My wife and I had the opportunity to attend an event called “Married Life Live” a few nights ago. Though I often hesitate to attend events like this, I am nearly always glad when I do. The fact is, just like in business, your relationships need for you to invest time and energy in them to make them better. The speaker this year was Shaunti Feldhahn. She is the author of several best selling books and on this night she spent a great deal of time talking about her book “The Kindness Challenge.” The concept is simple. You pick any relationship in your life (in this case she was talking to spouses) and for 30 days you do 3 simple things. 1. No negative talk to our about that person. This means you can’t say anything negative them. But it also means you can’t run to your friend and complain about them either. No negative talk about that person for 30 days.2. Sincerely compliment them on something they have done. Each day you find something you appreciate about them…and tell them.3. Do some act of kindness for them. This could be big or small. As Shaunti mentioned, for her 16 year old daughter, this act of kindness might be to stop working long enough to watch a youtube video with her. But each day, you make it a point to do something for them. I really like this concept. But there was one idea that jumped out to me above all others. Shaunti talked about one woman in a focus group that told her that she would really struggle to compliment her husband each day! She just could not imagine that she could come up with 30 compliments! She was so sure that she would not be able to come up with them that she decided to keep a notebook. “That way,” she told Shaunti, “I can bank them!” Then an awesome thing happened. On the first page of the journal, she listed 2 things that her husband had done for her. She thanked him for one of them and decided to save the next one for tomorrow. On day 2 she wrote down 5 things. On day 3 she wrote down 11! She was absolutely blown away by all of the good things her husband was doing that she was simply not noticing…until she started looking! There is science to back this up. The fact is, when you actively start to look for something, you tell your subconscious mind that it’s important. So your subconscious mind starts to find that thing and show it to you! It’s like when you buy a new car and start to see it all over the place! They were always there. You just needed to turn on the mental lights. So on this week of Thanksgiving, I want to challenge you to start your own Gratitude Journal. Start to look for things that are good in your life. An amazing thing will start to happen. You will start to find them! We are thankful for you! So please make sure you sign up to become a VIP! We want to provide you value each week so we send one email with all of our weekly content in one place. Sign up here.
