Gratitude to Create Joy

Hello, and welcome to episode number 14 of The Strategy Corner, where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michelle Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp.

Today’s strategy is gratitude to create joy. I wanted to share this strategy because it’s Thanksgiving right now in the US, so happy Thanksgiving to everyone. On this day of Thanksgiving I wanted to share my simple strategy to create joy because I know that during these times of festivities, when we have family and friends around, that they can be a little stressful. So I’m going to share this simple strategy so that it can help you not only get through Thanksgiving, but other holiday and events you have this coming season.

What you do is you write a list of everything you’re grateful for. The simple strategy to create joy is you get a blank piece of paper, and you write down everything you’re grateful for. For example, you could write down you’re grateful for the beautiful home that you have, your husband, your wife, your children. You could be grateful for the beautiful flowers that you have in your home. You could be grateful for an amazing weekend you had. Anything that you’re grateful for, you write it down. You want, again, focus on the things that bring you joy. You want to be grateful for the things that you love.

And then especially, like I said earlier, during the holidays we need to remind ourselves more of what is going right, what can we be grateful for with all the rush, stress, overwhelm, over-planning, work events, holiday shopping, et cetera. We can feel constraint and allow this to take over and focus on what we don’t have rather than the abundance we do have. Let me just say that one more time.

During the holidays, we can tend to focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do have. I know that sounds counterintuitive when it comes to the holidays, and it sounds like no, we should be happy all the time. But I do know that when you have so many things on your calendar, and when you’re trying to fit everything in, if anybody’s like me, you have certain friends that you always see around the holidays or you feel like I need to get this invitation out or I need to go see this person before the New Year thinking that you might never see them again. I’m not really sure why we do it, but we do put undue stress upon ourselves to see those that we haven’t seen in a while, to buy things that maybe we can’t afford, to do things that don’t fit in our schedule.

So during this time, if we can slow down and really feel that feeling of overwhelm, stress, lack of having, and we can utilize this strategy, it will help us to bring us up the ladder, as they say, and become a better person. A better person because you’re coming from a better place. As anyone knows, when you’re feeling down, and you’re feeling gloomy, and you’re feeling less than, it’s really hard for you to give love and joy to someone else.
This whole strategy is focused on being present, noticing when we are having a difficult day, noticing when we’re focusing on less than instead of more of, and just taking the time to, again, get a piece of paper out, and writing down everything we’re grateful for.

When you live in gratitude, you share gratitude in small ways. The reason why you want to do this is because not only will you feel gratitude, but you’ll share that in a smile to the cashier or wave to your neighbor, happy Thanksgiving texts or happy holiday texts to your family and friends, bringing donuts in for the office just because. When you’re feeling good, when you focus on gratitude, it expands to how we treat others. It increases our joy and happiness, and it shows.

Most people want to be around you just because of your joy and how it is infectious. As everybody knows, when you’re around someone who’s happy, you feel happy. When you’re around someone who’s complaining or being negative, a lot of times we become negative and we start complaining about the things that didn’t really bother us before. I kind of shared a little bit beforehand, but where I actually use this strategy in my day-to-day life is when I’m feeling sad, down, exhausted, upset, mad, disappointed, frustrated, angry, just to name a few.

It’s when I’m really feeling, again, less than, and just really down. That’s when I stop, and I get a piece of paper, and write down everything I’m grateful for to elevate my mood. Now the reason I know this works is because I do it daily. I practice every day where I use my app, called the Five Minute Journal, and it starts by asking you the three things you’re grateful for every day.

I love starting my morning focused on the good in my world because it helps uplift me, and it helps me to bring that energy for when my daughter wakes up or my husband wakes up, I greet them with a happy, positive attitude because I’ve already focused on the good things that are going on in my life. Remember, what you focus on grows, so let’s make it a point to be grateful during this holiday season so we can spread joy to our loved ones, coworkers, bosses, and people we don’t even know.

When we want to feel more gratitude, the best thing we can do is to write down our gratitude, and then to show gratitude. You know, during this holiday season it’s all about giving. What if we just gave a simple thank you so much for working so hard for me, or the simple here’s a donut because I was thinking about you, or a cup of coffee, or how about a simple appreciation email or a text message to a friend that you haven’t seen in a while.

When we think about gratitude and giving it to others, we don’t have to think about the big things about sending someone a luxurious gift. We don’t have to think about taking someone out to dinner. We could easily just make them some brownies. We could easily create some holiday cookies and then distribute it to some neighbors. It’s all about creating and giving gratitude during this holiday season that will make you elevate your mood, and then in turn, it will elevate your neighbor’s, and the community’s mood. Because the more that we can all be up on the ladder, the more we can be in a giving and a happy mood, the better everything in life is. The better things taste, and the better we can get through the holidays focused on what’s most important and not focusing on what we don’t have.

Saying this, are we all up for a challenge this month? I say let’s add in a daily practice today and throughout December of writing down everything we’re grateful for, and see if it makes us lighter, happier, and more joyful. Again, this is a challenge. I know a lot of people are afraid to commit to a daily challenge, but I would love for us to practice this daily challenge, and see what comes up. For me, I know it helps me to be lighter, happier, joyful, more giving, and in turn, that makes the people around me the same back to me.

If it doesn’t look like it’s creating any change for you, and you have committed to every day writing down something that’s grateful in your life, you could do one thing, you can do three things, you can do a whole sheet of paper, then you need to be more honest with yourself. You know, how have you really changed? How have you become maybe lighter or what are the things that stand out to you that you’ve noticed a change in? Because I know for a fact that when you are dedicated to this type of practice, that you will elevate yourself, and you will create positive change not only in your life, but others.

But again, we have to be good about noticing. We can easily go throughout our day and not really see how this simple change can make a positive effect on our lives and the lives around us. Okay, now it’s your turn. If you’re playing along with the challenge of gratitude daily for the whole month of December, and then the few couple of days, I think only one more day of November, then all you have to do is get a piece of paper out every day, and you do it anytime of the day. If you love to do this in the morning, or at lunchtime, or even at nighttime is nice too, so you can go to bed feeling positive.

All you have to do is get a piece of paper out, and write down everything you’re grateful for. Or you can put some constraint on it, and only list three things or five things. You know, do whatever feels right for you. And if you’re not up for the challenge, then just write down what you’re grateful for when you need it. If you’re feeling sad, overwhelmed, upset, stressed out, take time and sit with yourself, and write down everything you’re grateful for. Because when we redirect our brains to focus on the good, not the bad, we create positive in ourselves, and we’re able to be kind to ourselves, and we’re able to be kind to others.

When we’re feeling down, because it happens to everybody, right? Even though the holidays are here, we’re doing a lot of fun things, we can feel sad, melancholy sometimes. That’s okay. It’s totally normal, but what we can do is we can redirect our brains to focus on the good because every day we have an opportunity to focus on the good or focus on the bad. What would you like to choose?

Another thing to remember too, is with this strategy, we can pull it out anytime we need it. The great thing about all the strategies that I share with you all is to have and create a toolbox. A toolbox where when you’re feeling something, you can think about a strategy that I’ve shared or one that you already know, and pull it out and utilize it to increase your mindset, to increase your positiveness. Whatever you need to do in that moment to actually feel what you’re feeling, and then see if you have a tool that can help you to create the more joy and abundance that you’re looking for.

Because remember, when you’re feeling good, you do more, you do better, you stop questioning, and you make strides towards that big, bold goal we’re going to be talking about in the next month. That’s right. We have this strategy today that I’m sharing about gratitude to create joy, but next month in December, we’re going to start jumping into activities to start getting you to think about what you want to create in 2020. What’s that big, bold goal you want to create? How do you want to feel in 2020? All of those fun things, which is actually my favorite time of year.

I love planning and dreaming about the new year to come up, so we’re going to do that all of the month of December, so please stay tuned to that. So until next time, please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and subscribe to The Strategy Corner. Also, go to my website, www.IntentionalSolutionsCorp.com, and sign up to get my weekly blog post, which also has a link to the latest podcast.

Also, if you want to participate in the monthly challenge, one bonus is to go on my Intentional Solutions Corp Facebook account, and post randomly what you’re grateful for. It could be for business, or personal, whatever comes up, but I’d love to see what you all are grateful for so we can make this month extra special. Until next time, remember, through action and growth, progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you so much, and I hope you create an amazing Thanksgiving.