Find Richness Through a Gratitude Game Plan [Encore]

I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth. So you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect. So you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life, while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an absolute entrepreneur.

All right, welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneurship, this one's going to be cool, because I actually want to have a frank conversation with you about something that I think we need a whole lot more of, in our world,

especially in today's time. So when this episode is about to air, it's going to be here in the United States is going to be the week of Thanksgiving, which is a time for us to reflect it's a time for us to think about life to think about the things that maybe we're grateful for, that we're thankful for. And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes that's the only time we do it. But I think we we need to make it more of a daily

practice. And so one of the things I want to talk about is this whole idea of gratitude, and how that works into your life, how do you make it a daily practice to walk through a framework of mine called the gratitude grid. And in that type of thing, because here's the thing, when we talk about the affluent entrepreneur, we say that there's three critical outcomes. And the first critical outcome is that they live a richer lifestyle. Rich, this

isn't about money. The money has an impact on but richness is about life. It's about experiences, it's about feelings, it's about doing things differently. And richness comes from also being grateful, and knowing what that can be for us since and so so often, especially given the, the times that we're in the times that we've gone through the things that we've seen, the pandemic

and everything else. God when we don't get this gratitude thing, right, believe it or not, it seems flippant to just talk about gratitude, gratitude, you know, we hear it all the time. I ask, when when's the last time you stopped? And thought, I'm truly grateful. And you just think you felt you felt it? My wife and I, we had to attend a celebration of life this past weekend. And I sat there as some of the family members and and friends would get up and, and talk about the person who passed

away. I couldn't help but think, I wonder if he knew what they felt? What they thought, you know, you kind of sit back and say, How often do we allow things to just live in the land and the unspoken? How often is it that we we don't allow someone to understand how much of an impact they had on our life? And how truly grateful we are? And what would it be like if they did? And I didn't know the person that well it was it was one of the friends from from

Stephanie side. But I think that we'd look at it and start to ask ourselves, why should we wait to give reverence to the beauty of their life? Once they're gone? Why should we give reverence to their life while they're here, so they get a chance to relish it, to appreciate it, to feel that too. And so that's what this episode is about. And as much as we talk about affluence, and money and wealth and financial independence, this is a big part of it. You know, we talk about affluence, being a

meaningful life. Being an impactful life while gratitude is a big deal. So here's the thing, I'm going to jump to my iPad, for those of you that are listening, we'll make sure that you have all graphics in the show notes and make that happen. But I just want to walk through a couple of things to think about and to consider why this is important. This idea of finding gratitude in your life and your business. Because it is to me the path of feeling

fulfilled. Because when we don't get get it, right, we you know, why does this matter? Well, here's the thing, when we're not grateful for the things that we have when we're not grateful for What's going on our life, what we find is that we feel drained, it starts to take our energy weight starts to eliminate or limit our capacity to do things. And you may notice that when you you feel drained or tired or, or something of that nature, yeah,

that starts to get to you. The other thing that happens is is is, is that we feel angst. There's something there's there's just something that's unsettling about things, something that just doesn't feel right. And you can't figure out what the angst is or where it's coming from. But we end up feeling angst and this

anxiousness. And part of that is, because we're not slowing down to appreciate what we actually do have, we spent a whole lot of time in society talking about the bad stuff, talking about the dirty laundry, talking about all those things. What about just slowing down and saying, wait a second. What if I just looked at the things I do have my ability to do things that I am, I'm alive and vibrant, I get a chance to go and do things, I think we need to slow that down to be able to

do that. And the other thing that I think happens is that when we don't feel grateful for what we have, we have the sense of feeling alone, we have the sense of, of not being with with anyone else, and that we're isolated and am I Gosh, in today's world with with all the shutdowns and everything that we've done, we siloed everyone, in the sense of loneliness, the sense of separation is huge.

It's huge. We don't have, we hadn't even had the, the opportunity to express the gratitude because we've been separated in and so I think it's important for us to start to look for opportunities to make that happen. Because when we are when we bring gratitude into our world, what ends up happening is our energies lifted, our energy starts to grow, we feel like the energy is unlimited. The other thing that I think happens is, is that we actually find some

peace and happiness. Because we're looking at the things we do have rather than spending the time on the things we don't have the idea of comparison, and social media and, and criticism and social media and the media is huge. And that dissipates our energy that dissipates our, our happiness. And you know what? It's Is it real? Or is it just something that is a perception that's being created? Because someone has a bigger house because someone has a nicer car? Do you think they're more happy?

Because I know a lot of people that are Yeah, I remember when when I got diagnosed with the cancer, a lot of people said, you know, ask me, you know, how the cancer change? You bet. I bet it got your priorities straight. I said, Yeah, did, it really did. Because I realized that there isn't a priority list. They're just a single priority. It's life is living. It's embracing it each and every

moment. The other thing that happens is that when we get this gratitude piece, right, not only do we have the happiness, we actually become magnetic, you might have some of these people in your life, that for some reason, no matter what's going on the world could be falling in around them. They see the good

in the in the world. And they're always exuberant, always excited, they're always, always coming at it with a different bed and saying, Hey, let's just look at the glass happily, what is good about it, and they become this magnet. You know,

people will call it charisma. I think that some of that is just that you can see the fact that there's this reverence and appreciation for the moment the reverence and appreciation for what they do have the opportunity to serve the opportunity to be there the opportunity to be in a relationship, the opportunity to be a dad or a mom the opportunity to be a brother or sister the opportunity to be an entrepreneur, I feel grateful for the path for the journey for the life that I have been

blessed to live, even with the pains even with the trials and tribulations with the mistakes even with the losses and the suffering the struggle. Because it's the contrast between the suffering the struggle that gives me the opportunity to appreciate what I do. So, if this is why what do you need to know? Why does this what do you need to know to make this

happen? And I think that there's there's three core principles that when we talk about gratitude, and fulfillment and feeling this way and feeling that richness of life I think the first thing is this is to realize that it's all generated from within. Too often we're looking outside to get validation to get appreciation to, to bring that but our true gratitude, our true appreciation

is generated from within. It's it's a feeling inside of us, when we walk into a store when we were walking down the street, to have a reverence and appreciation for that ability to do that. And it seems like not a big deal. But but it truly is.

Because when we take control, when you take control back to how we feel, to make it self referential, if you will, and not external, then we don't, we don't find ourselves on, on the whim and at the mercy of the flows of what's going on around us, the society, the media, the social media, the the zeitgeist we're internally referenced. So that's the first principle, I think that we need to know that the second principle exists, is that your actions will give it

life. We can think about it. And that does something that gets you maybe to level one, but but when we turn around, and we take action on it. When's the last time you legitimately said, Hello, and smile at someone walking down the street? Well, first off, got to make sure you don't have a mask on, but I know where I live, not not directly where I live, because most people are casual and, and very,

very friendly here. But in general, in say, in Los Angeles, I mean, when we say hello to someone, sometimes they look at you like what do you want, but you know, and they're checking for, for their wall to make sure the ends like put it just a legitimate sincere Hello. A wave a smile, to take action on things I think becomes important. The other thing is to realize that, that gratitude is a practice, and that we create the habit of gratitude on a

regular basis. And, in sometimes when we don't have that habit, we haven't been doing it, we have to actually create something, a mechanism, if you will, to trigger it to make sure that it becomes part of our life, when we ingrain it and we embedded in our life, that's when all of a sudden it becomes second nature. And when it becomes second nature. It becomes who you are, it starts to, to embed into your identity.

And it's how you show up. And so one of the things I want to do is walk you through something that I use, it's called the gratitude grid, it actually is a weekly practice that turns into a daily practice. And we'll talk about the gratitude gameplan. And how you do this, and what that can look like. And by using this framework and doing it on a weekly basis, you're going to find that over time, it just becomes part of who you are. The habit from the practice becomes an identity. Hopefully that

makes sense. All right. So when we talk about this, and I'm going to draw this out on the iPad, for those of you that are on on YouTube, or watching the video, so here's here's the way that this this comes into play is that when I when I look at it, in this regard, there's three things that three types of categories or three little areas I want us to look at from three

aspects. So when we do this, what I want us to start to understand is that is that gratitude falls into three different categories, or at least when we start to try and build it. The first is this is that we need to consider things from an internal perspective. Okay, internally, what's going on inside of us? What's going on inside of us while we do this?

Second, just like we just said, it's it's part of practice, we need to look at and say, what is the action or the activity I need to take on what is the thing I need to do? Okay, so internal is what I feel or think activity is an action I take. And then how do I create a practice out of it? How do I create something that's going to

allow this to take hold? Okay, so one of the first things when we start to look at this gratitude grid is is We need to consider something and say, how about we just start noticing things. And what I mean by this is that really just taking notice of what is good around you, and asking yourself, what what happens is, look at the goodness that exists in the world look in the goodness that lives in your life, look at the goodness, you know, you could sit back and say, I want a

bigger house. I wish I had a nicer car, but you have a house and you have a car, why not appreciate that for the moment, to live in the goodness and notice the goodness and be aware of the goodness and have the appreciation for the goodness. Okay, because when we do that, when we start to understand how that plays out, that starts to give us some appreciation to

move from Okay. Second, the second aspect of, of the internal is that when we look at the goodness, that we turn around, and then also consider it with humility. Okay, with humility, I, you know, I look at, I look at this and, and realize, my life, and I have said this before, but I don't believe that anyone is self made. Anyone who says that I am self made. I'm a self made millionaire, and now they're lying. Absolutely, they're lying. And I feel this very

strongly. Because I am a product of my environment, I am a product of the people around me, I am a product of, of my audience, I'm a product of my clients, my customers, I'm a product of the people that have have blessed my life. And to come at it with some respect, and humility. And leave the ego in check the Ego is the Enemy of appreciation. Now we have an opportunity to Sir, start looking at things and say, Yeah, I'm human. I make mistakes. And I'm just human. But I come at it

with a humility. That's, that's a different game. And then the last, the last element of the internal. So there's three of each in each is the last element of the internal is really this idea of commit. But what are we committing to? Oh, man, this one actually sounds really easy. But it's not. I want you to commit to no complaints, criticism, or gossip. All right. Think about this. Think about what it would be like to try and not complain about something Oh, the the

coffee's too hot. The coffee is too cold or this person is that or that person is this? I'm guessing that also means you probably can't watch the news on that day. Okay? Because when we spend our time living in the complaint, living in the criticism living in the gossip, how can we find the appreciation? There's a guy by the name of will Boeing. And he started a movement called the a Complaint Free world.org. Okay,

a Complaint Free world.org? And what do they have these, they have these rubber bands that you put on your wrist? And every time you complain, you gotta move it to the other wrist. And you're supposed to go Complaint Free for 21 days. And it sounds easy. But it's not. It's not great. Can you imagine what it would be like if if we just said, I'm not going to complain for 21 days and seek because here's what happens when you're successful with with committing

to no complaints. What else you're going to appreciate the good. You got to replace the the urge than the feeling like I'm going to complain with something What do you replace it with the appreciation of the monk the appreciation of what's good about it, the appreciation, the gratitude. And imagine the kind of person you'll be like on the other side of that 21 days, when you've lost the need, and the necessity and the feeling to

complain. So that's the internal is to truly look at it from from that perspective that we noticed the goodness that we come with humility, and then we commit to no complaints criticism or gossip. Now what's the activities that we need to put into play? Well, that truly the first activity is an seems simple, but a lot of people don't do it. And that is this habit of journaling. journaling about your day journaling, and you can do it on a weekly basis. I think he ought to do it on a

daily basis. It doesn't take. Okay. But ask what happened today. Here's the questions. Ask what happened today? Okay. What did you learn today? What could you do better from today? And what are you grateful for? So what happened? What did you learn? What could you do better? And what are you grateful for. And so, we take a moment just to simply journal the day. And what it forces you to do is it forces you to slow down to reflect too often, we're just running like crazy, too often, we're going

too fast. And we don't even take the time to reflect to understand. So the first activity is to journal. The second activity is to compliment to actively seek out the ability to compliment to sit back with sincerity to sit back and say someone you know, You look nice today. Not in a creepy way. But to say his look nice to even just say hello, you know what it throws cashiers off. When I go to the store, or even I call Costco someone answers the phone and say, Hey, this is Mel Abram,

how you doing today? I stopped the conversation to ask sincerely, how are you doing today? Too, find a way to give someone a compliment, you know, when you felt a compliment, you stand taller, you smile bigger, you feel better. That's a gift. And it costs nothing. It costs nothing. But what you do is that, that gift then just keeps on giving, because that person will pass it on. So the second activity is really to compliment. And the third. The third activity is really about

cause. And really, what I mean by this is that I want you to believe and feel that you are at cause you're not at the effect of everything that's going on, that everything that you you do, and everything that happens is because of you, it is for you, and that you truly are at cause.

And that means that when you are a cause you have the ability to change and shift what is happening by making different choices, okay, so that activity becomes becomes based on the realization that I am empowered, and I am in and I have the power to shift, I have the power to change, I have the power to do something. So we come from a grateful place, we reflect in our journal, we we complement on a regular basis. And we know that we're at cause of everything that happens in our

life. We may not understand it. But we're a cause for everything. Okay, that leads me to the third, the third aspect, and that's really about the practice. And the first idea with the practice is this really this idea of transform. Now, this is twofold transform is is twofold in the sense of, I want you to look at how do you transform yourself in this, and who you become in this process and how you transform those

around you. And this comes right back to the idea of not perpetuating perpetuating negativity, to look at things and say, there's negative associations all around us that create and stir an emotion. Let's break that. Let's start creating positive associations. Let's start creating positivity in a way that we start to look at things differently. To sit back and say, I choose to

transform how I approach this. I choose to transform how I see it, how I feel about it, because we're at cause and then look at and say how can I transform the people? I am in front of the people I meet the people I greet the people I talk to the people you serve. How do I know one of the things that we did at the CRI school a lot of times said well we teach self defense and I said we don't teach self defense. Self Defense is a

commodity. What we bring to these children, what you bring to our youth is self esteem. Carry and respect. In the process of teaching self defense, the, the primary goal is to have them build their self esteem, to have respect and feel cared about. And we approach it

differently. It's the same thing with this transform is that when we look at things and we say, well, I'm, I'm providing a product or service, now, there's something higher, there's something that will transform them at the cellular level, when you deliver that, at that level things, shift things change. And brings me to this next piece. And that is this is that a practice of learning, of truly looking at it and saying,

saying, I am human. And I know that I'm going to learn, I'm going to make mistakes, there are bad situations, things are going to happen. And that, that, I'm still going to be grateful for it. I'm actually grateful for the for the cancer, not because I had it, but because of what it did to me what how it woke me up to look at things differently, what is provided for me to look forward to do

differently. So we want to learn from the from the bad situations, we'll learn from our mistakes, we want to learn and be open to that learning, and make that a practice. And that's why when we journal one of the questions we have to ask is what I learned today, see how all this works together. That leads me to the third piece of practice, and that is to come at

this whoops. come at this with a sincere, sincere heart to truly look at it with some sincerity, with some reverence, with some ability to look at this in a way that you can be joyous in the moment, to be sincere to when you say I'm sorry, when you say thank you, that is not just a throwaway. But you truly mean that it's not the words that you sing. It's not even the action that you do is the feeling behind that you come at it with

sincerity. And when when we do this on a regular basis, when we start to look at things from the internal from the active, the activity and the practice, when we're building things we're noticing, we have humility, we're committed to no complaints, we're journaling so we can reflect we're complementing on a regular basis, we're, we believe that we're at cause we know that we

want to transform. We're willing to learn, and we approach it with sincerity, things shift, things completely shift for you. And that's where fulfillment lies is in the gratitude in the process in creating that into a daily practice. Okay, so how do we do this, here's what I call the gratitude gameplan. And what I would tell you to do in this in this idea, let me move back to to the slides, and I'll show this to you. But But the

gratitude. gameplan is something where I want you to choose three to five, three to five people each week. So I do it on Sunday. I do it on Sunday. And I choose three to five people that week that I am going to connect with. And I'm going to create a gratitude plan with and so this gratitude gameplan. You ask yourself, I want three to five people that I'm going to connect this week with and I'm going to do it either in writing speaking video or a card or something. So

first off, it's who it is. And what's the relationship you have with them. I want you to look at when's the last time you talked to them? And what were the were the insights, the things that they told you about? And then what do you know about them? What specifically do you know about them? That's personal to them? Like, I like key lime pie. If you know that and say, Hey, man, have you had any key lime pie lately? There's this instant connection. There's this instant

rapport when you do that? What is it? What is it that they've done that you're truly grateful for? Express that tool? To sit back and say, hey, you know, I just I just wanted to call you I do this all the time. I'll send a video text and I'll say, Hey, man, I was just thinking about you, hey, I'm just really grateful because of this, this and this. And I just want you to know that. And then I'll always end with this. Hey, do me a favor, let me know if there's anything you're working on that

I can help you with. Sincerely just just reach out to me and let me see what I can do to support if it's an introduction. If it's some resource, let me know. And so literally, every Sunday, I will sit down and I'll do a game plan and I'll know the three to five people that I'm going to connect with. I know who they are. I know what my relationship is. I know what the last time we connected with.

What's about I know Something about them, I tell them specifically what I'm grateful for, and ask them how I can help them. And if you just did this, let's just say you did it for three people. Once a week, and you change that, and you rotate that out, can you imagine the depth of the relationships, the depth of one year graduate, what they would do in return, because now they bring gratitude your way? This, this is what richness is about, that you're enriching

other people's life. And, you know, when people appreciate you what it feels like, When will you be the catalyst for that appreciation, you'd be the one that starts that cycle of appreciation, and see what comes your way. I promise you that this is this is a practice that I have done for, for many, many years. And in one way or another, it always comes back. But in the moment where you're expressing gratitude, and always feels good. And that's the key.

So I just wanted to I wanted to do something specific because of the time of year, it is in hopes that we don't just look at it as Oh, well, in the US, it's Thanksgiving. So I'll reflect I'll be thankful. And I'll be grateful for this week. But rather that we use it as a springboard to a new practice, a new process, a new way of showing up in people's lives, because I believe that our society today is starved for

this. And that when you have the ability to show up with gratitude, appreciation for your own life, for everything you do have still yearning some of the things that that you're striving for, but that you have the come from a platform of appreciation, the likelihood that you get to where you want to be, I think is far greater. And in the process, you left a trail of beautiful souls that you blessed with your appreciation, and your gratitude along the way. That's a gift.

And that's a gift that doesn't cost you anything. And so I hope that, you know that I appreciate you for being here for being part of the show, being on this journey with me. I feel blessed in this moment to know that, that I get a chance to do what I love to do to allow people to live the life that they want to maybe like the way in some way shape or fashion and to lend a helping hand. And so I appreciate you for allowing me to live my calling to live. My what my purpose in this season

of my life. And so with that, I just I hope that you found this value and that you leave me a comment, let me know, do me Do me a favor. If you haven't reviewed the show, leave a review. And I'm going to read them on the air we'll start back to reading them on the air and we'll get a chance to then award some one on ones with me for any anything that is read on the air but, but more importantly, go out there not just this week, but from this week on and express your gratitude. First

start in the mirror. Be grateful for who you are and how you show up and everything that's gone on. And then go outside and start expressing gratitude to other people. You'll see that richness in your life expand until we get a chance to see each other or talk to each other another show. Always, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. Cheers Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with

me your host Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to mele ram.com forward slash group and I'll see you there