Today, let’s discuss the benefits of gratitude. Believe it or not, the guy who started the Gratitude Rock movement was my coach and is a personal friend. Lee Brower is based in Utah and is an all-around amazing guy. Lee Brower tells about the gratitude rock in the movie The Secret. He takes a little rock and decides that every time he touches it he will think of something he is grateful for. When he puts the gratitude stone in his pocket in the morning he goes through what he is thankful for, and when he empties his pocket in the evening and finds the rock, he again goes through what he’s thankful for.
As my coach, Lee started every meeting we had with a gratitude attitude and he kind of rubbed off on me. About 15 years ago, I started conducting every meeting with a gratitude attitude. Let’s look at why creating a gratitude mindset is important. Gratitude creates an outlook of abundance. If you look at life from a scarcity point of view, life will eventually become measurable. Oprah Winfrey once said: “If you look at what you have in life, you will always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you will never have enough.” An abundance mindset allows you to not chase things for the sake of chasing them. Do you notice some people have a victim mindset? If something bad happens, they always ask, “Why me?” They blame everyone and their siblings for their problems, including their co-workers, the government, and the Martians. People with a victim mindset are never happy no matter how much material wealth they accumulate.
On the flip side, people with a gratitude mindset focus on the abundant opportunities available to them. Now you might ask yourself, why didn’t I think of that? When we are grateful, we tend to focus on the positivity around us. That in turn brings abundance. People who are successful know there are enough resources in the world and stay away from competing for the same resources. A gratitude mindset allows us to leverage the resources we have, as opposed to competing for more. It also creates an awareness of the resources already around us.
If you have food, clothing, and shelter (roti, kapada and makan) and you are in good health, you are luckier than most people on this planet. Once you realize how lucky you are and begin to appreciate that, you will start noticing the opportunities around you. When our perspective changes, everything changes.
So how do we develop a gratitude mindset? The first thing to do is develop a daily practice. Every morning when you wake up, or before you go to bed, or at a dinner table, spend five minutes thinking about what you are grateful for and why. Why is as important as what here. Why allows us to dig deep and create a meaningful experience.
Another way to develop gratitude is to measure our success. No matter how small, be thankful for it. Some people live in what I call the gap—the distance between where they are and where they want to be. I used to be one of those people. Once I started developing a gratitude practice, I began to appreciate the abundance that I already had. It is very important to not live in the gap.
And the most important way to develop a gratitude mindset is with intention. Be sure to make it a habit to appreciate everyone who you come across: your family members, coworkers, essential workers you meet in your daily routine, your letter carrier, your newspaper delivery person, and anyone who you encounter, even for a brief moment.
It takes 21 days to make a habit. So for the next 21 days, do your best to develop a gratitude mindset. You will see changes in your life for the better.
Today, let’s try the Savasana meditation practice from Appendix 1.