I’ve talked about joy and happiness, what about gratitude?   Gratitude is a practice that helps you bring greater joy and happiness into your life – even when (and especially when) you are not feeling so happy or joyful.

Gratitude is not pretending that everything is great, it’s not masking the bad with good – it IS finding what is good and great right now – no matter what else is going on.  Event better is when you take it a step further and find the gratitude IN the events/circumstances that are not going well for you right now.

Career Examples

• Are you not getting any responses to your job search efforts (or marketing efforts if you are a business owner)?  What CAN you be grateful for about/within that situation?
• Are you feeling uncomfortable/unhappy in your current job/career?  What DO you feel grateful for in your career/job?

Be Specific in Your Gratitude

Instead of saying “I’m grateful to be alive, have some savings, etc”, what if you said something like:

• “I’m grateful that I am focused and resourceful in my job search”
• “I’m grateful for all the people that I’ve been talking with who have offered me information and advice”
• “I’m grateful for the opportunities I am applying for as they help me refine my search”

Instead of saying “I’m grateful to have a job”, what about something like:

• “I’m grateful that the work I do with_____brings me great satisfaction because_____”
• “I’m grateful that my colleague _____ was so helpful with ______ yesterday”
• “I’m grateful for my contribution to ______ because it allowed me to _________”

Willing to experiment with this for 30 days?

Would love to hear from you as you share what it was like to practice gratitude

How often do you do the same thing the same way every day without even noticing what is around you?

Yes, in last months article I talked about the value of systemitizing some things, however there are some things that we may want to be/feel fresh and new.

For me, that is the beauty of my surroundings.  When I see the same things every day, they begin to blur and fall into the background, outside of my regular awareness.  So, you will often find me changing the scenery – whether it be moving some furniture around in my house, to changing the arrangment of my files/office space to taking a different route/different direction with my morning run.

When you change it up, you activiate a different part of your brain.  It often ignites something in you, making your more present, often more alive. That may be the illure of travel for many people – seeing new surroundings, experiencing new cultures and foods.

This idea of “taking the scenic route”  can also be used when focusing on your bigger career and life direction.  You can have your goal/vision, yet how you get there can be as varied and creative as you choose it to be.  What if, instead of needing the see/create the exact path to your next career, you chose the scenic route?

It could look like:

• Exploring an idea you have by taking just one small step – when you take one step in a new direction, it can open doors to other “scenes” you may not have imagined
• Researching a career direction you have been considering and letting yourself be distracted by the other things you are learning – click on those others sites, read those interesting articles, research that new idea that you come across
• Do something out of your comfort zone – that usually means you are tapping into potential you have not yet considered.  When you begin tapping your potential, you are in a new/different “scene” of your life
• Allow yourself to play!  Career pursuits and discovery of direction often happen by “accident” when we are enjoying ourselves and taking the scenic route in our lives.  From there you often “notice” what you are feeling and creative ideas come to you – without you trying so hard to find them.

What might “taking the scenic route” look like in your career?

We have all heard that multitasking does not really work very well, and now I understand why!  I am one of those people that loves what can be known and understood just as much as I love what cannot be proved and just needs to be felt/experienced and believed.

How our brain works

Learning how our brain works, in this easy to understand way that David Rock offers in his book, Your Brain at Work, was eye opening.  To know that the part of our brain whose function is to learn, assimilate, and put together information is small and takes a lot of energy gave me a new awareness of why it is tiring to be focused and intent on something – and why it is so important to take a lot of breaks to allow that part of our brain to rest/rejuvenate. It also helped me see even more value in creating systems and automating as much as I can to allow a different part of my brain to take over when it is most appropriate and purposeful, conserving much needed energy for other things.

Brain and stress

He goes on to talk about how a reasonable amount of “stress” that he defines as a sense of alertness and interest is the sweet spot to greater performance.  That makes perfect sense in that for me, and my clients, I notice a marked difference in the amount of action put forth when engaged and excited about something vs when disinterested or overwhelmed.

Our emotions and the brain

Emotions are another big topic in Your Brain at Work and there is information about how to shift our emotions, through cognitive changes like labeling them and reframing our interpretation of an event.  “All interpretations of the world are only that – interpretations your  brain has made and ultimately just yours, therefore you have a choice about which interpretation you might use at any moment”.  Mr. Rock suggests that perhaps the keys to a happy life are “a good amount of novelty, creating opportunities for unexpected rewards, and believing that things are always going to get slightly better”

Relationships and our brain

There was some great insights into work relationships here too – both in how to collaborate and how to lead. We use different parts of our brain when thinking about people we believe are like us (and we see them as friendly/friends) and those we feel are different than us (we see them as foes).   This helps us understand why establishing rapport, getting to know others as individuals, before we attempt to work together, is so important.  Also shared is how to facilitate change in others.  When you (or you help others to) focus on the outcome wanted, insights/solutions will come more easily.  When the mind is more quiet (not getting lost in the details/story/history of the problem) the solutions evolve.

If you read this book you will learn “this is just my brain” which will give you a richer understanding of why some things work, why others feel like a struggle and what changes you can make to make the most of this part of you that is more changeable than you think!