Gratitude: An Incredibly Powerful Tool Personally & Professionally

As we wrap up a Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I wanted to draw specific focus to gratitude and how we can continue to live this valuable and important practice beyond one or a handful of days a year. We don’t need a special occasion or event to practice valuable behaviours that serve us all along our paths to a meaningful life living full out! Did you know that some experts suggest that it takes 2-3 positive emotions to counter balance one negative emotion? How can we take a more purposeful approach to keeping our bucket full? Today I focus on a manner in which we can bridge the value and motivation of practicing gratitude to daily habit. 

Rooted in a focus on goals, dreams, and living a life of meaning I purposefully take the time to journal each and everyday.  This tool allows one to define and refine what your path looks like in terms of goals and values.  Once your path is mapped out, you can begin to process daily events/activities/emotions/responses.  With this ‘mapped’ out you can evaluate and identify vitamins and toxins in you life.  This is where I identify the things, people, experiences, and environmental circumstances that boost my bucket and energize me forward along my path (vitamin) and identify toxins in which hinder, drain, or push/pull me off my desired path.

Once you have clarity on these vitamins/toxins you can begin to recognize and appreciate the value they bring you…express gratitude.  Yes, you can derive gratitude from both vitamins and toxins.  As such, I prescribe a specific portion of my journaling to gratitude.  It is incredibly difficult, if not impossible to not have a positive energy boost when you feel and express gratitude.  Try it!

For much of my life, I would share my gratitude freely and routinely, however after processing through my journaling time, the impact of my expressions upon others was not always well received.  For some to hear my words of gratitude it caused... continue