Business Secrets Podcast Episode 34: Gratitude Is The Way

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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 premier online destination for all things inspirational and transformational.

Today I want to talk to you about being stuck in the house. No, but really. I’ve been stuck in the house because it’s been raining like cats and dogs here. I am in Budapest, yes that is a city. You probably don’t know where it is. It’s in Hungary, which is in Eastern Europe, by the way. It’s just been raining like crazy here.

If you can imagine with two toddlers, you just get stuck in the house. There aren’t that many things to do outdoors with two toddlers – or even indoors when it’s raining. Definitely not outdoors. But indoors, your options are really limited. It seems like the rain is clearing, at least for today. But there’s a few more days of rain coming. Not sure how your summer’s going. Hopefully – well it’s not really summer yet, but almost. Hopefully it’s going well.

But today I wanted to talk to you about something called gratitude. We oftentimes are really ungrateful for the things that we do have. I don’t know if you have heard of something called the Hedonic Treadmill? The Hedonic Treadmill is this concept that talks about where we’re on this constant and never-ending treadmill, where we always want things and we’re never sated. We’re never actually happy with what we have. We’re always constantly vying for something more.

Which is okay, because we are trying to thrive. But not at the expense of our happiness. A lot of people are unhappy because they are ungrateful. They are literally ungrateful for the things that they have in their lives today. When you are ungrateful, it’s really hard to push forward. It’s hard to grow your business. It’s hard to scale anything when you are so conscientious about the things that you want, as opposed to being grateful for the things you have while working for the things that you want.

I remember when I was a kid, maybe a teenager? I had a friend who bought me something. It said, “Instead of succeeding to be happy, happily succeed.” That essentially means that you should just be grateful while you are working for what you want.

I know that this is a podcast about growing your business. But literally your gratitude shapes the form of your business. It shapes the direction, the trajectory. It shapes the underlying mission statement. It shapes how your employees act. It shapes how your customers act. Because everything’s a reflection on you. Whatever energy you’re emanating out there is reflecting right back to you.

If you are constantly ungrateful for the things that you have – say the customers, I don’t know? The business partners, whatever it is. The employees, your office, your situation, your amount of leads and sales – anything like that. If you are ungrateful for it, it really – people really feel that. There’s absolutely just no way that you can push forward when you’re ungrateful.

I know that in my life – when things started to go really, really well – I almost was expecting it, and I was just ungrateful for it. I misused a lot of things. I misused my own money. I didn’t give it the respect that it deserved. I didn’t give people around me the respect that they deserved.

Having a lot of money will kind of do that to you sometimes, especially when it comes quickly. They call it “Sudden Wealth Syndrome.” If you’ve ever experienced a sudden windfall of cash. Like you won a lottery or you claimed an inheritance or something like that. It’s called the “Sudden Wealth Syndrome.” It’s like you don’t know what to do with it.

You start acting in ways that you don’t normally behave. Ultimately, you become ungrateful for what you have. Now I don’t want to say that about everybody, but a large portion of the population is ungrateful when things come very quickly. Not that they weren’t earned, but they were just earned too quickly. I guess no pun intended there.

Gratitude really is the pathway to pushing forward. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. If you’re doing millions and millions of dollars per month. If you are doing $100 a year – whatever it is, in your business or in your entrepreneurial pursuits – you have to be grateful. Because it’s really going to be that gratitude that’s going to take you to the next level in life.

If you’re not grateful, it just is going to backfire, I assure you. Gratitude really is the path. It’s the path to growing and scaling to any size of business. It doesn’t matter if you are running a six figure business, if you’re running a seven, eight, nine figure business. Gratitude is the path. It will help you to increase your sales, your leads, your overall sense of happiness. Because really at the end of the day, business revolves around you – the business secret. This is the secret to business, it’s really about you – the entrepreneur at the center of the activity, at the center of the storm.

Finding ways to be grateful every single day, that really is the key. In my life, what I have found is that if I sit down every single day, twice a day – once when I wake up, and once before I go to sleep. I start jotting down what I’m grateful for, or reading off what I’ve already written down. I write it down in a smartphone app, so I just take notes on my iPhone and that’s it. Everything is in there, and I come back and I re-read it.

I recite those things to myself twice a day, but I used to be in the habit of actually writing them every single time, so when I woke up and before I went to sleep. Because by actually writing them instead of reading them, it just becomes more ingrained – the act of actually writing it down while you’re thinking about it engrains something more into your mind. I’d heavily suggest that by the way for goals. If you have specific goals, I would suggest re-writing and re-writing them. Both when you wake up and when you go to sleep.

This is definitely a great way to grow and scale your business, as strange as it might sound. Once you become grateful – what you have, even the problems. Once I started becoming grateful for the problems that I had, things really started to shift. Because, don’t think for a moment that you’re going to make more money and your problems are going to go away. I mean seriously more money, more problems. You’ve probably heard that song before. But it’s so true.

The more money you make, the more problems you’re going to have. They’re just going to get bigger. They’re just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. As you grow, and as you scale – you’re going to come across bigger problems. Don’t expect the problems to go away, just be grateful for them. Because years and years ago, you probably would’ve wished for them. Everything that you have in your life today was once a wish. It’s once what you dreamed about, and you do have it now.

You have to be grateful for it, even for the problems. Life doesn’t always go according to plan. Things are going to get messed up. You have to be grateful. For me, the pathway to gratitude is through God. Is my faith in God, and my belief in God – and that there’s a reason why I’m being taken on this journey.

For you, you have to be grateful. Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha or whatever it is – that spiritual oneness that binds us all. Just be grateful. Spend the time, take the time to actually write down everything that you’re grateful for. If you sit there and you say, “I have nothing to be grateful for,” then shame on you. Because you’re not searching deeply enough.

You can listen to the words that I’m saying. You can reason, you could logic. You know the Alphabet. The spoken, the written language. You have your faculties, your mental faculties with you. You are six feet above ground. That’s saying more than for a lot of other people right now. There’s seven billion souls on this earth. So many of them are dying every single day and new souls are being born.

We forget about everything. Because we’re so focused on ourselves, but we forget about the entire world and then this entire universe that we’re in – and potentially the multi-verse that we’re in. Just appreciate what you have. Because honestly you are here for moment. That’s it. We are just a blip on this radar of time. Then eventually we’re gone. We just vanish. Our soul just leaves. Leaves the physical body. Then our time here on earth is done and we cannot come back.

If you think about that for a moment. If you think about how temporary things are in life, and if you just stop and take a moment and just be grateful for everything that you have. An extraordinary shift will occur in your mind. I don’t mean like be fake grateful. There’s a difference between being really grateful and having fake gratitude.

I’m talking about being really, really grateful. Start asking yourself different questions, higher quality questions. If you ask yourself a bad question, you’re going to get a bad response. You have to reframe the question. There are tons of different ways to do that. You can look it up online. But my point is, just be grateful for what you have. Because it could be gone in a moment.

Life is very temporary, so we have to be grateful. Gratitude is the path. It literally is the path. It doesn’t matter what you want. Any goal that you want in life – the surest, best way to get there is – number one, to be grateful. Of course there are other things that you have to do. You can’t just be grateful and wish for good things to happen.

But gratitude really is the key. Because once you’re sated, and once you’re grateful – once you get off this Hedonic Treadmill, then you will be so happy and you will just – you will be driven by your purpose, by your mission. Something else just takes over you. It’s an extraordinary experience, and it’s an extraordinary feeling when you have true gratitude.

I challenge you today to start being grateful. Be grateful if you have two arms, if you have fingers, if you have a heart beating in your chest. Be grateful for those things. Find things to write down to be grateful for. Because, do you realize you are being kept alive by the organs in your body? They are working non-stop for you, when you sleep even.

We forget about those things. Don’t forget to be grateful, because the things that you have can also be gone. If you’re not grateful for today, you’re going to look back when those things are gone, and you’re going to be like, “Man, I wish I was grateful for those things.:” This is the path to literally, to success. I don’t care about what endeavour it is – business, personal life – anything.

Be grateful for it. Be grateful for the opportunities and the challenges, the problems – everything. It doesn’t matter what they are. They are there to serve you. They are not there to hinder you. Once you understand that, and once you appreciate that – everything will change, I assure you.

That’s what I have to say for you today. I hope that you got some value out of this, I truly do. Don’t forget to like, comment and share and subscribe on iTunes. I greatly appreciate it, I read all your comments. Until next time, I will speak to you guys soon.