Episode 48: Embodying Gratitude: How To Positively Shape Your Personal And Professional Life
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole world turned around.” - Willie Nelson.
Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves recognizing and appreciating the good things, experiences, and people in our lives. It is also the key to help us focus on what we have rather than what we lack. In this episode, Sara Murray talks about the definition of gratitude and how embodying gratitude impacts your work positively. She also discussed how to incorporate it into our personal lives. So, start counting your blessings to shape your tomorrow positively. Take a ride into a world with gratitude in today’s episode.
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Embodying Gratitude: How To Positively Shape Your Personal And Professional Life
I am super excited about this episode because this topic is something that has significantly changed my life, and I'm looking forward to sharing it. We're going to be discussing incorporating gratitude into our lives and how it positively impacts our professional and personal lives. To kick us off, I'm going to share a quote from Willie Nelson, “When I started counting my blessings, my whole world turned around.”
One of the reasons I'm excited about this episode is that I want to shed some clarity on what it means to practice gratitude. We hear those words so much. At this point, it's becoming diluted. We're all lumping it in with all those other things we should be doing. You’re like, “I know I should practice gratitude. I know I should meditate. I know I should exercise and sleep better. I need healthy,” and so on. It becomes another thing we should do.
While I like the term practice gratitude because these types of efforts do require ongoing trial, error, and reflection and we’re always in this space of learning, I would rather reframe it as a skill of embodying gratitude in our lives. It becomes a natural state of our being. When we learn to do this, we’re going to see benefits in every area of our life. Work, making up a majority of our waking hours, we’re going to see so much more positive impact in our work and how we show up in our work.
For this episode, I'm going to do a quick definition of what gratitude is, what results we're going to see when we exercise it, and then what are some actual specific ways that we can incorporate it into our personal and professional lives. Before we dive into the meat of it though, I want to start this episode by sharing something I am grateful for. This is episode 48 of the show, released November 20th, 2023. That's the week of Thanksgiving here in the United States.
I found out that the show is rated in the top 3% of all global shows. It has ranked in the top charts in the business category in twelve countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Macau, Italy, Ukraine, Uganda, Serbia, and the Dominican Republic. To my audience in all of those countries and all over the world, I want to share a very heartfelt thank you for taking the time to tune in to this show. I know your time is valuable. I do not take that lightly. I do not take it for granted that you give me yours.
You've all been in my gratitude journal multiple times, and we'll talk about that a little bit later in this episode. My new goal for 2024 is to make it to the top 1%, so if you would be so inclined to leave a rating and review if you have not yet done so in Apple Podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. We'll do something fun as a global group to virtually celebrate when we get to the top 1%. I look forward to that day.
Let's talk about gratitude. I am going to start us off with a formal definition. Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves recognizing and appreciating the good things, experiences, and people in our lives. It's a feeling of thankfulness and contentment that arises when we acknowledge the kindness, support, or positive aspects of our life circumstances. It involves focusing on what we have rather than what we lack. It can be directed toward specific people, events, or broader aspects of life.
Embodying Gratitude: Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness and contentment that arises when we acknowledge the kindness, support, or positive aspects of our life circumstances.
Practicing gratitude involves consciously cultivating a sense of appreciation for the positive things in our lives, both big and small. It's about fostering a mindset of appreciation and recognizing the positive aspects of our existence. Research and positive psychology have shown that practicing gratitude regularly has numerous benefits for our mental and emotional well-being. It can improve every area of our life satisfaction, increase happiness, and reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. It can enhance our relationships and have positive effects on our physical health.
Simply put, a more positive outlook on life equals a greater sense of fulfillment. One area that's important for us to have fulfillment is our work. Embodying gratitude as a constant state of being is going to have positive effects on our well-being, relationships, and overall productivity. Zig Ziglar says, “Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.”
A more positive outlook on life equals a greater sense of fulfillment.
I'm going to get into a handful of benefits that you'll start to see when you regularly embody gratitude, and then we'll end this episode with some tactical ways you can do it. The first benefit you'll experience is improved relationships. Expressing gratitude toward your clients, customers, colleagues, superiors, and teammates or team members can strengthen your relationship with them. People appreciate being acknowledged for their efforts. Expressing gratitude can create a positive and supportive work environment. It's an easy and free way to get emotional bank account deposits from other people. This must come from a place of sincerity though, and I'll give an example towards the end of the episode.
Gratitude is also a quality associated with effective leadership. Leaders who express gratitude and appreciation are seen as more compassionate and more understanding. They foster a positive work culture and build loyalty amongst their team members. Another added benefit from the leadership perspective is increased team morale. When team members feel valued and appreciated, they will be more motivated and engaged in their work and more willing to collaborate, support, and uplift their colleagues. A team dynamic that embodies gratitude will always outperform a team that embodies competition or independent work.
On the same thread, another benefit we see is increased empathy. When you embody a grateful mindset, it makes it common practice to frequently recognize the efforts of others. This recognition enhances your empathy because it allows you to better understand the perspectives and feelings of others. When we're not so focused on ourselves, we can carve out time to see things from another perspective. That's one of the first steps to empathy. Check out episode 37 if you want more details on how to build empathy at work.
On the same empathy thread, when we recognize when others are going through difficult times, it can serve as a reminder to us of our blessings and give us pause and be grateful for the good things in our lives. It also increases empathy for those who are struggling. We're seeing so much turmoil and trauma in the world. If we are fortunate to live somewhere where we are healthy, safe, and secure, it serves as a nice reminder to us to acknowledge our gratitude for that safety.
I walked us through some of the ways that we can experience relationship benefits, and that impact our work. This time, I want to focus on some of the ways of embodying gratitude specific to work and what type of benefits we're going to receive there. A huge one is increased job satisfaction. Focusing on what you're thankful for in your job can shift your perspective from what you lack to what you have. Anytime you can shift any situation that's frustrating or disappointing, find something to be grateful for, and make that a habit that you consistently practice, it's going to remind you of the positive elements of your situation.
Being able to do this shift helps you control your emotions. It helps with that knee-jerk reaction to things. I know I'm guilty of it. It helps you control your mindset. Reframing things into a positive or at least neutral response is going to improve your overall mental health. It will reduce anxiety. It will reduce stress. It will make it easier to handle the pressures of work.
Instead of spinning out when something goes wrong or calling and complaining about it to your work friends, you can shift that into, “What are the lessons learned? What in this situation can I be grateful for?” and what you can do to move forward. This leads to the next benefit of reducing stress and helping you cope better with challenges. All of this wraps up with a big bow on it for a better work-life balance. Gratitude will help you appreciate the positive aspects of your job and balance the challenges with a sense of perspective. This balanced outlook is going to contribute to a healthier work-life balance and reduce the risk of burnout.
After we’ve run through the benefits and I gave some small examples within them, here are some more tactical ways that you can embody gratitude both internally and externally. Externally to your colleagues, clients, supervisors, and team, what are some easy ways we can express gratitude and then reap all of those relationship benefits that I mentioned? The easiest way to do this is to say thank you. This can be in-person, emails, phone calls, or text messages. It’s my personal favorite for special occasions. Nothing beats a Thank You card. When we talk about ABAV, Always Be Adding Value, this is such a simple and free way to build relationship equity with someone else.
I personally like Thank You cards because they have the greatest impact on your efforts. It takes a minute to do. It costs nothing. When you think about all of the cards that you've received, think about those positive feelings that they generated. Imagine if you were the source of consistently generating those feelings in others.
Taking a minute to execute a Thank You card is something physical that people can keep as a reminder of their gratitude. Sincerity is important here. If you struggle with saying thank you or you feel awkward, especially to a boss or someone a little intimidating, I usually focus on what is one specific thing that they did and what takeaway or impact it has on you.
For example, I wrote a Thank You card to a high-level vice president. It was around the holidays, so it was a holiday card, a great time of year to express gratitude. In the card, I wrote that whenever he addressed the entire team, I felt his appreciation to the team and I always left those meetings feeling energized and positive. A year later, that thank you card was still hanging in his office. He told me how much it meant to him. It doesn't have to be complicated. It has to be sincere. I understand that cards are not everyone's personal brand. I get it. It doesn't have to be a card, phone call, email, or text. Taking the time to do it is really the point here.
While we find ways that we can express gratitude in a work environment, it does have an added benefit to our business development and relationship-building efforts. Here's an example where I received gratitude. I had a former colleague call me and share that he is in a new role as a VP of Sales for a new startup. I gave him a couple of leads, names, and contact details of people to reach out to for potential business with this new company. He called me and told me that one of the connections I made was a great fit. They requested a quote and it looks like it's resulting in business. He called to update me on the outcome of the connection that I made and to say thank you.
Two things came out of that phone call. First, it made me want to help him more. I thought of another person who would be a good fit and made an introduction. He benefited because I sent him another lead. Second, it allowed me to ask for something in return. He was willing to help me. What a great time to pull in this cycle of Always Be Adding Value. It always comes back to us.
None of this took very much time. It's being thoughtful, doing what you say you're going to do, expressing gratitude, and repeating. The more you do this, the more organic it will feel. It doesn't take a lot of mental load once you consistently start to say thank you. I like this quote from William Arthur Ward, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
Those are some examples of outbound gratitude towards others. From an internal standpoint, here are some things we can do to start to work this muscle and cultivate gratitude more intentionally. First, you have all heard this. A gratitude journal is an easy one. It doesn't have to be complicated. For me, I wake up, get my coffee, get back in my bed, put on 20 minutes of yoga music which serves as my timer, and write a list of 10 things I'm grateful for.
I challenge myself to think of ten unique things every day and not repeat myself. It usually ends up being a list of nice things that happened to me the day before, but it's lovely. It feels like I'm counting my blessings. Specific to this show, when I have a guest on the show, when someone writes a review, or when I get a notification that it's on a country's top charts, all of that goes into my journal. It sets up my days to be positive.
I can feel a difference on the days I don't do this, so it's worth it to me to wake up twenty minutes earlier and establish a positive tone for my entire day. Brian Tracy says, “Develop an attitude of gratitude and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.”
If you don't want to or you don't feel like you have time to journal, that's okay. An easy way to embody this is when you go to bed at night. Think about one thing that happened to you that you're thankful for. What was the best thing that happened that day? In the morning between snoozes, mentally jot down a short list of things you're grateful for. It could be, “I'm happy it's Friday. I have fun meetings today. I get to have dinner with my friend,” and so on. It is simple stuff but we're exercising this habit. Regularly take stock of the positive aspects of your life, the good things that you have, the supportive people around you, and the opportunities that you've been given.
Other quick tips here. Affirmations are a big one. Write a Post-It Note and put it on your desk. It could be, “I'm grateful for the love and support I receive,” whatever resonates with you. Meditation is an easy way to cultivate gratitude. It's easy. Pop on a gratitude meditation on YouTube. That’s an easy way to try it out.
Volunteering if you have time, giving back, and donating to causes you care about are all great ways to practice external and internal gratitude. We need to remember that embodying gratitude is a skill that can be developed over time. The more you consistently focus on the positive aspects of your life, the more naturally gratitude is going to come to you, leading to a more positive and fulfilling life experience.
That wraps up this episode. I'd love to hear from you on how you practice gratitude in your life. Feel free to reach out on social media or Hello@SaraMurray.com. I am grateful for the audience of the show. If you are reading this and you are based in the United States, I hope you have a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you soon.
