Discover the transformative power of gratitude with your guide, Sean, as we embark on a journey to uncover the hidden magic in life's small pleasures. This episode isn't about grand gestures or life-altering events, but about the everyday moments that quietly shape our lives. By exploring a simple exercise, we challenge you to look deeper into the ordinary and find the extraordinary. Imagine a life where every tiny detail you're thankful for tonight is all you have tomorrow. This practice doesn't just spotlight the beauty of the mundane, such as the joy of a morning walk or the flavor of a favorite meal, but reinforces the mortar that fortifies the very structure of our well-being.
As we navigate the uncharted waters of unseen blessings, we are reminded of the riches that dwell in our relationships and daily experiences. Together, we uncover the importance of cherishing these gifts, fostering a sense of care and appreciation that extends beyond ourselves. Whether it's the comfort of home or the smile of a loved one, recognizing their value can significantly elevate our appreciation for the life we lead. This conversation is a call to action: to support, share, and subscribe as we collectively cultivate a more mindful and thankful existence. Join us in this heartfelt exchange, and let's take care of each other until our paths cross once more.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Alright, today I'm going to give you a very short, blessedly short episode. Some of the feedback that I've gotten over the years of doing the show is sometimes the episodes are a little long for people's busy schedules, and while I do not always adhere to that, I guess is what I would say, I do try, because I do understand that you have a lot going on and today is going to be super, super short. Now, today's episode is actually more of an exercise. It's very doable, action oriented and I think it also hits home toward, you know, this whole inner heart and soul exploration that we do, where we also try to blend in performance. It's not an exercise that I created although I wish I had because it, I think, is a really good one but it's one that I recently came across through one of my coaches actually. So the power of gratitude, gratitude journaling, gratitude, meditation, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:
There's been a lot of conversation in popular culture these days around gratitude and its impact, its ability to improve our mood, improve our general outlook, reduce stress and so on, and I would argue that, yes, gratitude is a tremendously powerful tool, but there are so many ways of expressing gratitude and there are also some pitfalls Sometimes. One of the biggest pitfalls that I see is people waiting to express gratitude only for big ticket items in their life oh, I got the big promotion, I'm so grateful. Or we moved into the new house so grateful. Or my child was born healthy, so grateful. And while all those things are definitely things for which you should be grateful, I guess, if you so choose, they are typically events that are pretty far apart, and so if you're waiting for those big ticket items to hit home before you can access a sense of gratitude, you can understand how that might lead to a fair amount of dry spell, I guess we could call it, and so what I'm always attempting to do is I'm attempting to get people to focus in on smaller items, and the imagery that I always come up with is this notion of a brick wall. The bricks are the really big ticket items and they tend to draw our attention because they're so big. But what really truly holds a brick wall together is the mortar between the bricks, and that usually doesn't catch our attention as much because it's small. But that is actually the binding element. And so when we look at these little things for which we could be grateful, there's often tremendous power in those little things. And if I look at the years of coaching individuals and teams, what I found is it's often the little things, when they aggregate, that make the biggest difference in the long run, not these massive singular changes that usually don't stick. It's little changes held on to over time, that really shift the needle or the trajectory, if that makes more sense. So the exercise that I want you to consider, or I invite you to consider, is as follows Before you go to sleep tonight, think about this prompt.
Speaker 1:
If you write it out, great. If you just think about it or reflect on it or sort of meditate on it, that's fine too. But here's the prompt. If tomorrow you could only have that for which you expressed gratitude tonight, what would be on your list? The point is not that you need to create a finite list or rank order, although the prompt can certainly serve to clarify what you value most. More so, the prompt is there to highlight how many sources of gratitude we could access if we didn't take so much for granted. Because when I think about, okay, if I only have tomorrow what I expressed gratitude for tonight, and that can be an inward expression it doesn't have to be outward necessarily, although that can certainly help.
Speaker 1:
There's been a lot of research that's been done on how do we externalize things that are in our head and how does that make things seem more real, whether it's writing it down, whether it's talking about it with a loved one or a friend or a colleague or whatever. In fact, the coach that gave me this exercise he will often tweet in the morning or, I guess, send an X or I don't know what we're calling it these days, but he will express on social media one thing for which he's grateful in the morning and that's sort of one of his ways of making it real. But ultimately, if you do this exercise at night, what you might find is that your attention flows to those little things. Because if I think about, okay, god, what if I didn't express gratitude for my ability to walk, which I currently possess. I really want to wake up tomorrow, being able to walk and some of you may know that I had a pretty severe back injury when I was in the military and was temporarily paralyzed and could not walk for a few hours and, given the job that I had when I was in combat as an explosive ordinance disposal technician although I always find it funny that the word technician is in our title, but anyway, I've watched people lose their limbs.
Speaker 1:
So when I think about huh, yeah, what if I didn't express gratitude for my ability to walk or see or smell or taste, you know, with the recent I guess it's not so recent, but you know the last couple of years of COVID and people permanently losing their sense of smell and taste, you might think, oh yeah, well, I mean, that's not a big deal. It's not like losing your ability to see or hear and I can get on board with that kind of rank order. But when you start to hear the stories of these individuals, much of the joy in their life has been removed because they cannot sense, smell or taste. And if you think about your own life, you know, like if you've ever had, I guess, a flu or maybe a cold, when you temporarily lose those senses and everything just is kind of gray. You know that can be shitty.
Speaker 1:
So ultimately, I invite you to go through this exercise because what I think it will do is I think it will highlight that you have far more in your life for which to be grateful and that it will also highlight, probably, a number of things about your relationships, about your living circumstances that you've probably been taking for granted, and to bring them forward into your consciousness, into your awareness, and to say, oh, wow, yeah, this little thing that I rely on every day, man, that means something to me and I definitely want it to show up tomorrow. So hopefully that helps. If you've been enjoying the show, would love it If you would subscribe, follow, share, et cetera, et cetera, and until next time, take care of each other.