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Segment 24 - Exercising Your Gratitude Muscle

Regular talk right now about gratitude and all the tools that we have in our happiness toolbox gratitude comes right at the top and john c havens, I guess yesterday mentioned the importance of gratitude and I love it when I can hear from experts male experts geek expert says he would call himself that they're recognizing the power ofthe gratitude, not just on your own life, but the life ofthe the people around you know, I was thinking about this morning about it this morning we get up and, you know, you kind of attached energy, you know, we some people kind of think everything we do is energy, words or energy and then sitting looking what that's just so elusive I don't quite know how to get my arms around that thought, but you don't wake up in the morning like you could just have lots of energy or fuel tank is ready or you wake up, I just don't so we know what it feels like and I was just standing outside waiting to come here this morning I saw, like several people coming out of in ano...

ther hotel resting and just their presence, stepping out into the street where they walked out with a sense of joy and purpose and gratitude or like here I am having to deal with another day it affected everybody around them so the work that we're doing and talking and discussing over these past two days is not just about our life it's the lives around us and we talk about telling your story it's, living your story and living a life replace of gratitude and walking that reflects brightly from the light within gratitude has been called the memory the moral memory ofthe mankind I love that gratitude has been called the moral memory off mankind robert emmons on lead researcher on gratitude says there are team two key components of wyatt it helps us to feel good one is an affirmation that the world is good there's good things in the world and also that goodness comes from a source outside of ourselves that there's good stuff all around us should we choose to look for it and again like we looked and learned at the very first segment that we did yesterday when I asked you a question and it kind of I showed you where to put your focus is it going to be on the shapes or the clock choosing toe look for the good or choosing to see the negative is just that it's a choice and I just you know there is so much goodness in the extraordinary and gratitude fills our lives it makes our lives deeper. It makes us move from a place that is more joyful again, more resilient, more creative gratitude is not something you see but it's something that you feel and we touched on this yesterday and if you're at home and you did actually make your love bucket here's mine right here creative lives the al keeps falling off so it might just be creative by we've time to finish this but going get that now if you don't have it already and for those of you in the audience just have it close by maybe a little quick pan of our ah love buckets but you can fill someone's life bucket with your gratitude or you can empty someone's life bucket with a lack of gratitude you can fill your own life bucket with gratitude and you could just empty it out when you move from place off expectant ce you can't see it but everyone has a bucket and there's a beautiful story by carol macleod and if you have kids is a great start actually is a great I have it is a child's book and I have it by my bedside it is called have you filled a bucket today and it's a guide to daily happiness for kids I actually think it's a guide for daily happiness to kids in our heart the kid in our heart have you filled a bucket today is your intention in the way you step into your life into the world into your work into your into your passion to fill other people's buckets are you even aware that everyone has a bucket? Are you aware of how you affect that bucket? Are you a bucket filler? Are you feeling everyone else's bucket but depleting your own bucket? No one everyone has a bucket and your bucket is for one purpose on li toe hold good thoughts and good feelings about yourself and when your bucket is full you stand in a place of service you stand encourage you stand in the place to be more resilient you stand in a place to feel your fear and do it anyway. You stand in a place where it's not it's, okay for others to judge you that great saying by theodore roosevelt that's been made very famous by burn a brown it is not the critic who counts it is a man in the arena you're in the arena, you're doing the work many times those voices, other people who are so envious that they wish they could have your courage. So it's not the critic that counts and we have our we have our bucket for we have more courage to be able to deflect and not have our self worth and self esteem affected by the bucket empty years when your own bucket this fall it's less likely that someone else will have the capability to take from your bucket, but one of the best ways to fill your own bucket is by what gratitude and filling someone alice's bucket with gratitude when you give gratitude when you share gratitude, you get it in return thing I said these yesterday there's not no such thing as too much happiness, too much joy. You can not give it away it's like time. You can't give this stuff away because all that does is like a boomerang. It comes back at you, fought twice over gratitude does not work for a place of fear, so it can't necessarily work from a perfectionistic mindset because they're working for perfection. Don't we often forget to be grateful again? Think of a person right now and when I asked you to actually take a book your book out and right on just a random page, you don't have a place for this, but turns a page thirteen please, and I on the page next to it I'd like you to do right now and for everyone I'd like to do this at home. Your creatives, my desk it's uh, not my desk it's, but the desk ends. I find that interesting use of words when I hate people. Oh, my students, my students, they are amazing people that have I'm blessed that they've chosen to spend this time with me, but I wanted to think right now the person that you admire it could be someone in your family, it could be someone famous, it could be someone you know, intimately, it could be someone you don't know that well, but it needs to be someone that you admire that how they step into the world, that the characteristics that show their strength of character resonate with you on I would like you to do right now is think about an experience, or maybe it was something you saw on television if you don't know them intimately and you can pull arm on your character strength list if you want reminders of what strengths are and kind of look at that list and right down based on thinking about this person, what other strengths that they demonstrate, and I would like you to take a moment, and as you're doing that, I'm actually gonna walk around into the audience and hand out some of these cute little post it notes that were made from a mistake. Posters would have been hand that someone had failed. Gosh, I love that of all the things that we would never have. I have no electricity here given up before we had electricity going to give you the excuse me kind of just rushing this out here, get a couple so again, just be thinking off the characteristics and you get kind of stuck. Just go to the character strengthen that remind you off some of the characteristics that we can pull upon it's like thirty more seconds petra well away and just wanting to share that in the chat room j p says I'm going to talk to the middle school counselor at my son's school about this course and the vehement via me quiz there's some real interest in integrating it into the curriculum and happy seeing the benefit of getting this information sooner rather than later and as a great thing to share because what we see that awful you look for in our children what we teach too but what we value are two very different things the things that we look forward with teaching to the tests and I have no judgment on that I don't know the system well enough are not the characteristics that we look for in people we admire so this is so powerful how great to get it in a young age that formative age self esteem how I would crave for this and I was thirteen and this works really well I will show you in a moment so in the moment if anyone would like share yeah and then what I'd like us to dio is don't go ahead and share denise please so I'm sharing who my person is yes on then best strength okay, so I put down you and oprah winfrey and the character is also went over here on the same sitting on the floor to get coma people yeah and the characters six I think that both of you equally share our love spirituality, gratitude leadership and social intelligence awesome so I'd like you to do now thank you for that is take that post it note and for you at home I want to do this for yourself and for you in the audience I want to do this for yourself look atyour that person in the strength and now denise if I was you I'd say I am love I always write that down in the first person I am love and then I am spirituality I am gratitude and so on and so on take the strength that you see in someone else and write it in first person because many times the things that you look for in others are the very things that you have yourself but we are not very good in seeing in ourselves what we see in others and then if you have one whatever it may be I wanted to take your love bucket take that piece of paper and fill your own bucket I love this sorry q and the great thing about this smells like kids to take you back to your takes you into all your senses so that's the first that you just killed your own bucket thank you yes whatever we match with them we take put that on the no no you match what? Not just everything whatever you write down can you read me yours when I please just don't tell that I am yeah well tell me about the person first oh it's aligned I love alice who's out she's an older sister and I don't know why but I'm drawn to her just her whole being speaks to me and I just love her and I told her she's gonna be my mom um she's honest him has humility, love, humor and kindness so then I'm interesting to me you said should I write down the things that match so what on earth and there would not match you know it's interesting that I was thinking how come I don't think that I have kindness you kind of your smile you can't fake that this is stuff you cannot teach you just are you our kindness you are humility now please can you write that down? I want you to say it as you write it down loudly I am him I am humor I am kindness I am humility I am honesty I am love this is such a teachable moment and I hope you don't mind me kind of shining this light on you because the fact you could even question kindness when I've only spent forty eight hours with you it is it comes in before you it's that powerful and this is what this is all about. Many times were so busy filling everyone else's bucket but sometimes what happens when your choir is not there and you have to call upon yourself? Thank you for sharing it's just I've heard it said often before often have to go into a room looking for what we want when many times go into room bringing what you want and you bring kinds you bring humility you bring cuma you bring all of that yummy nous on dh it's only when we can kind of recognizes and this this is not about ego I hope that doesn't come. This is not ego. This is just recognizing humanity in ourselves and it's when we win the queen. If this whole velcro teflon thing again I could bet every single one of us here at home I could write a list ten king gone again I could write a long list what's wrong with me but then we have to search so that's what this is about so I hope you have you old down that and fills your own bucket. Beautiful oh that's like a birthday cake thing coming out I love that and then so what we do look at the creativity here that's. So interesting. Your love market corrections kind of looks like one very little one. I did, like a year ago that that's a sign way gonna buy your photography soon. I hope I can, you know, work with you. So take those love buckets and placed them under your chair. Beautiful. So many times, you know, life is a question off interpretation. It's not what's really going on, it could be the same event, and two different people can have completely different experiences. Yeah, I mean, you can have two people think of the exact same thing doing the exact same thing. Having the same conversation and the interpretation will actually happen is completely different. Where is your focus? Ah, positive focus creates a positive reality. And as my teacher, tall says, when we appreciate the good guess what happens, the good appreciates and many psychologists are seeing that it appears the way that we perceive the world is actually more important than objective circumstances. The way we actually internalize what's going on has more effect on our life, our creativity, our relationships. I keep coming back and back to back to this that this is not something we do for ourselves, but by doing it for ourselves, we can be in service of others and do our best work. So again it's all about where we choose to place our focus to choose to look for the good old we choose to look for what is not working and only move for a place off gratitude who become co creators are reality it's b on external circumstances it's our internal that has more impact on our happiness and that allows us to unring gratitude to hear the negative but not take it on to hear what's not working but to not take it on toby the change that our community ofthe family, our children our world needs our we have fault finder or a benefit finder and gratitude contempt that scale dramatically my partner michael it says it's easy to poke holes in something but can you build something better in its place? You know, so we look for the gird we look for the opportunities when we look for the opportunities we see the signs because millions other everywhere and then when you see the signs you take action when you're working from a place off resilience and gratitude and we've seen that a happier, more optimistic a more grateful life also not just ads to your life right now it can extend your life up to eight years so for nothing more than that in a couple more years talking onto our life it's a great reason to think of being starting to be grateful and gratitude is a moment by moment choice constant choice and trust me I go I have my great days and have really human days but at any moment we have the choice to flip the switch between every inhale I'm going to try make further I can flip the switch ago but how grateful my for this before I excel on my whole view changes with a title thing this morning I have this hair dryer on it like really slow I'm going to be and I got short have gonna be I'm gonna be late got to be right for my cab but then like how grateful am I to be this beautiful hotel with luxury of electricity and a hair dryer why would I get upset it ahead dryer I mean but these are every day moment by moment choices your attitude your energy is contagious is called emotional contagion what you think what you feel what you wear reflects out into the world and one person your thought your energy does make a difference and again it's gratitude for extremely extravagantly normal lives. You know we can choose to focus on the good times and developed from the negatives or we can choose to focus on the negative and lose the lesson and if things don't turn out right, just take another shot but when we're afraid of things not working right we never get a chance to take another shot gratitude on lee works when it's heartfelt deep, heartfelt gratitude. You can't just say I'm grateful for you have to kind of take it on internally and there's an all saying if you have forgotten the language of gratitude, you'll never be on speaking terms with happiness. If you have forgotten the language of gratitude, you will never be on speaking terms with happiness, and it is so true you cannot be flourishing, joyful, resilient when you're not grateful and studies showing that having a grateful, gratitude filled life effects positively your relationships, obviously, your health stress levels how you deal with stress, how you manage your stress to you, take it on, internalize it or do you manage to let it go your marriage, the relationship with yourself? We could have gratitude for everything. What up, grandma food, gratitude for our own magnificently I'm sorry magnificently. Why will this these long words today and it's my choice to checkem? Okay, as the day goes on these words, they're becoming shorter, shorter and shorter.