The Power of Gratitude: Lessons From Brené Brown
Episode 4
The Power of Gratitude: Lessons From Brené Brown
On this episode of the She Creates Success podcast, Danielle delves into the power of gratitude. Danielle shares how gratitude is one of the most important CEO mindset habits that Entrepreneurs can adopt as they build their businesses. To help explain what gratitude is and why it is one of the essential habits for your mental and emotional wellbeing, Danielle shares insights from the book The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. This episode shares the lessons Brené learned, the surprising truth her research uncovered and how gratitude can be a powerful part of our long-term business success.
Gratitude Creates A New Way Of Experiencing Our Environment
There are numerous CEO mindset habits that I encourage entrepreneurs to adopt, one of which, and the focus of this episode is developing a practice of gratitude. To help explain what gratitude is and why it is one of the essential habits for your mental and emotional well being, I turned to the book The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. Brené Brown, for those of you who don’t know her, is a professor and author whose research in social work led her to discover some powerful insights into the complexity of how we experience life. Her TED talks on the Power Of Vulnerability and Listening To Shame are brilliant and poignant. If you haven’t watched those, please take the time to do so. It will make you reconsider the way you see yourself and how you operate in the world. I’ll link to both of those at the bottom of this page.
For today I’m going to share Brené’s research on gratitude.
In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené has a chapter, she calls them Guideposts, titled Cultivating Gratitude and Joy.
Brené kicks off the chapter by inviting us to think in new ways about how we want to live and love and to consider the relationship between our experiences and our choices.
When diving into the research about gratitude and joy, she was completely surprised at what she discovered. Like many of us, she expected that joyful people were grateful because they had fabulous lives worth being grateful for.
That’s not what she discovered.
It turns out that in her research, it was grateful people who were joyful, regardless of their life and circumstances.
I’ll repeat that. It was grateful people who were joyful, not joyful people who were grateful.
Grateful people are joyful, regardless of their circumstances.
The Difference Between Happiness And Joy
This isn’t semantics. It’s a small but significant difference. Without exception, every person she interviewed who described themselves or their life as joyful actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to that practice.
That’s not all that she uncovered. It turns out that both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us. This means that the people who practiced gratitude and experienced the joy of that practice did so because they felt connected to mankind and humanity AND a higher power, such as God.
Equally important was their ability to recognize that there is a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is a human emotion that is connected to circumstances. Joy is a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.
Happiness is a human emotion that is connected to circumstances.
Joy is a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.
Brené is quick to point out that neither joy nor happiness is a constant. Happiness is attached to external situations and events and seems to ebb and flow as those circumstances come and go. Joy seems to be constantly tethered to our hearts by spirit and gratitude.
In the book, she reminds us that it’s important to create and recognize experiences that make us happy but also cultivate the spiritual practices that lead to joyfulness, especially gratitude.
So that we can experience more happiness but live from a place of gratitude.
She wraps up the chapter by sharing the steps to cultivate a gratitude practice, but I’m sharing a modified version based on my experiences as a life coach and Entrepreneur.
4 Steps To Cultivate A Gratitude Practice
Step 1: Develop Awareness Around Gratitude
In general, learning to become an observer of how you emotionally experience the world is a critical skill to develop. I call this role the Compassionate Observer. This is where you look at yourself and others through the lens of compassion and make observations about how you think, feel, and act in every moment. Watch for trends. Do you operate from a baseline of joy and gratitude? What throws you off balance? What behaviors do you do to bring yourself back into balance? Are those behaviors leading to happiness or joy or both?
Step 2: Get Deliberate About Being Grateful
There will be times when you’re flooded with unhelpful versions of emotions. Reminder - all emotions, good and bad, are valid and can be experienced in their helpful or unhelpful forms. When the unhelpful version of negative emotions appear - such as fear, scarcity, anger, frustration, and so on - this is an opportunity to find gratitude and it will bring you back into balance. Brené shares that in those moments she says, “I’m feeling vulnerable. That’s okay. I’m so grateful for ________” She is adamant that doing this has increased her capacity for joy.
Step 3: Get Inspired By Joy
Brené encourages us to look for daily doses of joy. Some days they only occur in the small moments. But by acknowledging that these moments are really what life is about can change our outlook on work, family, and success. Since we experience life through our perceptions, a small shift in our can vastly improve the ease or difficulty in which we experience the world.
Step 4: Make Gratitude A Personal Experience
Find a way to create a consistent gratitude practice. Not in a rote way where you quickly run through a checklist of things you’re grateful for while brushing your teeth. Step into the emotion of gratitude to make it a personal experience.
Give mental and emotional attention to something that you are grateful to have in your life. If you struggle to tap into the emotion, try imagining your life without it. Picture how different your life will be. Then step back into the appreciation for whatever it is and how it makes your life better. Living in the energetic state of gratitude is a skill, but it’s one that can easily be developed. Your life will be better for it.
As I wrap this episode up, I want to remind you once again that it’s not the joy that makes us grateful. It's being grateful that creates our joy. Both joy and gratitude are always available to you.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Brené’s Ted talk - The Power of Vulnerability
Brené’s Ted Talk - Listening to Shame
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING...
Danielle's message is spot on with achieving goals. Not only does she practice what she preaches, but she's your guide to help YOU achieve the best version of yourself! A must listen!
KRYSTAL PROFFIT
Grow a biz & feel good! Danielle is really skilled at bringing both the actionable steps plus the mindset work so we can feel good as we grow our businesses while being present for our families. I look forward to listening every week!
JEAN MILLER
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