Bunny Young distinguishes between forced gratitude and real awareness. She shares how a Veterans Day conversation with her school superintendent sparked productive dialogue, and reflects on a year of growth by talking to the right people and building her tribe.
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All right. Hello, difference makers. So I, we are working on this. I have this balance. I'm going to tell you about the, the kind of conflict that I have between forced gratitude, just because it's November, and mindful gratitude. And so that's constantly kind of going through my brain when we are doing this gratitude series. And I know that Kathy had joined us on last week's Difference Makers Live with Bunny. So she had kind of discussed that she has a similar conflict. And so when we're discussing gratitude, it's almost an awareness of, for me, it's an awareness of things to be grateful for. Like, it's not just being thankful, it's the awareness that comes with that. And so gratitude for growth. There's a couple things that I wanted to discuss with you on this subject. One of the things was Monday was Veterans Day, if you're watching this live. And I kind of was shocked because my daughter's school wasn't closed. And I just thought, assumed as a military family that we would be off for Veterans Day. And my family was doing veteran based activities. And so my assumption was wrong that the school would be closed. They were open. And I kind of like took to Facebook and was like, why? Like, why are our schools open? Like, how is this okay? And I ended up getting able, I was able to have a conversation with the superintendent for our school district. And I'm grateful for two things. One is far too often, I think we just jump on social media and we kind of stir the pot, but we don't actually get any real results. So I was really grateful for the opportunity to talk to the person who essentially would make the difference. Right. Like we're in difference makers. It's a better place. Consulting. We're all about making a difference. And so you can run your mouth all you want on social media, but is may or may not end up making an impact with service animal law. I would love to be able to find the person who's going to champion a bill for a service animal law reform. That would be great. So I can run my mouth all I want on Facebook, but until I find that person and actually make it happen, it's really just words. And so I was grateful that I grew enough as a person to not just post that on Facebook, but to actually call and get a conversation with the right person. So the second thing that I'm grateful for about that experience is that I learned that in our school district, because it's not a heavily militant or military family, heavily populated by military families, that the Research that they've done has shown that most kids would just be home watching TV unattended. They wouldn't actually be engaging in military or veteran based activities. And so, and because we have now where work is not off too, the parents would have to be at work. And so the thought was by being at school they can actually learn more about veterans than they can by just not having the day at school. So I learned that my child is the exception and that our family's experience is the exception, which there are so many practical applications of that all over our country and our world of, you know, your experience not taking for granted that your experience is the experience of everyone. So I'm super grateful for that growth moment as a person, as a family, as a parent, and as a human being. And you know, I also have this gratefulness of growing as a person. I know I just kind of said that. But an awareness of the growth of who you are as a person. And November is a fantastic time to kind of look at the growth that you've had over this past year. I reached out to a lot of people for invitations to kind of go through this Facebook Live gratitude series with me. And when I was having the conversations for the invitations, just thinking about when the last time I've seen that person and how much has changed since the last time we connected face to face and all the things that have happened just this year and, and when I look back at November of last year and looking at starting or opening a brick and mortar company and having these opportunities and all of the growth that has come professionally from those opportunities and to where I'm sitting today, I could not be more grateful for every part of that experience of learning more about myself, my resiliency, my network, my support team, my just, hey, Diana. Just the amazing people that you're surrounded with. And that's been another growth. As a human, I think we spend some time talking about, hey, this is what we want out of life. But just like my conversation with the superintendent, if you're not talking to the right people, it's really difficult to grow at that level. And so what I found is lately, you know, for 2020, one of my growth metrics or one of my growth goals was to be back on this speaking circuit. And you know, I was talking to these people about like wanting to speak more and all of this kind of stuff, but it's the right people. So, like next week I'm speaking at this national event that's going to be here locally in Richmond called Disrupt HR So I'm totally throwing them a plug because I think it's going to be an amazing opportunity and I think it's going to be an amazing event. And I've seen the videos from last year, but the point of a goal or the point of the growth is to reduce your learning curve and actually make it happen. And so one of the things that I grew as a person and grew in awareness was the realization that you can't just talk about it. Like, you have to talk to the right people about it and you have to surround yourself with the right people. And if you want to up your game, you need to up your. I'm gonna say, like, your tribe, too. And so that's been amazing to be able to see my tribe around me raise their game in kind of a battle cry of we're going to make a difference in this world. And tonight I get to have our client gratitude, appreciation, starfish social. And I'm so grateful for the work that I get to do each and every day. I'm so grateful for the hard work that my clients do that you guys do to make this world a better place. Because you're the starfish, right? Like, you make the difference and I'm just so grateful to be a part of it. So I cannot wait to see you. And I would also like to know what growth lessons you've had in the past year, in the past month, in the past couple weeks. Like, be as specific as you're willing to do and put it in the comments because that's really the magic is growing together. I A lot of my lessons have come from shared experiences from others as business owners, as mom, as women. You know, it's kind of my entire thing as a parent is to like take my lessons and synthesize them down and give them to the mini me's to basically say, don't f up as bad as mom did. Just f up like a little bit less. And if they f up a little bit less, then my work here is done. So, yeah. Thank you, guys. Like, truly, thank you for making the world a better place. And we'll get to see one of my work husbands next week on Live with Bunny. So talk to you soon. Bye now.
