Latest / Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess / Gratitude: Lead from the Heart | Episode #369

Transcript

Gratitude: Lead from the Heart | Episode #369 · 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
  advisor. 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. Want to let you know that I've
• 1:00
  made a few changes to my show. The first change is that I want
• 1:06
  you to know a little bit more about me, and that you can now
• 1:10
  find my podcasts under the heading of management on some of our listening platforms.
• 1:15
  That's right management. So if you're just finding me and tuning in for the
• 1:22
  very first time, I want you to know that I'm a leader and an
• 1:26
  entrepreneur. In fact, I have founded or co founded not one, not
• 1:33
  two, but three successful businesses, or maybe I should say three successful organizations
• 1:41
  because one is a nonprofit and two are for profit businesses. Yes, that's
• 1:49
  right now. Before I became an entrepreneur, which was over twenty five years
• 1:56
  ago, now, I worked in corporate America for some really big companies like
• 2:00
  Xerox and Citibank. I also worked in higher education as an administrator and as
• 2:07
  a professor. As a matter of fact, I still do a little professing
• 2:13
  every now and then. I'm also a founding partner with the John Maxwell team,
• 2:19
  and I'm one of their faculty members as well, where I help all
• 2:23
  kinds of people leave their job, their job and start their own business.
• 2:30
  I help speakers and coaches and trainers hone and polish their skills as well.
• 2:37
  So if you're looking for a dynamic speaker to open or close an event,
• 2:42
  or if you need a caring and experienced coach or a trusted advisor or thought
• 2:46
  partner to help you with your business strategy or to develop the leaders in your
• 2:51
  organization, let's talk about how I can serve you and add value to you
• 2:57
  and your team. You can connect with me via LinkedIn or on Facebook.
• 3:04
  I'm LinkedIn. Just look me up. I'm doctor Gloria Jay Burgess at Facebook.
• 3:09
  You can find me at Facebook dot com forward slash dr for doctor Dr
• 3:15
  Gloria Burgess, pH D. Now, if you'd prefer to connect with me
• 3:22
  via email, use this email address. Just type in info. I NFO
• 3:29
  at Gloriaburgess dot com. All right, great, So again, I'm delighted
• 3:36
  and so very grateful that you joined me today. I sure hope you're enjoying
• 3:40
  a fabulous day and that you're having a fantastic week, because, you know
• 3:46
  what, and the grand song of the universe, life is very very short.
• 3:53
  It's short and sweet and very precious. So I hope you're making a
• 3:58
  difference in your own life, because you know what, when you do,
• 4:03
  you also make a difference in someone else's life. Now, a lot of
• 4:09
  folks really want to make their life count for something, but they don't know
• 4:13
  how, or it just seems so big and overwhelming. They don't know how
• 4:17
  or where to begin. So they ask me, doctor Gloria, how do
• 4:24
  you do that? How do you make your life count? Well, let
• 4:28
  me tell you it's very simple, very very simple. You make your life
• 4:33
  count day by day, step by step, smile by smile, every single
• 4:41
  day. Three sixty five twenty four seven. You make your life count by
• 4:48
  making real connections with people. Now, don't get me wrong. Social media
• 4:56
  is great for some things, but in your real every day do you want
• 5:01
  followers or do you want to be connected with real people? Do you want
• 5:08
  air friends or do you want real friends you can actually talk with and be
• 5:14
  with. Can I just tell you something, when life throws you a curve,
• 5:20
  you want people who know you and love you, not just people who
• 5:25
  friend you and like you. Right, I know you know what I'm talking
• 5:30
  about. I know that I'm talking to somebody out there. Okay, Now,
• 5:35
  you can make a huge difference in somebody's life today. How you can
• 5:41
  make a difference simply by being grateful, that's right, By being grateful,
• 5:47
  grateful for who you are, whose you are, and by being grateful that
• 5:54
  when you know whose you are, you can lead with a sense of steadiness
• 5:59
  and purpose. You can lead with courage and confidence. You can lead with
• 6:04
  mastery through any situation. Now I'm going to stop right here for just a
• 6:12
  minute. I know that some of you are wondering, is this doctor Gloria
• 6:17
  talking to me? Because you may not even think of yourself as a leader.
• 6:24
  Maybe you're a doctor or a nurse or teacher, or maybe, like
• 6:28
  me, you're an entrepreneur or an artist, or maybe you're a student in
• 6:32
  college or high school and you have no idea what you want to be or
• 6:38
  do after you graduate. Well, let me tell you this. It does
• 6:43
  not matter what you do in your professional life, and it doesn't matter what
• 6:48
  life stage you're in. You are a leader. Now, how can I
• 6:55
  say that with such clarity and conviction and confidence. Here's the thing. If
• 7:02
  you are participating in this wonderful adventure we call life, then guess what.
• 7:10
  You are a leader? Maybe just maybe you are the only person you're leading
• 7:15
  at the moment. But somebody has to be in charge, right and that's
• 7:19
  you. You are in charge of yourself, so you can make a difference
• 7:26
  in your own life, and you can also make a difference in someone else's
• 7:31
  life. When you know how to lead yourself, you can take that knowledge
• 7:36
  and transfer it. You can transfer those skills and competencies so you can lead
• 7:44
  in any circumstance. Now, today we are going to talk about how to
• 7:49
  do just that. Specifically, we're going to talk about leadership and gratitude.
• 7:59
  I am going to share with you about the mindset of a great leader.
• 8:07
  This mindset is summed up quite nicely in this wonderful quote from Max Deprie.
• 8:16
  Here's what he says. Deprie reminds us that the very first responsibility of a
• 8:22
  leader is to define reality, and the last responsibility of a leader. The
• 8:31
  last responsibility is to say thank you, and in between, he says,
• 8:39
  the leader is a servant. Now I'm going to repeat that. The first
• 8:45
  responsibility of a leader is to define reality, and the last responsibility is to
• 8:54
  say thank you, and in between, the leader is a servant. Now,
• 9:01
  let me unpack this just a bit. What Dupris is saying here is
• 9:07
  the first aspect in the mindset of a great leader, Okay, and that's
• 9:15
  what to define reality. Now, this simply means that you have to have
• 9:18
  a clear grasp of what's happening around you and within you, and you must
• 9:24
  have the ability to clearly communicate, to clearly articulate what's happening around you and
• 9:31
  within you. The second aspect in the mindset of a great leader is gratitude.
• 9:39
  Now, how many times have you heard me talk about gratitude on this
• 9:43
  show? Right, if you're my daughter, or one of my clients,
• 9:48
  or one of my students or my husband, you've heard me say any number
• 9:50
  of times that gratitude is one of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone.
• 10:00
  I'll say a little bit more about that later in the show. The
• 10:05
  third aspect of the mindset of a great leader is to be a servant.
• 10:11
  So in between defining reality and saying thank you, the leader is a servant.
• 10:16
  Now today I want to focus on that very special responsibility that we have
• 10:22
  as leaders, and that's saying thank you, the responsibility of expressing our gratitude.
• 10:31
  I've done quite a bit of research on gratitude, and as I said
• 10:33
  earlier, I'm constantly reminding my clients, my students, my family about the
• 10:39
  power of gratitude. Now, my sisters and I grew up steeped. I'm
• 10:46
  talking about steeped in learning about and practicing the power of counting our blessings,
• 10:54
  the power of love, the power of respecting others, the power of honoring
• 11:01
  our elders and everyone else in our personal village. Right now, all of
• 11:07
  these things, all of these practices are aspects of gratitude. In fact,
• 11:11
  one of my mentors refers to them as the long arms of gratitude. I
• 11:18
  just love that. Several years ago, I read an article that talked about
• 11:24
  Marshall Ramsey, an editorial cartoonist. Now, apparently, when he was a
• 11:28
  young boy, his mother would give him a pencil and a piece of paper,
• 11:33
  in order to keep him quiet during church service. She was an art
• 11:37
  teacher, and Ramsey must have learned a few things about art from her along
• 11:43
  the way to his two Pulitzer Prize nominations as a cartoonist. When he left
• 11:50
  his position as editorial cartoonist at the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, Ramsey
• 11:58
  actually express his gratitude for those two Pulitzer Prize nominations. More importantly, he
• 12:05
  named the various people who made a way for him to achieve that level of
• 12:11
  excellence along the way. But several years earlier, when he was asked to
• 12:18
  list what he was most grateful for, those nominations were not on the list.
• 12:26
  So what was What did he actually put on that list? Well,
• 12:30
  here we go. He was grateful for his very first job after college,
• 12:39
  which was as a high school janitor. He was grateful for a major recession
• 12:48
  because it compelled him to take a part time job. He was grateful for
• 12:54
  being diagnosed with cancer with melanoma. He was also grateful for the folks who
• 13:03
  didn't have his back, for the folks who didn't believe in him. Now,
• 13:09
  what do all of these things have in common, Well, they sound
• 13:13
  kind of like snags or bumps in the road, don't they? But you
• 13:18
  know what, when we hit bumps in the road, those bumps are actually
• 13:24
  very special moments. Why because they give us an opportunity to take a closer
• 13:30
  look at the bumps. That's right, because behind every bump there is a
• 13:39
  blessing. You see. In his first job out of college, he worked
• 13:43
  as a janitor, just like my dad. And because of that particular job,
• 13:48
  mister Ramsey met the woman he would later marry. How did that happen?
• 13:52
  Well, she was the daughter of a fellow janitor. Now how cool
• 13:56
  is that? You know, some folks when they lose their jobs, they
• 14:01
  just get grumpy. All of a sudden, they find they have all of
• 14:05
  this spare time on their hands, but instead of making use of that time,
• 14:09
  they just get grouchy. Well, not Ramsey. When he got laid
• 14:15
  off, he used his spare time to launch a second career, and when
• 14:20
  he received his diagnosis that he had cancer, he decided to reach out and
• 14:24
  help others. He actually decided to help raise awareness about melanoma. Now I
• 14:31
  just love that. Here he was with a cancer diagnosis and instead of having
• 14:35
  a pity party, well, he probably did have a pity party, but
• 14:39
  instead of dwelling in that place of pity, he was inspired to reach out
• 14:46
  to help save other people's lives. Now, we all encounter folks in our
• 14:54
  life who don't believe in us. Right. Sometimes it's our classmates, sometimes
• 14:58
  it's a teacher, sometimes it's people in our own family. But you know
• 15:03
  what, this guy didn't let those folks stand in his way. He was
• 15:09
  handed a bunch of lemons, right, but he knew how to make lemonade.
• 15:16
  Now I share this with you because as leaders, sometimes we get a
• 15:18
  bunch of lemons. Sometimes we hit a lot of bumps in the road.
• 15:24
  Sometimes it just seems like one thing after another crops up in our lives.
• 15:30
  And the best response is not to throw a pity party. Right, Well,
• 15:33
  we can throw one, but we can't wallow in pity. Our next
• 15:39
  best response is guess what that's right, it's gratitude. We must cultivate an
• 15:48
  attitude of gratitude, which means that we must be able to identify, pay
• 15:52
  attention to, and depreciate the negative forces, the negative people, the negative
• 15:58
  events in our lives so that we can be intentional to harvest what we learn
• 16:07
  and to reap the many benefits that come our way as a result of those
• 16:12
  negative experiences. Research shows that when you can be grateful rather than hateful about
• 16:22
  bad experiences, you can actually see the silver lining and see behind what appears
• 16:29
  to just be a big, fat, gloomy cloud. By being grateful instead
• 16:34
  of hateful, you can give your psychological and physical immune system a leg up.
• 16:41
  You can actually give it a boost right, And you can rewire your
• 16:48
  brain. In fact, you can alter your brain and your mindset so that
• 16:53
  gratitude can become a way of moving through the world. It can become a
• 16:59
  habit. Okay, it can become a practice, the way that you approach
• 17:04
  life. When I was a little girl, my parents insisted that I appreciate
• 17:12
  who I was, Okay, that I appreciate whose I was. That I
• 17:18
  appreciate my sisters, that I appreciate them, Okay, that I appreciate my
• 17:23
  teachers, my neighbors, my friends, even when we didn't see eye to
• 17:29
  eye, even when they said mean things to me, even when people or
• 17:33
  events became bumps in my road. They insisted because they knew, they knew
• 17:41
  it would transform me. Right, it would also make me stronger, more
• 17:48
  loving, more caring. They probably knew that they were equipping me for life
• 17:56
  and for leading, for leading myself and eventually the others. Nowaday's research is
• 18:03
  now documenting what my parents learn from their parents who learned it from their parents.
• 18:07
  Right, here's what I know, and here's what the research shows.
• 18:14
  Before you can count your bumps as blessings, you first have to learn how
• 18:19
  to be grateful for the bump. Okay, And here's the best way to
• 18:23
  do that. Instead of viewing the bump as a bump, reframe it.
• 18:30
  Reframe your bump as a blessing. Now that's a great practice, a great
• 18:37
  habit. I also like to share what you must do before you reframe.
• 18:44
  So this is the work before the work, right, And so what I
• 18:49
  want to tell you is that it's also helpful to look for the good in
• 18:55
  your life, Okay, as a practice as well. So look for the
• 19:00
  things that you're like, look for the good people, look for the good
• 19:02
  moments, and celebrate those. So when your life is going smoothly, when
• 19:10
  your life is going well, when you feel like you're on top of the
• 19:12
  world, that's what I'm talking about. Now, why is that helpful?
• 19:17
  Because when you practice looking for the positive, looking for the good, you're
• 19:22
  actually training yourself to see the gifts in your life, the blessings in your
• 19:29
  life. If you can see these gifts when times are good, you can
• 19:33
  more easily find them when your road gets bumpy. Makes sense, all right.
• 19:42
  In one of my books, this one's called Dare to Wear Your Soul
• 19:48
  on the Outside, I have an entire chapter just focused on gratitude right now.
• 19:55
  One of the people I'm grateful for, and one of the people I
• 19:59
  quote in my book, is doctor Richard Emmons. He is a pre eminent
• 20:04
  expert on gratitude. Along with other scholars, he tells us that keeping a
• 20:11
  gratitude journal is actually good for us. In fact, it's really good for
• 20:15
  you. Here are some of the many benefits for the people who keep a
• 20:19
  gratitude journal. These people are happier. They're healthier physically, mentally, emotionally,
• 20:29
  and spiritually. They're nicer, they're more optimistic. Guess what, they
• 20:34
  have more energy, they have less pain, they have a more positive attitude,
• 20:41
  and they sleep better. How cool is that. I can't tell you
• 20:47
  how many of my clients I encourage to keep gratitude journals, especially my coaching
• 20:52
  clients, especially my students. Right, all right, now, because your
• 20:57
  brain is wired to respond to threats first and foremost, you have to be
• 21:07
  very intentional about reprogramming yourself, reprogramming your brain so that gratitude becomes your go
• 21:14
  to response instead of the typical knee jerk response when you hit that inevitable bump
• 21:22
  in the road. Now, research tells us that we actually need to practice
• 21:26
  gratitude frequently and to practice it with a degree of emotional intensity. Right,
• 21:33
  Okay, we have to be on purpose. We have to be intentional about
• 21:37
  this. Now. I want you to try this recall or recreate or actually
• 21:44
  you know, immerse yourself in a direct experience of gratitude, and be sure
• 21:48
  that this experience lasts for at least to half a minute, okay, thirty
• 21:53
  seconds or more. All right, now, this could actually be an experience
• 21:59
  of a beautiful sunrise, or you could be remembering, okay, calling up
• 22:04
  that memory of beautiful sunrises that you have encountered. Right. One of my
• 22:11
  mentors lives on the Atlantic Ocean, and he sends out videos of beautiful sunrises.
• 22:17
  Okay, you can also hear these videos that he sends the soft sounds
• 22:21
  of the waves lapping against the shore. So it could be a sunrise,
• 22:26
  a sunset, or maybe it's a memory of you holding your son or your
• 22:30
  daughter for the very first time, or someone on your team who just made
• 22:36
  your day right. So, once you have whatever experience it is that you
• 22:41
  are grateful for, then I want you to feel that sense of gratitude in
• 22:47
  your body. Okay. I want you to feel, actually feel those feel
• 22:52
  good emotions that come from gratitude, and I want you to welcome them and
• 23:00
  on purpose, be intentional, to locate in your body that sense of gratitude
• 23:04
  somewhere specific in your body. Maybe it's running through your fingers or your chest,
• 23:11
  or your throat, or your head or your feet, okay. And
• 23:15
  then I just want you to revel, just rejoice and the positive emotions and
• 23:22
  that sensation that's running through your body. Okay. And then I want you
• 23:29
  to just let yourself lean into it, Okay, lean into that gratitude.
• 23:34
  In other words, let yourself go surrender, give it up, surrender yourself
• 23:41
  to gratitude. This will help the sensation and the felt memory of gratitude go
• 23:49
  deep, deep and deeper into your brain. Now some of you are probably
• 23:56
  saying, well, you know what I just can't can't do this gratitude thing.
• 24:00
  I just don't have anything or anyone to be grateful for. Well,
• 24:07
  let me tell you, if you have breath in your body, that is
• 24:11
  sufficient reason to be grateful. Can I hear an amen? And here's some
• 24:17
  more good news. Most of you know about the movie called It's a Wonderful
• 24:22
  Life Now. This is one of my favorites. If you don't know about
• 24:26
  it. It's a lovely, heartwarming story about a guy who comes to understand
• 24:33
  how horrible life would have been for all the people in his life if he
• 24:37
  had not been born, if he had not been part of their lives.
• 24:41
  Now, research actually tells us that when you really take a close look at
• 24:47
  the lessons you've learned, when you really search for that silver lining behind the
• 24:52
  dark clouds in your life, then you remember where you are in your life
• 24:57
  at this particular point, this moment in time, then the way that you
• 25:03
  see things actually begins to shift. In fact, remembering the trials, the
• 25:11
  tribulations, the suffering, the difficulties, the losses, the traumas helps us
• 25:17
  know that now that we're on the other side of those hardships, the bright
• 25:23
  spots happened because of the difficulty. Now, when you recall how hard your
• 25:33
  life once was and the road you traveled to be here. Now, the
• 25:37
  road you traveled and how far you have traveled, you actually set up a
• 25:42
  clear contrast in your mind. And this contrast becomes a wonderful soil for gratefulness
• 25:49
  to take root in and to blossom. Did you know that gratitude is actually
• 25:59
  one of the many aspects of resilience. Now, before we talked about the
• 26:03
  long arms of gratitude, while resilience is one of those arms, right,
• 26:10
  So that means that when the hard times set in, gratitude can help you
• 26:15
  bounce back better. Okay, that's what resilience is all about, being able
• 26:18
  to bounce back after stress or hardship or difficulty. And it also means that
• 26:25
  you'll be able to pinpoint the positive when life throws you a curveball. As
• 26:32
  an element of resilience, gratitude helps you recover from adversity. Now, earlier
• 26:40
  I mentioned that when you make gratitude a habit, it can become part of
• 26:44
  your physical and psychological immune system that will help you transform trauma into opportunity,
• 26:52
  pain into possibility, turning your victim mindset into a victorious mindset. So when
• 27:00
  something awful occurs in your life, I want you to stop, look and
• 27:06
  listen. Then ask yourself, what is the lesson in this for me?
• 27:14
  What's the silver lining here? What's the rainbow that I can find? Right?
• 27:18
  How can I turn these lemons into lemonade? In other words, how
• 27:23
  can I be grateful for this awful event or person or moment or circumstance.
• 27:29
  How can I be grateful for this adversity? And then how can I flip
• 27:33
  it and reframe it and be thankful for it? All? Right? If
• 27:42
  you learn something in the show today, be sure to tell somebody. I
• 27:48
  want you to share the wealth. Share it with your friends, your family,
• 27:52
  your coworkers so they can be lifted up and inspired and equipped just like
• 27:59
  you. You know what, one of the biggest gifts you can give to
• 28:03
  someone else is to give them the gift of you. It is to use
• 28:07
  your gifts, your talents, and your signature presence that exists nowhere else on
• 28:14
  the planet. So ask yourself, how will I use my leadership to reimagine
• 28:19
  my team, my law practice, my police force, my city council,
• 28:26
  my school building. How can I provide a lifeline to someone I may never
• 28:33
  know, so that you can make a difference in your own life and in
• 28:40
  the lives of others. As we continue to celebrate the majestic music of your
• 28:47
  life, I want to celebrate you for making your life count. Be sure
• 28:55
  to join me next week. Now, if you missed last week's show or
• 29:00
  any part of this week's show, you can listen to the recording at your
• 29:04
  convenience. You can even listen to it on the go. Check it out
• 29:08
  at iTunes, Audible, Alexa, SoundCloud, iHeart, tune in, spreak,
• 29:15
  Youer, dot Com, Talk Network Radio, and so many other places,
• 29:22
  or you can tune in right here at Talknetwork Radio That's www. Dot
• 29:30
  Talknetwork Radio dot com. Forward Slash hosts, Forward Slash Legacy Living. That's
• 29:40
  Talknetwork Radio dot com. Forward Slash hosts Forward Slash Legacy Living. You can
• 29:47
  learn more about my work and Legacy Living Make your life count by visiting the
• 29:52
  Gloria Burgess website. And as I've mentioned before, if you love to be
• 29:57
  inspired, you can actuallybscribe to my inspirations right on my website. Just scroll
• 30:03
  down a little bit look on the right sidebar until you see the place to
• 30:08
  add your email address to subscribe to my weekly inspirations. It's that simple.
• 30:15
  Each week you get a lovely photograph and a short quotation that inspires you.
• 30:21
  You can also find me on the TEDx site and listen to one of my
• 30:25
  ted Talks. Just type in my name to find me there. Okay,
• 30:30
  all right now, before I close today's show, I want to thank each
• 30:37
  of you for tuning in, for allowing me to share a bit about my
• 30:41
  journey with what legacy living is all about, not just living and learning,
• 30:47
  but living and learning and serving so that you make a difference in your own
• 30:52
  life and in the lives of others. It's about being on purpose every single
• 30:59
  day. Three sixty five twenty four to seven. Legacy living is a powerful
• 31:06
  way to make your life count. I'm your host, doctor Gloria. Gloria
• 31:12
  Burgess. Please join me again next time right here for another segment of legacy
• 31:19
  living. Make your life count. Don't just count the days in your life,
• 31:27
  Make the days in your life count. That's what legacy living is all
• 31:33
  about. Have a fantastic day, and remember, make the days in your
• 31:41
  life count. God bless you. That's our show today. I'm your host
• 32:00
  doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until
• 32:06
  then, don't just count the days in your life. Make the days in
• 32:12
  your life count. That's what legacy living is all about. Here's to you
• 32:17
  have a fantastic day and be sure to make it a yes kind of day.
• 32:23
  Remember to celebrate the music of your life. Make the days in your
• 32:32
  life count.