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TheUPside Podcast
The Transformative Power of Gratitude | How to Be Happier in Life & Business | Upside Podcast
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Welcome to the Upside podcast, where we help you get unstuck in your life and business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change from the inside out. Happy Thanksgiving week, upsiders. I cannot even believe that we have landed on Thanksgiving week. This year is about to wrap. Wow. And so, of course, I'm going to talk about gratitude, because I believe that gratitude is one of the most powerful mindsets that we can have, Believe it is pivotal, and Thanksgiving is such a perfect time to really talk about that. I know some of you listening may be overwhelmed with gratitude because of life, because of the blessings that you have. And I know some of you might be going through hard times. It may be a little harder to see the. The blessings. There may be some things that are causing pain or a reality of. Of hardship. And I. I get that. And my heart goes out to you. And I just want to say I'm so grateful to you for listening, for tuning in, and for being a part of this journey with me. I look back over the last year and I started this podcast really as an expression, in a way to grow personally, to make impact. And I'm just so grateful to every listener who has tuned in once or who tunes in every single week. I'm grateful for the. The encouragement that you have given me along the way. So thank you. Thank you for that. And as you are reflecting this week, I'm going to encourage you to stop for a minute and just reflect on your blessings. And if we look at what gratitude really is, the root word in Latin of gratitude is the word gratis. And I don't speak Latin, so if I'm mispronouncing that, you can email me theresaflood@kw.com but it is out of the Latin word. And what's interesting, it is the very same root of the word for the word grace. And grace really is undeserved favor. And if we're honest, no matter whether we feel like we are on cloud nine because everything is going right or things are not going right, we all still have received undeserved favor in our lives. And gratitude is really an acknowledgement that there is favor I have received, there is blessings in my life that I haven't earned, that I haven't worked for, that have been given to me from an almighty God, given to me from other people. And for that, we show appreciation. The beautiful thing is that gratitude doesn't just shape our perspective, it actually reshapes our us. There's a scripture in 1st Thessalonians 5 and it says to be grateful in all things. And that, that scripture doesn't say to be grateful for all things. It says to be grateful in all things. And we're not grateful for bad things. We're certainly not grateful for evil in the world. And yet we can be grateful in all things. So I was thinking about the transformative power of gratitude because I know that when we really shift from an attitude of ingratitude or maybe just maybe just not even focusing on the, on the things in our lives, that that is blessings. When we do shift into gratitude, it can be so transformative. And so I've got four things that gratitude really does for us. And the first thing is that it keeps us humble. It reminds us that nothing good happens in a vacuum. That our success in life is because other people have taught us, other people have encouraged us, other people have sent us business, other people have given us opportunities and platforms. Nobody succeeds alone and it keeps us humble. When we step into a place of being grateful and realizing that not everything in our life is just because we worked for it and because we earned it, but because it was unearned favor, why did we get born in a country where we have freedoms? Unearned grace, unearned favor. We can come from a place of gratitude. Gratitude. The transformative power of gratitude will reshape your relationships. And I think sometimes one of the things I'm guilty of is not vocalizing my gratitude and sometimes to the people that are most important to me and, and I'm working on being more verbal with my gratitude, making sure that I'm expressing to Tommy what I'm grateful for. Not just hey, thanks for picking up the kids, but thank you for being such a hands on dad. Thank you for being a leader, a spiritual leader in our family and expressing gratitude in written words, in handwritten notes. But it does, it reshapes our relationships. If you have a relationship that's struggling, start coming from a place of gratitude. Maybe you're not at a place where you want to start verbalizing it. Start just by writing it down, what are you grateful for about that person. And then start speaking it to them and watch that relationship start to shift. Gratitude makes us gracious again. Remember, it's the same root word. So when we are in gratitude, it causes us to extend grace to others. Our, our hard line stance. Sometimes we allow other, we see other people's perspectives a little bit better when we in gratitude and it boosts our happiness. Grateful people are just happier people. If you want to be happier in your life, be More grateful. And don't wait around for that, for the happiness to be grateful. The truth is, is that the more grateful you are, the happier you will be. It starts with the gratitude, not with the happiness. The happiness is the result of a grateful heart. So if there are areas where you feel discouraged, where you feel disappointed, where you feel depressed, get grateful. Sometimes we have to start with the air that we breathe. Sometimes we have to start with I woke up today. Sometimes we have to start with seeing people that we love and being grateful for the blessings in their life because maybe we can't see it in our own, but find things to be grateful for and watch yourself get happier along the way. You know, the enemies of gratitude are things like entitlement. I deserve this type of mindset. And when we get into gratitude, it takes that entitlement attitude away. We get into self pity. Sometimes we start to feel sorry for ourselves. I know I have thrown myself plenty of pity party in my life that nobody really else has wanted to attend, but I threw myself a great little pity party. And when we focus on what's missing or what's broken, we lose the gratitude for what is good. What I know is that there is good. There is so much that we each have to be grateful for. Another thing that robs us in our gratitude is comparison. We think, well, I can't be thankful for what I have because somebody else has more, somebody else has better. We're constantly comparing ourselves and allowing that to be the level of gratitude that we have. Can I tell you our level of gratitude should have absolutely nothing to do with, with how it compares to something else. Should have nothing to do from what it could be. We look sometimes and say, if only I had X, if only I was here. And yet when we come from a place of gratitude, it actually causes that to expand and to grow in our lives. So does entitlement. Does self pity, does comparison? Does it creep into our lives? It does for all of us. The antidote is gratitude. So I just want to encourage you today on this Thanksgiving week. It's not cliche to stop and count your blessings on Thanksgiving week. Or maybe it is, I don't know. I'm this, I'm the person who the first time the fall weather starts, I go get a pumpkin spice latte. So maybe I'm a little bit cliche. And there's a whole reason that we have this holiday besides just a turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. It's because each and every one of us do truly have so much to be grateful for. And I'm gonna spend time this week reflecting. I'm gonna spend time this week in prayer. I'm gonna spend time this week sharing with others what I'm grateful for. And I hope you will, too. And I know by doing that, you're gonna get a little bit more humble, you're gonna get a little bit more gracious, and you're going to get happier as well. So thank you for listening to this episode of the Upside. I hope you're taking a week and getting a little bit of R and R, that you're having a great time with your family and your loved ones. And we'll worry about all of the calories next week, but for this week, enjoy yourself. Thank you for tuning in to the Upside. And as always, invest in your growth every single day and it's going to yield you great returns. We'll see you on the Upside.