The Science and Psychology Behind Gratitude
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If you’re reading this right now my guess is you're busy; you're overwhelmed. The world is throwing a lot at you right now, but the good news is you made an effort to show up. And that in itself is not only a commitment to your own well-being, but it's a commitment to the other people in your life. This article is all about gratitude. We will cover three things, how gratitude impacts your own well-being, how gratitude is great for teams, and how gratitude really affects the customer relationship. But before we get into that, I'm going to dive into a brief story on how we got here.
How 7:47 Began
I haven't always been massively obsessed with gratitude. If you looked at my life about five years ago, things look entirely different. I was involved in show business, traveling worldwide, producing or investing in Broadway plays, and having a really good time. Our plays had won a bunch of awards. We had gathered a bunch of people to be entertained, and everything looked good on paper, but as you may know, just because something looks good on paper doesn't mean it feels good in the heart. I realized that disconnection in July of 2015, we had just come back from Italy after producing a Broadway play over there. When I got back to New York City, I realized this actually isn't it.
Italy had changed my entire life. See, I realized when I got back to New York that I essentially felt four things once you removed the success and the façade. I felt lonely, disconnected, overwhelmed, and insecure. Maybe some of you may be feeling that right now. And in that darkness, I realized I had to change because the last time I had felt those four things at once, it led me down a deep dark path of suicide, depression, jail, and rehab. And I didn't want to go back there. So I thought back, what did I love most about my time in Italy? It was the food.
I started playing around in our kitchen, accidentally created a pasta sauce recipe, and figured I should probably feed it to people to see if it's even good or not. A ritual began, and the dinner table was formed. We invited people over. We put them to work. We sat down for dinner, and we had a great, great, great meal. And we haven't stopped since. We've used the dinner table to spark over 500,000 relationships. But as we look back on what made those dinners so good, it wasn't the pasta sauce. But it was the gratitude and what we talked about at every dinner.
The First Dinner
At that very first dinner, we asked a simple question, "If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you don't give enough credit or thanks to, who would that be?". We heard people dive way back into the past and pull forth some autobiographical memories to share their stories with others in that small group format, and people found a connection. People had these cathartic transformational releases, and a movement began. The dinner table was comforting, but when you ask people and give them the platform to share a story, they come alive. Notice we didn't ask, "What's your biggest fear" or "What was your biggest failure" or "Your greatest regret." We asked them to tell stories about others because that's what we all are here to do. Learn how to be exemplary servant leaders. Your role in the customer journey is about being the guide, not the hero. And so the more you can emphasize others using gratitude as a tool, the better off we'll be over time.
Gratitude as a Tool
I can't imagine how you feel right now, but I would imagine many of you are very future-oriented. Who knows where we're going to be in the future, right? We don't know what a month looks like. We don't know what a year looks like. Now, when you live your life, looking ahead to the future in that tremendous unknown period of uncertainty, it starts to eat you up a little bit. And so we use gratitude as the antidote to looking ahead to the future. Gratitude is our tool to go into the past. That is what I like to do right now for a few minutes.
If you're reading this, I invite you to take a brief pause. Maybe you're multitasking and looking at your CRM system or your email thread, but I was hoping you could take a pause and take that gratitude question seriously for a second. I want you to think for yourself if you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you don't give enough credit or thanks to, who would that be? Someone you've never thought to thank. It could be your mother, your father, your third-grade teacher, a dog, God, or yourself. Please write down that person's name, write it down here with me right now. Think about what that person means to you. What have you learned from them? What did they see in you? If they were here right now, what would you say? Think about those things.
The Power of Gratitude
See gratitude is the invitation to acknowledge that we've received value from other people. There is no such thing as a self-made person. We've all received help from others. Sometimes, when we can pause and reflect and acknowledge that we've received value from others, we can take that and look at that experience in a whole new way.
Maybe some of you wrote down someone who triggers a positive autobiographical memory. Well, I hope it felt good just thinking about that positive memory. Perhaps some of you wrote down someone that provoked a negative experience. Maybe you wrote down that ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend that was so mean to you that when you finally broke up with them, you realized what you do or do not want in a partner. See, gratitude is about taking those experiences and reframing how we look at them. Those negative experiences have no weight over you any longer. That's the power. So when the world is in great doubt, you can pause, reflect, and look to the past, to find safety and comfort. Thank you for writing down that person.
As you go forth
My challenge to you is to think about what that person meant to you and how you can reach out. Not only paying it back but paying it forward. See gratitude, on the one hand, is about reaching out to that person even if they're no longer with us and writing a letter, making a phone call, figuring out how they like to receive love from you and giving it to them, using their language of receiving. And you can pay it forward. Take that reciprocity, take that generosity, and pay it to the people on your team, pay it to the people in your immediate family. Often it's the people that are closest to us that we often overlook. So thank you for doing that.
Try to think about what are the values those people stand for or stood for and how those values show up in your life today. Because when you can connect those two things, that's when you start thinking big picture, that's when you can start thinking along the lines of legacy. That was just a small example. But know that gratitude is free, easy, impactful, and immediate. We've seen gratitude be able to bridge gaps and heal broken relationships. Peer-to-peer gratitude amongst the team is one of the greatest tools for retention and productivity. Gratitude unlocks curiosity, connection, productivity, inspires further movement, and people to take action. When you bring gratitude in a customer relationship, you can tell those that you serve how much they mean to you. Now's the time to reach out to your external partners, to your external customers and tell them, thank you for being a part of our team. This movement helps the world go round, and you all can change the world by creating a culture of gratitude. Include your customers in this, give them gratitude, show them how much you love them in good times and bad how you invest in those relationships now will set you up for success in the long run.