SOAR! Newsletter: December 2008

The Holidays are a magical time of the year. The Thanksgiving holiday is a time to experience gratefulness for the abundance and blessings that are present in our life. The December holidays are a time to get in touch with great joy and a profound sense of generosity for who we are for others. Yet, in 2008, we contrast these holiday moods with a world experiencing economic turmoil, businesses in distress, and thousands of people losing their jobs. If we're not alert, we can easily fall into moods of resentment and resignation.

We live in a world where the internal and the external cohabitate in a symbiotic relationship. External conditions affect our moods and internal moods affect external behaviors. A difficult business environment can create internal feelings of despair and moods of hopelessness, which in turn can trigger external criticism and fault-finding. Similarly, putting our attention on what's right with people and what's going well in the world can help us rekindle internal feelings of optimism, hope, faith, and trust. This, in turn, helps us to express external gestures of acknowledgment, appreciation, and goodwill to others.

We alluded in our May 6 issue that acceptance is the secret to shifting out of moods of resignation or resentment. When we accept that which we assess to be unchangeable (such as events in the past), we shift from being resentful to feeling peaceful. Likewise, when we accept that possibilities exist in our life, we shift from being resigned to feeling ambitious and taking action. The practice that we suggested back in May is to catch ourselves putting our attention on what we don't want, and then shifting it to what we do want.

The Thanksgiving and December holidays are an invitation to go even further. For example, why only go as far as achieving feelings of peacefulness after shifting out of resentment? Can we reach higher and, if so, what's the benefit? To find out, we invite you to complete the following exercise. Begin by thinking of a situation where you feel some resentment. Then, write down all of the reasons why that situation or condition is such a gift in your life. Push yourself to write down as many reasons as possible. For instance, if you feel resentful about customers who threaten to buy from your competition unless you cut prices, then some reasons for why those customers are a great gift include:

1. They make you more resilient when dealing with future adversity.
2. They encourage you to become much more creative and innovative.
3. They jolt you out of complacency and into discovering more efficient and effective ways of doing things.
4. They improve your ability to relate with people under a wider range of conditions.
5. They help make "good times" more enjoyable, because we usually experience greater joy when we undergo and overcome great adversity.

In doing this exercise, we've found that people experience two tipping points. These tipping points vary from person to person, and from situation to situation, but they nevertheless occur with almost mathematical precision. As you list reasons why a challenging situation is such a gift in your life, you experience the first tipping point: going from resentment to acceptance and peacefulness. Now, if you continue listing reasons, then, at a certain point, you experience the second tipping point: going from peacefulness to gratefulness. This is not trivial. If moods are predispositions to action, then the actions taken from a mood of gratefulness are more far reaching than those taken from acceptance and peacefulness. A grateful individual can truly change the world for the better.

Wouldn't it be great to extend our feelings of gratefulness beyond the holidays and into the rest of the year? We suggest that grateful employees take more far-reaching actions that delight both customers and shareholders. Can we help you and your team discover and express what's right with yourselves and others? Please contact us at any time. We would love to hear from you.