The Appreciation Game | Jack Canfield

Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield. You know, daily habits of gratitude and appreciation are one of the highest emotional states you can experience. And today I want to show you how to cultivate gratitude through the appreciation game. Many people find that it requires great diligence to cultivate a persistent attitude of appreciation. That's because we've been culturally conditioned to focus on what we don't have, rather than appreciation for what we've already received and achieved. When you make being grateful a habit, you'll feel true joy and contentment no matter what you have or don't have in your life. And since the law of attraction states that like attracts like, being grateful will naturally attract more into your life that you can be grateful for. It becomes a never ending cycle of positivity. Now, we do dozens of things every day on autopilot, such as eating our meals, taking showers, or doing the dishes. And we don't have to spend time visualizing these activities or putting them on our to do list. We simply do them out of habit. Now, playing the appreciation game on a daily basis will help you turn gratitude into a daily habit so you can attract more joy and more abundance into your life all year long. Now, here's how the appreciation game works. First, set aside a specific time each day to consciously appreciate everything you encounter, everything you look at, everything you see. Now, an ideal time to do this is on your way to or from work. Secondly, appreciate the people you pass. The road you walk on, the cars that let you merge into a different lane, the street signs that make it easy for you to know where you're going, the rain that's nurturing the plants and the trees and so on. And third, look for the good in all situations, even those you would normally view as negative. As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. For example, when my wife was in a car accident a few years ago in she could have chosen to berate herself or question her judgment. Instead, she focused on her gratitude for suffering only minor injuries and for the help she received from other drivers. Remember, new habits take about 30 to 66 days to lock in. So create an appreciation scorecard. An appreciation scorecard is an easy way to play the game and build a habit of expressing your gratitude. Just keep score. Every day, check off. Did you appreciate 10 people? So if you express appreciation to at least 10 people a day, both individuals you know intimately, as well as virtual strangers who touch your life, you're going to bring more gratitude, more appreciation, more joy into your life and into their lives. But keep score make sure you do it, otherwise you won't know if you've done it or not. Now experiment with the different forms of appreciation and observe how much more deeply your appreciation is received by when you find the right way to deliver it for each individual, you know you can write them a letter. You can write them an email. You can talk to them. You can tell them in person. You can give them a gift. There are a lot of ways to express appreciation, but make sure to keep track of everything you've appreciated on your scorecard. I don't go to bed without achieving my daily appreciation quota. I appreciate my wife and my children. I write letters to my friends and colleagues and students, or I send emails to my staff. I want to encourage you to do this every day for six months or until you no longer need a scorecard. As a reminder, as you build this habit of appreciation, it's going to help you expand the circle of people who you do appreciate. And think about this on an even bigger scale. Our society flourishes because of connections we literally couldn't survive without other people. Nobody pumps their own petroleum, nobody refines it into their own gasoline or trucks it into their own town. Other people do it. Think about the food we eats probably has 30 to 40 people involved in growing it, harvesting it, packaging it, transporting it, stocking it on the shelves at a supermarket and selling it the checkout counter and preparing it before it gets to your tables. Although they may be strangers, the people who serve us by doing their part in making our society function also deserve our thanks too. So I want to leave you with a bit of homework. Grab an index card, a journal, or keep a note in your phone to start writing down at least 10 things you appreciate daily for the next 30 days. It may not feel natural at first to focus on appreciating what you already have, but I promise by faithfully practicing the appreciation game, you'll begin to transform your conditioned mindset and to help keep you more accountable. And take a moment to comment below how you plan on building an attitude of gratitude, and I'll be sure to follow up with you and thank you for watching. And remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on daily gratitude practices, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.