The Ripple Effect of Gratitude in Life and Business

 Uncover just how potent a sense of thankfulness can be in this episode, as we talk about the transformative power gratitude has, not only in our personal spheres, but also within our professional lives. We delve into my own journey and how gratitude has played a pivotal role in shaping my perspective. The holiday season, known for its dual nature of joy and sadness, serves as a backdrop, reminding us of the importance of cherishing time with our loved ones.

 Value and appreciation are key themes here, and as we approach the holiday season, listeners are encouraged to express gratitude and kindness in all they do. We wrap up this episode with some profoundly inspiring words from the ever-gracious Amy Grant, reminding us to give thanks and give back in all that we do. Join us on this journey of gratitude, and see how it can revolutionize your life and business.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Alright, in today's episode, we are going to be talking about thankfulness and gratitude and how they are just such an important part of our personal lives, but also in our businesses, and how they can play a part in just the culture of our company and growing our business. So let's get started. Welcome to the Farm to Heart Podcast, a podcast for heart-centered entrepreneurs and dreamers alike, seeking to plant their seeds and grow a life of alignment, purpose and their own version of joy filled success. I'm Sarah Rutter, a former award-winning bakery owner, turned mama, animal rescuer and multi-passionate entrepreneur with a desire to help others ignite their dreams and create a life they love without the burnout. So whether you're seeking guidance on personal growth, launching or growing your current business, or simply looking for inspiration to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit, this podcast will be your loyal companion. So join me as we plant the seeds of your dreams, nurture their growth and cultivate a life of purpose, abundance and fulfillment. So saddle up and let's go. Yay, I'm so glad to be back.

Speaker 1: 1:16

I did not record an episode last week because I did not have a voice and I really miss it, and I think that was just a good sign that maybe I actually do really enjoy this podcasting and that I want to keep this thing going, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep it really consistent with posting every Wednesday, and so it was kind of rough to not be able to record last week, and I'm just grateful that I am better now. But I also was glad that I was able to give myself some grace and just know that it was not going to fall apart if I did not record for one week. So I'm excited to be back, and I'm just excited about this topic this week for the week of Thanksgiving, as I record this, and I really love gratitude and I love thankfulness. I think that we live in a kind of scary world and there's a lot of things that you could look at and just like not even know how to be grateful for anything, and so I think it's so, so important to slow down to really look at our lives, because there are a million little things every day that we could be grateful for, and that is just kind of what I want to dive into today.

Speaker 1: 2:43

It is the holiday season officially, and I love the holidays, I love Thanksgiving, I love Christmas, I love everything that they are all about, and I am even more excited this year. I feel like to share it with Brett, my two and a half year old, because he is just getting so excited about them too, especially Christmas, and I think it's just brought reawakened, like a whole sense of joy and wonder in my eyes, because I see it already in his eyes, and so I'm so, so excited for this holiday season and I am very blessed to have parents that made Christmas just super magical every year, and now I want to bring that into our family with Brett and I just love the magic and the wonder and the story of Christmas and just everything about it. I can't wait to teach him about it. I can't wait to create new traditions and new memories, and I'm just feeling extra grateful this year to just really have that opportunity and I'm so excited for that. And I know that holidays can be not so great for everybody. I know that they can be really challenging. I know that they can be really sad, they can be really stressful. So I really just want to dive in today on thankfulness and just finding little ways to be more grateful and have more gratitude in our lives during this season and then hopefully carry that that into 2024 and all throughout next year and the rest of our lives.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So for me, I feel like I can't really even pinpoint when it started, but I know that at some point, for as long as I can remember, I have learned the concept of being grateful and being thankful for things in my life, because I know that our lives are short, I know that time goes by so fast and I know that I want to look back and just remember being grateful and being present in the moments with the people that I love and I don't want to regret like kind of taking things for granted and that type of stuff. So I don't really know when it started. I want to say that it kind of started because my grandparents all passed away when I was fairly young and I think that was like a moment or several moments where, like seeing my parents grieving and seeing them so sad, made me just want to like live every moment to the fullest and make those memories and be grateful for those moments with my parents, because I am not immune to the fact that I know that they're not going to be here forever, and so, especially around the holidays, I feel it, and going into the new years each year. I just feel this immense amount of thankfulness that I get to spend another year with them, because I know that these lives that we live are so quick and they just in a blink. They go so fast and, especially now being a mom, like holy cow.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Time goes by so fast. Now I know how my parents felt, because it's truly unlike anything I've ever experienced when you have a child, like time, some days, time seems to just never end and then the next thing you know it, you're celebrating another year's birthdays. So for me it's just become so important to wake up and be like, hey, I woke up today, like what a blessing. And hey, I can see, I am breathing, I can hear, I can taste, I can smell. Like those are all things to be grateful for and I definitely that's something I want to instill into my son as well as like every day is such a gift and that is something to be grateful for. If you wake up in the morning, that is a gift. And then just little simple ideas of like starting your day with a gratitude journal, like what are you thankful for from the day before? Or ending your day with a gratitude journal what are you thankful for that happened that day. Those are just some easy ways to remind yourself of what you're grateful for, and just little things too, like being grateful that you have clean water to drink, or being grateful that you could afford to have food in your house or that you have a roof over your head, just anything like.

Speaker 1: 7:35

There's so many little things that we've kind of take for granted and forget to be thankful for, and so I think it's just really good to remind ourselves of everything that we truly have in our lives, and not that we need an excuse to be practicing gratitude, but gratitude and thankfulness have been shown in studies at places like UCLA and Harvard that it can literally save your life. Patients with anxiety and depression were showing significantly decreased signs of both of those when they were practicing daily gratitude, because it was shown that when you are sitting there saying things like wow, what a beautiful day, or wow, I'm so blessed to be sitting next to you, or man, I feel good today. When you're saying like just happy things like that, your brain can't physically think or feel anxiety or depression simultaneously as it does with happiness, and so it really if you get into that continued habit of just like being so aware of things that you're grateful for around you. It cuts that anxiety and depression way, way down in your life and that, ultimately, is improving your heart health because your blood pressure is going down to a healthy level. And that is also slowing your natural heart rate down and your breathing rate down to almost a meditative state. So you're sitting there just in, like this body of peace when you, when you're practicing thankfulness, and you get into a good rhythm with it.

Speaker 1: 9:17

So, especially this week, as the holidays really kick off, no matter your situation or what's going on in your life, let's all just make it our goal to either wake up each morning and write down what we are grateful for, or go for a walk and just speak over what you are thankful for and say it out loud, because I feel like hearing it. If, even if you're thinking it, you kind of just like Push it aside, but if you say it out loud it's like, oh yeah, you actually feel that in your body and your body Recognizes that, that peace and that happiness and that in that emotion coming out. So this week, that's my, that's my homework for you is to just do something to get those feelings of Gratefulness out out of your head and either on the paper or spoken or something, anything, so that we can all start just being more Present with the the small things and the big things in our lives that we have right now that we can all just be so thankful for. And as far as our businesses go, I think it really speaks for itself that now there are books all about Becoming a grateful leader and there are full classes that you can take now to become to bring more Gratitude into your leadership. So I think it's really just becoming kind of a Must-have in company cultures, and for good reason too. I mean it definitely brings such a positive energy into your business and really improves employee morale and employee Work ethic just overall, because by showing your employees that you are thankful for them and you are thankful for what they do, you are really just telling them that they matter, like it's not just the work that they're doing that matters, it's them as the person that matters and and that can say a lot to somebody in today's society. Like we never know what somebody is going through when we speak to them, whether it's at a coffee shop or a restaurant or a Bank or anything like that. We just never know, and so when their own Bosses are coming to them and are just filled with gratitude for the work that they're doing and who they are as a person, like that can change somebody's entire outlook on life, and you just never know how that's going to positively impact your company as well.

Speaker 1: 11:50

I recently read a story about Gary Ridge. He's one of the founders of WD-40, the the like lubricant that you make, put on things to make it not stick, and stuff like that, and and I I don't know. I didn't think to ever know the story behind it, but WD-40 got its name because it took 40 tries To create a formula that actually worked. So that means that there were 39 times that Somebody could easily said like, oh, you messed it up, or oh, that was a huge mistake, or oh, you failed. But Gary was always kind of a teacher and an influencer in Grateful leadership and he would just say like, no, those 30, those 39 times, they were all learning opportunities and chances to grow and get better, and I loved hearing that so much. I loved hearing that 39 times like somebody or a group of people Tried and they kept trying.

Speaker 1: 12:54

But the the biggest thing, the biggest lesson here, is that because they were given the blessing of Gratitude and thankfulness from the person in charge, they felt safe to keep making those mistakes and they didn't feel the anxiety of like, oh gosh, we're gonna get fired or we're gonna mess this up again, because they they were given the the opportunity to just feel safe in knowing that they were appreciated and that their efforts were seen and that they were seen. And so I think that can speak volumes for any company when it comes to just making your employees feel seen and appreciated and that it's okay to make mistakes and that they are still valued as a part of your company. That becomes so valuable too when your employees especially like in a retail space, when they're serving your customers and those customers can just feel the thankfulness and the gratitude radiating off of the employees because they're grateful that that customer came in and made a purchase from that company. And I know, like me as a customer, if I go somewhere and I can just tell that that company is truly grateful to have me in their business and have me spending my money within their company, that makes me want to continue to go back to that company because I know that they truly appreciate my business and that I'm not just another number on their end of day sales chart. So I think that that is such a huge example of how gratitude and thankfulness can play into your company as well as just instilling that into the company culture, because if your employees feel like they are being valued and that their work is appreciated, they're going to just exude that onto the customers as well, and those customers are going to feel that feeling as well and it's just going to help your business continue to grow because people are going to feel valued and appreciated and seen.

Speaker 1: 15:02

So another homework assignment I have for you this week, with it being Thanksgiving, is just to find a way to tell somebody that you are grateful for them, whether it is a text message or a handwritten note, which is a dying thing. And I feel like they, when they, when somebody gets a handwritten note, and they know that like that person took the time out of their day to sit down and share their thoughts and write them down on a piece of paper like that. I think that means so much to people and I know, like I keep notes from people for years and years that are handwritten, because I know that they spent time to actually think about what they were going to say and how they were saying it and stuff, and they just mean a lot to me. But anything like that. Or you could take them out to a coffee or to dinner or take your team out on like a fun team bonding activity or anything like that. Those are just some ideas to let the people whether it's in a business or your friends or family just make a point this week to let people around you know especially even strangers too that you are grateful for them and you are grateful for the work that they are doing and you're grateful just for who they are as a person.

Speaker 1: 16:21

I think anything that has to do with being kind is contagious and our world could use a lot more of that right now and always, and especially as we head into the holidays. Like I said, that I know can be stressful and hard for people and you just never know what somebody is going through when you are around them out in public, or somebody even some of your closest friends might be hiding some hard stuff that they're going through. So just just make sure that we're stopping and just telling them how much we appreciate them and how thankful we are for them and just that we love who they are. So I just want to close with a quick quote by Amy Grant that says Thanksgiving Day is a good day to recommit our energies to giving thanks and also just giving. And I think this is such a perfect quote, going into Thanksgiving and also just the holidays in general, because it can be a very expensive and just materialistic and stressful time, and I think it's good to just take a step back and think about how we can truly give to somebody and in a way that lights them up and showcases how much we love them. And it doesn't have to be elaborate and expensive and big. It can just be a handwritten note or something that says how much you appreciate them. So happy Thanksgiving, everybody, and I will talk to you next week.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Thank you so much for listening today. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening platform. You can also leave a review anytime or send me a DM on Instagram at farmtohartsara. I would love to hear from you and hear more about your story. You can also help the podcast even more by financially supporting the tech and time costs of each episode, starting at just $3 per month. Click the support the show link in show notes to learn more. Today's show plus more farm fun can be found on the blog at suitefreedomfarmcocom. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Have a beautiful day everyone.