Why Entrepreneurs Who Practice Gratitude Always Win (and How You Can Too)

What if a simple mindset shift could sharpen your focus, elevate your team's performance, and even boost your bottom line?

Gratitude isn’t just a feel-good concept—it’s a game-changing tool for resilience, clarity, and performance. 

In this episode, we’ll explore how science backs gratitude as a powerful leadership asset that can transform the way you think, lead, and achieve more in business. 

• Unlock Resilience: Discover how gratitude rewires your brain to handle stress and make smarter decisions.
• Elevate Team Dynamics: Learn how gratitude builds trust, inspires collaboration, and sparks creativity.
• Achieve More: Walk away with four practical habits to infuse gratitude into your daily leadership and drive results.

Ready to lead with clarity, focus, and flow? 

Hit play and discover how gratitude can become your ultimate performance-enhancing tool.

Unlock Your Business's Full Potential: Enroll Now in Dr. Dave's free Flow-Driven Business Blueprint Course!

Transcript

Anthony Ray Hinton lay on his mattress, a slab of foam so thin it felt like the metal beneath was pressing into his back the mattress like everything in his cell was designed to break him. He stared at the ceiling, tracking the cracks that seemed to multiply over the years, each one was a story of its own. Some cracks reminded him of trees he climbed as a boy. Others of the bars that held him there, all of them reminded him of Time, time slipping away, time stolen. He was 29 when they took him to death row. Death Row, they called it. But for Anthony, it was simply where hope came to die. Days bled into nights, and nights bled into mornings, each one indistinguishable from the last for years, his anger burned hot, consuming him like a wildfire. How could they How could a system fail so completely? How could it steal everything, his freedom, his family, his chance at life, and yet, in the darkest of places, Anthony discovered something extraordinary. It didn't come in a package. It wasn't handed to him by a lawyer or a guard. It came from within, quietly, subtly. It was a tool that didn't just save his spirit, but could transform how we as leaders face challenges every single day. So here's the question, how does gratitude, a simple yet often overlooked practice, become a tool for resilience, clarity and even peak performance, especially when everything feels out of control? That's what we're exploring today. Stick with me, because by the end of this episode, you'll see how gratitude isn't just this feel good concept, it's a leadership superpower. Let's get started. Welcome to flow driven performance, the podcast that transforms ambitious entrepreneurs into flow driven CEOs with high performance workplaces. I'm your host and coach, Dr Dave Maloley, and as I record this, it's just a few days away from Thanksgiving, 2024 here in the United States. It's a time when gratitude is naturally on our minds. But today, we're going to go beyond the surface of gratitude as a simple holiday tradition and explore it as a tool for mental optimization and leadership. I believe that entrepreneurs are athletes, and their business is the field of play each day is a game that you're either prepared to win or you're not. If you disregard this, you're headed for trouble. As a business owner for 15 years and a business coach for seven I've seen the dramatic impact when leaders apply this concept. We spend so much of our lives at work and really high performance is our duty as business owners. Why? Because life's too damn short to allow team dysfunction to fester in our organizations. It's really hard on you, it's hard on your team, it's hard on your customers, and it's hard on your bottom line. I dream of a world where businesses routinely adopt flow as one of their core values. Now flow driven leadership is where high performance and high profit are going to intersect in a business. And that big idea is supported by four key pillars. First, we have mental optimization. Then we have flow orchestration, and next, we have courageous communication. And finally, there's team transformation. Today we'll be focusing specifically on that very first pillar, mental optimization and how gratitude plays a critical role in unlocking resilience, clarity and flow for leaders just like you. Let's return to Anthony Ray Hinton for a moment. He spent nearly 30 years on death row for a crime that he did not commit, imagine waking up every morning in a five by seven foot sill knowing the world outside is moving forward, while you remain trapped in this nightmare, while much of his survival was rooted in forgiveness and hope, Anthony also learned to find strength in the small moments. It might be the laughter of another inmate or a little sliver of sunlight streaming through his window, or the memory of his mother's voice. These moments didn't erase his pain, but they did give him. A lifeline. They reminded him that even when everything seemed out of control, he could still find something to hold on to that there, my friend, is the power of perspective. Gratitude does not mean ignoring your challenges. It means shifting focus to what strengthens you in the face of those challenges, it's a tool that can transform not only how you lead, but also how you live. If you're a high performer like me, you first need to know that gratitude isn't about warm and fuzzy feelings exclusively. It's really neuroscience. When you practice gratitude, your brain is going to release dopamine and serotonin, those are the chemicals responsible for happiness and contentment. According to psychologist Dr Robert Emmons of the University of California. Davis, often considered the foremost expert on gratitude. He says Gratitude is the ultimate performance enhancer. Practicing gratitude is going to significantly improve work performance, relationships and overall well being. Here's where it gets even more fascinating. Dr Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher and creator of the broaden and build theory explains how gratitude broadens our mental focus. When we feel grateful, our minds open up. It's going to shift from a narrowed problem focused perspective into a more expansive, solution oriented view. Instead of just seeing obstacles, we start seeing the possibilities this broadened perspective does something powerful. It builds resources. Gratitude. Helps us strengthen relationships. As I said, it's going to enhance emotional resilience and spark creativity. It's like zooming out on a stressful situation and being able to see that bigger picture, one that might include pathways you hadn't seen or considered before. Think about what this could mean for your leadership. How often are we bogged down by daily challenges, that we miss the opportunities right in front of us? Gratitude trains your brain to look for those opportunities. And this isn't about toxic positivity, where we just ignore the weeds. It's about seeing clearly and leading effectively. Gratitude is also going to improve your sleep. Research shows that individuals who reflect on gratitude before bed fall asleep faster, they sleep deeper and wake up feeling more refreshed. For leaders, this is critical. Your performance is directly tied to how well you rest and recover. A good night's sleep fuels, energy, creativity and resilience, all those things that are essential for your peak performance. So how can you bring a deeper level of gratitude to your life as a leader? Here are four practices to get you started. The first one is foundational. It's the daily gratitude list. Write down three things that you're grateful for at the end of each day. They don't have to be big wins or monumental. The small wins count. This is going to train your brain to notice the positives and rewire it for resilience, second gratitude. Walks take 10 to 15 minutes. Go out in nature, walk in silence, reflect on what you're grateful for. This is going to clear your mind and help you refocus your energy. Three, my favorite of all time, Team gratitude practice. Start your meetings with a gratitude round. Each person on the team is going to share one thing that they're thankful for. Ideally, it's going to be a gratitude for somebody else on the team who exceeded expectations, who helped them out. In a pinch, this is going to build connection trust and set a positive tone. And fourth, gratitude notes or letters. Write a letter to someone who's impacted your life or work, expressing gratitude is going to strengthen that relationship and boost your mood and also theirs.

So here's my challenge for you, for the next seven days, commit to just one of those gratitude practices. If you already have one going, maybe add another one to your habit stack, write it down, schedule it, stick to it. Then notice the shift in your mindset, your leadership and your results. Gratitude isn't a nice to have. It's really a must have in today's world, because it fuels clarity, resilience. And flow, and it's going to help you flourish as a leader in rapidly changing times. Let's go back to our friend Anthony one last time after nearly 30 years, new evidence finally cleared his name, and Anthony walked out of prison a free man. Today, he speaks about the importance of joy, forgiveness and gratitude, as he puts it, I may have been imprisoned in my body, but my mind and soul were free. His story reminds us that no matter how tough the circumstances, gratitude can help us reclaim our power and our humanity. If Anthony could find gratitude in that dark, dark place, imagine what it can do for you. Thank you for joining me on this episode of flow driven leadership. I appreciate you. If you found value in today's episode, I'm going to ask you to take a moment right now and pay a small fee. Please leave a five star review or share it with a friend so that flow driven leadership can continue its rapid growth until next time. This is Dr Dave challenging you to stay focused and flow driven!