Ep 26: Gratitude… The One Quality That Will Make Your and Your Business Irresistible

There’s been a lot of discussion around gratitude in the business world and in the personal development sphere lately. Experts and gurus spout stories about how they created a gratitude ritual and their business exploded overnight and things of that nature.

While that doesn’t surprise me one bit, gratitude is really powerful, I wanted to take an UnSabotage view on the topic. WHY does gratitude cure all ails? WHY does it mean so much? HOW does it actually work? And… is it tied to the UnSabotage journey?

This week’s episode is about all that I discovered.

Gratitude… Have you ever been thinking about something and you start to see it everywhere? That’s what has happened with me and the concept of gratitude. Like I mentioned above, it’s everywhere right now so I wanted to provide an UnSabotage take on the idea.

Before we really jump in, let’s take a look at the word’s actual definition (according to Google).

Gratitude: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

Did you catch that last part?? A readiness to return kindness!

It’s active, it’s not passive. It’s not weak. 

It’s like “Thankfulness 2.0” or “Thanks Squared.”

Here’s an example of what I mean: Have you ever heard those stories where a car in line at Starbucks paid for the people behind them and the next person paid it forward and so on and so on. Check out this example where is lasted for 11 HOURS!! And it included 378 people, by the way. 

Or let’s look at a related word: gratuity. The tips we leave for those who wait on us, and serve us. It you look at the tie-in to gratitude, you’re return the kindness they showed us. 

That’s literally gratitude.

It’s being thankful AND ready to return the kindness.

I think it’s this piece that has everyone in the business world taking notice of gratitude.

It’s movement. Positive movement.

We as entrepreneurs are always looking for momentum (movement) and gratitude is that kind of movement. 

Now that we know what gratitude is, here’s a list of what it’s not:

• Stagnant: Have you ever wondered where the Dead Sea got it’s name? It’s actually because this Sea has consist intake of water from rivers or streams but once the water is in the Dead Sea it has no place to go. All of the salt and minerals that come in via the intake sources stay there with no where else to go. That’s what makes the Dead Sea so salty and so adverse to sustaining life. 

• Isolated: Take a look at any example of thankfulness leading to gratitude and there’s never just one person involved. Gratitude cannot exist in isolation. It is a benefit of us trusting others enough to involve them in our lives… and rewarding them with looking to return the kindness as we can.

• Condemnation or Judgment: Let’s take a look the root word for gratitude. It’s Latin and the word is “gratus.” Gratus is also the root word for grace. So, gratitude, in its fullest form it is being thankful for something about someone else and showing them grace by not also judging that person for any shortcomings. Gratitude cannot exist without us showing that person we’re grateful for some grace.

 

Is it any wonder that we keep hearing that the secret to success in business involves being grateful?!

When we are grateful, we take our thankfulness and pour it back into our world. 

Who doesn’t want to do business with someone like this?

And just in case you feel like writing off this episode as a feel-good-ery, here are three separate studies that look at gratitude in relation to separate parts of our lives:

1. Two professors at Indiana University did an interesting study recently. They took 300 adults who were seeking counseling related to depression and anxiety and broke them into 3 groups.

– One group was asked to write letters of gratitude to someone (anyone) before they started their counseling sessions.

– The second group wrote letters recalling negative experiences they had had in their lives.

– The third group was given no writing assignments at all

What were their findings? “Those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended.” (!!)

They also found that sometimes it can take time to feel the difference it’s making, but that the effect is like a snowball. In other words, it’s 1+1=4.

2. A group of Chinese researchers looked at the combined effects of gratitude, sleep quality and symptoms of anxiety and depression. 

They found that higher levels of gratitude were associated with better sleep and lower levels of anxiety and depression.

Again… if you’re getting better sleep, of course you’ll be on your game in business. It’s rather practical, isn’t it?

3. The National Institutes is Health found that people with more gratitude had overall higher levels of activity in the hypothalamus (which helps control several essential functions including eating, drinking, sleeping, metabolism, stress levels and that neurotransmitter we know and love dopamine)! 

Dopamine is considered a “reward” neurotransmitter. So in other words, gratitude creates a virtuous cycle in your mind or an upward spiral.

All this leads me to my thought. Our brains are not these fixed organs that we have no control over. We are constantly rewiring them everyday.

Neuroplasticity, baby! It’s amazing.

Not sure what this is? Here’s a brief video explaining this amazing part of our selves.

All this to say, coming from my UnSabotage perspective of looking at something that may feel common in a new and fresh light to gain more understanding AND a practical way to up-level our lives, I highly recommend gratitude.

It wakes you up to GOOD happening in the world around us.

It keeps an incredibly powerful movement in your life and business.

It’s a crucial part of UnSabotage-ing our daily thoughts. Remember, we’re like an iceberg. 95% of our thoughts are below the surface and only 40% of those are habit-related. So it’s tapping into the literal majority of our thoughts that can cause us to focus on the negative or on the positive.

Now let’s talk about bringing gratitude into our everyday with a challenge! 

Gratefulness challenge: 

1. For the next week, set a reminder in your phone preferably in the morning.
2. And when that reminder goes off, use the Notes app on your phone or whatever you find handy to write down 3 things you’re grateful for in that moment! 
3. Then, throughout the course of the day, check in to see how the rest of your day feels

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m so grateful that you’re in my world!

Until next week…