“Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.”

-John Ortberg

Once this episode goes live, Thanksgiving will have come and gone and most of America will be lining up at the stores ready to cash in on their Black Friday savings. That is fine and all, however, I firmly believe it is important to display gratitude more often than just once a year. There’s literally a meme that states, “only in America can we have a day where we celebrate being grateful for all that we have, then the very next day, rip each other apart for a $10 discount on a new TV.” Obviously there’s a problem there. In this episode I’m going to focus on gratitude and how Leaders can and must show gratitude and humility while working with their teams. No one is born a leader, contrary to the popular saying, “they were born to lead…;” Leaders are leaders because they have people willing to follow them. Leaders who display arrogance and take credit for their team’s hard work aren’t leaders at all. 

Gratitude

• There are very few people in this world that can rise to the top without a single person helping them to get there.
• Uplift others
  • Don’t focus on negatives, find a way to improve them and move forward.
• Take time out of your day to thank others for the roles they play in your life.
  • Praise your team even when they accomplish what seems like menial tasks.
    • Compound effect
• Take time to reflect on experiences you’ve had in life and find a way to show gratitude for the experience. 
  • We can still find gratitude in bad experiences because they teach us lessons.
• Daily Gratitude Journal
  • Set aside time to focus on at least one thing that you are grateful for that day and record it, then describe the impact it had on your day and why you’re grateful for it.
  • It’s easy to focus on the bad things that happen, not so much to focus on the good.

Humility

• Progress over Perfection
  • Launch a new project before it’s fully ready (learn ways to improve along the way and accept the failings as lessons)
    • This podcast for example
• It is possible to be proud of your accomplishments, no matter how small they seem, while still maintaining a level of humility.
  • Give others credit over yourself
  • Accept that you have much left to learn
  • Continue focusing on improvement over perfection
• Leaders display humility when they mastermind a project and their team accomplishes it, and they give the credit to their team.
• Leaders display humility when they allow constructive criticism from their team without letting their ego block out opportunities to improve.

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