Significance – The Basic Human Need To Be Important
May 24, 2021
Leadership Self Development Framework
June 11, 2021
During this year, how often have you sat back and reflected on what is working? What you are grateful for?
I’ve learnt that it’s exactly when things are hard, that we need a gratitude practice.
Years ago, during university I was in India in a buddhist meditation centre and the monk teaching us meditation spoke about gratitude. He said that even when things are at their worst we can still have compassion and gratitude for our breath or our heartbeat. Without those things there is no life! (it was a great reframe about what is important to my 20 year old brain!)
As a concept its simple : be grateful for what you have, rather than be aware of what you lack.
Gratitude is super important in my life because rather than being naturally grateful I’m naturally drawn to thinking about what is lacking. I think about what is missing. And what it can do if we don’t have a gratitude practice is send us down into spirals and negative thinking.
It’s really a powerful thing because for all of us there’s so many things in our lives where we could go “I’m not achieving, I’m not doing, I’m not who I want to be in that area”, but there’s also equally so many areas in our lives where we are achieving and progressing. Often those items are small, but they are there.
The other thing you need to know about gratitude is that it has become an industry in itself. So be aware of all the apps, journals etc..and try to create a space to do this that works for you.
For me this year, things have been hard. Business changes, personal changes, life stage changes, challenges with kids all thrown in a big hot bucket.
Having this as a practice can really help when you’re going through change in all stages of life.
Lack and Fear – Our 2 Million Year Old Brain
Think about the fact that in your brain there’s a very old part of your brain that keeps you alive. It’s called your Autonomic Nervous System, the autonomic part of your brain and is also called the reptilian brain. This part of the brain is 2 million years old.
What do you think is the purpose of that part of our brain?
The purpose of this part of our brain is to keep us safe. It’s about survival. How interested do you think this part of our brain is in gratitude? Not so much. We’ve got to recognise that the voice in our head that is about doubt, you being not enough and keeping us safe.
If we understand that about our brain, every one of us has goals to say about this – our family, our friends, our clients, customers at work, our communities and those around us we’ve got to desire to be a certain person, to be a certain way, to be significant and to live our values in our life that way we want to.
In service of those goals, what would happen if we put pressure to achieve our goals, what do you think happens to our brain? Yes, we start to think about all the reasons why we can’t. All the reasons why we can’t go out of our comfort zones, all the reasons why we can’t do something new. Sometimes that stuff is like treading water, or wading through mud.
The Antidote – Gratitude
Try this as a practice to experience the power of Gratitude:
- Think about something hard or challenging you have to do soon, a conversation , a product you have to build or a new idea you need to present to someone, something that’s going to push you.
- Then I want you to listen to your self talk. Where are you doubting yourself, what part of that you can’t do? Become aware of it in you conciousness, ideally without identifying or personalising the idea.
- Now lets shower you with gratitude:
- I want you to think about a specific time where you have done this before successfully.
- Think about a time where you’ve been with a friend and you just had a great time with a great friend.
- Think about a time you’ve been in life and you had an amazing time with a person.
- Think about a time when you exercised like a genius and felt amazing.
- Think about the time when you’ve been creative, when you created something you never thought you’d be able to create before.
- I want you to layer all of those times on top of your doubt. What happens?
It’s very hard to hold doubt and think with your 2 million year old brain when you’re in a grateful state. But if you think with gratitude, it’s so much easier, so much more achievable and that’s why so many people have not just taken gratitude as an idea but built it into practice.
Making Gratitude a Habit
Practice can look like part of your morning routine but even more than that you can train your brain to think this way. This is what I’m trying to do. And it takes a 2 million old brain to take a bit of wrangling, but you can do it.
There’s an app called Gratitude you can download in the app store, and you’ll find other app you can use.
It’s as simple as everyday writing down 3 things you’re grateful for. You can do that inside your head but you can also do that in a journal. And I would do that before you plan your day, set all intentions for your day as it puts you in the right headspace.
Gratitude changes the chemistry of your brain into what’s possible and what we can do, rather than what we can’t. We’ve all been told by our grandmothers that gratitude and being grateful is a great way to be, but we never understood why it’s so.
I think important we can identify our old brain and it’s constant chatter and attempts to make us safe. We know it’s there and we can listen to it saying “thank you for keeping me safe”.
Reach out – Let me know …
If you want to, you can take an idea into practice. What I would love to hear from you is when you talk about gratitude and make it a practice in your life, what changes did it make? How did it make you feel? What was the impact on those around you, those that you serve – your clients, customers, family, community, soccer team, rugby team? What difference does it make being positive and focusing on gratitude? I’d love to hear from you.
Talk to you soon.
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