The Importance of Living Our Gratitude
Welcome to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years, ensuring that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy.
It’s Thanksgiving in the United States, and as has become our tradition at Leadership Vision, this episode is all about gratitude.
We’ve been doing this since 2015, and each year after we do these episodes, we are stirred to action and encouraged to live more toward the light and the good in the world. We want to express our gratitude and invite you to express your gratitude to your families, tribes, co-workers, and others in your sphere of influence.
But more than that, let’s live our gratitude…
On Gratitude
When I was researching gratitude earlier this month, I came across a short book by Oliver Sacks simply titled, Gratitude. It’s a collection of four short essays he wrote towards the end of his life and published after his death in 2015. If you don’t know who Oliver Sacks is, he’s a neurologist, probably most famous for the book Awakenings, which was turned into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro.
Gratitude was written in the final two years of Sacks’ 82-year life. He muses on aging, illness, and death, and does so in a way that’s almost removed, as if he’s writing about someone else, but it’s also extremely vulnerable and charming in a way that perhaps only someone who has lived a very full life can be.
The second essay in the book, “My Own Life,” particularly jumped out to me. It’s sort of like a mini reflection on the things he’s grateful for as he looks back at a long and full life. Two things from this essay stand out to me:
- Let’s not wait until we’re near the end of our lives to express gratitude to the people, places, and things we’re grateful for.
- Let’s reorient our priorities.
Linda recently shared this quote with me about gratitude:
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”
John F. Kennedy
Time is precious, and life is short. This quote and the essay by Oliver Sacks make me want to live my life in a way where the things I say I am grateful for are reflected in how I spend my time and in the things I focus on.
It’s one thing to express gratitude for your family, your health, or your job, but it’s another thing to live your life in a way that matches that level of gratitude.
“I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential…”
Oliver Sacks
As leaders, parents, colleagues, friends, spouses, and people on this earth, all we have is our time. Each moment is a gift we should be grateful for as if it’s our last. How much of our lives do we waste on nonessential things? How many of us will sit around the Thanksgiving table talking about how grateful we are for our family, and then after dinner mindlessly scroll through social media or argue about politics?
Three Reflections on Gratitude
I’d like to challenge you to reflect on the following three questions. Think about what you need to do or change in your life to live more in line with your responses. You can do this reflection on your own, or if you’re brave enough, maybe share them around your Thanksgiving dinner table.
- Describe something related to work you are thankful for in 2022.
- What do you need to focus on to live that gratitude?
- What do you need to focus on to live that gratitude?
- Describe something related to your home or family life that you are thankful for in 2022.
- What do you need to focus on to live that gratitude?
- What do you need to focus on to live that gratitude?
- Describe something you are grateful for related to X in 2022?
- What do you need to focus on to live that gratitude?
Your Gratitude
It’s probably easy for each one of us to make a list of all the things we’re grateful for in our lives, but much more difficult to justify how we’re living our lives showing appreciation for those things.
“…We want to shine a light on the goodness of humans, the potential of teams, and what it would mean if organizations were thriving and casting light into the world.”
Linda Schubring
What are the things in your life that you are grateful for? And what are the ways that you can live into that gratitude so that you are thriving and casting light into the world?
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. We believe that knowing your Strengths is only the beginning. Our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents.
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