Increased gratitude is essential for lifetime growth. Only a small percentage of people are continually successful over the long run. These outstanding few recognize that every success comes through the assistance of many other people—and they are continually grateful for this support. Conversely, many people whose success stops at some point are in that position because they have cut themselves off from everyone who has helped them. They view themselves as the sole source of their achievements. As they become more self-centered and isolated, they lose their creativity and ability to succeed. Continually acknowledge others’ contributions, and you will automatically create room in your mind and in the world for much greater success. You will be motivated to achieve even more for those who have helped you. Focus on appreciating and thanking others, and the conditions will always grow to support your increasing success.
Everyone has his or her own idea of what success means. Some people measure success by what they have in their lives, which may include material possessions or circumstances, and also more esoteric things— qualities like love, wisdom, and life skills; particular accomplishments; certain kinds of relationships; and a particular quality of life. The trouble is, it’s possible to attain all these things and still not be happy. Usually, this happens when people reach their idea of success, think they’ve “arrived,” and stop growing. When the enjoyment and energy created by the growth process itself subside, there’s a hole, despite all the trappings of success. For the person committed to lifetime growth, success is a process, not a destination. Living a successful life becomes a matter of constantly growing. Gratitude makes constant growth a given.
Gratitude is the greatest guarantee of continual successful interaction with the world over an entire lifetime. This is because all of our accomplishments and capabilities are made possible by the talents and contributions of others. Just look around you right now if you need proof. Look at everything in your environment that was created by others: the tools you use, the food you ate earlier, the furniture you’re sitting on, the paper this book was printed on. It’s almost inconceivable how many people, how much ingenuity, and how much effort were required to create the situation you’re in right now. No success happens without the right combination of elements and circumstances aligning, whether you believe it’s by luck, fate, design, or destiny.
We are taught to thank someone when he or she does something for us, but there is much more in the world to be grateful for. We can be “proactively” grateful by appreciating more about the world we live in—the people we know and don’t know, everything that creates the environment in which we are able to grow and live productive lives. What we appreciate appreciates. We see the value in people and things through proactive gratitude. Once we see this value, we naturally treat these people and things with greater respect. People want to work with people who appreciate them. Resources are drawn to where they are valued most. The world responds to gratitude by making more of everything we appreciate available to us.
It took years for Dan to convince Tony and Mary Miller that the way to address the industrywide problem with staff turnover affecting their successful janitorial business was to give the cleaners more time off. It seemed so counterintuitive and went completely against how things were done. Yet finally Tony relented and tried an experiment, giving them an unprecedented three weeks off. Immediately, things began to change. The turnover rate of 300 percent declined dramatically. People stayed, and as they stayed longer, they got better at working in teams and started to produce better results in shorter times. It was then that Tony and Mary knew they were on to something. They realized that by appreciating and responding to the broader needs of their workers, who were almost exclusively new immigrants, they could transform the nature of their business and do some good in the world, too.
New immigrants don’t get as much real time off as other people do. Their challenges with the language barrier and with having to figure out how things work differently in their new country mean that once the necessities of life are taken care of, there often isn’t much time left for leisure. Giving employees more free time was a way of proactively acknowledging this difficulty and saying, “We appreciate your challenges and the courage you’re demonstrating by starting a new life in a new country.” This is proactive gratitude: it does not say “Thank you because you’ve done something for us,” but rather expresses the broader message, “We’re grateful that there are people who want to be cleaners, and we appreciate these immigrants’ value as people with courage and hopes and dreams for a better future.”
Tony and Mary began offering English lessons and then created a program that would allow cleaners to eventually buy their own homes. These kinds of benefits were unheard of in the industry. Though the Millers had no guarantee that what they were doing would generate better results or that the cleaners would respond, they took a chance and did it anyway—and their staff did respond. Many started referring their relatives. Turnover continued to drop and productivity continued to improve. Word spread among the immigrant community of this company that treated its employees like people with dreams and futures and not like disposable labor.
Soon Tony and Mary’s problem became the difficulty of explaining how they were able to legitimately price their services so well as they underbid competitors for contracts. It was hard for prospective clients to understand how the Millers’ team could be so much more efficient than those of other cleaning companies. The answer, in a nutshell, was appreciation of their employees, which allowed them to create a process for cleaning buildings that no other company could compete with. Not only did it transform the lives of their cleaners, but it also transformed Tony and Mary’s understanding of how to approach business and blew wide open their perceptions of what was possible, allowing them to envision a much bigger future.
Here’s a quick exercise to try that proves how gratitude can change your outlook. Pick any person you know, and ask yourself, “What do I appreciate about this person?” Write down everything you can think of. Try to come up with at least ten things. Get creative if necessary. Then observe how your attitude toward that person has changed. If you want to take it a step further, let the person know what you’re grateful for, and see what his or her reaction is.
Pablo Neruda once wrote a book of poetry called Odes to Common Things. Reading through the poems— about a salt shaker, a chair, a can opener—gives one a completely new sense of how even the most ordinary objects play meaningful roles in our lives. We can find this meaning if we look for it; and in the process we grow, and we increase our connection to those things. The same is true of people.
The more successful you become, the more important it is to practice proactive gratitude. With gratitude come three prime ingredients for lifetime growth: connectedness, in that you see yourself as part of something larger; commitment, in that you want to contribute to that larger reality because you see the value of the contributions that other people and things are making; and humility, in that you see yourself as a unique part of the world around you, but not the most important part. When you’re connected, committed, and humble, there’s always more to learn, and you’re open to learn from anything and anyone who might have something to teach you.
Gratitude, by its very nature, also automatically works to eliminate three mental characteristics that most undermine individual success in an interactive world: isolation, egotism, and arrogance. People who isolate themselves are cut off from crucial knowledge, resources, and capabilities that others can provide. People who are egotistical continually destroy the goodwill and support of others. And people who are arrogant increase the opposition and hostility of other people. By cultivating gratitude, we can immunize ourselves against all three of these threats to growth and continued success.
Write down what you’re grateful for. A common, and always effective, way to focus your attitude on gratitude is to write down five or ten things you’re grateful for every day. You can practice proactive, creative gratitude when you do this and include people, events, and circumstances you just appreciate for their own sake, as well as those that have directly benefited you in some way.
Express your gratitude! The late Dan Taylor, a highly successful entrepreneur and longtime client and coach in The Strategic Coach Program, ended every meeting and every encounter with our team by expressing his gratitude for the opportunity in a heartfelt way. As a result, people loved working with him and always felt appreciated and valued in the process. Expressed gratitude almost always has a ripple effect.
Make it about them. People like to be appreciated in different ways. If you’re appreciating a particular individual, doing it in a way that’s meaningful to that person will always land better. Some people prefer not to have attention drawn to themselves and may prefer a more private form of appreciation, like a thank-you card or a gesture or gift that has particular meaning to them. Others enjoy more public recognition. If you don’t know someone well enough to know how to best appreciate that person, you can ask someone who does. Often an assistant or a friend will know what the person likes and how they might appreciate being thanked. For one person it might be a nice bottle of wine; for another, a donation to a favorite charity—in their name if they like recognition, or anonymously if they’re the type who likes to keep things more private. You get the idea.