TES 083 - Finding Gratitude in Business and Life

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to brand yourself as an influencer so you can have more impact, more income and more freedom. And welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. In this episode, we're gonna do something a little different in the sense that here in the United States, as this is being released this week happens to be our Thanksgiving week. And it's a time where a lot of us reflect and think about what are we grateful for in today's world. And I think that we really need that. And today we're going to talk about this concept of gratitude. I'm going to introduce you to what I call the gratitude grid and I'm going to give you the ability to download what I call the gratitude game plan. It's an action guide that you can use each and every week, each and every day to make sure that gratitude is living your life. And we'll talk about why that's important. But if you want to get that action guide, just go to my website, melabraham.com session083. You'll be able to download the action guide. You'll be able to follow along and make sure that you're doing the right thing. So let's just jump. Oh, you know what, before we jump in, if you're not at your computer, you can also get the action guide. Just text me text one word mylegacy with no spaces to 38470 and I'll make sure that I send you the download link for that action guide. So let's jump into this whole thing and I'm talking about finding gratitude not just in your life, but in your business. But you know, as you know that I don't look at life and business as two separate entities. I think that they coexist as one entity. And so when I say gratitude in your life, it means in your business. And Your life and everything else. Because I think gratitude truly is the pathway to fulfillment. When we look at the things that are going on in society today, when we look at what has transpired, if we don't get this gratitude thing right, ultimately what's going to end up happening is that we're going to be limited in our energy because it sucks us dry. I mean, think about what it's like when you're going through a day. And I'm not infallible. So I've done this plenty of times, and I'm sure that I will continue to. The question is, do I live there? And the answer is no. Is that you going through your day and you're not grateful for things, you're irritated, you're agitated, you see nothing but the bad in everything. And you can't be grateful in that context. And what that does is it just erodes your energy, your energy to go on. It's what keeps people from getting out of bed because they're not grateful for what they do have. And I know that that's really a simplistic thing to say. And some people out there might be looking and go, shh, Mel, it's easy for you to say these things. Look at where you live and your life and all that. And yeah, I guess you could say that the reality is that it's not easy. Each and every day, we need to find the things that we're grateful for and give you the process to do that. The other thing that happens if we don't get this right is that we're gonna find ourselves full of angst. I mean, just full of anxiety and stress. Because we're not appreciating the things that we do have. We're not appreciating the things that are going on good in our business. We're not appreciating the things that we have in our life, our relationships, our family, health, the things that are going well, which will be the springboard to increase even more. The other thing that'll happen, ultimately is that if you're not very grateful, if you're not very gracious, you're going to find yourself alone. Because people don't like to be around people that aren't grateful for them being around. I mean, I. For me, just a simple thank you, a simple appreciation, a simple, you know, acknowledgement a lot of times goes a long, long ways. You know, here's the other side of this, though. When you get this right, when you start to understand how to bring this into your life on a regular basis to walk into your office, to walk into your business, to interact with your vendors, your customers, your team members, to interact with the people in your life on a regular basis with this in your heart, with this in your soul, with this. What does that do for you? And I think that what it really starts to do is if on the wrong side of it, you have limited energy, it creates energy for you. It energizes you because it moves you forward. I know that every time I'm out there and I get a chance to speak or I get a chance to do one of these episodes or some of my daily videos and I get responses back from you, all that energizes me, that keeps me going. That's what really starts to drive me because I know that I'm serving and I'm serving at a level that's making a difference to you. So I love hearing from you. So let that be a hint. So put some comments below and share this. All that stuff really helps to really energize and continue the message going forward. So when we get this right and we're coming from a grateful place, you're going to find that you're energized in that process. The other thing that happens in this is that you're going to be happier. I mean, let's face it, if I'm focused on all the negativity and all the stuff that is bad in my life, how am I going to be happy? You can't. I mean, if we're constantly beating ourselves down with all the negativity, we're never going to find that happiness. If we really want to be happy, we've got to focus on the gratitude side of things. We've got to look at what we have and appreciate the things that we do have. And there's plenty of things out there. If you want to choose to focus on the negative. I want to choose on focus. Focus on the lack. Choose to focus on those things. Plenty of that out there if you choose to do it. But it's just not a good way to live. It's not a good way to do business. It's not a good way to do things where you're coming from fear, you're coming from lack, you're coming from angst and anxiety. Now, I'm not saying to ignore it and live in some fairy tale world where you're unaware of some of the risks and the exposures out there. I'm just saying that as we make our choices, be grateful for the things we have so we can be happy in the process. And in the long run, what that ultimately does is it makes you magnetic. I mean, it really does. I mean, think about this. You probably have. Many of you probably have that one person that was two people in your life that are always exuberant, always happy. They're always finding the right side of the coin, if you will, the happy side of the coin, if you will. And so what are they like? I mean, a lot of people love being around them. Now, sometimes it can be a little much, but for the most part, we like being around happy people. We like people being around people that are grateful and appreciative of the things that we do for us being there and for us being in their lives. And if you bring that to your life, if you bring that to your business, if you bring that to your team, to your customers, to your. To your vendors, to everyone around you, and you're grateful and appreciative, man, you're going to become the magnet. You're going to become that. That part of it. You know, people ask, you know, well, how do you get charisma? I think part of that is this gratitude piece. It's being grateful for the things that. That you do have. And I've seen some extremely, tremendously successful entrepreneurs, because of how they show their gratitude, they're going to be even more dramatically successful. I know one, a good friend of mine that is in the real estate industry, and what he does is that when they're coming up to the end of their lease, he literally sends them a note saying, you know what? Your lease is up for renewal. You've been a great tenant. If they've been a great tenant for the. For the year, he says, you've been a great tenant for the. For the last year. If you choose to renew, I'm going to give you another month free. And it's just out of gratefulness. But you know what he's done? He's tremendously decreased his vacancies, his exit rates and all that because he showed his appreciation. I think that there's a lot of times that with our audiences, with our marketplaces, with our people in our life, we should be able to show that in a much greater way. So if that's really the case, if that's what we need to think about, if things are good, if we get it right, great. If we don't get it right now, know what's going to happen, then we need to think about, well, what do we need to know? What do you need to know, to bring that to life in your life, in your business. And I think that the first thing we need to understand is all that gratitude, all of that energy, all of that is generated from within. It's not something that's going to come and drop on you. It's not something that's external. It's something that has to come from within you and give you a process that allows you to bring that out. So that's the first thing to understand, is that our gratitude is generated from within. It's from our thoughts, it's from our insights, it's how we see the world. The second thing that we need to understand is that the actions you take will give it life. In other words, we may be grateful on the inside, but are we acting on that gratefulness? Are we acting on that appreciation? When we act with that gratefulness as the lead, it's going to give life to that appreciation that you have. It's going to be what brings that happiness, and it's what's going to do. It's what's going to allow you to become that contagious, magnetic person in doing that. And then the third thing to understand, the third principle, to really understand is that that the habits, and I think gratitude and appreciation is a habit, is going to come from practice. In other words, setting some things up in your life that will continue to bring that to the surface. The idea of gratitude, the idea of happiness, to bring that into your life and make it a practice until it becomes a habit, until it becomes second nature, until it's just like tying your shoes or walking. Although I've seen myself not walk so well at times. But the bottom line is that I want it to be ingrained in my soul and my being. So it's the way I show up on an everyday basis. Now, again.

We are going to ebb and flow. We're going to have those moments. And the question is not whether we have those moments that were infallible. The question is that we don't live there. The idea is that there's going to be plenty of times where I'm living with anxiety or angst or. Or possibly even fear or anger or some of those other emotions. The question is, do I live in that? Do I stay in it? Do I stew in it? And the answer is no. The idea is to be able to pull yourself out, to recognize it, to shake yourself up, to be able to do that. And so in order to do this, one of the things that I think we need to do with this is Understand how do we make it part of our life? And that's what I, what I call using the gratitude grid. And it's actually a weekly practice that turns into a daily practice that really starts to embed itself into your pattern of behavior, which becomes the habits that show up in your life. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw this out for you. We're going to jump to the iPad again and we're going to draw out the framework. I know I've got a framework for everything. We're going to draw out the framework that I call the gratitude grid, that's going to allow you to start to understand the key components, to really driving and making sure that you're living in that space of gratitude, be it in business, being in relationships, be it at home, be it with your loved ones, whoever it is, because we're going to create a process that's going to allow you to do that. So let's jump into, let's jump to the iPad and let's walk through what I call the gratitude grid. The first part of this. So when we look at this, one of the keys here is that we're going to look at things. Remember I said that it's internally generated. So one of the first things that we're going to look at is some of the elements that are internal to you.

So we're going to look at three different levels. Internal, first, the actions, the activity.

That you need to undertake, the things that you need to do on a regular basis. And then ultimately we're going to look at what I call the practice.

So we're going to look at those three elements of this. What's internal, what's going on inside, what's the activities you need to take, and what's the practices that need to come into your life to make that happen. So let's start with the internal first. The first thing to understand is this, is that we need to notice things. And now we, we have the ability to notice the negative. We also have the ability to notice the positive. We have the ability to walk through life and be appreciative of the things and grateful for the things that are around there. Or we have the ability to critique, criticize, compound, complain, whine and do that. And there's plenty of that going on today. And I'm. And I'm not saying that some of that is not warranted, but it's not solving anything. So if we're not doing it from the perspective of constructive growth, then what we're doing is we're doing it from the perspective of destruction. And the point is that I want to look around and I want to appreciate the things that are good around here, and what are the things that I might be able to improve? Because if I come from a grateful place, how much more energy can I bring to the improvement side of that? So the first thing for you to do do is just to raise your awareness level, to start noticing the things, even when you wake up in the morning, what are the things that you're grateful for each and every morning? Noticing it, what is your filter? What's your focal point becomes really important. The second internal mechanism is what I call humility.

When we talk about this, it's really about not allowing your ego to get in the way. Ego gets in the way of gratitude. If you come at it from an egoic type of perspective, you know, I am the best. Here's who I am. You know what? It doesn't feel good for the people around you. Bottom line is, I feel blessed to be doing some of the things I'm doing to be able to have the life that I have, to have the beautiful bride that I have. I feel blessed to be living in this space, doing the things that I'm doing to get a chance to talk with you, to get a chance to share my knowledge, my experience, my expertise, to help you grow and to see you grow. I mean, the greatest feeling for me is to see you more successful, to see your life come to fruition, your dreams come to fruition. So it's really about coming at it with some level of humility. You know, maybe you've achieved great things. That's great. But if you have a great ego to go along with that great achievement, it sucks. I mean, let's face it, I don't want to be around egotistical folks. I want people that are coming from a place of service, that are coming from a place of community, people like yourselves that really want to improve the human condition, people that really want to help other people. And so we want to keep that humility as an internal filter in the process. And then the other side of this is this. I think this is really something that we need to think about in all aspects of our life. What commitment are you bringing to it? In other words, being committed to raise your awareness, to notice things, being committed to reduce the ego.

Living with humility, being committed to looking for the things that you can be grateful for versus the things that you can be miserable about, because there's plenty of misery to go around if we choose to focus on. But there's plenty of gratitude to go around. There's plenty of things that we should be thankful for, especially given.

What we've got going on today. And I think that the more we can focus on the greatness that is that is within us and the greatness that is around us, the bet the more greatness we're going to get out of people, you're going to. You're going to get them to live into that greatness. Here's an interesting dynamic, is that one of the strongest forces in human nature is for people to be congruent with the commitments that they made. And so if we give them an identity of greatness, if we give them an identity of gratitude, if we give them an identity of success, they're going to live into it. Now, some may not, but most of them will, or they're going to strive to, and it's going to shift and change things. So from an internal standpoint, we need to notice the things that are around us. We need to consider it from the perspective of eliminating our. Our ego and being kind of coming at it from a humility standpoint and being committed to doing that. In order to do that, what kind of activities do we need to undertake? What are the things that I think we ought to do? Well, the first one, and I think that this seems basic, but a lot of people don't do it. And that's journaling.

Journaling daily if you can, weekly if you can. But I would say daily, where you're sitting back and saying in your journal, what happened today? What did I learn? Okay, some key questions. What happened today? What did I learn? What am I grateful for? What can I do better with? Okay, and just writing. And sometimes it's just going to flow, sometimes it's not. But make it a regular habit, because here's what happens when you start to write and you start to reflect on the day and you reflect through those filters of what happened? What did I learn? What am I grateful for? What can I do better? It's always pushing you towards the positive. It's always pushing you towards growth. It's always pushing you forward. And we don't take enough time to reflect on the day to sit back and say, did I do all right today? Did I make it go so well today? Is there something I can do differently tomorrow? And we don't always do that. We get home, we're stressed out, we've had a long day. What do we do? We eat, we Sit down on the couch, we turn on the tv and we watch brainless tv. That isn't going to improve our lives, but it's an escape. It's a numbing drug, if you will, in my estimation, versus maybe having a conversation with yourself and maybe a conversation with your spouse and having those conversations that deepen the relationships around you. So the first thing that I would tell you to do is journal daily. You can do it in the morning or you can do it in the evening, whatever fits. I would do it typically in the evening. And it clears my mind and puts me in a good state.

To go to bed and sleep in that state of gratitude. The other thing is this compliment.

This is something that we need a lot more of in society today. Bottom line is that.

Bottom line is that we don't compliment each other enough to simply walk in and say, you know what? You've got a beautiful smile, or you look really nice today, or that was a great job. To simply compliment someone is something that we don't do enough of today. And I don't understand why that is. I mean, think about this. You know, when I walk in up to a cash register, I'm buying something. Hey there. How you doing today? I asked them how they're doing. A lot of times they get freaked out. A lot of times they are surprised they're taken back because they're not used to. They're just kind of going through the day, all right, scanning things and taking your credit card or having you scan or put your. Your card in, and that's it. And it's this. But have a conversation with.

How often are you complimenting the people around you for the things that maybe you are noticing? Because now you've raised your awareness. And so one of the things that I would look at is look for places where you can compliment people for what they are, what they're doing, how they're showing up, even strangers. And I know that, especially in the United States, you start complimenting strangers, they go, what do you want from me? I mean, they feel like you're, you know, they're checking their pockets because they think you're taking their wallet or something. But the bottom line is compliment people. Complimenting people will constantly shift their behavior. You'll watch their shift in their behavior. Because think about this. When someone is complimenting you, what did you do? You stood taller, you felt better, you moved with more energy, you would move with more decisiveness, and you kept going. And. And so I think that that's one of the activities that we ought to do so journaling, complimenting. And then the last activity that I'd like you to consider is what I call cause why are you doing some of the things you're doing? In other words, move it beyond the tactical outcome to more of a mission. Keep your, to move yourself over and above what it is to elevate the driving force in your life for something greater. For me, a lot of times, especially as I was a single full time dad building my businesses, a lot of the choices I made were for my son. It was to either set an example, to be a role model, to give him a life, to do the things that were driving him and to set that example. And if I know that people are watching, how am I going to show up differently? So what is that driving cause? What is that driving mission? What is that driving motivation? That is over above getting a task done. And you think about people like Zappos, organizations like Zappos, where they're overriding cause they're overriding missions to deliver happiness. And that drives the way they show up. If I turn around and say, listen, sell a bunch of shoes, just sell a bunch of shoes. Because that's what they did when they first started. That's what matters. You can approach it differently than if I tell you now. Make sure they're happy as you sell the shoes. I remember that one of the businesses I had was a martial arts student. We had 150 students and I would work with my instructors and I said, we are teaching, make no bones about it, we are teaching self defense, we are teaching the martial arts arts here. But what we are, that's our commodity. What we're really doing is using the martial arts as a vehicle to build self esteem, but also make sure that the families, the kids that are training with us, and the families and the parents of those kids feel cared about. So the question for each of the instructors before they stepped on the mat was as I go to teach these techniques, how can I make sure the families and the kids feel cared about when I'm done? And then you approach things differently when you find that higher cause versus just saying, I just got to get this done. And it's a checklist and you're checking the box. So those are the activities, journaling, complementing and raising it to the level of cause. And then this last column, which is really the column that starts to really ingrain it into your soul, into your being, into the threads of your everyday life. And that's the practice. And the first thing is what I Call transformation.

And what do I mean by that? There's two sides of this one, the transformation for you. How are you going to look at your life differently? To make sure that you're focused on the good, focused on the grateful, focused on the things that are really important to you, that are really starting to drive the things around you to be grateful, to notice the things that are good so you can be grateful for those. So that's the first transformation. The second transformation is to the people around you. Think about this. If one. Just like in Zappos, where they say the primary purpose is for them to deliver happiness, if one of your primary purposes is to transform the energy of someone else. In other words, to give them, to make them feel appreciated. Because we're talking about gratitude. To walk into a Starbucks and you're going to order that coffee. How can I make sure that that person, barista.

Feels appreciated? Well, if my job is not only to transfer, transform how I show up, but to transform how everyone else is feeling around me, man, it's a different game. It's a different game to play. It's something that we need to step into and make that daily habit. The second thing, as far as the daily habit is this.

And practice, and that's to learn. Learning. Listen, I don't have it, all right? Trust me. And if you think I do, talk to my wife. She'll tell you otherwise, all right?

But I'm open to learning. I make mistakes. I've made plenty of mistakes, and I will continue to make mistakes. But I'm open to learning. I don't come at it from a, you know, my way is the only way. I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to be open. I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to accept that, you know what? I screwed up and I learned from it, and it won't happen again. So I need to bring into it. And that's why one of the questions in journaling is, what did I learn today? As we learn, we grow. We need to focus on that learning and that growth in the process. And then the last piece of this is this.

Sincerity.

And I think that this really becomes extremely important to us, is that this concept of sincerity, when we go out there, we can certainly go out there in a superficial way and put things out there and say thank you and not mean it. We can say I'm sorry and not mean it. We can say, even say I love you and not mean it to go through the motions, but to be really sincere with a thank you with appreciation, with compliments, with how you feel, to really be sincere, to be present with that person and do that. And that takes a little bit of effort if you're not used to doing it. It takes a little bit of vulnerability to be there and be present with them, to look them in the eye. And as I'm looking through this camera lens to you in the eye, to look at you and say, you know what? I actually appreciate you being here. I really do. I mean, I appreciate each and every one of you that are on this journey with me, that are part of this community, that are willing to take the time to listen, to watch, to comment, to share, to do the things to support me, to support this process. And I think that that sincerity is lacking. So those are the three columns of what I call the gratitude grid. It's the internal game, it's the activity game, and it's the practice game. It's what's going to drive us. And so here's what I'm going to invite you to do is to download the gratitude game plan. The gratitude game plan is going to walk you through how to bring this to life. You need to go to melabraham.com session083 to download that. It's going to give you something that's going to allow you to do this. And in a nutshell, what you're going to do is you're going to actually plan your gratitude for the week, literally every Sunday. You're going to plan specific actions that you're going to take each week with specific people that you want to show appreciation to. And at some point, you're not going to need it. I don't necessarily need it, but at the very beginning, you plan it out, you get it, and you do it that way. It allows you to really start to bring it forward and build it that way. So that's the thing that I think becomes important, is to implement it in your life. Just as much as I said, journaling needs to be part of just as much as I said, noticing and being aware needs to be part of your life, complimenting needs to be part of your life. Create a process that is going to force you to trigger it. Because when we look at the game plan, you're literally going to put things on a calendar and look at the people that you want to reach out to. You're going to review or revisit, if you will, the last time you had a conversation with them. You're going to consider where they're coming from. Do they have Kids, do they have a spouse? You know, do they like sports? Do they have animals? So you can actually have a sincere, real conversation. Yes. That's going to take a little time. You're going to have to document. But if you want to create, if you really want to create meaningful relationships with people, that takes time. It doesn't just happen. In fact, you need to be intentional with the relationships that you create as we move forward. So download the gratitude game plan, implement it, put it in the calendar, start using it. Because I'm going to tell you this, literally in 30 days, 30 days, your life and your business will be transformed because they're going to go, what happened to you? What are you doing? What are you eating in the morning? What's going on? Because all of a sudden you are intentionally being appreciative to those around you, going to have a dramatic, dramatic effect and impact on them, your life. So I hope you found this of value. I hope that, that you will go out there and be grateful. I hope that you will show your appreciation in a sincere way. I hope that you'll go out and compliment the people because people are hungry for the compliments. There's a lot of criticisms out. There's a lot of complaining, there's a lot of wine. There's plenty of that. Let someone else do it. You guys be the carrier of the compliments, the carriers of the gratitude and the appreciation and building people up so they can be greater, doing the things that they want to do. So download the gratitude game plan again. It's melabraham.com session 083. If you're not at your computer, just text me mylegacy, one word with no spaces. Mylegacy to 38470. I'll make sure I send you the download link. Do me a favor. There's a lot of people that need to hear this message. So share this, get this out there to people and let's start shifting the attitudes out there in the marketplace, place in the community and humanity by sharing this whole concept of gratitude and appreciation, giving them the tools to do that. So share it with a friend. If you haven't done so already, hit the subscribe button. Stay with me. Lots more to come, lots of stuff for your success, for your wealth, for your life, for your business. And if you have specific questions, specific challenges that you're dealing with, then reach out to me. Let's put it on one of these episodes and let me, let's, let me help you out. Just go to askmelnow.com and leave me your message, leave me your question and I'll make sure that we get it taken care of. And in the meantime, put some comments Share this stuff, subscribe and stay in touch with me. I want to have a conversation with you and until we get a chance to see each other again, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.