Gratitude is a mission-critical setting for the emotional ‘radar’.
The English word gratitude comes from the Latin word for ‘pleasing,’ i.e., how something impacted you positively. By training ourselves to recognize all the positive outcomes we experience day to day, month to month, year to year, we balance out our instinct for thinking only of the negative, only what risks we must mitigate.
I’m not bashing the negativity bias, by the way. Risk assessment and readiness are not negotiable. It’s what a former mentor of mine called “The Jerk Rule.”
The Jerk Rule states that any activity that you might do if it would go south and your loved ones are justified in calling you a jerk, you should not do that activity. Like skydiving the day before you sign your life insurance policy. Or…just…skydiving.
It’s a more explicit version of one of the most important rules I learned in seminary: Don’t Be Stupid.
But if we live in risk mitigation and fail to exercise the muscle of gratitude, we might stay quite safe, but over the long haul, we’ll miss just about every opportunity the good Lord places in front of our path.
Being great at risk mitigation without gratitude is like being a bodybuilder who only works the right side of his body. It’s asymmetry of strength.
I’d like to suggest an even deeper opportunity in how we understand gratitude.
The Hebrew word for gratitude is directly translated as ‘recognizing the good,’ i.e., fundamentally appreciating the positive impact something has on the world. This concept is not about how something benefits me, but rather appreciating that person’s, event’s, or thing’s essential power of contribution.
There is no end to coaches and experts telling us to connect with gratitude, develop a gratitude practice, and keep a gratitude journal.
And they are 100% correct! We must have symmetry of strength, cultivating not only the ability to mitigate risk but also the ability to see opportunity.
But I’d like to suggest we expand our gratitude practice to include training ourselves to recognize other people’s essential power of contribution.
A leader says thank you. A leader also trains him/herself to see how others can have an impact.
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