Hi everyone, I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to practice your leadership.
When I was growing up, the word gratitude was taken kind of lightly sometimes in social circles at schools. But in my household, we had a lot of gratitude.
I think we had more gratitude the sicker that my dad got. And we had gratitude for doctors, nurses, healthcare systems, even though he was dying, and there’s a perspective in that, where life can be really shit. And having a practice of gratitude helps bring that perspective into the bigger picture. For me personally, it’s helped me ride waves of chaos, unknowing, uncertainty.
It’s helped me when I, when I see in different levels of systems, right, if I look at the globe, and I get overwhelmed at big issues of social injustices, cataclysmic climate change, and so on, having an active practice of gratitude helps.
There’s something about the word for some, where they just roll their eyes. And for others, they dig deep. I don’t think there’s a shared narrative and normed understanding of gratitude and its connections. And so I’ve appreciated some of Brene Brown’s work on connecting gratitude to joy, self-belonging, self-acceptance, being in service to others, to a collective, not just coming from a place of individualism and ego.
She has been on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah a couple times, I think it’s not just once. I’ve seen her there once. She says something about, you know, never interviewing, in all of her research, a single person who talked about the capacity to experience joy, and all of its depth, without actively practicing gratitude. Whether it’s formal or just in, in conversation, or holding it at least lately.
Brene Brown shares also that in practicing gratitude is how we acknowledge that there’s, that there’s enough out in the world. There’s enough love, for example, that there is enough and that we are enough. And so some of that has been part of my practice, in connecting to my own self acceptance, my own self love, and riding the waves of, of change and transition that I haven’t expected or wanted to be quite frank.
And that I use it to gain perspective. To sit in the gratitude and fill me up. So that when life completely empties my cup, and takes all the resilience that I’ve got, that there is a practice of gratitude that can bring me back and bring my family back into conversation of all that we have. Of some of the privilege and the responsibility that goes with that privilege and all that we have.
So with gratitude, you know, it’s more than just a thank you, though, I gotta tell you, in this friggin first time of recording podcasts, I got to thank you all for being here with me. In passing on any of these podcasts that are helpful to others, I definitely have gratitude and thanks for that. But in terms of a longer term practice, there’s a few things that I’ve done that that might be helpful for you.
I’ve kept a gratitude journal since 2016. And some of you may know it, the Five Minute Journal, I have it here actually sitting with me. And it purports an AM and a PM process, a morning ritual, and an afternoon ritual. And in the morning, the idea goes, you sit with a quote, here’s one by Simon Sinek I opened, “All leaders must have two things, they must have a vision of the world that does not exist, and they must have the ability to communicate it.”
All to say is that you have a quote or I would add a visual if you’re a visual person, maybe you have an image in front of you, a photograph that you sit with even 30 seconds and just be with and then you have journal prompts for the morning. I am grateful for dot dot dot list three things. What would make today great? Dot dot dot, list three things. And who knows what will come. If it’ll be about your family, your work, the world, who knows what what will come up.
But the morning ritual is that maybe you do this in the mirror, maybe you do it at your desk, maybe you do it at the breakfast table. And to wrap up that morning ritual, with this Five Minute Journal, it asks you to write a daily affirmation of just simply I am. I’ve been hearing that affirmation a lot by various people. Just saying I am and then whatever follows for that day.
Then in the evening, when is this time for you? Is that after dinner? Is it right before bed in the evening? Three amazing things that happened today, dot dot dot. And how could I have made today even better. So maybe a journal practice is right for you when it comes to gratitude. Maybe it is just standing in the mirror every morning and saying one thing you’re grateful for as you’re brushing your teeth, looking into your own eyes. Maybe for me around our dining room table, it’s that everybody says one thing that they’re grateful for.
And maybe with your team it is something of a practice that you attach to other rhythms that you work out with your team right? Or it is a practice in your once a month reflection moments? One thing I’m grateful for. And it could be in the work, about the team, what- however it comes up, right? You don’t want to put too many parameters, you just want to offer an invite question. One thing I’m grateful for.
And then of course for individuals as well there’s lots of gratitude meditations out there if you subscribe to peloton meditations, headspace, you create your own, others have prompts. Those are some practice around gratitude. Knowing that sitting with gratitude allows us to connect to joy, connect to vulnerability, connect to our self acceptance and really it allows us to contribute to the collective agency of just bringing those energy vibes up all. And the world could sure use that from you.
Thanks all, I’m Saralyn. You can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership
