I have been practicing gratitude over the past 2 weeks and here are my thoughts. Enjoy
Matt Henderson:
What’s up everybody? How grateful are you for the things you have? It’s Matt from The Business Mind Podcast. We’re talking about gratitude today.
So I’ve been doing a lot of research over the last couple years. And one of the things that I, or one of the books that I read that kind of led me down this path was a book from Michael Hyatt. And I don’t know if you guys know who Michael Hyatt is, but he is the author of The Miracle Morning, which is
totally worth a read if you guys haven’t read it yet, or you’re looking to set a morning routine, or just set a routine for yourself. He’s very motivational and a super cool guy to listen to or read about, but he’s very into having that morning routine, and how it can set the pace for the rest of your day. Now, why do I bring it up? Because we’ve obviously talked about morning routines before if you’ve listened to any of my other podcasts, and I’m not really just talking about a morning routine, but it is part of my morning routine now.
…So after reading The Miracle Morning probably about a year and a half ago, I went on a 30-day personal challenge to try and implement as many things as I could from Michael Hyatt’s pattern of his morning to the pattern of my morning. And some of it stuck, some of it didn’t, some felt good to me, other things were just kind of like, “Eh, it’s alright. It’s nothing life changing for me, it’s not nothing, but it’s not an earth-shattering situation.” So the things that really emanated with me, I kept the things that didn’t, I’ve definitely just forgotten about or pushed to the side. But one of the things that has been kind of a recurring theme in everything that I’ve read and studied and worked on over the past two years almost now, is the idea of practicing gratitude.
And I know you’ve probably heard it in some other podcast, maybe you listen to, or an Instagram that you follow, but anyway, so just about practicing gratitude and being grateful for the things that you have, being grateful for the life you’re living or the business you’re building, or your significant others around you, just being grateful for today and what’s going on in your life. So after my tons of reading about it, and I’ve done a couple of just practice runs at it, I’ll say, for lack of a better explanation, I have fully put it into practice now for the past probably 10 days, 10 or 12 days now.
So I’ll tell you more about what I’m doing with it. So the way I’m practicing my gratitude is for me, it’s hard once I get up to refocus my brain to just do one specific thing, because I have so much going on in my day, and I have so many people talking to me all day and it just, it gets to be difficult. And I’m sure you guys can understand. If you have kids, I’m sure they’re asking you a billion things before you even get a cup of coffee. And if you’re at work, you have a million people stopping by your cubicle, or coming into your office, or wherever you are doing, I’m sure you’re being interrupted all day long.
So the way that I’ve been able to implement this into my lifestyle was I started doing something really early in my day. And that is, from the second I wake up, be it through an alarm clock or just naturally waking up, which once in a while I do get to do, before I even get out of bed, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not even opening my eyes yet, because I feel like if people notice that I’m awake, then they start to talk to me. And I honestly don’t want anybody talking to me before I’m going over in my own head what I’m grateful for that day. And it’s been something I’ve been focused on for the past, like I said, almost two weeks now, and it’s been great. I’ve actually really enjoyed waking up and just sitting there, and running through, in my head, all the things that I’m grateful for.
And it’s fun because over the past two weeks, it went from just doing that when I got up first thing in the morning and when I’m laying there with my eyes closed. And first I doze back off for a minute or two, but now it’s actually become something I’m looking forward to. And I’m even thinking about it the night before, like, “Oh man, what else am I grateful for?” Which is such a nice thing that’s creeping into my day. So it went from just that couple of minutes before I even got out of bed, honestly, two to five minutes of just laying there with my eyes closed, thinking about all the things that I’m grateful for, to once I was up, I felt like it started to incorporate itself into my mornings. And now I’m cooking breakfast and thinking, “Yeah, I’m really grateful it’s sunny out, and that the weather’s nice today, and we’re not having another dreary day. And that it was such a nice fall here. And we really had an extended end of summer in New Jersey.” And yeah, literally anything, anything if you’re grateful for it.
And just acknowledging it and thinking about it in your day. And I know, like I said, a lot of people talk about it, and I was going over it with my wife and just talking to her about how I’ve been implementing it into my mornings, and thinking that maybe it would be a nice thing for her to put into her mornings. So I was discussing it with her, and funny enough, the universe is a funny place, it just, it keeps peeking, its head up all around you. And it’s funny, if you pay attention, how often you’ll see it. But I just got back from a little trip for a couple days down in Florida, and this morning, my wife is opening up some of the mail that came in while I was out of town, and we were just going over some stuff. And we got a letter from a friend of ours who’s a real estate agent in the South.
And she just sent us a monthly letter and it’s their typical direct mail, stuff that they send out for their real estate office, which I love seeing because obviously, if you guys have been listening, I’m huge into this marketing stuff and I’m loving that. So it’s cool to see what other people do and what kind of direct mail and direct response type marketing that other people do. But anyway, today she opens up, my wife opens up the letter from our friend and inside she has an article. And she does this very often, she’ll send out an article with her monthlyinsight. And this month’s article, what do you think it was about? Yep, you got it, gratitude, practicing gratitude every morning.
And I thought, “Man, this universe is kind of crazy. It literally pops all these little things up around me and it lets me know when I’m on the right path. And at other times, when I feel like I’m running this uphill battle, if I can step back, if I can step back and take a look, I typically see that I’m trying to jam the square peg into the round hole.” So this time I felt like, “Wow, you know what? This is the universe telling me, ‘You’re on the right path, keep up.'” And then other times, it kind of lets me know in not so subtle ways, “Hey, this isn’t the path for you. Stop trying to run down it so fast. No matter how many times you back up and run square into this wall, it’s not going to fall down.” But as I’ve proven in the past, that’s not always true. The wall will fall down if you run into it enough times.
But it’s definitely not the most direct route. I know it could seem like it but it’s not. Anyway, off my tangent. So that’s what I’ve got for you today. I mean, practice your gratitude. Try it out in the morning, implement it into your day and see what it feels like for you. It was something that, out of all of the things that I’ve been reading, and practicing meditation, which I’m not very good at, and I’ve really fallen off of, and maybe it’s because it wasn’t implemented correctly into my day, I don’t even know, but practicing gratitude was one of those things where I thought, “Hey, you know what? This is definitely easy enough for me to just try out, see what I think. And then if it works in my morning, keep it. Or if it worked in my day, keep it.”
And while I was away, I got so much time to really practice that and implemented it so much into my day that I can’t imagine my day going on at this point, even just 10 or 12 days into this, I feel like I kind of have to keep this going and keep this momentum behind me. So that’s what I wanted to give you guys today. Think about what you’re grateful for, practice your gratitude. It does take practice. I know, that sounds silly. You’re just thinking about stuff in your head that you’re happy about, but that’s not it. You have to actually want it and feel it and know it. So give it a shot. If you have any questions and you want to talk about it, let me know. I’m always here to discuss stuff with everybody, and figure out what’s working and what’s not. And if you guys have a chance, and you could leave me a review on iTunes, that would be phenomenal, or Spotify, or anywhere you’re listening to this podcast, if you can take a minute and leave me a review, that would be amazing.
And I hope you guys have an awesome day. This is Matt from The Business Mind Podcast. If you need to reach out to me in an email, you can get a hold of me at [email protected], and I will get back to you and we’ll discuss anything that you need. And in the meantime, I hope you guys have an awesome day and your week continues on just crushing it, and having the life that you always want. All right, Matt from The Business Mind Podcast, take it easy guys.