Be Grateful For What You Have

Be grateful every day.  And here’s why.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Be careful of who you stand on, on the way up, because they’ll kick you on your way back down?

So, how do you avoid this scenario?  Well, it is about not getting “too big for yer boots” as the saying goes.  Not thinking you are more special than other people.  Often what separates a successful person and one who would like to be more successful is, timing, or luck.

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Although it is true that the harder you work, the luckier you get (as Greg Norman the Ozie golfer famously said), timing and luck have something to do with it.  Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci ‘invented’ or, at least, had the first concept for a helicopter?  Of course, the technology did not exist for him to be able to make it.  So what if Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg had lived 50 years before or 50 years later?  They may have all been successful at something but probably not the thing they are currently known for.

So, to stop myself getting ‘too big for me boots’, I do something very important every day.

I practice gratitude. 

Now, this isn’t a fluffy new age new world thing. This is just the simple act of being thankful for those around you. Being grateful for those people that have helped you get to where you are today. It’s also about being thankful for the skills and life experience you have, grateful for the day you’re having, thankful for your family. Even on a ‘bad’ day you can be grateful you have a bed to sleep in, enough food to eat, and that the sun is shining.

Taking 5 minutes in the morning and at night to hush the noisy mind, and just be thankful for all those things that have come together to make you the success you are, right at this moment in time.

Moreover, that success can be something that extends out to your firm and your clients. And here’s the thing,  just being thankful and appreciative of all those people that helped you along the way, can increase your success.

I remember when I first left full-time employment and set up my own business. A wise man, Darren Turner, a colleague who I had been working with for years, told me that, “I’d been put on the stage”, but he didn’t mean this literally.

For the previous 15 years, I had developed a successful career, delivering solutions effectively for my clients.  things like achieving a billion-pound Hospital divestment, and working in the media industry building video-on-demand platforms from a variety of organisations.

The success I got from these projects was fantastic.  I was doing my vital part and achieving great things. But I was all too aware that this success could only have been realised through the help and support of so many other people working alongside me.

So, in searching for your success, remember this. You have people around you – the other members of your team, members of your management, HR, your account departments, etc. Hopefully, those people want “you” to be successful so that you can provide success to your business and prosperity to your clients. But it’s not all about YOU. Without that team, your success may not have even happened.

And what I have noticed is this.

When you are genuinely grateful for what is in your life and take the time to focus on that every day, and when you show others that same gratitude – well magic starts to happen.  People love to be appreciated, so when people know you appreciate them, they are more willing to help the next time, happier to put in the extra effort, proud to be acknowledged.

And when you are grateful for what you have, it seems like – you get more.  the new age people will tell you that’s the Law of Attraction, the scientists will start talking about quantum physics, I think it is basic leadership.  When you let people know you appreciate them, they appreciate you right back!

So, I’m going to challenge you in the week ahead to find; one thing to be grateful about and one person to be grateful for every single day. Even better would be to reach out and say thank you to that person.

I’m going to leave you with a thought: Gratitude is a memory that is stored in the heart and not in the head.