't dress it up Got a list of things that need me and the list don't ever let up Every voice inside my head is selling stories Cheap ink, bad math, but I buy it every time Too much terrain, too much to climb Grateful are the great (we get to) Grateful are the great (we get to) How blessed are we? (we get to) Climb — climb to the top Top of the mountain Mad about the way back down Am I missing the view? Or am I just in the middle of the climb? You don't know air — till someone's choking you You don't know sight — till the lights go out You don't know sound — till you meet the deaf You don't know the walk — till you meet the man who can't Grateful are Grateful are the great (we get to) Grateful are the great (we get to) How blessed are we? (we get to) How can He give you more If you can't see what you've got? Grateful are the great Still think the mountain's got me beat? That view makes it worth the climb Go on — climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me Go on — climb with me Climb with me To be great, you gotta be great To be great, you gotta be grateful We get to
Lyrics © Mi. / the Re. Karaoke-synced in the app.
We Get To — the making of Grateful Are the Great
A real answer to “how's your heart?” — the breath, the reframe, and the demo the call became. This is the creative process in public: what resonates, what would you change? The comments steer the final cut.
The full story of this video›
The episode opens with an honest answer to a simple question. Asked “how's your heart?”, one man on a recorded coaching call says the thing most people swallow: I'm struggling right now. What follows is the reason this video exists — Rick doesn't fix the to-do list or hand out advice. He swaps one word. Not you have to — you GET to. You get to breathe. You get to see, share time, share love. The swap sounds small until you watch it land on someone actually drowning in their week; overwhelm and gratitude turn out to be two readings of the same list.
From there the episode follows the sentence into a song. Rick keeps building — the mountaintop wasted on dreading the way back down, the gifts nobody values until they're gone, and finally the line that named the track: to be great, you've got to be grateful. Grateful are the great. The video shows the idea becoming lyrics and ends on the demo itself, built the same day from Rick's own words in Rick's own order.
What makes this one different from a normal making-of: the song isn't finished, on purpose. This is Mi.'s process in public — the demo is up, the comments are the A&R meeting, and viewer suggestions genuinely steer the final cut of track one of Rick's Why? album.
The story behind the song
We Get To: How 'Grateful Are the Great' Was Written in Public — and Isn't Finished Yet
A hard morning, a two-word reframe, and a demo built the same day — this is the first Mi. song written with the door open, and the community holds a pen.
Every song on Mi. starts as a real conversation. This one starts with a rough one. Asked “how's your heart?” at the top of a recorded coaching call, the honest answer came out before the polite one could: I'm struggling right now. I'm definitely struggling.
What happened next became a song by the end of the same week — and, for the first time, the whole build happened in public. The demo is streaming, the making-of is on YouTube, and the final version isn't locked yet, because the people listening get a say. Here's the story so far.
The two-word reframe
Rick (Codename: Curse Breaker) didn't answer the overwhelm with advice. He answered it with a swap — one verb for another:
“Take a deep breath. Don't forget you get to breathe. We get to share time, we get to share love, we get to share breath, we get to share sight. Look what we get.”
— Rick, on the call
Have to becomes get to. It sounds too small to matter until it lands on a day that's actually drowning you — and then the list you resented rereads as an inventory of things someone else is praying for. Rick pushed it up a mountain: standing at the top, most of us are mad about the way back down. The view was never missing. The seeing was.
“Are we missing the point of the game — to have gratitude in the middle of the game?”
— Rick
The sentence that named the song
Near the end of the call Rick landed the law the whole conversation had been climbing toward: gratitude is a very admirable currency — in order to be great, you must be grateful. Grateful are the great. Four words, a hook, and a title, delivered off the cuff.
Nothing invented, everything remembered
The house rule held: the lyric may color the scene, but the spine must be the real sentences. The song's ledger — kept in the project files, timestamped against the recording — traces the words home:
| The lyric sings… | Because Rick said… |
|---|---|
| "To be great, you gotta be grateful" | "In order to be great you must be grateful" |
| "How blessed are we? (we get to)" | "How blessed are we — we get to take deep breaths together, man" |
| "Top of the mountain / mad about the way back down" | "It's like being on the top of a mountain… how are we going to get down from here?" |
| "Am I missing the view?" | "Are you missing the view?" |
| "You don't know air — till someone's choking you" | "We don't appreciate these deep breaths until someone's choking you" |
| "How can He give you more / if you can't see what you've got?" | "How do I give you more abundance if you're not able to appreciate what you have?" |
The darkest verse is the most verbatim. Air until choking, sight until the lights go out, sound until you meet the deaf, the walk until you meet the man who can't — that litany is Rick's, nearly word for word. The songwriting only mirrored it: the same gifts come back in the chant, handed back one by one. We get to.
Written with the door open
Here's what's genuinely new about this track: it skipped the label's private audition process entirely. Every Mi. song before this one auditioned in a closed pool before release. Grateful Are the Great published as a demo on purpose — the making-of video shows the call, the forks in the writing, and the take itself, then asks the only A&R questions that matter: what resonates? What would you change?
The comments are not an engagement trick. They're the meeting. Suggestions from listeners genuinely steer what the final cut becomes — a lyric, the feel, the tempo, all of it is still on the table. The song is track one of a new album called Why?, and the whole record will be built this way: real conversations in, public demos out, the community holding a pen.
What you get to do next
Hear the demo with the full lyrics, free, no signup. If a line lands, say so. If a line misses, say that louder — you may be writing the final version. And take the song's own question with you into the week: what's one thing you keep saying you have to do… that you actually get to?
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About Rick (Curse Breaker)
Rick: Codename: Curse Breaker breaks generational curses out loud. His weekly Do-Rick-Mi sessions are real conversations that become raw material for songs men can actually carry. This one caught him mid-ministry — answering a friend's worst morning with the law he lives by.
More from Rick (Curse Breaker)
Why? is just getting started — this is track one, and the community gets a voice in what comes next.
The Making Of
The Inspiration
A dark-but-playful electro-soul machine groove — slamming drum-machine floor, deep sub-bass, and chanted call-and-response hooks under one warm male soul lead, with high music-box bells cycling odd-count patterns over the straight beat.
- Electro-soul machine groove
- Chant-gospel electronic
- Mid-tempo head-nod pocket
- Minor-key, warm not brooding
- Warm male soul lead
- Gang-chant chorus with echoes
- Growled ad-lib punctuation
- Question-as-hook · 2
- Mantra chorus · 2
- Loss litany answered by a gift litany
- Deep sub-bass pulse
- Clap-snap backbeat
- Music-box bell polyrhythms
- Pitched-laugh vocal FX
- Wide negative space · 4
- Grateful swagger
- Uplift with grit
This track was generated with AI from a documented analysis of a genre's structural elements — tempo, vocal delivery, arrangement, and production aesthetic. Mi. publishes that analysis below. Any resemblance to a specific recording artist's voice or composition is a coincidence of methodology, not imitation.
Sonic Architecture
Vocal Delivery
One warm, natural male soul voice at two volumes — low and close in the verses (the struggler), open and full on the hooks (the sage), with female echo answers and a gang chant arriving only for the final chorus. A recurring growled “yeah!” ad-lib works as the song's amen.
Structure
Built as a dialogue: a dare opens the song, a struggle verse answers, and the chorus states its thesis as a question. The back half mirrors itself — a litany of gifts shown by their loss, answered verb-for-verb by the gifts handed back — and the last words spring the hook's withheld payoff.
Production Aesthetic
Dark floor, bright ceiling: a dry slamming drum-machine kick with clap-snap backbeat and deep warm sub-bass below; sparse glassy music-box bells cycling odd-count patterns that drift off the straight beat and lock back above. Few elements at once, wide space, one-bar dropouts; pitched-laugh FX living in the empty beats.
Mood Territory
Grateful swagger — uplift with grit. The minor key stays warm on purpose: the darkness is real (the struggle, the loss litany) but the groove never stops being a celebration, and the lift arrives by accumulation rather than explosion.
How this song was made
Grateful Are the Great came out of Rick's coaching and his own surrender — the Warrior's Way Mindset — with Rick's words shaped into a song and produced by Mi. The words above are Rick (Curse Breaker)'s own; the lyrics are Mi.'s and the Re's. How Mi. works · Listen with karaoke lyrics in the app.
Mi. — iM HEARD · songs made from real conversations, each one written for the person who lived it.