“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” -John F. Kennedy
Expressing gratitude is important. Two reasons: 1) good karma, and 2) you document your positive influences, which pushes you to keep growing and improving.
Unless you plan on living in a cave like Tom Hanks in Castaway, you’re part of the world, not a separate being. As a member of Earth, you inevitably get influenced by the positive people around you.
Being Grateful Benefits You
When you express gratitude for those positive influences, you’re writing a journal in a way. You write down the benefit you’ve gotten from a person.
An improved work ethic, a positive characteristic that you’re working on, a negative characteristic you’re shedding, seeing the world with an improved perspective… whatever personal development you’ve had from that influence, you’re concretely recording it.
When you express that gratitude, you see how you’ve grown. The specific thing that has helped you improve. That gives you a clear picture of what you need to do to keep growing. Plus: seeing your progress laid out in a journal or article motivates you to keep going.
And even on a directly beneficial level, expressing gratitude is good karma. Do good things, and good things will happen to you.
(Just don’t express gratitude expecting good things directly, since that’s not genuine gratitude and is tainted karma… wow, that’s a good song title, “Tainted Karma.”)
Some People I’m Grateful For
Since starting Lifebeat in October 2009, there are a handful of people who have positively influenced me and my site. In no particular order, here is who I’m grateful for as of January 2010…
Chris Guillebeau for inspiring me to be confident in my unconventional self and for being a remarkable website and small business for me to model after. Also, for sharing your process in the free 279 Days to Overnight Success guide that I followed to start growing Lifebeat.
Jonathan Mead for giving me clarity and direction by pushing me to analyze what I love to do and can get paid for with the amazing free ebook Zero Hour Workweek. And letting me guest write for your readers about breaking free of the sidewalks in life.
Nathan Hangen for pushing me to be more entrepreneurial (or rather, webrepreneurial) with Lifebeat. And letting me guest write for your readers about 3 steps to being remarkable. Get the 1st 2 years of Nathan’s remarkable writing on entrepreneurship, motivation, and life in his generous free ebook Claiming Your Destiny.
Tomas Stonkus for helping me find my unique voice and pointing out my writing strengths to focus on. I highly recommend taking advantage of Tom’s consulting service before everyone realizes his genius and he has to shut it down because of too many requests.
Henri Junttila for pushing my slow ass to write faster and opening my mind to being a paid freelance writer (and how it’s just ‘guest posting deluxe’). Henri’s awesomely following his passion and his free series Discover Your Passion in 5 Days can help you start doing the same.
Ramit Sethi for personally emailing me a helpful tip on my consulting service. And for forcing me to get into prospective clients’ heads: offer solutions specifically to people willing to pay, not just focus on features. Ramit’s article on how to turn your skills into services that people will pay for is one of the most useful freelancing/consulting free resources I’ve ever read.
Josh Hanagarne for letting me guest write on how to expertly balance work and life, Glen Stansberry for letting me guest write on Radiohead’s formula for unleashing your creative genius, and Mary Jaksch for letting me guest write on the U2 method of high-impact writing. And just all 3 of you (plus Jonathan and Nathan) in general for letting me share my ideas in guest posts on your awesome sites – showing me that I’m not crazy and maybe someone else might want to read what I have to say.
Note: In part two of this article here, I explore how to effectively express gratitude and thank the awesome commentators on this site.
The Importance of Being Grateful
Expressing gratitude brings good karma and documents your positive influences, showing you what you need to keep working on to grow and improve.
What positive influences have you had lately? Who are you grateful for?
__________
(Image: Kobato)
16 Comments
Oleg,
Thanks for the mention. I am extremely grateful for being listed.
As I tell you all the time, you are on your game and I think you are doing great things. You aren’t looking at the small game, which is what I like about what you’re doing. You’re also down to earth and authentic, which is a far cry from many people in this industry.
You are welcome on my blog any time.
Appreciate the nice words Nathan. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully grow and improve.
And thanks – I’d love to write on your site again. As soon as I have something unique for your readers, I’ll shoot you an email.
Great post Oleg. You are 100% right on the importance of gratitude and I think it was a really neat idea to share with us some fellow bloggers who you are thankful for. Congrats – and cheers to future success!
Good stuff, Oleg!
Your writing has come a long way in the short amount of time that I’ve been reading your blog. I want to know what Tomas told you that supercharged your progress!
Thanks for the shoutout as well!
Thanks Henri. One of the things Tom pointed out is my strength is simplifying more complex ideas into to-the-point statements. I was only doing that in certain parts of my articles, so I’m pushing my writing to be more to-the-point, freeing up the word count for more content and less rambling (another thing Tom mentioned: while I was letting my voice through, it was separate from the real content, so I should fuse the two).
Oleg, I’m not grateful for you whatsoever – because you didn’t give me a back link. If you happen to do so next week, maybe I’ll consider being grateful for you. At least “fake” grateful. (or is that called “fakeful”)
In any case, I won’t appear to be grateful unless you do something for me. My laundry needs to be folded. Do that and I’ll probably be grateful, but I don’t guarantee it. Maybe you won’t do a good job. Then I’ll be upset that in my attempt to show authentic gratefulness, I’ve made you out as an ungrateful S.O.B.
Being grateful is so complicated.
Jordan, I don’t think you understand what Oleg is doing nor the message he is putting out there. Being grateful doesn’t come with a price tag. You help because you want to, not because you want something in return. Sounds more like you are in the blackmail business…you do this for me and then I will do this for you. You just don’t get it my friend. To bad!
Oleg, you on the other hand do get it. Keep being grateful and doing what you do even though you will get the occasional Jordan’s of the world who just don’t get what it means. Their lose really.
Dean,
Jordan is a comedian. First rule of Jordan is to never take him seriously
I was just about to say that, Nathan. Apparently, I have to be even more exaggerative in my comments for the humor to be evident. ::faceslap::
Thanks for your comment and support Dean. I’ve read Jordan’s blog and comments before, and he wasn’t being serious here. He’s a comedian, and his style is wry/dry/sarcastic.
It just comes off as serious and douch-y to someone who hasn’t previously encountered Jordan’s stuff. (Although, true to Jordan’s style, he’ll reply and say he was serious
)
Well, that and he really is a douche
Jordan, how did you guess? I’m a MEAN laundry folder. World-renown, even.
Send me a package of your clothes and I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
Hey Oleg!
I am definitely excited to see my name on the list! Thank for your kind words
It just pushes me to do more and better. Expressing gratitude is a great thing as you show others your appreciation and tell them that you are doing a good job. It’s a win win situation.
Keep doing what you are doing. You will do great things. I know it
Good luck!
Tomas
I wouldn’t give Jordan a backlink now out of principle. He obviously doesn’t appreciate you and isn’t worthy of your links. Now myself, on the other hand….
This is a very good point and I think Tomas is bang on the money when he says that you can simply more complex points. I think there is a lot to be said for brevity and I’m hoping that I can use your improved writing to become more well known myself.
Maybe the the point where I get a link from someone bigger and better than I.
Keep up the great work, Oleg.
Ian
What positive influences have you had lately? Who are you grateful for?
Oleg this is going to ’sound’ so…. well…I don’t know….but anyways I have to say it! YOU my friend have had a huge positive influence on me lately.
Who am I grateful for?
David Risley for being a straight talking blogger therefore I follow his tweets….end up on his blog and read a guest post by Nathan Hangen. I love what I read and head to Nathan’s blog where I read a guest post by none other than you Oleg.
I’m grateful for Nathan having you guest post on his blog so I could connect with you. I read a few posts on your blog and cannot begin to tell you the influence you’ve had on me in a matter of days!
I’m wordy (I know you hadn’t noticed:)) so can’t begin to detail it all here but Oleg I’m forever grateful to you for giving me permission to be me.
You rock!
All we will try to be grateful of whatever things that we have and the person that is around us. We can be grateful to the basic things that we have around our life like food, water, etc.
When we start to think of that, we will be more appreciative of the things around us and we will have a feeling of gratitude. Who gets the gratitude is not as important as us own feeling of gratitude.
Try to look for these things that we can be grateful for so that we can always feel the joy of gratitude. It can even be someone that we are close to or person that has really influence us.
This will in turn slowly changes and trains our mind to have a positive attitude as we will have. When we have the joy of gratitude, the negative thinking will instantly be gone.