Michael: Hello everyone and welcome to HaBO Village Podcast. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And we are really glad you're here today. Today's podcast is going to be on gratitude. Now, this podcast, HaBO Village, is about helping leaders build Passion and Provision companies that are filled with profit, purpose and legacy. Our goal is to help you and equip you and just give you a moment in your day where you can sit and think, maybe learn some new things and be reminded of just how important it is to not only work on your business so that it is profitable, but it is fulfilling. These are important things. And that we're working towards the right things. Right, Kathryn?
Kathryn: Yes. You were just on a roll. I was just watching you in awe, like is he ever going to take a breath?
Michael: I'm excited.
Kathryn: It's amazing.
Michael: I'm super excited. I've been really thinking a lot, actually lately we've been working on the next phase of our book Fulfilled, a Passion and Provision Strategy to Building Businesses With Profit, Purpose and Legacy.
Kathryn: He's getting better and better at being able to say that without stumbling. It's so incredible.
Michael: A little plug here. We're excited and we are working on the first major editing version draft manuscript that we have after the first draft. And so I think it's going to be really helpful. It's going to be really useful to a lot of people to you, our listeners, to people you want to share the message with and everything else as you're trying to explain Passion and Provision. And I had lunch with a friend this last week and we were talking about the fact that there are so many of us that are a part of this tribe but we haven't had words to use. And he was mentioning the fact that some people are in his organization, he's trying to communicate, because some people are calling it Passion and Provision. Some people are calling it Extreme Ownership, some people are calling it something else, because there's different books that have been written about this idea of running a business that is profitable and fulfilling.
Kathryn: Well. Yeah. And it's not like we're the only people who are talking about it. There are a lot of people who are starting to cotton on to the fact that there is this incredible value in not just for you as a leader, but as a company for you to really spend time focusing on organizational health. Because it is not just about making money because that is always going to be something that while it matters for the survival of your company in and of itself, the money is not going to provide the fulfillment that you probably were looking for when you started your company. Or when you moved into the leadership in your company. So, this whole concept of what does it look like to actually enjoy coming to work? To actually be like, "I like my job and I like the people I work with and I like our clients and I feel like we're making a contribution and the stuff we're doing matters and makes an impact."
Kathryn: So all of those things are part of this picture. And there's people talking about it from all sorts of angles, which is really fun, because it's not like we're the lone voice in the wilderness, but we just have our own framework. And so we talk about it and we talk about Passion and Provision. And so that's really fun.
Michael: Well, and I told them when we started shifting, as the book's coming out, shifting from calling it Passion and Provision to a Passion and Provision strategy, really important and significant there. Because he's been a listener of this podcast for a while and a great input-
Kathryn: And a former client, [crosstalk 00:03:10].
Michael: ... former client and a leader and different things like that. And he's taking over a firm. And so there's lots of players, lots of people in this firm. And he's realizing there's also people who are not excited about these changes. It's like, "I liked it when we didn't have to do anything. When we could have a plan where I didn't have to be engaged, I didn't have to have a lot of work. We didn't have to work hard at making this a place that was fulfilling."
Kathryn: Could be [inaudible 00:03:34]. Well, he does sort of have engineers and sometimes they'd like to be in corners by themselves and, you know, have pizza slid under the door or something.
Michael: Well, and he's basically saying it's not an option. And you have two options. You know, you can either get on board or leave. At some level, I mean, that's really kind of the way it is. And because if you're going to create a fulfilling culture, a profit, a Passion and Provision culture with profit and fulfillment, it takes work. This is not an easy thing. This is not for the faint at heart. But because I was reminded recently that you have to actually remember in this sense of you have to believe deeply that there's a treasure there to be found.
Kathryn: Yeah. Because it's not an overnight thing. It's a longterm, daily intentionality.
Michael: Yeah. And running business is difficult and it's rewarding, but there's challenges and you've got to be able to, and there's always going to be moments where there's thresholds of difficulty and if you don't have the stamina to get through it, you're going to give up, walk away or whatever.
Michael: And yeah, there's times when you need to walk away from something. It's inappropriate and that's the right thing, but more often than not, it's you have to stick it out and you have to believe it's worth sticking it out. You have to believe there's something on the other side.
Kathryn: So, there are practices that help that. And one of those is what we want to talk about today.
Michael: Okay, so let's switch onto our subject of gratitude.
Kathryn: Let me just shift him onto [inaudible 00:00:04:55].
Michael: Switch into the gratitude. There's so much going on right now. It's so exciting in this area and business people who are talking to us about what's going on and believing that this is important and passion. And the more we hear from you, our listeners, the more we're fueled because when we hear you say this is critical, you believe this is important. This is you are a tribe. But leadership is lonely. So one of the things that we're going to talk about or the main thing we're going to talk about today is this topic of gratitude. Gratitude is a key factor. I heard recently, pause, that-
Kathryn: He took a breath, that was good. He's going to turn red any second.
Michael: ... that ... you were talking without breathing a minute ago.
Kathryn: Totally fair.
Michael: Okay, so we were realizing recently, I heard this stat when I was thinking, now my train of thought is back on. 10% of running a business is what we know, and 10% is what we're doing, and 80% is our mindset. We've talked about this a little bit before on the podcast, but-
Kathryn: 80%.
Michael: ... 80%-
Kathryn: That's a big number.
Michael: ... is what people are saying. Well and you think about it, I mean, how much is about your attitude? How much is about the way you approach problems? How much is the way you, for instance, the way we're approaching the book, so all of you out there, our listeners, because you're going to catch, there's a video of this on YouTube too. So one of the things that's critical is dealing with your own limitations, your own struggles. I'm a bit dyslexic, it's not extreme, but it is an issue. And when I finally started admitting a couple of years ago, our Office Manager, who was a teacher for 10 years, studied brain science, started just openly laughing at me in the middle of a staff meeting.
Kathryn: I've been laughing at you for years.
Michael: Yes, well, it happens. Okay. So therefore she's like, "Yeah, I've known for a long time." Well, there's multiple things that are great gifts out of that struggle of what's called a challenge or a diagnosis or whatever. But one of the things that happens out of that, as many people know, is it's hard to read. And I've been really nervous about reading our manuscript, because we've got to read through it. And then read through it again. And when I start to get familiar with text, my eyes move, but my brain stops reading it. And I get real nervous. It's like I have to read a chapter or a paragraph four times just to kind of, "What did it say?" So I've been really kind of building up a little bit of apprehension realizing I need to change my attitude. I'm going to be fine, we're going to get through this, I'm going to kill it.
Michael: And whether it takes me a little bit extra time or not, I don't need to be worried about it. And I've been working myself up a little bit more than I need to and I just go, "Okay, it's an attitude." Again, 80% of the way we approach the world is what are we expecting when we get there? What are our expectations? How do we react to challenges? And a lot of that comes from our own inner stuff. And that's where gratitude, I mean, I don't think that's much of a rabbit trail. Gratitude comes from that pool of how's our internal mindset and are we framing ourselves in the middle of the day or in the morning to go, "How am I going to look it today?"
Kathryn: Yeah. Okay. So before we get to specifically gratitude within business, let's be a little bit more generic about gratitude. What it is, what it does for us. So, okay, dictionary definition, right? Got to have one. So it is simply defined as the quality of being thankful or a readiness to show appreciation for something or to return kindness. So just that sense of internally you are positioned and poised as a human being to be grateful, to be circular [inaudible 00:00:08:34], to be thankful and to be kind. Okay. So, that's kind of that basic concept. And I was perusing an article that was put out by Berkeley, so you know, nobody important. Cal Berkeley.
Michael: Not the city of Berkeley.
Kathryn: Not the city. So there's actually a website called Greatergood.berkeley.edu and there's a whole bunch of studies out there about all sorts of different things that are health and well-being related.
Michael: For those of you who are skeptical about research from Berkeley, Harvard and some of the major Midwest-
Kathryn: Universities.
Michael: ... universities have done research on this too, coming up with the same-
Kathryn: Are you saying people are biased against Californian institutions?
Michael: I'm just saying that Berkeley has gone out of its way to produce great, brilliant people and cause the rest of the world to be skeptical.
Kathryn: Okay, fair. I'm going to just not even engage that. I'm going to just tell you that it was a really good article. So the title of the article was, Is Gratitude Good For Your Health?
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: Okay? So I don't think anybody questions anymore. There's been enough studies, enough time, enough history to know that gratitude is good for your psychological well-being. Right.
Michael: I still think there are people who don't realize that.
Kathryn: Okay.
Michael: But that's okay. We don't need to make a total argument for it, but go ahead.
Kathryn: Yeah. Lots and lots of studies out there that people who are grateful human beings have better relationships. They have a little bit of an insulation or an antidote in some ways to depression. It's a good counter agent to depression, to suicidal thoughts, to some of the things that would completely stand in the way. So gratitude is this really, really solid place of practice if you want to have psychological health. Okay. So that piece established, the question they were asking is, you know, what are the studies and what has been proven with regard to gratitude's effect on your actual physical health?
Kathryn: And there's been all kinds of studies and they're not 100% conclusive, right, there are some that did studies where they had people practicing certain types of gratitude things for two or three weeks and there was no marked difference. But when people were doing things for 10 weeks or 12 weeks, fewer headaches, better sleep-
Michael: I mean, three or four weeks is not ... we know we can't even change a habit in three to four weeks.
Kathryn: Right. Right. Less stomach aches, you know, those kinds of things. So there's this growing body of work out there that's talking about the impact of gratitude on your physical well-being, not just your mental well-being. So, yes, it affects your mindset, but as it affects your mindset, that also affects your physiology. Right. Because we're tied together. So if we are mentally piece, if we're mentally sort of positioned from a position of gratitude, hope, all of those positive things, we're going to sleep better. We're not going to lay awake at night all anxious and freaked out. And then physiologically it just stairsteps from there.
Michael: Perfect.
Kathryn: So that was what the article was. And I really liked that, because it was like, yeah, there are some really solid research that would suggest that if you are not being intentional about how you practice gratitude, you should start.
Michael: Absolutely, start.
Kathryn: Right. And then we'll talk about some different ways you could do that towards the end of this podcast. But this practice of gratitude, really, really important for your physical and mental well-being.
Michael: Okay. So that's really true in so many places. And it's true for your business, because your mental attitude, and again, part of the Passion and Provision perspective that we have is that, well, you say it really well, you take your whole self to work.
Kathryn: You take your whole ... you don't actually get to leave any part at home, no matter how good you are at compartmentalizing.
Michael: And it just, it's a make. Yes, there's appropriateness, there's appropriateness in every part of life, you're not supposed to just spit and spew everything up that comes into your mind, or your heart, or your soul. At the same time-
Kathryn: It would be dangerous.
Michael: ... you want to make sure that you're walking with appropriate emotional intelligence, that you're engaging with people and yourself honestly, truly and appropriately for the situation. And there are certain situations, and running businesses, especially in California, but running businesses across the country as leaders now, we've got regular things that we have to think about that we should be thinking about all the time.
Michael: But we have to be really careful with legalities and all that. And we have to have that at least in our mind. We may or may not choose to follow all of the different things that the lawyers want us to do, but we have to be aware of it. We have to be aware of the risks and the challenges. So if we're going to break some of those rules, like actually hugging a client when they said it's okay to hug them, you know, and all that kind of stuff. You know, I mean-
Kathryn: Some of you are cringing. I hug my clients all the time.
Michael: Well and here's the deal. And clients are different, right? Because they're not on the payroll. They can't sue you. They can fire you, but they can't sue you like that.
Kathryn: I hug my employees too.
Michael: I know. As Patrick Lencioni said recently, "The fact is, is we have to love people. We have to love our employees." And there's appropriate ways to love and inappropriate ways to love, but lawyers want to get rid of, because of mitigating risks, they want to get rid of even love and affection and care [crosstalk 00:13:35]-
Kathryn: Yeah, they don't want you to do anything that even could possibly be even almost remotely, almost even just a smidge construed.
Michael: Which is sad because those types of things are driving us towards a negative perspective. It's the opposite. It's negativity. It's the opposite of gratitude. We've got to be careful of those things. It's like warning signs. You want to be careful of those things that can impinge on you being grateful and turn life into a complaining fest. Or I've got all these problems and everything else. It really frames your mind in a way that's difficult to solve problems. So thinking about those things and this gratitude can really impact business, impacts things with your employees.
Michael: So we talk about the five areas of management and those are, again, goal setting, and good communication, and trust, and accountability. The fifth one is public recognition. It's that idea of saying to people attaboy, attagirl, way to go, good job, and recognizing it in a sense where they know that you care about them, one, that specifically something's been recognized and whether it's a small thing like way they handled that problem today or cool way, the way you solved that was great. Or, well in addition to public recognition where they know, their peers know that from a leadership perspective and even from a peer perspective that the community respects them.
Michael: We all want to be, know that our work is purposeful and meaningful and is helpful. It's not help unless it's perceived itself as help and if we don't say in a community, you did that well, good job, way to go. We don't have that feedback. We also find it a really healthy sense of value when people respect our work, because we know it's helpful and we know we're having purpose and meaning.
Kathryn: Yeah, so we had a situation happen with a client a couple of weeks ago that they had a massive challenge, an internal PR challenge in one of their offices.
Michael: Yeah, something just happened that was really hard and difficult and-
Kathryn: And very public and very, yeah, just yucky. And we handle their social media and so a lot of interaction about how we do this, how we walk through it, how we navigate, how we help them, that kind of stuff. Just [inaudible 00:15:54] and that person who's the VP of Business Development, as we unrolled this thing is about 10 days into the crisis. She sent this email that basically said, it was just so surprising to me in one level. It said, "Thank you for loving us so well through this." And I was floored by that.
Michael: This is a company by, anyway, just so y'all know, this isn't a tiny company-
Kathryn: It's not a [inaudible 00:16:17].
Michael: ... it's not even a mid-sized company, this is a company of a thousand employees.
Kathryn: Yeah. And it was so profound to me. And really the major gratitude for that went to Jeannie on our staff because she's the one that was really helping craft. And I was interacting in it, but Jeannie was running with that thing.
Michael: Jeannie oversees our social media.
Kathryn: Right. And so-
Michael: And now our Project Management.
Kathryn: Yeah. So I was able to remember and then be able to acknowledge not just that that was said to Jeannie and well done, and thank you so much for being so great at what you do, but then to be able to share that with our staff. So it goes from the gratitude towards her directly from me, from the client, but then into the public recognition space at a Monday morning meeting that you weren't there yet when that happened.
Michael: Yeah, I know.
Kathryn: But yeah. But it was one of those moments where you go, "Okay, this could stay quiet and it would still be a good thing. But how much better is it if it's shared?"
Michael: Well, and there are so many different angles to that form of gratitude on public recognition because it's sharing it. But people say, "Oh, I don't want anybody to know and I don't want this." And like, look, we want our community and our peers to know we're competent at what we do so they can trust us. The only way to do that is to allow certain things. Trust is built also when we extend trust. So we have to give trust to others, and part of that is willing to be able to say, okay, you know, this false humility that gets in the way of gratitude sometimes and, "Oh, don't want anybody to know. I want to keep it all a secret." that's not good. And it's not fair to your teammates because your teammates want to know when you score. Because you're so involved in everything you do, even though, you know.
Michael: On a baseball team, you know, not everybody's playing the same position, everybody's got a different position, but they're also integral to each other that when the first baseman does something well, that the shortstop could pick up that ball and connect with one shot to first base and then it goes to second, you got a double play and everybody's just like super excited. That kind of stuff happens. So, when Jeannie does what she did for this client, everybody wins. And if you don't tell them, they don't get to experience it, it actually robs a sense of satisfaction in that too. And it robs them from being grateful for her and her role in the position on the team.
Michael: Again, we just keep coming back to this idea that gratitude is so critical in the performance of a team and when we go to the book, The Carrot Principle, those folks did a phenomenal job and the book's kind of dated now, I mean in our world, over 500,000 books a year come out. I think it might even be up to three quarters of a million are published every year. And so this book's probably eight or nine, 10 years old. Oh, it's an old book, but it's not an old book and it's great research. And they really-
Kathryn: The principles are the principles.
Michael: Right. And they tied directly, over a 10-year research study, the issues of this public recognition, this concept of gratitude for your employees, making sure that the community knows about it so that the community can be grateful also is directly tied to not just increased in business statistics, but exponential. They actually call this gratitude factor, which they talk about it as public recognition.
Kathryn: A catalyst, isn't it?
Michael: It's a catalyst.
Kathryn: It's a catalyst. Yeah.
Michael: Right. And they tell a great story in the beginning of the book, we've talked about it on this podcast before, but a catalyst in chemistry, which is the main place that word is used, is creates an exponential effect. And so all of a sudden it speeds up the results and it creates more. And so like, I think the best simplistic thing that most of us have done is many of us, when we were kids, we saw the volcano science experiment, right? You know you've got vinegar and then you've got baking soda.
Michael: And all of a sudden what you've got is you've got this fluid that you can mix water with. You can put it in your cooking, you can pickle cucumbers with it. Vinegar is an amazing thing. It does all these great things. It's a great cleaner, it's a natural cleaner. It cleans windows like a tablespoon or that in your window cleaner, makes them sparkle and takes away this-
Kathryn: That's your extra tip for the day. Thank you for joining us on the Village Podcast.
Michael: I mean, vinegar is an amazing thing. Nowhere in all of these, you mix it with water, you mix it with soap, nowhere does it do anything. I mean, do anything like crazy until you take baking soda and vinegar and you mix it together and all of a sudden you have this catalytic effect where it just goes [whoosh 00:20:58] and there's all this stuff. Mentos and Diet Coke.
Kathryn: Mentos and diet Coke.
Michael: Right? You put that in there, it's a catalytic effect and if you've ever seen those ... if you haven't seen the videos about the Mentos and the soda, you've got to go on YouTube and type in Mentos and soda, because that's the power. That's what we're talking about with gratitude. Gratitude is that you've got all these great ingredients, you've got everything you need in a business that's running healthy and right. Then you add this thing like vinegar or you add this thing like baking soda or you add this thing like Mentos into the soda-
Kathryn: Or in our illustration like gratitude and public recognition.
Michael: Absolutely. It just goes boom. And that's huge.
Kathryn: So it becomes exponential return on investment. Right. So you end up with, you get so much more than you expected. Right. So silly illustration. A bunch of years ago, it must have been 15 years ago, we had sent a, I want to say it was a $5 Starbucks card to a client of ours just to say, "We appreciate you. Thanks for being our client." $5 Starbucks card. Now, you have to understand, the person we sent this to was very well off. He could afford his own Starbucks.
Michael: Multimillionaire.
Kathryn: Yeah. I mean, he's not hurting for Starbucks. And yet somehow the fact that we thought and were kind enough to express our gratitude and to send him [inaudible 00:22:23] he would not stop talking about it. I mean, I got the feeling like he practically framed the Starbucks card. And it was just this bizarre, unexpected ROI on that for just in the sense of the connection and his belief that we were a great partner to work with simply because we said, "We appreciate you. We are grateful that you're a client." And I mean, it was just such a great thing to see that and to realize it isn't about the amount of the gift. It isn't about, you know, how big the issue is or whatever, it's just people don't say thank you enough. Isn't that gratitude? It's like, well, it's just business, so.
Michael: Okay, I just had a great one. All right. Okay. So I'm thinking, we're going to share this with everybody else-
Kathryn: He's been waiting for me to stop so he could share his.
Michael: No. I just like all of a sudden it just hit me because I've been, okay. So, I won't mention his name, but there's this person who has been on the podcast before, he's potentially going to do a blurb for our book, and he has everything he needs. He doesn't need anything else. I mean, like he can buy everything he needs. He's fine. He's looking at me when we're having lunch and he goes, "I hit my number." Right. So you're like, okay. So I'm trying to figure out how do you brainstorm for people like this client of ours.
Kathryn: Yeah, how do you say thank you?
Michael: All of a sudden. So this friend of ours has a big family. And all of a sudden I'm like, "Okay we could send a Starbucks card and then a note that says, 'I wanted to buy one trip. I know you don't need this, but I wanted to buy one trip for your entire family to Starbucks while you guys are traveling on the road.'" Because they drive a lot and they go with his mother. And so there's like seven of them. They fill up a car with this tribe and I'm like, "I know this won't do much, but I would like to buy one round at Starbucks while you're on the road for everybody in the car."
Kathryn: Nice.
Michael: I'm just thinking-
Kathryn: We could do that.
Michael: We could do that. Have fun with that.
Kathryn: It's a good idea.
Michael: And it's better than a bottle of booze or something like that.
Kathryn: Well, he might not think so.
Michael: Maybe not, but-
Kathryn: But his kids will be happier.
Michael: But yeah. It's like, and I want to touch his family like I want to go, because I want to say we care about you and we care about your family. I like that.
Kathryn: I'll write that down so we don't forget. Note to self.
Michael: Yeah, that's a great, okay. So we need to pivot in this conversation to if you're going to exhibit gratitude in your business and your life and you're going to start working on it, there's a couple of things you need to do. First of all, you need to start believing that it's a practice of yours and starting in the morning. I believe getting up in the morning and starting to practice gratitude is really important. That's one thing we do. You and I do it in different ways, but write it off in the morning for me. I usually start out with spending a few minutes every day in prayer. And I don't sit well.
Kathryn: Trust me on this.
Michael: And so, just so you know, for those of you who aren't going to sit and be still, I'm walking through my process as I'm showering and different things like that, I'm listening, I'm praying part of my prayer time every day is partially in the shower. As I wake up in the morning, I start to pray as I'm laying there because I want to start my day off with the right frame of mind. For me, part of that is prayer and being grateful to God for what I have. And then remembering to have a right attitude and framing my attitude. I do that right now for the last couple of years with the Lord's prayer, if that's helpful to anybody. And because there are key things in there that remind me to keep my mind focused and grateful in the right direction.
Michael: And then I'm grateful and I take time to think about what I'm grateful with you, my wife, our daughter-
Kathryn: You in front of me.
Michael: ... and just then I'm regularly practicing gratefulness on the way to work in the car. Not every day, but a lot. I think about our staff. I'm thankful, I choose to say I'm grateful for our company, I'm grateful for our customers, I'm grateful for our team and how amazing. And I walk through that. And then periodically you and I play the gratitude game.
Kathryn: Yeah. And sometimes we play it when I don't want to play.
Michael: Let's night we needed the gratitude game.
Kathryn: Last night, oh gosh. So yesterday was one of those days that started badly in terms of timing and an alarm not going off and my routine getting jacked up and I just never caught up [inaudible 00:26:44] ended all the way through like being 20 minutes late to a board meeting where I'm the chair. I mean it just was one thing after another yesterday, was just a train wreck of a day.
Michael: And of all the days you needed to play the gratitude game, last night you needed to.
Kathryn: I did, but I was hangry when I got home. It was 8:00. I hadn't had a snack. I was starving. I just was hangry.
Michael: And I fed you.
Kathryn: So Michael fed me and then he was like, "Okay-"
Michael: By the way, folks, I dealt with her real need first, her physical need first, I fed her and then I entered into the game.
Kathryn: Yeah, he started asking me about gratitude when I had broccoli in front of me. So, that was a good gift.
Michael: She likes broccoli.
Kathryn: I do like broccoli. So it was really funny because he's like, "Okay, what's one thing you're grateful for?" And I literally was like, "I'm just grateful this freaking day is over." Like that was the best I could do. "I am grateful I get to go to bed and try again tomorrow."
Michael: Yeah, absolutely.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: So sometimes it's not, you know, I didn't necessarily feel hyper grateful and as he kept going on, further and further, I was like, "Okay, fine. You win the gratitude game. Okay. You're being more genuine about it. I'm just glad to be alive."
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kathryn: But it's helpful. And then this morning I woke up laughing about that. I went to work out, I work out with my best friend, and I was telling her how my husband won the gratitude game last night because I just was so hangry.
Michael: It was good.
Kathryn: Yeah. So that's one practice that we have and I share that because part of what you need, and obviously not everyone's married to their business partner, but you need someone who's going to encourage you in gratitude. You need someone who's going to push you to be, "Okay. I know things are hard right now. Tell me what you're grateful for. Let's reframe."
Michael: And that's from a self-leadership perspective. You start creating around you people, whether they're at work or at home, actually, preferably in different parts of your life, that your training is you're training yourself to be in that, or you have people that are naturally there that you're just saying, "I want you to encourage me in this [inaudible 00:28:35]."
Kathryn: Yeah. And there've been different gratitude practices. So for me, I read a book probably five years ago called A Thousand Gifts, and out of that came a practice of taking this little journal and just numbering and writing one thing I'm grateful for and seeing how long it would take me to get to a thousand things. And it was not like, it wasn't super deep incredible stuff. It was things like, "I am grateful for Italian roast coffee and I am grateful for the fall colors on the trees." And sometimes they were profound, but often it's shifted my way of looking at the world so that I'd be driving down and instead of just going, "That's a pretty tree," I'd be like, "I am so grateful that I live in a place that has trees like that."
Michael: Yeah. Okay. So some people are going to say, "Yeah, those little things, they're like, they don't really count. Oh yeah, they're not big deal." Why is that not cheating? Being thankful for these little things that seem pretty mundane.
Kathryn: Because they shift your mindset towards an attitude of gratefulness. So the little things, actually noticing the little things positions me better to notice the big things.
Michael: I think it increases or tell me if you think this. It seems as though it increases our sensitivity to things to be grateful for.
Kathryn: Yeah, it attunes my mind, right.
Michael: It expands our ability. We can think about great things and little things. So we catch all these other things to be grateful for.
Kathryn: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: So, I'm a big journaler, but that was a really different practice for me. It wasn't just writing out stuff. It was literally one liners. I still have the little notebook. I made it to a thousand and then I kept going.
Michael: Nice. I remember that.
Kathryn: I didn't always do it every day and I still sometimes pull it back out and just start writing and listing stuff and it's just a great practice.
Michael: Yeah. So I think as we share these things and we kind of wrap up this episode just to just say, "Hey, you know what? We want you to, first of all, believe Passion and Provision is possible. And gratitude is one of the keys in our mindset to be there."
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: You raised your hand.
Kathryn: I did. I raised my hand.
Michael: Did you want to ... they can see you on [crosstalk 00:30:42].
Kathryn: [inaudible 00:30:43].
Michael: Yes, you're the blonde on the other side of the table.
Kathryn: So one of the things that I would encourage you to do, and if you have 300 employees, this might not be possible, but at least for the folks that are in your daily purview. Spend some time writing down what you're grateful for about that employee, or that business partner or whatever. Spend some time really trying to articulate it. And then once you've done that, begin to figure out the best way to communicate that to them.
Michael: At least one of them.
Kathryn: At least one of them. Start small if you're not used to doing this.
Michael: And do this regularly, it's a really good deal. And if you have a lot of employees, one of the things to try and do is see how many people, first of all, take care of all your direct reports. And then break out into the people that are their direct reports. And see if you can make sure you know who they are. Because as we talked about on the podcast recently, one of the keys to a miserable job is being unknown and being irrelevant. All right. [inaudible 00:31:48] another one, and gratitude helps people go, "Oh, you notice me? And I'm relevant."
Kathryn: And the more that you as the leader of the company do that, you're training your people underneath you to do that with the people underneath them. So it's just really, really critical skill.
Michael: Yeah, it's good. Okay. Well, we really appreciate you coming today and one of the things we would ask is would you please hit subscribe in iTunes, not iTunes, in Apple Podcasts because they've changed the name on us.
Kathryn: Because they've changed the name, yes.
Michael: And that helps us expand our reach and help more people know who we are and everything else.
Kathryn: And we'd be most grateful.
Michael: And we would be most grateful. We would appreciate that immensely. We also hope that if you have any comments, questions or anything else that you would put them in the comments on the page at habovillage.com on podcasts, on this podcast sheet page. And we just say thank you so much. We just really appreciate the fact that you take time out of your life to come and listen to us, whether it's in your car or walking or at any other point in your life. We are honored that we're a part of your journey and we appreciate you being a part of our journey as we try and reach 10,000 companies for Passion and Provision and realizing that many of you already have a desire for these core values. And our goal with Passion and Provision is to continue to give words and a community of encouragement to those principles and values so we can talk about them more and share those ideas more because we can change a huge amount of our community by creating Passion and Provision companies.
Michael: It changes lives. We've seen it over and over again, and it even saves businesses. We've heard those stories, so we want to thank you. Have a phenomenal day and many blessings on you. This is Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: For HaBO Village Podcast. Take care.
Kathryn: Bye.
