Latest / Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess / Gratitude: Your Superpower | Episode #349

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Gratitude: Your Superpower | Episode #349 · Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess

• 0:21
  Hello, and welcome to today's show, Legacy Living, Make Your Life Count.
• 0:28
  I'm your host, Doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess, international leadership expert and trusted
• 0:37
  adviser. Welcome to Legacy Living, Make Your Life Count. I'm delighted that
• 0:46
  you joined me today. I want to give a great big thank you and
• 0:51
  shout out to all of you listening today all around the world. I'm delighted
• 0:56
  and so grateful that you joined me. To let you know that I've made
• 1:00
  a few changes to my show. The first change is that I want you
• 1:06
  to know a little bit more about me, and that you can now find
• 1:10
  my podcasts under the heading of management on some of our listening platforms. That's
• 1:15
  right management. So if you're just finding me and tuning in for the very
• 1:22
  first time, I want you to know that I'm a leader and an entrepreneur.
• 1:27
  In fact, I have founded or co founded not one, not two,
• 1:33
  but three successful businesses, or maybe I should say three successful organizations because
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  one is a nonprofit and two are for profit businesses. Yes, that's right
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  now. Before I became an entrepreneur, which was over twenty five years ago,
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  now, I worked in corporate America for some really big companies like Xerox
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  and Citibank. I also worked in higher education as an administrator and as a
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  professor. As a matter of fact, I still do a little professing every
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  now and then. I'm also a founding partner with the John Maxwell team,
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  and I'm one of their faculty members as well, where I help all kinds
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  of people leave their job, their job and start their own business. I
• 2:30
  help speakers and coaches and trainers hone and polish their skills as well. So
• 2:38
  if you're looking for a dynamic speaker to open or close an event, or
• 2:42
  if you need a caring and experienced coach or a trusted adviser or thought partner
• 2:46
  to help you with your business strategy or to develop the leaders in your organization,
• 2:52
  let's talk about how I can serve you and add value to you and
• 2:58
  your team. You can connect with me via LinkedIn or on Facebook. On
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  LinkedIn, just look me up. I'm doctor Gloria Jay Burgess at Facebook.
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  You can find me at Facebook dot com forward slash dr for doctor Dr Gloria
• 3:16
  Burgess, pH D. Now, if you'd prefer to connect with me via
• 3:22
  email, use this email address. Just type in info I NFO at Gloria
• 3:30
  Burgess dot com. All right, great, So again, I'm delighted and
• 3:36
  so very grateful that you joined me today. I sure hope you're enjoying a
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  fabulous day and that you're having a fantastic week, because, you know what,
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  in the grand song of the universe, life is very very short.
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  It's short and sweet and very precious. So I hope you're making a difference
• 3:59
  in your own life, because you know what, when you do, you
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  also make a difference in someone else's life. Now, a lot of folks
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  really want to make their life count for something, but they don't know how,
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  or it just seems so big and overwhelming. They don't know how or
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  where to begin. So they ask me, doctor Gloria, how do you
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  do that? How do you make your life count? Well, let me
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  tell you it's very simple, very very simple. You make your life count
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  day by day, step by step, smile by smile, every single day.
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  Three sixty five twenty four seven. You make your life count by making
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  real connections with people. Now, don't get me wrong. Social media is
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  great for some things, but in your real, everyday life, do you
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  want followers or do you want to be connected with real people? Do you
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  want air friends or do you want real friends you can actually talk with and
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  be with. Can I just tell you something, when life throws you a
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  curve, you want people who know you and love you, not just people
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  who friend you and like you. Right, I know you know what I'm
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  talking about. I know that I'm talking to somebody out there. Okay,
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  Now, you can make a huge difference in somebody's life today. How you
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  can make a difference simply by being grateful, that's right, By being grateful,
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  grateful for who you are, whose you are, and by being grateful
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  that when you know whose you are, you can lead with a sense of
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  steadiness and purpose. You can leave with courage and confidence. You can lead
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  with mastery through any situation. Now I'm going to stop right here for just
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  a minute. I know that some of you are wondering, is this doctor
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  Gloria talking to me? Because you may not even think of yourself as a
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  leader. Maybe you're a doctor or nurse or teacher, or maybe like me,
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  you're an entrepreneur or an artist. Or maybe you're a student in college
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  or high school and you have no idea what you want to be or do
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  after you graduate. Well, let me tell you this. It does not
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  matter what you do in your professional life, and it doesn't matter what life
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  stage you're in. You are a leader. Now, how can I say
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  that with such clarity and conviction and confidence. Here's the thing. If you
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  are participating in this wonderful adventure we call life, then guess what you are?
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  Leader? Maybe just maybe you are the only person you're leading at the
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  moment. But somebody has to be in charge, right and that's you.
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  You are in charge of yourself, so you can make a difference in your
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  own life, and you can also make a difference in someone else's life.
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  When you know how to lead yourself, you can take that knowledge and transfer
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  it. You can transfer those skills and competencies so you can lead in any
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  circumstance. Now, today we are going to talk about how to do just
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  that. Specifically, we're going to talk about leadership and gratitude. I am
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  going to share with you about the mindset of a great leader. This mindset
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  is summed up quite nicely in this wonderful quote from Max Dpris. Here's what
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  he says. Dupris reminds us that the very first responsibility of a leader is
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  to define reality, and the last responsibility of a leader. The last responsibility
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  is to say thank you, and in between, he says, the leader
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  is a servant. Now I'm going to repeat that. The first responsibility of
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  a leader is to define reality, and the last responsibility is to say thank
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  you, and in between, the leader is a servant. Now, let
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  me unpack this just a bit. What deprisa saying here is the first aspect
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  in the mindset of a great leader, Okay, and that's what to define
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  reality. Now, this simply means that you have to have a clear grasp
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  of what's happening around you and within you, and you must have the ability
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  to clearly communicate, to clearly articulate what's happening around you and within you.
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  The second aspect in the mindset of a great leader is gratitude. Now,
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  how many times have you heard me talk about gratitude on this show? Right,
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  if you're my daughter, or one of my clients, or one of
• 9:48
  my students or my husband, you've heard me say any number of times that
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  gratitude is one of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone. I'll say
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  a little bit more about that later in the show. The third aspect of
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  the mindset of a great leader is to be a servant. So in between
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  defining reality and saying thank you, the leader is a servant. Now today
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  I want to focus on that very special responsibility that we have as leaders,
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  and that's saying thank you, the responsibility of expressing our gratitude. I've done
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  quite a bit of research on gratitude, and as I said earlier, I'm
• 10:35
  constantly reminding my clients, my students, my family about the power of gratitude.
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  Now, my sisters and I grew up steeped. I'm talking about steeped
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  in learning about and practicing the power of counting our blessings, the power of
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  love, the power of respecting others, the power of honoring our elders and
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  every one else in our personal village. Right now, all of these things,
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  all of these practices are aspects of gratitude. In fact, one of
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  my mentors refers to them as the long arms of gratitude. I just love
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  that. Several years ago, I read an article that talked about Marshal Ramsey,
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  an editorial cartoonist. Now, apparently, when he was a young boy,
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  his mother would give him a pencil and a piece of paper in order
• 11:33
  to keep him quiet during church service. She was an art teacher, and
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  Ramsey must have learned a few things about art from her along the way to
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  his two Pulitzer Prize nominations as a cartoonist. When he left his position as
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  editorial cartoonist at the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, Ramsey actually express his
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  gratitude for those two Pulitzer Prize nominations. More importantly, he named the various
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  people who made a way for him to achieve that level of excellence along the
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  way. But several years earlier, when he was asked to list what he
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  was most grateful for, those nominations were not on the list. So what
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  was What did he actually put on that list? Well, here we go.
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  He was grateful for his very first job after college, which was as
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  a high school janitor. He was grateful for a major recession because it compelled
• 12:50
  him to take a part time job. He was grateful for being diagnosed with
• 12:56
  cancer with melanoma. He was also grateful for the folks who didn't have his
• 13:03
  back, for the folks who didn't believe in him. Now, what do
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  all of these things have in common, Well, they sound kind of like
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  snags or bumps in the road, don't they. But you know what,
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  when we hit bumps in the road, those bumps are actually very special moments.
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  Why because they give us an opportunity to take a closer look at the
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  bumps. That's right, because behind every bump there is a blessing. You
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  see. In his first job out of college, he worked as a janitor,
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  just like my dad. And because of that particular job, mister Ramsey
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  met the woman he would later marry. How did that happen? Well,
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  she was the daughter of a fellow janitor. Now, how cool is that?
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  You know, some folks when they lose their jobs, they just get
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  grumpy. All of a sudden, they find they have all of this spare
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  time on their hands, but instead of making use of that time, they
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  just get grouchy. Well, not Ramsey. When he got laid off,
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  he used his spare time to launch a second career. And when he received
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  his diagnosis that he had cancer, he decided to reach out and help others.
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  He actually decided to help raise awareness about melanoma. Now I just love
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  that. Here he was with a cancer diagnosis and instead of having a pity
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  party, well he probably did have a pity party, but instead of dwelling
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  in that place of pity, he was inspired to reach out to help save
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  other people's lives. Now, we all encounter folks in our life who don't
• 14:54
  believe in us. Right. Sometimes it's our classmates, sometimes it's a teacher,
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  sometimes it's people in our own family. But you know what, this
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  guy didn't let those folks stand in his way. He was handed a bunch
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  of limons, right, but he knew how to make lemonade. Now I
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  share this with you because as leaders, sometimes we get a bunch of limons.
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  Sometimes we hit a lot of bumps in the road. Sometimes it just
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  seems like one thing after another crops up in our lives. And the best
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  response is not to throw a pity party. Right, Well, we can
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  throw one, but we can't wallow in pity. Our next best response is
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  guess what that's right, it's gratitude. We must cultivate an attitude of gratitude,
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  which means that we must be able to identify, pay attention to,
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  and depreciate the negative forces, the negative people, the negative event in our
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  lives so that we can be intentional to harvest what we learn and to reap
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  the many benefits that come our way as a result of those negative experiences.
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  Research shows that when you can be grateful rather than hateful about bad experiences,
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  you can actually see the silver lining and see behind what appears to just be
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  a big, fat, gloomy cloud. By being grateful instead of hateful,
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  you can give your psychological and physical immune system a leg up. You can
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  actually give it a boost right, And you can rewire your brain. In
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  fact, you can alter your brain and your mindset so that gratitude can become
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  a way of moving through the world. It can become a habit. Okay,
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  it can become a practice, the way that you approach life. When
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  I was a little girl, my parents insisted that I appreciate who I was,
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  Okay, that I appreciate whose I was. That I appreciate my sisters,
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  that I appreciate them, Okay, that I appreciate my teachers, my
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  neighbors, my friends, even when we didn't see eye to eye, even
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  when they said mean things to me, even when people or events became bumps
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  in my road. They insisted because they knew they knew it would transform me.
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  Right, it would also make me stronger, more loving, more caring.
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  They probably knew that they were equipping me for life and for leading,
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  for leading myself and eventually the others. Now, today's research is now documenting
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  what my parents learned from their parents who learned it from their parents. Right,
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  here's what I know, and here's what the research shows. Before you
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  can count your bumps as blessings, you first have to learn how to be
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  grateful for the bump. Okay, And here's the best way to do that.
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  Instead of viewing the bump as a bump, reframe it. Reframe your
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  bump as a blessing. Now that's a great practice, a great habit.
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  I also like to share what you must do before you reframe. So this
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  is the work before the work, right, And so what I want to
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  tell you is that it's also helpful to look for the good in your life.
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  Okay, as a practice as well. So look for the good things
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  and you're life. Look for the good people, look for the good moments
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  and celebrate those. So when your life is going smoothly, when your life
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  is going well, when you feel like you're on top of the world,
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  that's what I'm talking about. Now, why is that helpful? Because when
• 19:17
  you practice looking for the positive, looking for the good. You're actually training
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  yourself to see the gifts in your life, the blessings in your life.
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  If you can see these gifts when times are good, you can more easily
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  find them when your road gets bumpy. Makes sense, all right. In
• 19:42
  one of my books, this one's called Dare to Wear Your Soul on the
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  Outside, I have an entire chapter just focused on gratitude right now. One
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  of the people I'm grateful for, and one of the people I quote in
• 20:00
  my book, is doctor Richard Emmons. He is a pre eminent expert on
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  gratitude. Along with other scholars, he tells us that keeping a gratitude journal
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  is actually good for us. In fact, it's really good for you.
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  Here are some of the many benefits for the people who keep a gratitude journal.
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  These people are happier. They're healthier physically, mentally, emotionally, and
• 20:30
  spiritually. They're nicer, they're more optimistic. Guess what, they have more
• 20:34
  energy, they have less pain, they have a more positive attitude, and
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  they sleep better. How cool is that. I can't tell you how many
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  of my clients I encourage to keep gratitude journals, especially my coaching clients,
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  especially my students, right all right, now, because your brain is wired
• 20:59
  to respond to threats first and foremost, you have to be very intentional about
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  reprogramming yourself, reprogramming your brain so that gratitude becomes your go to response instead
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  of the typical knee jerk response when you hit that inevitable bump in the road.
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  Now, research tells us that we actually need to practice gratitude frequently and
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  to practice it with a degree of emotional intensity. Right, Okay, we
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  have to be on purpose. We have to be intentional about this. Now.
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  I want you to try this recall or recreate or actually you immerse yourself
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  in a direct experience of gratitude, and be sure that this experience lasts for
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  at least a half a minute, okay, thirty seconds or more. All
• 21:55
  right, now, this could actually be an experience of a beautiful sun or
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  you could be remembering, okay, calling up that memory of beautiful sunrises that
• 22:07
  you have encountered. Right. One of my mentors lives on the Atlantic Ocean,
• 22:12
  and he sends out videos of beautiful sunrises. Okay, you can also
• 22:18
  hear these videos that he sends. The soft sounds of the waves lapping against
• 22:23
  the shore. So it could be a sunrise, a sunset, or maybe
• 22:27
  it's a memory of you holding your son or your daughter for the very first
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  time, or someone on your team who just made your day right. So,
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  once you have whatever experience it is that you are grateful for, then
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  I want you to feel that sense of gratitude in your body. Okay.
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  I want you to feel, actually feel those feel good emotions that come from
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  gratitude, and I want you to welcome them and be on purpose, be
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  intentional, to locate in your body that sense of gratitude somewhere specific in your
• 23:07
  body. Maybe it's running through your fingers or your chest, or your throat,
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  or your head or your feet, Okay. And then I just want
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  you to revel, just rejoice and the positive emotions and that sensation that's running
• 23:23
  through your body. Okay. And then I want you to just let yourself
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  lean into it, Okay, lean into that gratitude. In other words,
• 23:36
  let yourself go surrender, give it up, surrender yourself to gratitude. This
• 23:44
  will help the sensation and the felt memory of gratitude go deep, deep and
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  deeper into your brain. Now, some of you are probably saying, well,
• 23:56
  you know what, I just can't. I can't do this gratitude thing.
• 24:00
  I just don't have anything or anyone to be grateful for. Well,
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  let me tell you, if you have breath in your body, that is
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  sufficient reason to be grateful. Can I hear an? Amen? And here's
• 24:17
  some more good news. Most of you know about the movie called It's a
• 24:22
  Wonderful Life Now. This is one of my favorites. If you don't know
• 24:26
  about it. It's a lovely, heartwarming story about a guy who comes to
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  understand how horrible life would have been for all the people in his life if
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  he had not been born, if he had not been part of their lives.
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  Now, research actually tells us that when you really take a close look
• 24:47
  at the lessons you've learned, when you really search for that silver lining behind
• 24:52
  the dark clouds in your life, then you remember where you are in your
• 24:57
  life at this particular point, this moment in time, then the way that
• 25:02
  you see things actually begins to shift. In fact, remembering the trials,
• 25:11
  the tribulations, the suffering, the difficulties, the losses, the traumas helps
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  us know that now that we were on the other side of those hardships,
• 25:22
  the bright spots happened because of the difficulty. Now, when you recall how
• 25:32
  hard your life once was and the road you traveled to be here, now,
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  the road you traveled and how far you have traveled, you actually set
• 25:41
  up a clear contrast in your mind. And this contrast becomes a wonderful soil
• 25:48
  for gratefulness to take root in and to blossom. Did you know that gratitude
• 25:57
  is actually one of the many aspects of resilience. Now, before we talked
• 26:02
  about the long arms of gratitude, while resilience is one of those arms,
• 26:07
  right, So that means that when the hard time set in, gratitude can
• 26:15
  help you bounce back better. Okay, that's what resilience is all about,
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  being able to bounce back after stress or hardship or difficulty. And it also
• 26:25
  means that you'll be able to pinpoint the positive when life throws you a curveball.
• 26:32
  As an element of resilience, gratitude helps you recover from adversity. Now,
• 26:40
  earlier I mentioned that when you make gratitude a habit, it can become
• 26:44
  part of your physical and psychological immune system that will help you transform trauma into
• 26:51
  opportunity, pain into possibility, turning your victim mindset into a victorious mindset.
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  So when something awful occurs in your life, I want you to stop,
• 27:04
  look and listen. Then ask yourself, what is the lesson in this for
• 27:11
  me? What's the silver lining here? What's the rainbow that I can find?
• 27:18
  Right? How can I turn these lemons into lemonade? In other words,
• 27:23
  how can I be grateful for this awful event or person or moment or
• 27:26
  circumstance. How can I be grateful for this adversity? And then how can
• 27:33
  I flip it and reframe it and be thankful for it? All? Right?
• 27:42
  If you learn something in the show today, be sure to tell somebody.
• 27:48
  I want you to share the wealth. Share it with your friends,
• 27:52
  your family, your co workers, so they can be lifted up and inspired
• 27:56
  and equipped just like you. You know what, one of the biggest gifts
• 28:03
  you can give to someone else is to give them the gift of you.
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  It is to use your gifts, your talents, and your signature presence that
• 28:11
  exists nowhere else on the planet. So ask yourself, how will I use
• 28:18
  my leadership to reimagine my team, my law practice, my police force,
• 28:25
  my city council, my school building. How can I provide a lifeline to
• 28:30
  someone I may never know, so that you can make a difference in your
• 28:37
  own life and in the lives of others. As we continue to celebrate the
• 28:45
  majestic music of your life, I want to celebrate you for making your life
• 28:52
  count. Be sure to join me next week. Now, if you missed
• 28:59
  last week's show or any part of this week's show, you can listen to
• 29:03
  the recording at your convenience. You can even listen to it on the go.
• 29:07
  Check it out at iTunes, Audible, Alexa, SoundCloud, iHeart,
• 29:14
  tune Inspriger dot com, Talk Network Radio, and so many other places,
• 29:22
  or you can tune in right here at Talk Network Radio That's www. Dot
• 29:30
  Talk Network Radio dot com. Forward Slash Hosts, Forward Slash Legacy Living.
• 29:38
  That's Talknetwork Radio dot com. Forward Slash Hosts Forward Slash Legacy Living. You
• 29:47
  can learn more about my work and Legacy Living Make your life count by visiting
• 29:52
  the Gloria Burgess website. And as I've mentioned before, if you love to
• 29:57
  be inspired, you can actually subs scribe to my inspirations right on my website.
• 30:03
  Just scroll down a little bit look on the right sidebar until you see
• 30:07
  the place to add your email address to subscribe to my weekly Inspirations. It's
• 30:14
  that simple. Each week you get a lovely photograph and a short quotation that
• 30:18
  inspires you. You can also find me on the ted x site and listen
• 30:23
  to one of my ted Talks. Just type in my name to find me
• 30:29
  there. Okay, all right now, before I close today's show, I
• 30:36
  want to thank each of you for tuning in, for allowing me to share
• 30:40
  a bit about my journey with what legacy living is all about, not just
• 30:45
  living and learning, but living and learning and serving so that you make a
• 30:52
  difference in your own life and in the lives of others. It's about being
• 30:56
  on purpose every single day. Three sixty five twenty four seven. Legacy living
• 31:03
  is a powerful way to make your life count. I'm your host, doctor
• 31:11
  Gloria. Gloria Burgess. Please join me again next time right here for another
• 31:18
  segment of legacy living. Make your life count. Don't just count the days
• 31:26
  in your life, Make the days in your life count. That's what legacy
• 31:32
  living is all about. Have a fantastic day, and remember, make the
• 31:38
  days in your life count. God bless you. That's our show today.
• 31:57
  I'm your host, Doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess, I hope you'll join me again
• 32:05
  next time. Until then, don't just count the days in your life.
• 32:09
  Make the days in your life count. That's what legacy living is all about.
• 32:16
  Here's to you have a fantastic day and be sure to make it a
• 32:22
  yes kind of day. Remember to celebrate the music of your life. Make
• 32:30
  the days in your life count.