One of the most important components to business, relationships, healthcare, just about everything in life, is trust. Having trust is so valuable because it allows you to collaborate in a way that frees up your time and energy to focus on other things. But trust is pretty unconventional in how it exists, it’s not something you can acquire in massive amounts all at once, it is slowly built over time. It’s the culmination of many instances of trust - Consistent, dependable, and reliabiable behavior that enables a deep and genuine trust to form.

As stated in the book “Conscious Capitalism”, there are two overlooked elements of trust. The first is reciprocity. You will not be trusted unless you can trust others, so just like so many things in life you need to be the change you wish to see. The second is transparency. The more things are out in the open and accessible to others, the better you demonstrate that there’s nothing to hide. Being vulnerable and transparent allows you to be an authentic person whose intentions are trustworthy because they are on full display.

Unfortunately, as slow and difficult as it is to cultivate trust, it can be taken away in a moment. Trust is very sensitive in that way, and before taking any actions that might jeopardize the trust you have grown with someone, be sure to think through the consequences and even over-communicate to avoid creating conflict.

Be slow and deliberate about building trust through reciprocity and transparency, and hold onto that trust tightly when you’ve earned it.

The first time I heard this expression it really stood out to me. What you appreciate, appreciates. There’s two different definitions for appreciate that are important to breakdown before going further. The first definition is the traditional one - To appreciate is to be thankful or grateful for the presence of something in your life. The second definition is more unique - To appreciate is to rise in value or price. So, to bunch those two definitions together - What you are thankful for rises in value.

I think it’s no coincidence that this word has these two meanings because it is a law of the universe, and I can’t emphasize enough, what you choose to be grateful for becomes more evident and prevalent in your life.

With the acknowledgment of gratitude you assign that thing to be more valuable in your life. If that thing becomes a priority and engrains deeply in your belief system, you’ll start engaging in behaviors consistent with that belief. If you start appreciating your family more, you’ll find that you’re starting to act in ways that better represents the relationship you want to have with your family. If you’re grateful for the amount of money you have, you’ll start being more conscious of matters that relate to your financial health and exercise more positive financial habits.

What you appreciate appreciates, and it starts with your choice to assign your energy and attention to what you want to matter in your life, through gratitude.

Your gratitude is a gift because it has so much to offer other people. It holds an immense amount of value. Do you remember the last time someone went out of their way to tell you that they genuinely respect and appreciate you?  How did that make you feel? Well you hold that opportunity, and can deliver that gift to someone else just by expressing the way you feel. 

I’m actually going to go a step further and say this - it’s selfish to hold onto your gratitude. The world needs your love and compassion. Your expressing gratitude to someone else creates an energetic ripple that influences them, and affects their next interactions, which then goes on to affect more people. Gratitude, positivity, and deep appreciation are contagious, but it all needs to start somewhere. You are the epicenter, and if we all individually committed to expressing gratitude more often the world truly would be a better place, I have no doubt about it.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

Being more grateful is something that changed my life, and I really want you to see all of the things happening in your life in this very moment that you have reason to be grateful for.

You’ve heard of the expression “taking things for granted” haven’t you? Well every single day in everything we do we take the subtleties of our life for granted. How we have the power to stand on our own two feet. That we have loved ones to call. That we have running water in our homes and food in our pantry. Gratitude doesn’t always need to be a complex reflection on your blessings, it can also be a simple mindfulness of what is right there in front of you.

So let’s do it right now, in this very moment. What is one thing you’re grateful for? Again, just something that is true for you as it is, that doesn’t necessarily get the credit it deserves. When you’ve identified that thing, I want you to think about what you life would look like if you didn’t have it. If you’re grateful for the feeling of sunshine, what would a completely dark world be like? If you’re grateful for you brother or sister’s health, what would your life be like without that?

The reality is, things very well could be different, and there’s a lot to be grateful for right now as you are, and I encourage you to acknowledge it.

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When I began discovering the power of appreciation I was overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. The idea of it made sense but I didn’t know the actual, tangible ways to incorporate it into my life. If gratitude is a mindset, which by nature is a very broad perspective toward something, then how do you integrate a new one in a real way? That’s where a practice of taking consistent action comes in, and I want to share a few, real practices I’ve implemented to add gratitude to my life. 

First is to say thank you twice a day. Only twice a day. First thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before you go to bed. This is something I learned from David Meltzer. At one point I changed the title of the wake up alarm on my phone to say “Thank You” as a reminder.

Second is through journaling. Every day as part of my morning routine I sit down at my desk and write down 3 things I’m grateful for. This is something I learned from Mike Sherbakov. Again, starting your day with gratitude primes you to see opportunities to be grateful for the rest of the day.

And last, is to set a reminder randomly in the day. At 11:11 am every day I have a phone alarm that goes off, and it’s titled “Humble, grateful, dependable.” This is a tip I learned from Brendon Burchard. When it goes off I take a moment to be mindful of those 3 qualities that I hold as core principles, and to connect with them in a small way.

If you noticed, all 3 of those examples require only 30 seconds of work up front to change your environment and help trigger you to be grateful.

This might show how dorky I am, but my favorite Holiday is Thanksgiving. It’s not because I have an excuse to load up on a bunch of food for a day, it’s because for once we are all encouraged to be mindful of the blessings we have. They truly are too many to count, and in spirit of the Thanksgiving Holiday I want to focus on one of the most powerful tools we have as humans - gratitude - and how we can harness it to bring immense benefits to our lives.

You’ve probably heard the expression “attitude of gratitude” before. Well being grateful for the circumstances around you is simply a mindset and a choice. When you start choosing to see the reasons you should be grateful, you’ll notice more and more of them start revealing themselves. This is because a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System looks for patterns, and if you focus in on gratitude the Reticular Activating System will work to find more examples of it in the things around you. Eventually, the RAS will become so trained to look for these things that you will just perceive them with more gratitude without any effortful thought.

But this process takes a little bit of time, and needs to be trained by your taking action. So I have a challenge for you. Tell one person from your past - an educator, coach, relative, or friend, who really helped you an important way - tell them that you appreciate the role they played in your life. Your energy will absolutely change theirs, and will begin a cascade of positive change.

You’d be surprised how far one random act of kindness, one expression of gratitude can travel, and I challenge you to give it a try!

Something beautiful about our lives and world is that we have the freedom of choice. However with choice comes multiple options to select from, and you don't know the full potential and consequences from certain decisions until they’ve been made. If we want to get better at life, we need to get good at receiving feedback so that we can have more information to make a better decision next time. When it comes to getting good feedback here are a few rules of thumb.

First, don’t ask one person about everything, ask many people about one specific thing. The more narrow and targeted the feedback is the better, because it controls for the circumstances different people are coming from and keep things from getting too complicated. For example if you wrote an article, don’t ask one person “Hey what’d you think?”, instead ask a few different people “What do you think is the core message in this article, and was that clear to you?”

Also, pose questions in a way that are unbiased. There are different ways you can present a question that prompts people to validate a certain thought instead of reflect upon a certain thought. For example, and using the article example again, instead of asking someone “Do you think my article is too long?” you can ask “What do you think about the length of the article?” That way they aren’t primed in any way to respond and you get their genuine feedback, which will ultimately be more useful. 

There’s definitely an art to getting good feedback, and these are a few ideas to keep in mind as you go about asking others about their thoughts on different decisions you’ve made.

This thought was inspired by something I heard Jay Shetty say, and it’s something that many of the most successful people in the world can relate to. No matter what you accomplish or how great your achievements are, “be humbled by your dreams”. 

Your dreams are meant to serve you in a few ways. The first is with motivation, knowing that you have a vision for who you want to be and being dedicated to realizing it. When you have a big dream then you always have something to chase, always something to push you forward, which will be necessary when the road gets bumpy.

Your dreams also serve you in a way that is directly related to today’s quote, and being humbled. When the vision for your life is so profound, so far-reaching and ambitious, then no matter what you do it’ll always pale in comparison to how you want things to be. 

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t appreciate or recognize your intermediate accomplishments, but it does mean that you shouldn’t over value them at the expense of your potential. The most successful people in the world don’t need to prove their wealth or success to others because they don’t compare their wealth and success to others. They compare it to their own dreams, and in recognition of how they are only a fraction of the way there, they find no need to flaunt their accomplishments.

So I encourage you, dream fearlessly big. And take a stand for what you believe in, so that you can be humbled by the size of your future.