The Power of Gratitude
As I have started to reflect back on a crazy year (sometimes I think 2020 was easier), there are a couple of thoughts that have been consistent. One of them is how grateful I am to be where I am in life despite the craziness.
Update: I recently released a Leaders Lift Shorts Episode that ties into this, it’s about the power of positivity. It’s a 4 minute listen and you can find it here.
The Power of Gratitude
A few years ago I saw a Ted Talk by Shawn Achor. I can't recommend it strongly enough. What he said about us needing to be happy to be successful instead of the other way around made total sense. I have also read two of his books on happiness. There are two things that this did. First, it made me more aware of how much I look at the negative side of things. Second, I started to pay attention to what other leaders I respected were saying about gratitude. I started hearing this from numerous sources.
Several church leaders talked about how being more deliberate with their gratitude made a difference in their lives. Their counsel matched up with Shawn's - find a way to notice more of the good things in life and express gratitude for them. This hit home to me because I had spent a decent portion of my life helping others prepare for big emergencies. This trained me to look at things more negatively than were my natural tendencies. If you want to hear more about this experience, check out my Leaders Lift podcast which is launching in January 2023.
I decided that I would try a gratitude journal. At first I tried listing at least a few things that I was grateful for during the day. This exercise is supposed to help you look back on the day and find the good things and then eventually you re-train your brain to look for those things as you go along. For me, this approach didn't work and I just couldn't stick with it. The bulleted list just seemed hollow for me (your mileage may vary) and I needed something more. As a result, I stopped doing it for a while but then when I got laid off a couple of years ago, I decided to give it a try again. Same result.
This time instead of giving up, I adapted my approach and just started writing about positive things that happened during the day. This has been much more effective. I won't say that my brain has been retrained yet. I still struggle with looking at the glass half empty side of things first, but I am seeing more and more of the positive.
Let me give an example: I'm not a big DIY home repair kind of guy. I'm willing to try and fix things and YouTube has an amazing number of tutorials. My fear anytime I start something is that I'm going to make the situation worse than it was to start with (it’s happened a lot). As a result, I often end up replacing things versus trying to fix them or just paying someone else to deal with it.
This week I decided to try and fix a leaky faucet. Everything said it was probably a gasket or something like that. YouTube was helpful in getting me pointed in the right direction and a trip to the hardware store resulted in a cheap part that should fix the issue. Part installed and that issue is fixed - and two more popped up (my biggest fear). I'll say that in the moment, it did trigger my anxiety and I was anything but grateful.
We finally got the faucet to a semi-stable place, at least one that wasn't going to cause any additional issues and I walked away until the next day. When I came back to it the next day, my anxiety and perfectionism caused me to try and get it more than stable. And what happened? I fixed the one remaining issue - and the original leak was back. Sigh.
I took it all apart again and put it back together and somehow that solved all of the issues.
The next morning, I was just thinking about the previous couple of days and while I still remembered the stress of dealing with the issue, the first thing that came to my mind was gratitude that the faucet was fixed. Not only was it fixed, but I saved money because I didn't replace it or have someone else replace and I didn't make things worse. This might seem small to those of you that are big DIY folks, but for me, this was something to be very grateful for. I'm not sure I would have felt like that before I was focused on trying to find the positives so I can personally tell you that once you find something you can stick with and do in a meaningful way, it will make a difference.
A Few Things I’m Grateful For
I don't want to try and make a full list of everything that I'm grateful for this year, but there have been some key events that have happened that make the top of my list. Spending quality time with extended family is very high on that list. Some of it was not under the best of circumstances but even in the face of those trying times, we have had experiences that we just would not have had otherwise. Those times have taught me to be more present and just enjoy the good times we have together. That's something that I have definitely struggled to do in the past.
I'm also grateful for my ongoing career transition. I mentioned this in a Thanksgiving post but I'll reiterate that I have twice been part of company restructurings and both times, it was something I could look back on and be grateful for. The first time it took me a while longer to get to that point, but this year, when it happened, I almost immediately felt a sense of relief and started looking forward to the great things that were going to come of it.
In addition, I'm grateful for the lessons I have blessed to learn over the course of the year, especially over the last few months. When I look back, I see how God has worked in my life to help me course correct. You can't put a price on that.
Wrap Up
I could keep listing all the things that I'm grateful. But I'm sure that's not why you are reading this post. If you are currently thinking about your goals for next year, I would encourage you to put gratitude and the power it can manifest in your life towards the top. It has the ability to impact everything else that you do. Use a gratitude journal or any of the other techniques Shawn Achor mentions in his Ted Talk. Anything you can do will be well worth the effort and you will see tremendous returns.