What is the Easiest Way to Shift Trajectory Today
Ingratitude is a bag of rocks that weakens knees and slows progress.
Ingratitude is fatigue. Gratitude is opportunity.
Gratitude turns a new day into a beginning.
Trajectory:
Gratitude fuels upward trajectory.
Gratitude invites you to climb and throws a rope. Ingratitude pulls you down and spits in your face.
Everyone is always going somewhere. If you’re running in circles, you’re spiraling downward. If you’re stuck, you’re sinking.
All decisions, attitudes, interactions, and reflections produce trajectory.
Blindness and ignorance choose ingratitude with it’s corrosive trajectory.
Ingratitude binds you to failure, hobbles you with fear, fills you with envy, and condemns you to miserable repetition.
Only a fool knowingly chooses ingratitude with its destructive stench.
Gratitude enables forward movement by revealing opportunity.
Ingratitude narrows perspective and drains hope. When you choose gratitude, you experience freedom.
Shift:
The practice of gratitude is leadership’s great shift.
Apart from gratitude, problems, dissatisfaction, and drive end in three emotions – disappointment, frustration, and discouragement.
Gratitude shifts perspective from:
- Don’t have to have.
- Past to present.
- Can’t to might.
- Narrow to wide.
- Lack to generosity.
- Burden to energy.
- Complaint to enjoyment. (Yes, it’s possible to face challenges with joy.)
- Problem to opportunity.
- Pain to potential.
- Obligation to freedom.
Ingratitude whispers about lack and laughs when you try something new.
Gratitude reminds you of benefit, advantage, opportunity, and potential.
Easy is effective:
Last November gratitude became a burden. I committed to record five things a day in a gratitude journal. That’s too many for me.
This November I’m writing down one thing I’m grateful for – just one.
One item a day on my gratitude list kickstarts a shift in perspective.
High achievers can reflect on WHY they’re grateful for their ‘one thing’.
What one thing might you record on your gratitude list today?
My gratitude list for today says, “I’m thankful that a new day is a new beginning.” Why? Because I see a need for improvement everywhere I look. I need to repeatedly begin again. If I can’t begin again, I can’t improve.
Bonus material:
Eye on Psy Chi (PsiChi)
13 Most Popular Gratitude Exercises and Activities (Positive Psychology)
Does Happiness Promote Career Success (JCA)
What one thing might you record on your gratitude list today? I am Grateful for my family. My wife who i married in Taiwan 39 years ago, my 27 Yr old Daughter ( who we adopted from China in 94), her 27 yr old Husband (who was adopted from China at 10 yrs old), there 16 month old Son my first grandbaby, my 26 yr old son (who we adopted from China in 95), and God who has seen fit to give Grace to me with all these people from different lands in my life. They all make me whole and make the world a better place.
Thanks Roger. You are a story of integration, to put it in today’s vernacular. 🙂
Dear Dan,
Everyday, I express my gratitude to the God to have blessed me & the family with everything to live contented and healthy life. This enables me to start a new day with full energy, better confidence and readiness to accomplish pre-planned tasks.
Thanks for joining in, Dr. Asher. For some reason the connection between confidence and gratitude speaks to me. 🙂
When someone comes to mind that I am grateful for, I work to express that gratitude with a specific reason to them. That way, something that makes me happy can make someone else happy, too!
Thanks Brilliant, Rich. One thing that became clear this month is that gratitude, in order to be gratitude, must find expression.
I am grateful for my neighbors. We had to leave for 10 weeks to drive across the country and take care of my dying Mom, and our neighbors picked up mail and packages, put insulators on hose bibs, took care of the hot tub, watered our plants, even cut our tall grasses. And then they were overjoyed to see us return, making us feel really loved and appreciated.
Thanks Glen. It seems like we never thrive on our own. 🙂 I’m glad you were able to return home safely after your journey.
Shift your ‘have to’ from a burden to an ‘I get to.’ When I wake-up and want to hit the snooze button, I think about how ‘I get to’ go to a job I enjoy and work from my house with my family that I love. When I think about ‘having to work out,’ I imagine it as ‘I get to work out’ with my healthy self and feel good! Imagine how many people would love to ‘have to’ wake-up to go to a job and how many people would love to be able to work-out. Don’t take it for granted. Procrastination is the thief of your wants!
That’s brilliant, Travis. And it’s an easy beginning. Love, “Procrastination is the theif of wants!”