How are you progressing with your 2023 plans?
This is my only post for the month of February because, well, quite frankly, from mid January through to what is now the end of February, life has decided I needed another reality check on just how grateful I need to be.
My intention, my wish, my hope for you is that you take a moment here, pattern interrupt your life, and as you read, take a look in the mirror and just do a reality check about how grateful you are for all you have … for all you’ve experienced … for the meaningful relationships you have in your life … and well, for the gift that life is.
Gratitude is such an underwhelming idea for so many of us … “Ho hum … really … is that all you’ve got?”
Well, maybe not all I’ve got or want to talk about, but certainly, what science confirms is, gratitude is one of the most positive contributors to your overall sense of life satisfaction and well-being in both your business and personal life.
The Power of Gratitude
One question I’ve been researching is this:
How can gratitude compete in today’s world for our attention and application?
Here’s what’s stopping so many of us from reaping the proven benefits of intentionally and mindfully practicing more gratitude.
The BIG and little players in the ‘App-iverse‘, are very clever at compelling us to tune the world out (and sadly, tune out from our real and meaningful relationships) … and yes … I get there’s some irony in that you’re reading this on a blog (sigh).
Through these apps and social media, we are being bombarded with influencing and engagement techniques that can find many of us mindlessly unaware that we are scrolling just a little longer down this never-ending, always refreshing screen.
They’re enticing us to stay just a little longer; Play just a bit more; See what else we might be missing out on; Pry into ‘friends’, or in reality, random contacts we’ve been enticed to ‘connect’ with … only to socially compare ourselves to these on line fake-lives that are being posted across social media platforms.
All This Ain’t Good
And each of the above time-distractors (life-distractors) add very little, if any value to our life-satisfaction or well-being. In fact, what we know is, our inner-self feels lost, numb, disconnected, exhausted and … where did January and February go already?
Add to this that many of us have succumbed to accepting this plague of shortening attention spans is ok.
It’s now too easy to find excuses to lose focus … and sadly, when we lose focus on What Really Matters in our lives, we lose one of the key ingredients to living a good life.
While there’s always room for quick-fixes, hacks, and short-cuts … the reality is, many of us are losing the capacity (willpower, GRIT, drive, motivation, energy) to apply our focused efforts on applying our strengths, curiosity, and collaboration skills to ask the bigger questions.
It’s all too easy to just mindlessly step into the seemingly gentle but surging stream of accepting we are allowing ourselves and our children to lose contact with the easy-to-access, life-enhancing experiences that cause us to be humankind … kind humans … kindred humans.
Gratitude is just one of those many easy-to-access, life-enhancing experiences that we all have the opportunity to tap into, share and spread the positive impact we can all gain.
3 Evidence-Based Ways to Practice the Power of Gratitude
Here are three ways to experience all the benefits of gratitude, with very little effort:
- Diarise at the start of each week (or at the end of each week) a ‘task’ in your on-line (or off-line) diary, a 5 minute meeting with yourself to simply ask (and write down is even more powerful) and answer the question … Over the past week, what am I grateful for?
- During a lunch break, at least once a week, ask a work colleague (or friend, or family member) to join you for lunch … and let them know you’re working on being more grateful (I know … weird right), and share what you’re grateful for, and why … and ask if they’d like to share with you what they’re grateful for. Don’t judge if they’d rather not … the impact of the activity on both of you will be positive regardless.
- Every day during the next week, intentionally look for actions that another person, either at work, or in your personal life, make you smile or feel good about life. You don’t need to tell them … just ask yourself, what was it about that person’s actions that caused me to smile and feel good about life? Ask yourself, how might you practice something like that in your own business or personal life.
I urge and challenge you to give at least one of these a crack over the next week and month … and when you do, I know (and science agrees), you’ll experience a positive boost to your sense of life-satisfaction and well-being because you’re focusing on What Really Matters.
OK., that’s it for my only post during February. Bring on March … and I look forward to sharing some new insights from my research outlined in my book LIVING in the Light of Day: How to avoid the ‘success trap’, strive to be your best, and live a more meaningful flourishing and prosperous life … which is now available in Paperback, Hardcover and Ebook (stay tuned for the audiobook version which we hope to be on Audible and your other favourite audiobook stores in March)
Wishing you a meaningful, flourishing and prosperous life,
Warmly,
