Why do YOU want to practice gratitude?
Playing TicTacToe might help you find an answer.
A lost photo triggers an insight.
“Why” is the fuzziest part of our thinking. It’s what we push aside as we jump into what we want to do and figure out how we’re going to get it done. Time management; project management, a thousand books all focus on that getting- it-done part … sometimes with a nod or maybe a chapter to that “why” thing.
"Why" is the glue that keeps us there (wherever our there is) when the rough times show up.
“Why” and I are having a tussle right now.
Lynne Snead and I had a wonderful year-and-a-half creating Gratitude Mojo. It has changed our lives, and we think it is a unique and powerful way to help others. Now, however, the hard part has arrived … the I don’t wanna part. Taking it into the world … a noisy, busy world that’s already overbooked, overwhelmed, overloaded. This is the part many, if not most, creators hate.
I’ve often thought of my creative life as something like a woman who gets pregnant, births a beautiful child, and then waves gaily as she walks out the door calling, “Have a nice life!”
This time, I feel a responsibility to break that pattern … and in order to break it, I have to create a new mindset about marketing, promotion, asking for attention, risking rejection. All of this depends on having a North Star of why? Why do I think this is important enough to do what I’d rather not do. After all, there are a multitude of new projects knocking at my door saying, “Come play. It will be fun and new!”
Why can’t I just wait for the world to beat a path to my door?
That whine is ridiculous, of course, but it doesn’t stop it from playing on an endless loop in my head. Fortunately, a dear friend who happens to be in the same spot with her recently completed young adult historical fiction trilogy, suggested that we team up and attack this issue together. As a first step, she insisted that we explore our “whys” and look at our personal values.
I, of course, just wanted to figure out what to do and how to do it and be on with it, but she wouldn’t budge until we dug deeper into why we were doing this. So I began to dig, and when I hit something that brought on tears, I knew I had found something important.
I’ve had the great good fortune of realizing a childhood dream of being a writer, although not in the way I had imagined. The first story I tried to write (in the fourth grade) was about a gondolier in Venice. As a dreamy kid in land-locked Kansas, I lacked a few details to bring that story alive. It would take a few more decades of living before a non-fiction proposal about mind mapping brought me a real book contract.
A few other non-fiction books followed before life changed significantly and writing became something I did in an attempt to figure out who I was and what I was doing. None of that writing needed to be published in anything more than my personal blog or small books for friends and family.
Then Gratitude Mojo was born, seeming to demand … and deserve … a bigger life. I was faced with the question of why I felt like I needed to respond to the challenge of taking it out to the world when all I really wanted to do was move on to the next creative project. Interestingly, this challenge took me back to Gratitude Mojo.
A big part of Lynne’s background was spent developing and teaching the project management courses for FranklinCovey. She is a big advocate of understanding our values and her determination to bring that work together with gratitude showed up in Gratitude Mojo in a simple exercise titled Values TicTacToe. It works much like most values exercises in that you winnow down a list of possible values until you wind up with a fixed number.
In the case of Values TicTacToe, the number is nine and they are divided into three categories which are arranged into the familiar board game grid for a convenient visual:
Cornerstone Values - the ones most foundational for your life. Guiding Values - the ones most important for guiding your actions and decisions. Key Growth Value - the one value which might lead to the most growth for you.
(NOTE: For all of you who are now using the Gratitude Mojo workbook/journal and would like to do this exercise for yourself, it starts on page 115.)
For me, my Key Growth Value is confidence. My tearful moment of insight revealed that while I have confidence in creating, I lack confidence in putting it out into the world to be judged and possibly rejected. What I needed was the courage (one of my Guiding Values, along with Gratitude) to step into a zone of discomfort and understand that this project is worthy of stepping out of … or maybe just expanding … my zone of confidence.
This brought me back to “why” … why I should not walk away from the task of promoting this work. I believe Gratitude Mojo can help people gain insight and appreciation for their own lives. I believe it’s my responsibility to do whatever I can to bring it to their attention.
In the early days of creating this work, as Lynne and I were both starting to see pretty remarkable shifts in our thinking, we joked about it (gratitude) being a way to heal the world. That has become the biggest “why” for me … I truly believe that gratitude can change the world and am a bit overwhelmed that we have been given the task of carrying this flag. I have resolved not to walk out the door on this project. It will not become a lost photo left behind.
If gratitude also turns out to be one of your values, we hope you’ll help carry this flag.
Good thought provoking content Joyce. The foundation to understanding our core guiding values helps address our ‘Why’ questions. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it’s hiding, but digging for that understanding usually leads us to deeper self-awareness and greater meaning in our lives. I know that I love learning and sharing things that make a positive difference in our lives. This journey into the deeper dive experience of gratitude was so life changing for me, for us, as we delved beyond the surface level, that sharing felt like an obvious responsibility. I also feel now like it was the universe letting me know I was going to need a little help with something big that I didn’t know about at the time, but having my black-belt in deep gratitude has helped me negotiate the trauma named Ian that has defined my life for the past month and will for quite awhile to come. When you can go through a cat 4 hurricane with family and pets, knowing you are the one who has to hold it together, and can still do so with gratitude in every moment of the experience, you know you have entered a realm that matters. This took work and practice. It doesn’t live at the surface level of gratitude 101. This is graduate level study that pays off in life changing ways of thinking. Why is because it matters and I can’t keep something so important to myself. ❤️
Recently I looked into the scientific literature and found some scientific papers at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=gratitude+parasympathetic&oq=gratitude+para which showed that the practice of gratitude shifts the balance of our Autonomic Nervous Systems from the Sympathetic Nervous System (fear, fight flight, ego) to a more active Parasympathetic state (peace, acceptance, humility, connection with others).
If you and I prefer to be calm and peaceful then expressing gratitude is likely to help us get there.
Can you and I be grateful for the glass that is half full rather than bemoaning the fact it is half empty?