Business Secrets Podcast Episode 22: How Gratitude Can Change Your Business

This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes

Hello and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat, founder of wanderlustworker.com, the premiere online destination for all things inspirational and transformational. Thank you so much for joining me again here today.

I’m still in Croatia, and it’s pretty warm here actually. I’ve kind of gotten used to the whole Celsius temperature thing. I’m not sure what part in the world you’re from. Whether you’re from the Fahrenheit world like me, or you’re from the Celsius world. But crazy thing is, us Americans – we do everything in kind of our own system. We’re one of the only countries in the world who have not adopted the metric system. Travelling around to other countries in the world – I’ve lived in Canada, and of course I’ve lived in Europe and a lot of other–

I’ve been to and traveled to a lot of other regions of the world, and it’s pretty much the metric system. America kind of has it’s own way of doing things. Even though I’m used to feet and inches and miles per hour and pounds, I’m now getting slightly used to the metric alternatives of those. So even though I still don’t know how tall I am in meters, and I still kind of can’t really figure out kilos – especially stone, that’s real strange to me. Stone is another form of weight. I just – yeah, that’s pretty perplexing to me.

So anyways, I’m still out here. Today what I wanted to talk to you guys about before I digress too much – is gratitude. In yesterday’s podcast episode, I talked a lot about how you could overcome setbacks. One of the things that I didn’t actually mention, which I wanted to talk about today – and I just thought about it, was gratitude. Because gratitude is really kind of a hallmark for life. If you are not grateful for what you have, then you just have to dig.

I wrote a book a long time ago talking about the silk merchant, sorry it was called, “The Silk Merchant.” It was the story of a guy named Pontas. He’s a silk merchant, he lived thousands of years ago. But in the prologue, I talked about– I talked about meeting an elderly man on the beach. It was during a time of like serious distress in my lifem so it kind of piggybacks off of that. So of you haven’t checked it out, it’s called, “Silk Merchant.” But you could probably see the prologue for free on Amazon.

If you read that prologue, you’ll notice that this elderly man met me on the beach when there was nobody else there. I was watching the setting sun. I sunk my feet into the sand, all the way up to my ankles. The sand was really warm. The sun was setting, and this was during the time that things collapsed in my life. Literally collapsed. I went on a bit of a soul searching journey, I guess you can call it.

I – this man sat like really close to me. Even though the beach was like nearly empty. He sat real close to me, and he said something to me that I will never forget. He said to me, “Your ship’s not going to come in here son. You have to go out there and swim to it.” It was an interesting way of actually starting a conversation with a person, but I was intrigued. Because here’s this old man, and literally he was – he was real tanned and weathered, like wrinkly, old skin. But you looked at him, he had these piercing eyes. It was like intelligence and light.

I don’t know if God put that person in front of me at that time for a specific reason. I believe that. But it was, it really was mind bending, I guess to say the least. What he kind of made me realize was all of us have something to be grateful for. We think – sometimes we think like we have nothing to be grateful for. But if you’ve ever heard the saying that if the whole world threw their problems into a pile, you would immediately take yours back. It’s totally true.

Because as much as we think that things might be bad in our lives, we are six feet above ground. We are alive. Even if we don’t – we won’t be alive tomorrow, we are alive right now in the here and now. We can listen, we can speak, we can reason, we can– We have logic. We have the alphabet, right? We have words. We have our minds, which are very, very powerful. A lot of us stop and think like we have nothing to be grateful for. But it’s funny that – when everything is literally taken away from you, you realize that you always have had something to be grateful for.

Like if you lose a certain person in your life – like a parent, a sibling, a child. You just want to go back to that time when you had that person in your life. Because you were so grateful. Like you wish like – when something is taken away from you, you realize how grateful you were for it. But why not be grateful for it now, and find other things to be grateful for? This isn’t just – you don’t just do this just because you think you should be doing it. Something shifts in your mind, right?

Now in business, we always think that if we just do so and so or if we just accomplish this – that we will have no more problems. I assure you, the problems will only get bigger. As you make more money, as your business grows and expands – your problems will also grow. It’s not about never having problems. Problems are a sign of life. Tony Robbins always says that. “Problems are a sign of life. Don’t think that you’re not going to have any problems.”

It’s to be grateful for everything, even your problems. That’s when true shifts of transformation occur, right? Be grateful for the problem. Be grateful for the failure. Be grateful for the mess up and the set back, and everything else. Because once you do that, I assure you – everything starts to shift, right? We have over 60,000 thoughts every single day without fail. You’re thinking all of the time, subconsciously you are thinking, and thinking and thinking. Yes, a lot of those thoughts are somewhat repetitive. But we are always thinking. We are always running things through our minds.

So you have to understand the power of your thoughts, and the power of actually being grateful. Gratitude is the key to living the life of your dreams. Because if you’re not grateful for what you have now, how are you going to be grateful for it tomorrow? Because what you have now, you once wished for, right? You once wished for all the things in your life. Even if you have a problem. I’m not talking about the problems. You wished for the things that you have in your life. The car, the house – whatever. You wished for it.

So if you can’t be grateful now, like how can you ever be grateful. Like can never ever, ever be grateful. So gratitude really does offer a shift. But in order to get there, you have to train your mind to be grateful. Because we all have negative self-talk, right? I do it too. I’m not saying that I am perfect. But as soon as I start to hear that negative self-talk in my mind, I start writing down what I’m grateful for – immediately. You should do the same thing. It’s just practice, right?

Then your mind starts thinking about what you’re grateful for, and it becomes habitual. But it doesn’t happen right away. Nothing ever does. But it’s truly, truly transformational. I assure that it’ll give you a shift in your mind. That shift will make you more geared towards abundance than scarcity. Because when we’re always worried, when we’re always concerned about what’s happening – not enough customers, the employees aren’t doing the right things. The business climate is going south. The market is decreasing, competitors are increasing. Blah, blah, blah.

We have scarcity mindsets, and that’s not the right mindset to be in. You have to have an abundance mindset, right? That comes with gratitude. So when we live in a state of abundance, that’s when the most incredible things start happening. But when we’re so worried and we’re living in a– When we’re living in scarcity, that’s when things go south, right? Like you don’t realize it, but they go south. So you have to move to abundance. The only way to move to abundance is to be grateful for what you have now.

Not, “I’m going to be grateful when.” Because what you have now, you wanted before. So you have to be grateful for it. Even if you have problems, be grateful for those problems. Those problems are going to help you into the future. It might not feel like it right now – the failures and the setbacks and all of that is going to build a foundation for the life that you really want to live.

I know that it sounds like very ra ra cheerleader-ish, but it’s so true. Because if you’ve ever made it out on the other side from massive pain, you’ve recovered and then your life kind of started going up on the upswing. Things were just jiving for you, and you had all this momentum. You know what it feels like to recover, right? But that can only really happen through gratitude. Something shifts inside of you. You have to be grateful.

So think about what you could be grateful – right now in your business. Write it all down. Even if it’s a problem, be grateful for it. Because if that problem helps you figure out something that will help you change the trajectory of your business into the future – then you should be grateful for it, right? Write it down, write down what you’re grateful for – all of it. It doesn’t matter. Because what you have today, you wanted before – and so many other people want right now. So be grateful for it.

I know that this sounds like pseudo-ish science type of thing, but I assure you that it works. Gratitude is the pathway to success. Believe it, right? That’s all I have for you today. I just wanted to drop in and talk to you guys about this, because it’s super, super important. So, again, just be grateful for what you have.

Until next time, don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. I will read and am going to be reading every single one of your comments. If you want to drop me a personal note, go to my website, wanderlustworker.com. Click on the “contact” tab, and send me a message. I will talk to you guys soon. Thanks so much, bye.