Gratitude And Personal Success – Part 1

According to legend, a young man while roaming the desert came across a spring of delicious crystal-clear water. The water was so sweet he filled his leather canteen so he could bring some back to a tribal elder who had been his teacher.

After a four-day journey he presented the water to the old man who took a deep drink, smiled warmly and thanked his student lavishly for the sweet water. The young man returned to his village with a happy heart.

Later, the teacher let another student taste the water. He spat it out, saying it was awful. It apparently had become stale because of the old leather container. The student challenged his teacher. “Master, the water was foul. Why did you pretend to like it?”

The teacher replied, “You only tasted the water. I tasted the gift. The water was simply the container for an act of loving-kindness and nothing could be sweeter. Heartfelt gifts deserve the return gift of gratitude.”

This story demonstrates how gratitude is about thankfulness and appreciation. Gratitude is like a state of being. Some people are always grateful whereas other people may feel dissatisfied and unhappy with their lot.

Valuing gratitude means that you see the world in a different way. You see what is around you, you hear the birds singing, you hear the voices of children playing, and you see life bursting forth. In seeing these things, you feel gratitude and thankfulness for such beauty…this expression of gratitude is your personal success!

Gratitude is deeper than feeling happy. It is about a state of mind. To value gratitude and to be in this state of mind means that everything you see, you see through the eyes of thankfulness. Every action you take and every thought that you have comes from this place.  And when you move through the world with this intent your personal goals are attracted to you.

The amazing thing about being in this state of mind is that it creates an increase in energy in you. Your overall body will feel strong and confident when you are in a state of gratitude. Have you ever been in a situation where you feel angry and frustrated and you take a deep breathe and think of something that you have to be grateful for? Maybe it was a friend in your life, maybe it was your health or maybe it was your family.

Whatever it was, do you remember the shift in energy that occurred in you at that moment in time when you made that shift?

Test it right now!

Take a deep breathe and think of something or someone you are grateful for.

How are you feeling?

Observe your posture. It will shift and so too will the energy fields in your body. When we increase the energy fields in our body it is similar to electricity. The energy bursts throughout the universe and it connects with other people.

When you are in a state of gratitude people (and the Universe) notice! And this is the opening for your personal success to enter.

Have you ever been talking to someone and stopped the conversation to look up into the sky and to comment on the beauty of the moment?

The person you are with will stop short in their tracks. It will shift the energy in the moment. You may even see their face change in appearance. This is the power of gratitude.

A study was carried out by Dr. Michael McCollough, of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Dr. Robert Emmons, of the University of California at Davis (2003) around the virtues of gratitude. Their initial scientific study indicated that gratitude plays a significant role in a person’s sense of well-being.

The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved. McCollough and Emmons also noted that gratitude encouraged a positive cycle of reciprocal kindness among people since one act of gratitude encourages another.

Generosity

A natural extension of gratitude is generosity. Grateful people notice the contribution of others to their personal success. They see when others are behaving at their best and, when others make mistakes, they look behind the mistake to the other person’s intent. They give others “the benefit of the doubt”. They so clearly see the “gifts” that others give them that they automatically want to give something back.

Generous people live the concept of “win-win”. They believe that as they give to others, they will receive good things back. The beautiful thing is that they do receive good things back, partly because others feel inspired to be generous back, but also because they notice the things they are being given.

Even if they don’t receive good things back from the particular person that they gave to, they see so much around them to be grateful for, that the individual giver doesn’t matter. In fact, many people get to the point where they are grateful for being able to be generous in the first place. As the old saying goes, virtue really does become its own reward!

We tend to think of generous people as those who donate money or give expensive “things”.

Generosity is much more than that.

Many generous people do tend to give gifts because they remember significant events in the lives of others, but they are just as likely to give the gift of their time, their attention, a shoulder to cry on or a few words of love.

Generous people share their ideas, their personal goals and their emotions because they believe that abundance creates abundance.

Generosity is about dynamic exchange, the act of giving and of receiving.

Stop for a moment and imagine creating each day where you are committed to giving to each person you meet. It may be the gift of a flower, a compliment, an acknowledgement, a caring thought.

It isn’t about the commercial giving of gifts or physical things. In giving you create a dynamic exchange in that you also open yourself up to receive. Giving creates confidence in giving. The more you receive the more you will give.

OK that’s it for Part -1; I think there’s enough for you to contemplate and how gratitude affects reaching your personal goals and personal success.

I’ll leave you today with a quote:

“Therefore you must know that you are already inherently affluent, no matter how much or how little money you have, because the source of wealth is the field of pure potentiality – it is the consciousness that knows how to fulfill every need, including joy, love, laughter, peace, harmony and knowledge.“ –  Deepak Chopra (1994)

Please let me know your thoughts about gratitude in the comments below.

References:

• Chopra, Deepak, (1994), The Seven Spiritual laws of Success, New World Library, CA., USA.
• Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389.
• Kauffman, Carol, (2006) Positive Psychology: The Science at the Heart of Coaching in Stober, Dianne and Grant, Anthony, (Eds), Evidence Based Coaching, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons