83. The Biggest Problem With Thanksgiving

Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven mind. For the home service professional, I am your host and I'm pumped to bring you episode 83. The biggest problem with Thanksgiving. Yes, I'm going there. It's Thanksgiving week. It's dropping here in a couple days in the U.S. and, and the places that we celebrate. If you celebrate, if you don't, here's the deal. I'm going to talk to you more about gratitude than Thanksgiving. But I definitely wanted to take this opportunity to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, of conventional belief and deciding we need to pick some random date. Okay, maybe it's not a random date, but it's some date that got picked to say, I'm going to be thankful today and I'm going to get with family that I don't like, and I'm going to hang with friends that I'm frustrated with and I'm going to eat too much and drink too much and go, oh, my God, I'm happy and grateful. Right? I'm sorry. I can't help it, man. It's too fun to be alive and go through this. Please don't cut this off. I'm going to talk a lot about some good, deep gratitude. So I hope you're getting a little chuckle with me as you might be a little stressed out on this grateful week. Right? Like, oh, my gosh, the stores are so packed and I can't find the right sized bird for my get together or whatever's going on. Here's the deal. Take a deep breath with me right now. All the way in, then all the way back out. It's just another week of life experience, elevating your consciousness. And sometimes time with family and friends gives us a great chance to test our level of conscious awareness. So here's the deal. Today's about gratitude, focus. And I just want to challenge, you know, some conventional belief around Thanksgiving Day. Now, please, I'm not going. You know, I'm not minimizing any of the reasons behind it. I'm talking off the cuff. I'm talking off the top of my head. What I do here with our time together on this Leadership in a Nutshell podcast where we come together with driven minds and just have a little bit of a chat. And I just want to ask you, why one date on the calendar? Why do we have to have one date where we go, okay, here's the deal. I'm going to be grateful. I'm going to Be thankful for my life, for my liberty, for my peace and justice, in pursuit of happiness and whatever it is. Right. I'm going to be happy this one day. Now, I hope you're super happy. I hope you have the greatest Thanksgiving ever on recorded history. That's what I hope for you. But I also want to challenge you to continue it going and to begin it right now, today, a couple days before Thanksgiving, as we kind of spend some time together and think about what does this date really do for me, though, if you think about it, what's interesting to me is a holiday sometimes gives a license for the antithesis of that. So, like, when you think about because I have Thanksgiving coming this week, then that really gives me a license to not have gratitude yesterday, today, or tomorrow, because Thanksgiving's coming on Thursday. And so whenever you listen to this, by the time you listen to it, it might be already past. I'm dropping this a couple days before Thanksgiving. And so I hope, like I said earlier, just please, just get a little laughing. Let's have some fun together here today. I hope you're already having. But the fact of the matter is, why one day when we put a date or a time on something, it kind of turns into an obligation instead of a desire. And when I think about the life mastery work that I do, and sometimes when I work with couples in intimate relationships and different times when maybe we've strayed away or maybe there's been challenge in the relationship, or maybe the business has gotten in the way or kids have gotten in the way, or whatever distraction that we choose or allow gets in the way of the intimate relationship. And then there was this whole concept around some psychologist somewhere said, well, let's come up with date night. Let's put a label on it, and let's put it on the calendar. And that's going to make this intimate relationship incredible, right? Well, here's the deal. Yeah, it creates some focus for a minute, but now I'm putting it on the calendar. It's like Thanksgiving Day. Hey, guess what, honey, it's Wednesday. Now we go to eat a meal and we go to, you know, hang out in the same place and we go home and we have sex in the same position and it's the same boring like, okay, don't get me wrong, maybe you change the position. Oh, don't cut this thing off. Yeah, I'm getting a little crazy today. I'm just having fun. But you see what I'm saying, right? When we make things routine, when we put them on the calendar now it becomes maybe obligatory instead of, hey, it's a desire. I just. I woke up and I want to take my significant other on a date tonight. Hey, cool. You got time. Let's go. Where do you want to go? I don't know. Let's try this, let's try that. Yes. That takes conscious awareness. That takes choosing your life. So what I would like to encourage you to do, instead of having maybe Thanksgiving Day, maybe we have Awareness Day, maybe we have Awakening Day, maybe we elevate our consciousness to really understand how I feel, what I'm choosing, why I'm doing what I'm doing, and if I'm doing what I want to be doing or not. Little tongue twister for you. Maybe I'm just thinking, you know, when we make things obligatory, is there as much value there? And of course, don't even get me started on the whole, you know, the commercialization of things. And I'm a big fan of marketing. And what's crazy is how much marketing is really running the world now. Like, honestly, whether it's politics, whether it's. I mean, everything is about marketing and advertising now, right? And so what I want you to realize is this is an incredible time to be alive. I talked about that last week on last week's episode. But when you start thinking about making something an obligation, well, it's Thursday of Thanksgiving week. I better be grateful. I want you to move that up in the calendar. I want you to move that up in the day. I want you to move that up in the routine. I'm going to talk about routines in a minute. But I think about my own childhood, and I remember we had kind of the patriarch of our family. My Uncle Ivan was the one that kind of brought peace and serenity to the whole organization of my family, if you will. He was one of my biggest, biggest mentors in my life. I'm super grateful for him in my life. At the time I'm recording this, he's in his early 80s. He's still healthy, he's still happy. I still learn from him. When we're together, he's driving his motorhome around the country, doing his thing, and I learn a lot from him. And one of the fascinating things that we used to do when we would all get together before so many of the kids moved away and different people and families went different directions or whatever. But when we used to have a big family get together for Thanksgiving, it was usually at Uncle Ivan's house. And I remember, you know, everybody bring their own dishes and all this stuff. And I remember being anxious as a kid, and I remember not just because I was the fat kid in the ugly Christmas sweater on Thanksgiving, but I was, you know, had anxiety. Why? Because I knew what was coming. And I knew it was Thanksgiving. And what was going to happen is we were all going to hold hands, which made me very uncomfortable. And we were going to do this prayer, which I never knew who was going to get called on. And so I was praying it wouldn't be me. Like I was praying before. How about that? Please, God, don't let him pick me. Please, God, don't let him choose me. There I got my Thanksgiving prayer in, right? We haven't even prayed for the meal yet. And so, you know, he would decide who would say grace, and then we would do that, and we would sit down and then we would enjoy this incredible feast, and everybody would probably eat a little too much or whatever, and then it was time for pie. And usually either between the time of eating and, you know, as we're all laying around like kind of sloths and having football come on, there would be a time when everybody would get called back together and Uncle Ivan would say, hey, you know, let's mute the tv, cut off the football for a minute, whatever, and let's go around the room and everybody say what they're grateful for. And I knew it was coming every year, and I had anxiety about it. And why did I have anxiety? I had a ton of stuff to be grateful for if I really focused on it. I was a dysfunctional, angry kid. So I had to dig a little deep, perhaps. But as I look back on it, I did have, and I still have so many things to be grateful for. But I would be anxious because I was put on the spot because it was an obligation for something to be grateful for. And that's one of the challenges I have with gratitude exercises that coaches force and I do some deep dive work with people and help them eliminate trauma or eliminate the negative effects of trauma, I should say. And how we reframe and restructure our lives after traumatic events and different pain and guilt, shame and all kinds of different things. And what happens is if I just implement and go, okay, so. And so I want you to write things you're grateful for every single day. If that's all I do, then I'm living in a false reality, if you will. And I'm starting to go, hang on, wait a minute. Do I really believe this, or am I saying it to be saying it? Am I really grateful for this? Or did I think this would go over the best with my family? Right. Think about that. And what about your own truth when you think about gratitude, what is your routine versus your ritual when it comes to gratitude? I'm huge on journaling. I believe in journaling. I journal every single day I've missed. I think one day in the last two years that I somehow woke up the next day and went, oh my God, I didn't journal yesterday. I think once in the last two years. It's a ritual. It's not a routine, it's a ritual. Because rituals have more depth. Meaning I know it's a necessary part of my self care for me to get out of this crazy mind something every single day. And one of the things that I recommend for clients and I would recommend for you is what I call the four by four. My coach taught me this process where what are four things that are going well that I feel good about that I might have gratitude around? Write down just four things and then follow that up with what are four things that are struggling right now that I'm not very pleased about that I'm not proud of that I didn't do well yesterday or today, whether you're doing it in the morning or the evening where I didn't show up and honoring your truth and getting that out and begin to realize that you can build a ritual around this. Because here's what I want you to think about and write this down if you're not driving. Gratitude precedes greatness. Gratitude precedes greatness. What do I mean by that? Here's the reality. There's plenty of stories in the Bible. There's plenty of laws in the universe that prove that you will not be given more than you show that you are grateful for. You will not be universally gifted granted shown up for you more than what you're actually showing that you can handle and that you're grateful for. And I forget the episode now. I talked about the little girl with the ice cream scoop with my niece many episodes ago where you're not going to be able to handle more than what we're given. And guess what? If you're not grateful for what you have, sometimes that can be a challenge. I'm grateful for my failed relationships in my life. I'm grateful for financial struggles. I'm grateful for a father that ended up having to get himself killed at 54 years old to teach me so many lessons that I might not have learned if he would have lived to be into his 80s or 90s. I'm grateful for that. I wasn't at the time, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is an automatic thing, but I think it's important that we honor these things. And when we start looking at what can you be grateful for, sometimes you've got to keep on digging, and sometimes you got to go, hey, man, I don't know, Kenny, I don't really have anything. And then that's when I get to the really core. Are you driving right now? Guess what you can see. Guess what, you have a car. Are you listening to me right now? Guess what you can hear. There are a lot of people that would be grateful for that right there. My mentor, Dan Sullivan, taught me a concept called the gap versus the gain many years ago, and I just want to remind you of that concept here today. And when you measure your life based on the gap, you're always going to be in pain. When you measure your life based on the gain, you will always find gratitude. And basically, in a nutshell, in the interest of this leadership, in a nutshell podcast, when you're measuring your life by the gap, it's between where I am today and where I want to go. I'm always going to have a gap in my life. I'm always going to be creating, I'm always going to be building. I'm always going to be engaged and involved. I won't ever retire. Because when you retire, you tap out. I think that you retire from complexity, you retire from pain, you retire from the stupid stuff that you don't want to do in your life, and then you get on to living your life. I would encourage you to find careers and do things that you enjoy, and so you can retire in your situation. So that means I'm always going to have a gap. I'm always going to have a difference between where I am and where I'm going. And as soon as I get where I'm going to set a new goal, I'm going to set a new intention. I'm going to continue to evolve. That's how I personally evolve my consciousness in life. So if I'm measuring between where I am and where I'm going, I'm always going to be in pain because I'm never there. I'm never arriving. There's always something between me and what I want. However, if I look behind me and picture me turning around in my podcast chair in my studio and looking behind me, I'm looking at the green screen right now. But if I look theoretically back at My life. And I go, my God, this morning I got to have an incredible conversation with two incredibly brilliant human beings that are on my team that have chosen to hang their hat with us and to be able to share a great conversation, a depth conversation. I'm so grateful for that. I never would have thought I'd be able to surround myself with incredible people like this on my team. When I look back. When I look back at my relationship with the lovely Christy, when I look back that I now live in Arizona, where I love. I love the weather. I love it even when it's hot. I'm crazy like that. When I look back on the challenges I've had in business and where we are today and all the. But when I look back at where I've come from, there's a lot of gratitude. If I only look at where I'm going, there's a lot of pain. And here's what we know, my friend. There's a universal law, and it says this. What you focus on expands. Are you focused on what you're grateful for? Are you focused on what's going right, or are you focused on what's negative, what's painful, where you've made mistakes, where you've done wrong, where you've had gaps, whatever that is. I'm not saying there's not lessons there, and I'm not saying stick your head in the sand and not learn from those lessons, because if you don't learn from the lesson, the universe, God, universe, spirit will continue to serve you up those lessons until you learn them. But here, a couple days before Thanksgiving, I just want you to think about, really, maybe this Thanksgiving, maybe this year, maybe this coming week, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after Thanksgiving, maybe in December, maybe in January, February, March, so on and so forth. You can start finding gratitude by looking at where you came from. Is there a time in your previous life, your previous self, when you realize. I say previous life because I feel like I was blessed to be born again on this planet a few different times, of recreating and evolving myself on this planet with my divine connection and realizing I don't even recognize the Kenny Chapman from a few years ago. Therefore, I feel like, you know, so I'm not trying to say I was living as a cat before this. I'm not saying I wasn't, but I'm not saying I. I was. When I say previous life, I'm saying before I changed the level of consciousness that I have today, and I would have looked at my life now and went, oh, my God. That guy's got it all figured out. He's so blessed. He's happy, he's healthy, he's got some wisdom, he's got incredible people around him. And yet I'm still going. There's still more that I want. I want to continue to evolve my consciousness. So I'm going to focus on gratitude. I'm going to focus for where I'm at. I'm going to focus the fact that in episode 83 here, where I'm talking about the biggest problem with Thanksgiving on the Leadership in a Nutshell podcast, I'm so grateful that you listened today, and I'm grateful that you're willing to kick this to somebody that needs to hear it, that somebody that might have a great life and a great situation, or maybe they're in a struggle and they need to think about where they're at, right where they need to be. I think it's an important thing. All progress comes from telling the truth. And yet sometimes some of the hardest thing in our life is to tell ourselves the truth. And you go, well, wait a minute, Kenny. I don't have a lot to be grateful for, and that's the truth. I get that. I'm not minimizing your situation. I'm not minimizing the challenges in the world. I'm not minimizing a pandemic or economic challenge or any of the breakdowns that's happening in society. What I'm challenging is your perspective when it comes to gratitude. It's time to elevate it. Don't forget, gratitude precedes greatness. What's your next level of greatness? Get happy for what you've got today. Until we talk, my friends, this has been episode 83. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. I'm so grateful you're with me. Blessed to be sharing this time with you. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week and I'll see you next time. Cheers, everybody.