How Applying Gratitude Can Make All the Difference

I remember when I was running my restaurant. I would get up in the morning, go to work, crank out the day. Then, I'd go home, go to bed, and get up and do it all over again. I worked myself into this endless cycle of get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, get up, go to work, go home, go to bed. It was endless. Now, I know that at the time, I was building a business. I had people to pay. I had people to serve. I had expectations to fulfill. Being a business owner, heck, being a leader, do you ever feel that you are just in the steady mode of just surviving? That's coming up next on Marc Haine Life. Welcome to a very special episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And I am so grateful that you are with us today. My guest today is Grateful CEO and believer in grateful leadership, Steve Foran. And today, We will be talking about what it takes to become a grateful leader. But what does that mean? Stay tuned and we'll get to that in just a moment. In the meantime, feel free to be part of the conversation. You can go ahead and subscribe to this program. I'd love to make sure you don't miss an episode as it is released. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and let me know what you think of the episode? Go ahead and put some comments in the chat box below and let me know what you think about this. And at the very least, if you know somebody who could benefit from this conversation, why don't you go ahead and share it? I've known people who talk about financial freedoms. I know people who talk about driving success. Even people who will talk about how to manifest what is important to us so we attract everything to us. So, this brings us to Our Question of the Day. If you were to look at where you are today, would you say that you are surviving? You know, hey, how you doing? Meh, I'm surviving. Or are you thriving? Again, I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. So, go ahead and put some comments in the the comment box below and don't be afraid to push back. My guest today is an immense believer in grateful leadership. He is the founder of Gratitude at Work and author of Surviving to Thriving: The 10 Laws of Grateful Leadership, which was named one of 8 recommended reads by Greater Good Science Center at the University of Berkeley. It's a great book and you should pick one up. And it ranked as one of 5 positive psychology books for a happier 2019 by Inc. Steve Foran is the creator of a global online community driving towards 1 billion happier people. His community, 1 Billion Happier People, helps people be happier at work and to be a positive force in their workplace, home, and in their community. Steve, Thank you so much for being here. It's so great to have you.

Thank you, Marc. It's awesome to be here. Love seeing tabs on a book like that.

It's tabbed. It's highlighted.

Love it.

Thank you.

Great to be here.

And you know what I really love about it? I love all your personal stories that you take through there because you've gone through some things that some people would say is not necessarily something you would be grateful for. But the way that you've described it, the way that you reflect your mindset in the book, I think is just fantastic. So, thank you for writing it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now, Steve, like it's really plain to see if anybody visits your website or sees anything about you that you are on a mission. What is the catalyst for this passion that you have?

I've been doing this work around grateful leadership for 16 years now. And while I was writing the book, actually, I was at a conference in Toronto, and the opening keynote speaker was Peter Diamandis. And he's the guy that does the XPRIZEs. He's got a PhD in, I think, astrophysics from Harvard, an MD from Harvard. These XPRIZEs, $10 million at the time. The prize was $10 million to the first team that can extract 2,000 liters of water from the atmosphere per day for less than 10 cents a liter. So, you do that, he's going to give you $10 million. Anyhow, they introduce him and I'm thinking, I'm not even worthy to be here. Anyhow, at the end of his session, there's Q&A and someone in the back of the room asks him a question. Says, Peter, How do you decide what you invest your time, your money, your energy? How do you decide what you get behind? He says, I ask myself one question. Does it have the ability to impact 1 billion people? And I got goosebumps. And so, 3 years ago, my dream, my mission or purpose or whatever that you would say for my company, I changed it And I phrase it as a dream. And the dream is 1 billion happier people. And I just kind of think back to that, sitting in that chair in that conference room and just really being ignited by someone's answers, someone else's story, right? And how I make sense of it for me. Because each of us, we kind of make sense of our own lives through the lives of others.

Yeah, that's amazing. But now, this is a profession for you. So, could you dig a little bit deeper into what do you do for your clients when people hire you?

Well, this is what I've been doing for 16 years. And when I started doing this, I would say, I speak on gratitude. And my wife would often look at me and she'd say, Stephen, you got to start saying something else. People, they give you weird looks when you do that. But it really is, as you indicated at the outset, Marc, is helping people inside companies and in organizations have a mindset, right? Develop a mindset that enables them to live a thriving, flourishing life. And at work, that's so that they show up productive, positive, engaged. And so really, what I do is And I'm a teacher. I'm a trainer. And I teach people how to build their gratitude muscles and how they can use it, those gratitude muscles at work more than they already do, more intentionally than they already do so that they can be just better versions of themselves. Not that they're—

right? I love that you use the word intentionally. Because I think that's the differential between doing anything just out of natural response or natural habit and doing it intentionally. And I think that's a magic word, I think, throughout your— even through your book.

Yeah, it is because I'm on this journey of mastery with you, Marc, with others. This great mastery of grateful leadership because when I'm not intentional, Like, think about it even for you watching, listening, right? When you're not intentional, for me, the important things in my life, I take them for granted. And when I take them for granted, I'm not grateful for them, right? And I can feel entitled, complacent, right? And when that happens, we don't bring out our best selves. I don't show up as my best self. And for Marc, your mantra about caring and loving service and daring to be exceptional, to be different in that service that you do. That doesn't happen through complacency and entitlement. That's intentional.

It can't survive there.

No.

Yeah. I know that a lot of small business owners, as I mentioned at the very beginning, had you talked to me 30 years ago when I was in the middle with my restaurant and I'd be looking at you going, gratitude? Do you know what I've been through the last 14 months? We've mentioned on this show multiple times how engagement levels in companies have been so low for so long. How does one overcome this mindset of, I have so many things I need to focus on. Why is this important?

Yeah, well, engagement since Gallup's been measuring it, I mean, it's virtually unchanged, right? And when they do global surveys, right? I believe gratitude is a lever, right? It's a lever that you as a business owner and entrepreneur that you can use in your business to really make some intentional changes in how your people show up. And we can't tell people you should be grateful. Like, think of this past year. Like, if you were running your restaurant business over this past year and I said, oh Marc, you should be grateful. That would not go very well, right? Because you gotta— but through challenge, that's the time. Like for me, that's the question we need to ask ourselves. And Marc, I want to share with you, and maybe we got to describe this a little bit to anyone who's not watching because I got a PowerPoint slide I want to show you. And this is my new COVID PowerPoint. And really, this is that surviving to thriving hierarchy. This is just a mindset hierarchy. Thriving down to surviving. Surviving life is a battleground, which it can feel like that on any given day, right? Especially over this last year.

Yeah.

But thriving, that's where life is a playground. And the thing, why it's important to be up here is because when you're up there, You're in a positive emotional state. And when you're in a positive emotional state, you then have access to, guess what? The executive function in your brain. This is what controls critical thinking, decision-making, creativity, innovation, moderates social behavior, how you interact in social situations. When everything is swirling, that's when we need access to that. And gratitude is that tool. that's going to be able to get you there or get you back there as fast as possible.

Yeah, I noticed on your PowerPoint, which by the way, I thought highly creative. You put the arrows going down.

Oops!

You put the arrows going down from thriving down to surviving. Can you explain that?

This arrow is something else. I call this the unrelenting force. This is the thing that It's at work like gravity, constantly trying to pull you down, pull your mindset back down into a negative emotional state. So, when there's a lockdown, when you lose a key employee, when people don't show up, when all these things happen, those are the things that drag us down. And part of it is part of how we're wired as humans. The biggest component to this is I didn't know we were going to get into this with that. This is exciting. Yeah, it's called negative attribution bias, which is really just the human fascination with negativity, right? We're so focused. We glob onto negative news, information, situations. And it's what enabled humans as a species to evolve and exist. Probably why we're here today and we didn't end up as saber-toothed tiger lunches because when we did didn't have places to stay, live in, we had to be hyper-focused on negative. Thing is, we've evolved but our brains are still there.

Fair.

And so, that down arrow is the reminder that even if you're there and you're spending all your time thriving, there is this force that's constantly at work on you, anyone you work with on your team, and everyone in your household. Trying to pull him back down into survival mode.

Yeah, yeah. No, that I can see 100%. It's so funny that you said that because one day, I was working at a hotel and I told my wife, I'm gonna leave at 4 o'clock. I'll be home by 5. And very rarely in hospitality, you get to sit down and have supper with your family because that's when you're busy. And so, this particular day, I'd made the commitment and people started showing up. And people started calling in and saying, I can't make it in. And it's like, okay, well, it's one. It's not so bad. We can figure it out. Then, somebody else calls in. So, you know what? It'll be a little tough. They'll be okay. But then, a third person calls in. It's like, damn it! Now, I have to stay through supper. And I started walking around like angry. Like, I was so angry. And I realized by 7 o'clock, by the time 7 o'clock rolled around, And we were kind of in the middle of it. It was on its wind down. And we were just going through it. We're having a very successful service. And I thought, why did I feel the way I did when all this thing happened? And I realized that the reason why I was mad was because I was harping on the problem, not dealing with the problem.

Yeah.

So, that unrelenting force part of it really makes sense.

And it creeps up on you and catches you. And I say you. Me too. I'm not immune to this, right? It's just, it is always there. And the thing is when we get caught by it, it can be hard to catch yourself. So, you said it was like 7 o'clock where you kind of realized, hey, why did I do that?

Right?

And so, but you caught yourself, right?

Yeah.

When you practice gratitude more often, the more time you'll tend to spend up in the thriving. And then, when you fall down, you're going to get back there quicker. That's what I've experienced in my own life and in some of the teams and the clients that I've worked with is that they just report that they have a generally more optimistic, outlook and overview that enables them to better deal with things. And we can so quickly judge to jump to judgment. Oh great, called in sick again. Same person. I could have predicted it, right? We go right to judgment versus let's just not even judge the situation because it is what it is, right? It's how we deal with it that determines how you're going to feel all night.

Mm-hmm.

And really, Anyone that you're serving, they're going to sense it. They're going to sense it, aren't they?

Absolutely! I don't care how good an actor you are. When your knickers are in a twist, other people will feel it.

They do, yeah. You know it.

So, in your book, you mentioned as one of your laws of the 10— it's 10 Laws of Grateful Leadership. You mentioned that the mindset of those who lead will be at or below your mindset. Could you explain that a little bit?

Yeah.

Do we have another?

Yeah, I'm just going to go back to this because this is this idea. You think about it. If you want a thriving organization, you want the people in your organization to thrive, right? The so what of this here hierarchy is those you lead will be at or below your level of leadership in terms of mindset. And If you think about what leadership is, it really is about influence, right? Influence over others. But first, it's influence over self. And I don't believe that you are going to influence anyone that is operating at a higher mindset than you, right? They're not going to be. And this is not positional, right? This is not positional. This is just mindset, how we influence others. You work with custodial staff. that light up a room when they walk in because of how they interact with people. And they could have no direct reports.

Yeah.

But they influence. So, it really is about mindset. And so, as positional leaders, I believe it's even more important to, if you want to have an influence on those in your organization, to always be working on your mindset. Just Always set that example and others will follow.

I love that. And that's a perfect segue because I'd like to get into what we can do to tune up our brains. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with the Gratitude CEO, Steve Foran. Steve, so we talked about all these unrelenting forces that are coming down on us and how it affects our mindset. Do you have any tips or tricks on how one could get present with what their current situation is so that they can overcome that and start kind of playing on the side of gratitude rather than the side of crisis or victimhood?

Yeah, sure. And I mean, if we go straight to the solution, it's— I don't want to tell you, Marc, or you listening, or you watching that you should be grateful.

Right.

I don't want to do that because that's judgment, right? I don't want to do that. But what I'd like to invite you to do or challenge you to do is take up— and I call it a habitual ritual. Like, Build a habitual ritual into your day around gratitude. And I'd encourage you to take on 2 things in this habitual ritual. One, make a list of what you're grateful for. And 2, consume other people's gratitudes. Have a steady diet of other people's gratitudes. And I'll just tell you a little bit about both of these. So, number one is just recording. Get yourself a gratitude journal or download an app. And just each day, take that extra step. Don't just think about it. Take the extra step to record them. It's like putting weights on barbells at the gym. You get more results with it. And it actually will have a greater impact on your brain, the physiological makeup of your brain. Just make the commitment. Do it once a day. Second, when I say consume other people's gratitudes, what I mean is read or listen to what other people are grateful for. It requires a bit of a, I think, a commitment to humility, to not feeling that you have it all figured out yourself. And I discovered this by chance probably 7, 8 years ago when I subscribed to somebody's gratitude blog. And as I read the blog, it just gave me inspiration, right? And so, to consume other people's gratitudes, you need a community. And that community could be your work group, your shift that you work with at work. It could be your entire company. It could be at home. It could be your best friend. It could be an external community. Marc, you were a guest contributor on the Daily Gratitude And the 1 Billion Happier People community. That's an external community that you can read or consume other people's gratitude. So, look at building. Back to your question again, Marc. What I encourage people to do is establish a habitual ritual. And that's just make a list of what you're grateful for. And these are pretty simple ideas too, right? And read or listen to what other people are grateful for.

Yeah. And of course, you have your community portal, which is 1 Billion Happier People, which is just a brilliant way to be able to share that and consume that. You mentioned gratitude blogs. I didn't even know they existed. Where would somebody find gratitude blogs?

Like, I stopped looking for them. There's so many of them out there. There really is, right? So, it is. I subscribe to Habitual Gratitude by Lisa Valentine. She's in Minnesota, just outside the Twin Cities, doesn't live far from there. And I subscribed to her just as she was kind of getting her blog going, probably in 2012, 2013. But if you, you know, the Network for Grateful Living, that's a place where you're going to get my website. I regularly post on gratitude. So, it is everywhere. It is mainstream. But that— it is when I receive someone else's gratitudes or read them, consume them, they're coming with— they're not saying, Steve, you should be grateful for your spouse or your child. But as I read, it's causing me to reframe and think about my— just the same way Peter Diamandis made me think about how I do things. We've learned from the stories of other people, not from other people telling me to do, Steve, you should do this. Steve, you should do that.

Right.

And that's what this beauty of it, it's all about. And you can even incorporate this into your work. When you do start a shift, let's go around. Everyone share one thing we're grateful for. And that You're getting your people to consume gratitudes, right? So, you're introducing the habitual ritual into your workplace and without taking any time either.

I'm sure that a whole bunch of what you're talking about is going to resonate with people right now, Steve. How can people get in touch with you if they want to connect with you?

Easiest way is through my website, gratitudeatwork.ca. And the membership, the 1 Billion Happier People Community, you'll see that along the main menu. So, but through the website is the easiest way, Marc.

Perfect, perfect. And the link is in the show notes so anybody can click on it. What is the difference, Steve, between gratitude and people bragging? Like, there are people out there who talk, oh, I do this. I do this. I do this. I'm so wonderful. My life is so great. You know, I have such a big car and I have a big house. And what's, what's the difference between gratitude and kind of flounder peacocking?

Bragging, peacocking, that's ego speaking. Gratitude is this place in the middle where we recognize, uh, what we have as a gift and We also recognize that we did have to do something to— so, it's this balanced place in the middle because at one extreme is that bragging, peacocking. At the other extreme is being a victim or, oh no, it was nothing. I didn't do anything. What are you good at, Marc? You are so good at speaking and injecting energy and passion into the people you speak with.

No.

You know what? I think it's as much a sin or a faux pas for you to step away of your— step out of your greatness as it is to overinflate your greatness. And what gratitude does, it enables you and me to see the gifts that we have. And whether they're our own personal gifts or the physical, tangible things that we've been entrusted with, in this world, to see them as gifts so that we can stand. I just think it's standing in our greatness. And so that you and I can each stand in our greatness and recognize. So, there's this balance of humility and not too much, but just knowing that we're this combination of the two together. It's, I don't know. I'm not a very good dancer, but I think it's a dance, a Latin dance maybe, Marc.

Well, and you use the magic word because as you were And as you were saying that, I was thinking, you know what? It takes an awful lot of humility to be able to do that. First of all, I could never ever tell anybody that I'm standing on the— I'm standing in my greatness because that's not how I view myself. But this idea of exuding this humility or having this sense of humility to say, I am not the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I'm also not the moldy loaf sitting on the shelf for 3 weeks.

Right.

Somewhere in between.

Right. And you know what you're doing, right? And so, it's this ability to step into that and to see it as objective, right? Because if we were to go out and look at a car and say, oh, that's a truck. No, it's not a truck. It's a car, right? And it's like saying someone— so, let's just name it for what it is and be I think because it comes to me when I see my gifts and my talents, when I can see them actually as gifts, it enables me to separate myself from them. When I say my ego, which wants to feel like, oh, look at me, I'm great, I'm speaking here, I'm doing this, I have this client, I did this, right? All these— that's all— that is my ego talking.

Mm-hmm.

When I can just be Steve.

Yes, yeah. So, we're talking a lot about this consuming other people's gratitude and so on. We've defined the difference between gratitude and peacocking or bragging and the balance that we're playing. But in our digital age, do you think social media is doing us a disservice when it comes to our mindset and our level of gratitude?

The research I've seen around social media is that Negative social media posts, guess what? They get more attention than positive social media posts. They do, yeah. People are more likely to believe that a negative story is true as compared to a positive story. And why is that? Well, I don't need to reach for my chart again, right? So, social media contributes to that. The other thing that I see it contributes to is just this unrelenting comparing with others, what others are doing. Look where I'm having dinner tonight. Look where we're going on vacation. Look at my new clothing. Look how great my kids are. And whenever I compare myself, I'm going to come up on the downside of it.

Right.

And I ask the question, how does that serve me?

Exactly.

And if I compare and I come on the upside, oh geez, I'm glad I don't live in a house like that. Or I'm glad I don't live in this community. Or I'm glad I don't have this government or whatever the case is. I'm grateful to be here and not there. What it's doing, it actually makes my gratitude conditional on a comparison.

Right.

Which, right? So, I like to say, try not to compare. And Social media, I believe this because I know I feel it myself and I see it in people that are close to me. I don't know the science around it. But I believe it leads to heightened levels of comparing. And when we compare, it leads to lower levels of happiness and contentment. And we feel like, I should have that. They have it. How come they can do it and I can't? And that That ultimately leads to a downward spiral.

Yeah, I joke. I kind of pseudo tongue-in-cheek to describe social media that there are 3 kinds of social media posts. One that elicits the response, oh, good for you! Congratulations! That's wonderful! And another one that elicits the response is like, oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. That's terrible! And then, there's a third one is all about kittens.

Right.

And so, when I'm looking at this, what's interesting is not only the comparison thing. But it's this idea that yes, you're looking at a post and you go, wow! Steve has such a wonderful life. He lives in such a big house. And it's like, and I'm sitting in my little dawdery little place that needs all sorts of renovations and all this. He's got it. But at the same token, what we don't understand is the people who are posting this also are doing it in such a way that they also have needs. And we're not really clear on their reality. And to me, I think that's one of the things that we should be focused on. I think as human beings, we need to be able to look at these posts and say, why are they posting this? What are they compensating for? What are they celebrating? Because it could be a really, a very real celebration of something.

Yeah.

But then, when you're constantly seeing how good people have it, we have to start saying, okay, well, what are the problems that they're facing?

It is. And so, the thing with gratitude that you can do when you're talking about gratitude is because you can be so proud and grateful of your kids. And so, you can talk about all these benefits of your kids to yourself, right? But then, you can also— we can frame any gratitude In terms of the benefits to ourselves or the sacrifices. And I call it sacrifice or the cost to somebody else. And for example, let's just use this conversation you and I are having here today, Marc. I could write in my gratitudes, I am so grateful to be on Marc Haine's show because I'm getting broader exposure in the world and other people could. Right. And that's awesome. Right? That's true. I could also frame my gratitude as a sacrifice, meaning I'm grateful to Marc. He's got— he put his social capital on the line because he might know a little. Marc, we know each other.

Hmm.

But you put your reputation on the— when you bring a guest on your show, I'm gone. You're here. It's your reputation. So, what I'm grateful for is you having trust in me and for doing that. Wow!

What a good way to look at it.

So, gratitude. There are 2 sides to it. Frame it as sacrifices of others. Like think of our freedom that we have in this country, your country, right? We quickly think of the sacrifice to get it. We also think of, oh geez, our ability to do these things. Those are benefits. Every gratitude can be framed as a sacrifice or a benefit.

Yeah, it's so amazing. The gratitude aspect of it. And this is where I kind of fall down on some things that I've seen because sometimes the gratitude, and again, it goes back to the comparison that you were talking about, could be, thank goodness I don't have that.

And it can. And if that's where you're going to find some gratitude to start, I don't want to judge you.

Yeah.

I think that's a good place to start. See Anna's comment here. Marc is one of the most humble men I've met. He is wonderful at showing his staff and friends around him how grateful he is and how it is to have them in his life. So, there's a gift, right, to Marc. So, there's that opportunity for Marc to stand in his greatness, not to brag about it, Not to be overly humble or just to have that place where it's like, because it feels good when you got someone say that. So, Anna, thanks so much for adding that. Good timing too.

That's great. Thank you, Steve. We're talking about this thing that we've talked about multiple things. We've talked about mindset. We've talked about habits. And I think I'd like to tap a little bit more into the habits in a second. And we've talked about the different ways that we can elicit gratitude. But to get into it, to actually think about this idea that to be present, sometimes we need to create the habit of it. And I'd like to get into the habit of driving our gratitude. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Hi, welcome back. I hope— I am grateful that you're still with me. If you've gotten this far, I am grateful that you've got here. Steve, yeah, I am. I'm grateful about this stuff, right? So Steve, some people would say gratitude is for suckers because you know what? Just because you're grateful doesn't mean stuff is not going to happen. What happens when stuff still happens?

Well, stuff happens. If you don't have any crap in your life, It's coming. It's in Chicago.

I love that you use the formal terminology. I think that's great because crap will still happen. So, how does somebody overcome that? Because it's easy to be like you said, you have that force on you. How do you get yourself back into that mindset? Is there something like I remember seeing that somebody used to have rubber bands or different— are there any tools that people can do to Snap them back?

Yeah, you know, there's, you know, did you brush your teeth today, Marc? Did you brush your teeth? Yeah. Where's your toothbrush? Right? You did. It was, I'm guessing it was on the sink. So, you saw it. Think of your toothbrush as a trigger. That's your reminder, right, to brush your teeth for good oral health. So, it's important. I just encourage people, find a trigger. Something that you can use in your day that's going to remind you to stop no matter what's going on. And okay, what am I grateful for? And because like when COVID is over, because we're recording this in the middle of COVID hopefully at the end of COVID actually, Marc.

Hopefully, we're on the ending. It is.

But there's going to be something else in our world. Like, this is just a fact of life. This is part of life that crap happens. And the thing is, when crap happens, this is when we need the executive function in our brain more than ever. So, find ways to introduce some triggers in your life. So, that could be taking your smartphone and putting a reminder on it that, okay, what am I grateful for? Or a repeating calendar appointment. Every day at whatever time it is that works for you, right? If it's once a day, you could do a couple of them if you wanted. Say, okay, I want to do this twice a day. When I post my gratitudes, I send out an email and I tell people this is— or you get a notification. That's your trigger. And you can use it whenever you want in the day, right? And if you want more than one trigger, set up a couple reminders on your phone. And then, Then, just build that practice. And I just say, start with once a day. And as you grow into it, you can— if you're going to run the Boston Marathon, you don't go out and try and run 26 miles the first time. You go out and just little by little, let's work it up. And just so little baby steps. And I just challenge you, encourage you, try it for 30 days. See what happens.

Yeah. Could you review again your steps?

Yeah, the habitual ritual. Yeah, so these are the things that are— it's like going to the gym and putting weight on the barbells. And just the first couple days, it's going to feel hard or awkward or whatever the case is. But after what you're doing is you're exercising and building your gratitude muscles. And the more you do it, Marc, this is for you and your audience only. The gooder you're going to get at it. So, you get gooder and gooder at being grateful. Hear that? 2 steps. 2 habits in this. Oh, Anna, this is one of the best episodes to date. Boom! Give you the high five. And really glad you're here too. So, thank you very much. Those 2 steps. Number one is record a list. I record 3 things, 3 things I'm grateful for. I do it every day. I have missed a day. I couldn't tell you when, 15 years maybe. But if you miss a day, don't beat yourself up. So one, make a list of what you're grateful for. And 2, consume other people's gratitudes. Read or listen to what other people are grateful for. So, that needs a community. So, get a gratitude buddy or get your group at work or your entire company or join our community of 1 billion happier people. But that introduces that accountability too. Like Marc, say you and I were gratitude buddies. And all we did was we said, once a day, we're going to text our gratitudes to each other.

Nice.

And let's say it's Thursday. 10 o'clock. You haven't heard from me.

Hmm.

You're going to send me a note. Steve, everything okay? Yeah, Marc. Grateful that you're thinking of me. Thanks. Talk tomorrow. And see, the community brings accountability, reminder, just like the toothbrush sitting on the counter. So, make a list of what you're grateful for and consume others' gratitudes.

Now, in your book, you have 2 others though. You have 4 steps to gratitude.

I do. There are 4 habits. And I don't want to say, buy the book and you'll find them out.

But we could just leave that as a teaser.

But no, I will tell you what they are. Share your gratitudes. Talk to other people about what you're grateful for. This is the leadership one. This is where it's important to balance sacrifice and benefit, right? It's important to do that. This is where you help set the tone in your organization or in those you influence or lead. And the 4th one is say thank you. And that's just that expressing of one's appreciation. So, those are the other 2 as well.

Nice, nice. And you see, you didn't have to buy the book. But buy the book because it's really a great read. It's an easy read. And I thought for me, it really touched my heart as well as I was reading it. So, it's a great book. Steve, this has just been so amazing. When I had the opportunity, when you said yes to doing this podcast, I was just so thrilled because it is something that is dear to my heart. Because we've talked about civility in the workplace. But this takes it to the next level. Being grateful for what you have and what you do and the people you surround yourself with, I think is really important, especially when things get tough. And nothing has been tougher than COVID. And you can really see the difference between those who are really thriving and those who are just pulling out their hair trying to survive each and every day. Is there any cautionaries you would have if we were to say, there are some people out there who might be band-aiders and they're going to say, hey, you know what? I have to work on my culture. I have to work on me. I'm going to do something. I'm going to start something right now. What would be cautionaries?

What you want to do is if you truly want to build that culture in your organization, you want to do it with a genuine concern for your people and your people that work. Because if you're only doing it for you, your people are gonna sniff it out really fast, right? And what you're gonna find is that it's gonna backfire on you. What we don't want is people to feel used. And think about it. If Marc, in your world, if someone to any of your viewers and listeners, another program in customer service, right? People are going, yeah, because it's a journey. You're going to master it. And if you're, I don't know, in accounting, maybe accountants would, how to do financial statements better. Yes, I want to do it. If your boss comes to you and says, we want you to take this course on being grateful. Like, what's wrong with me?

Right?

So, you got to be careful how you position it. We're not doing it because people aren't grateful. We're doing it to give them— we want to equip them with tools, right? This is what— so, if you genuinely care about your people, I care about you. I want you to be happier here at work, at home, in your community. This is going to help us do this. That's— so, there's a caution. And the other thing we want to do individually for you or anyone else here listening or watching is we don't want to force our gratitudes. Because when we try to force it, it can backfire on us. So, if we're not finding something, don't beat it. I'm not going to beat myself up. That's okay. Just step back, right? That's the thing you find.

Yeah. And ask any boss whoever was responding to somebody who's just saying, could I please get a raise? And they responded by, you should be grateful for what you're getting. That creates a culture not so good.

Yeah, I know.

Steve, you can feel it. You can feel it. Oh, and it just feels so wrong in so many different ways. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've talked about today?

Marc, I want to thank you. But the connection between gratitude and service, like service to me is one of the ways that you and I Say thank you, right? Even before a patron steps in a restaurant, or a hotel, or anything that we're doing where we're serving them, you every day have that ability to say thank you by how you serve. And that mindset of paying it forward for everything because you have no idea. That customer hasn't done anything other than just show up in your facility. Serve them with excellence.

Yes, yes. And with gratitude because they're not a thorn in your side and they're not an inconvenience. Steve, this has been awesome. Thank you so much. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they could get a hold of you?

Yeah, my website, our website is gratitudeatwork.ca. Thank you, Marc. Really appreciate it.

Before you run away, you do have like an assessment that people can take, right, on your website?

Yeah, yeah, there is. There's a mindset assessment. that you can take complimentary. And we'll give you a custom report. And if you want to do a debrief with me, I'll happily do that as well.

Wonderful! Steve, again, thank you so much. I am so grateful that you were able to do this with us today.

Not half as much as I am. Thanks, Marc.

Thank you so much! Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, Go ahead and book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that says meetme.so/MarcHaine. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this feed? That'll give you first dibs whenever I bring you fresh content that will help you work on your business, not just in your business. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, Stay healthy and dare to be the exception.