Tag: gratitude

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Gratitude – 5/24

I am grateful for:

  • A trip to Durham today – happy to see my friends get a new house. They are a tremendous husband and wife team, and I am glad to help them celebrate.
  • A conversation with a friend yesterday – He wanted a second opinion from me, and I appreciated his trust to have me help him through this important life decision.
  • Working with friends – Tony, Jace, and I went full bore on Life as Usual Video yesterday. It was fun, and a good kind of exhausting.  There is a lot of good stuff coming, and I can’t wait to show you.
  • Good sleep – I had a blast sleeping last night. Super fun.
  • Working out again – Getting used to this more intensive, stretch heavy, workout routine.
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Entitlement vs Gratitude

Don’t forget this

Gratitude is a hard skill to learn and even more difficult to master. Once you decide to go down that road, don’t handicap yourself with the expectation you are owed something. That title or salary doesn’t mean anything when it comes to leadership.

The opposite of gratitude is entitlement

Seth Godin

Appreciation goes a long way in your journey to leadership.

Acting like “someone owes you” pushes against you. Even if you still advance you are handicapping yourself.

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Appreciate Being There

Appreciate Being There

It’s an honor to compete.

The Olympic Games are on.

When I watch them, I am in awe of the scale of it. The world has a general agreement. We want to compete, on a friendly (i.e. not killing each other) basis.

The countries sent athletes. They competed against each other. And we all get to enjoy it.

When you watch them, it’s easy to see that they are different. Even the person that comes in dead last still produces stronger and faster than the people watching.

It’s an honor to compete because you get to see what’s possible. Even if you don’t win, you know that you have a shot.

I think that’s the attitude we have to have to get to our best selves.

Each event, pitch, meeting that we take on (especially when we vet them) can let us see what’s possible.

If you treat everything like a winner takes all event, then you won’t see the other possibilities.

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When It Rains, It Pours…

“Flooding” is bad for your health and sanity.

In the book “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well”, the authors describe “flooding” as the psychological event that multiplies the impact of a negative feeling. For example, “flooding” is when you find that the printer isn’t working and somehow that feeling becomes everyone here at the office hates me.

Yes, I’ve seen that example happen. It also may have been me.

When I notice the oncoming “flood” happening there are three things that help me get out of it.

  • Breathe – watch your breath, let things settle. Exercise is good here too.
  • Get context – Write out everything that is happening to you and read it back. The printer broke, not you.
  • Get thankful – The fact that you zipped up your pants before you left the house? That’s a win.

Floods are going to happen based on your disposition. I know a lot of creatives are on the “open” side of that scale, meaning we tend to “flood” more often. It’s OK when it happens, it’s human, but the key is to not stay there. 

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