The Attitude of Gratitude is the Answer to Everything
The Attitude of Gratitude may seem cliche to some people, but this simple phrase is core to what we believe, how we show up with our clients, and what we focus on when we are creating the 912 Experience.
The Attitude of Gratitude is a way to help you reach the next level personally and professionally, and allows you to remain optimistic and focused on your goals.
Gratitude, or being grateful, means being present and aware of what you have as well as expressing thanks for it. While people often show gratitude for people, places, and things in life – what if you were able to be grateful for everything in your life and found that this very gratitude helped you to reach the most lofty goals you had personally and professionally? It’s true! You can practice gratitude and reach goals easier and faster, all while appreciating what you have now and its role in your current life.
So let’s dive in – what does living with gratitude look like?
Being grateful and practicing the Attitude of Gratitude transitions into finding yourself living a life filled with positivity. Positive thoughts, actions, and situations only lead to more positivity that helps you overcome obstacles faster, get to the bottom of problems easier, and gives you a positive outlook on life. Practicing gratitude in the workplace brings about many positive effects as well. If you are a leader in your organization, you and your team can benefit immensely from the Attitude of Gratitude!
When you focus on expressing gratitude and foster an environment where your employees are valued and appreciated, you will quickly see that your employees are working in harmony and working toward goals easier and faster. Feeling valued and appreciated is a fundamental human need of employees no matter what industry you are in. Appreciated employees tend to be more loyal, productive, and satisfied in their roles and are eager to collaborate and contribute.
But sometimes it feels hard to be grateful, and it may seem like a huge feat to accomplish. That is actually based on science! Psychologists have found that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones, referred to as the negative bias. Your brain is wired to receive a harsh moment or situation and considers it more influential than something that happened that is positive in your life.
Psychological research has suggested that the negative bias influences motivation to complete a task – because your brain would rather prevent something if there is loss attached to it, rather than do a certain task to gain a “thing” attached to it. People actually have less motivation when an incentive is framed as a means to gain something, rather than when the same incentive will help them avoid the loss of something. Knowing that this wiring happens in your brain makes sense as to why it may seem hard to practice gratitude. But the payout of the Attitude of Gratitude is so worth it!
Why should you practice gratitude and what are some ways to do it?
It increases happiness.
Gratitude increases happiness by 25% in some cases. Showing thanks for what and who you have in your life consistently can actually increase your happiness and happier people have an easier time in all aspects of their life. So what about being grateful and happy at work? It can have a waterfall effect on your team if you are a leader. (These perks are afforded to you as well, so you see the benefits also!) Happiness caused by gratitude can aid in:
Promoting better sleep
Lowering blood pressure
Improving one’s sense of mindfulness
Increasing energy
Improving one’s mood and feelings of happiness
Decreasing stress
All of these are wonderful incentives for you and your team to get on the Gratitude Train and find ways to practice it every day.
It levels up communication.
Practicing gratitude can also level up your communication skills. As we say, “Communication is the problem, and communication is the answer.” Let’s focus on how communication is the answer, and gratitude can help you level up your communication skills so you communicate more effectively and efficiently. Incorporating gratitude as it relates to communication looks like:
Focusing on listening as much as you talk so the other person feels seen and you understand what they are saying to you.
Expressing gratitude for someone and their work, their ideas, their determination shows you care about them.
Focusing on fostering a gratitude practice in your business so everyone can learn the attitude of gratitude and how it positively affects them.
Focusing on what you can do to positively affect your team and your business by articulating, setting and working towards big goals.
Being able to not be as stressed so you can focus more on being proactive and not reactive to situations and are able to clearly offer help and suggestions when stressful situations arise.
You make long-lasting changes in your life, all for the better.
A simple act to start focusing on gratitude is having a gratitude journal where you write all the things you are grateful for daily. In a study carried out by Emmons & McCullough in 2003, there were a multitude of benefits from keeping a gratitude journal where you express your thankfulness in your life. The study showed that the people who kept a journal exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic. It also showed that people who kept the journal were more likely to make progress towards their goals.
So how can you take this Attitude of Gratitude and incorporate it into the workplace?
There are some easy ways to incorporate gratitude into your workplace and into your team so that everyone can see the positivity that comes from it! There are some ways that you can do that starting today! We recommend the following:
Write down what you are thankful for each morning – even if it’s just something as simple as “I am thankful for an uneventful commute”.
Communicate gratitude and thank 2 people each day – and keep track just so you know you’ve accomplished your goal!
Celebrate even the smallest of wins as a team!
Foster gratitude in relationships by honoring each human being on your team and recognizing their contributions, learning about their life, and asking them to help based on their expertise and skills.
Be present and engage in active listening – not just listening to talk.
The Attitude of Gratitude may not be something you thought was so important to your life and career, but it truly can make such a difference in your life and set you up to meet any high-reaching goal you have. Focusing on being grateful, on understanding others, and seeing the positives whenever possible can take you to the next level of connection and purpose. Once you live in gratitude, you can understand how and why people make decisions and learn how to connect with others at a human level to unlock hidden potential in you and in them as well.
We know how impactful gratitude can be – it’s how we got to where we are today.
Empowering your team to leverage their unique strengths and gifts will create a healthy, collaborative culture that allows people to show up as their best, every day. We want to help you tap into the power of teamwork, harnessed at the human level and develop a way you can adopt the Attitude of Gratitude into your personal and professional life.