[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan today we are finally at number 10 of the scary time success manual Deep dive into each of the strategies and this one is one I think that people are really going to resonate with because it's about gratitude so what you talk about here is forget about your complaints and focus on your gratitude and given that so much has changed let me put it this way there's been a lot to complain about or at least some people have found a lot to complain about in our current version of scary times so talk about why is it so important to focus on gratitude instead of complaints why is this a critical skill and capability there's a lot to be grateful for too so the issue here whether you complain or whether you are grateful is a choice you're not compelled actually Shannon to do either so I think complaining comes from that it's somebody else's fault what's happening yeah and that you know from a standpoint of event if you're talking about events or circumstances that might very well be true but the real dividing Point among people is really how you choose to respond to events which you didn't cause and events which are fundamentally out of your control throughout the scary time series we're really talking about how you choose to respond to the world and makes all the difference in the world because other people are influenced by your response so this is really the complaining and I find that people who are grateful become kind of immune to other people's negativity I've chosen to be immune to other people's negativity because you can only actually be responsible for yourself very true it's interesting I like how you talk about being immune to other people's negativity and there's a lot of it out there right now but you do seem to be someone who's immune and you are someone who expresses your gratitude so why is it important to protect yourself because some people have dived have first as far as I'm concerned into the negativity and just are kind of wallowing in it yeah well feeling bad is bad you know I mean I don't want to feel bad and you know throughout my life I've gone back to circumstances of my life were at the end of the second world war and so I've gone through lots of changes you know family life and I was drafted into the military I served in the military and you know I've gone through whole number of economic downturns I've gone through you know Health Care scares you know disease scares I've had personal injuries I've been ended up in surgery you know and I've had personal setbacks divorce bankruptcy and it may be you know it may be that once you get to a certain age a lot of events outside of you just don't have the same kind of impact on you but generally speaking I think that the skill that I've developed most is just choosing my responses to outside events so the moment that this current one happened I said oh okay time to put on an another switch here you know to snap another switch and now we you know we go into a mode in strategic coach and our company where the job of leadership is to actually be positive and to keep other people's confidence up and know Focus everybody on those things which can actually be achieved today and create a sense of high morale High momentum and motivation because those things can be chosen and those things can be implement it and they actually create their own Force so if you choose badly and you choose to complain that creates a negative Force if you choose well gratitude I think is the great mindset here Dan I also like how you talk about when you take the Grateful or appreciative approach you also attract into all areas of your life other individuals who are also making the same positive choice and that's interesting so is it kind of like birds of a feather flock together very much I think we have kind of a radio signal relationship with other people and you know I think there's certain kinds of frequencies that are triggered and go out to other people and that either attracts them because they want to be near that energy or it you know pushes them off and you know it's very very interesting if you dig a Little Deeper if you go to parking garages for example they've learned that if you play classical music in parking garage especially Baroque music so a certain period of European history Bach telman Baldi yeah if you play that kind of music people with Criminal Intent people who want to cause trouble are repulsed they're repulsed the police find that in areas where they don't want to pay the expense of patrolling them they put loudspeakers in and they play Johan Sebastian Bach at night time and the criminals can't stand it they hate that kind of music because they're more into wrecking crew type of music tracks you know well if that's true you know just with music I think that a mindset where you're grateful you're appreciating the things around you is going to attract people who also have those thoughts and I think it'll repulse people who say well you make me mad you make me angry and I said said well no that started quite a long time before you met me and you know I didn't make you anything you're just choosing to feel negativity now I'm taking into account to that people are constructed differently you know that we have different genes I think the makeup of our brains the makeup of our nervous systems are really different and I mean there's I've read all sorts of articles that about 20% of people are born with a predisposition to be pessimistic another 20% at the other end are predisposed to be optimistic and you know gratefully I would count myself among the optimistic and I think you are too Shannon and I think someone who was negative wouldn't want to do the interview series on this topic you know they wouldn't want to be part of this particular project I think that's true I mean I find understanding myself a full-time job so I don't have a lot of insight into how other people are constructed but I can see the choices that I make and I can see the choices that other people make that's really what this is about I appreciate that Dan and if it is 20% and 20% in terms of predisposed there's 60% in the middle that depending on the day could probably choose to go well they may or may not be aware that it's a choice but it is you know choose to pay attention to one or the other and I I think one of the things that's been true through this whole series is it is a choice your response is up to you circumstances may not be but your response is up to you you know I'm very well aware of the mental health conversation about anxiety and depression and all that stuff going on and I'm glad it's now cool to talk about but one of the things that I really appreciate about the direction that you provide it's like we have a choice about what we focus on and what we think about and again how we respond and you have a line in our preparation here but complaining only attracts negative thoughts in people negative people come together reinforce each other and continually attract others who are negative everything becomes an endless stew of fear worry anxiety criticizing and complaining all this just adds to the scary times perhaps this is even what caused it and I think that's a really interesting perspective and if we're not careful we can participate in that stew or we can go hang on sicken what is there to be grateful for and all of a sudden you gratitude seems to be much High level thinking process than anxiety or fear or worry yeah I mean it's a topic I've over the years looked into you know psychologists and people who are now into Neuroscience you know there's a whole group of scientists who say you know people think they have free will but there is no free will they have a logical explanation why you're just at the mercy of circum ances but my belief is that it is what you believe it is that if you believe you have free will you do and if you don't have free will you don't and uh that it's a choice yeah because first of all free will really really requires that you take a great deal of responsibility for yourself that that the decisions you make the choices you make in life that you're responsible for that and people say well I don't think we can hold you know other people responsible for these things and I said yes that's what your belief is and so that's that's kind of how you operate in the world but you know I can sympathize with someone and I can help someone but fundamentally I still think they can choose to be 100% responsible for their life so I always use the word choose here because I think choice is totally unpredictable I think that you can never from the outside say how another person will choose about anything I I think it's always a surprise I think our choices are really something that is completely our own and you can choose to choose or choose not to choose and that itself is a choice yeah I like that that's a choice yeah right so sometimes choices are really difficult because you're actually not taking an easy way out you're taking a hard way out I think when negative things happen to make yourself responsible to yourself I mean you're responsible to yourself here that just every day during these scary times when there's a lot of negativity out in the air I'm just going to choose to be positive I'm going to choose to be creative the choice I'm not asking anyone else to make that choice it's just as far as I have an influence that's the choice that I'm going to make I love this conversation because it's very encouraging of someone to take full responsibility for themselves their own internal State how they're going to be regardless of circumstances so it's a very internally motivated you know mindset to look at it that way and one of the other things that we've talked about in this series is that you know entrepreneurs almost by definition if they're going to be successful have to take responsibility no one else is going to do it for you you've chosen to cross what we call the risk line into the results economy and no one's writing you a paycheck every two weeks you have to create that for yourself so you know entrepreneurism really encourages people to be responsible for themselves or maybe it's you know not sure which one comes first but I think we see that a lot that entrepreneurs are very even if they get temporarily set back by the circumstances they're very quick to Pivot and to take responsibility and get creative and resourceful and fig out a new way to create value yeah and I think the other thing is it makes you calm you know there's a calmness that comes along with it one is that you're not requiring other people to do what you're doing and I think that makes you okay with the world because you're granting to other people the right to choose or not choose like everyone I meet I said well you don't have to choose to be responsible I said the very notion of a choice means that it's completely voluntary you know so I said I just volunteer to go this way but whatever you do that's your way of handling the situation I have found that you know if you really get good at choosing that there's some big Rewards for it and they seem to grow as I get older I can totally see that yeah Dan let's jump into some of the actions that you talk about in terms of how to kind of put this into motion put this into action and the first one you talk about is the power of appreciation let's talk about that for a moment you know the topic if you go up and look at the strategy it uses the word grateful but there's an interesting thing about gratitude and that is that it's often used as something synonymous you know there's a thing called appreciation okay and appreciation is an interesting word because it has two senses to it one of them corresponds to gratitude if you appreciate something then you you know you're grateful you know your appreciation and a lot of people use them interchangeably but I always say well if there's two words there has to be a different you know one word is meaning something and another word can overlap with that but it's meaning something else so in regard to appreciation there's an emotional sense of appreciation you know I really appreciate what you've done for me I really appreciate that and in that sense it sort of corresponds to gratitude grateful but the other meaning of the word appreciation is to increase the value of okay so that that's used in economics so you talk about property appreciating you talk about stocks appreciating you talk about the price of gold appreciating and that is it's increasing in value and my sense is that what I'm trying to put an emphasis on here that appreciation makes you grateful if I had to choose one which is the one that comes first I would say it's a general sense of appreciation and the reason I say that is that you don't have to do anything for me to appreciate you I can just choose you know that's Shannon Waller you know I appreciate so much about her you know I appreciate you know how enthusiastic she is I appreciate you know just how quick and smart she is I appreciate what a helpful person a useful person is and that can happen from a distance where we don't even have a relationship but I just appreciate you you know and it's not because you've done something for me that I'm appreciating you I'm just looking at you as an independent soul out in the universe and I'm just saying I really like that person I mean there are like public performers and stars who I don't have any particular need to ever meet them you know I don't know if we'd have anything to say if we did meet but from a distance I said I really appreciate this I really appreciate this person I appreciate the way they go about things and what I'm doing in my own mind is I'm increasing the value of this type of behavior this type of approach and the other person doesn't have to do anything for me I just really really appreciate it you know that's really cool Dan well I'll give you an example it's generally bad news as far as the news media like it's just non-stop bad news and what it tells me is that they're not actually appreciating any good things that are happening right and I suspect that they're not being dishonest about it I suspect that if you're in the news media at this particular time in history it's negative negative negative negative it's criticism it's complaining so my feeling is that the news media people themselves have chosen to feel bad and that feeling bad and finding bad is crucial to their success as a member of the news media I get a feeling it must be very depressing maybe social distancing has actually been good for these people because if they were all in the same room together it would probably not be healthy for any of them psychologically emotionally probably not physically it wouldn't be good for them so I've said this before on some of the podcasts that we're doing Shannon that I stopped watching television it's almost two years it'll be two years in a couple months the reason is they're not giving me news they're giving me negativity so it's not a gift it's not a good gift so I don't appreciate them you know and by cutting them off I said that what they're doing has no value to me so therefore I'm not going to allow you know their headlines and their complaints and their criticism I'm just not going to allow that into my space I can choose it can I choose it you know yeah yeah well and I think having those boundaries is very astute as opposed to just letting things unfiltered come into you as you talked about last time in our last podcast you want to create your own opinions based on the information not have them fed to you I mean I've never been a journalist never trained that way but that whole old saying which seems to hold true if it bleeds it leads yes and so they're trained to look for the negative and for the drama and for the negativity and the Despair and that's what gets publicized and yet as we're about to talk about there's so much to be grateful for right now and it is a choice but their training I think is not actually serving them at this point in time yeah I mean one of the things that I've just been very impressed with is just how kind of Cooperative people have been during this period of time and you know to the extent they can they help out and they're useful everything else so you know I said I bet the vast majority of people during this situation have been really good about the way they went about their interactions with other people and they're good and I appreciate that I appreciate humans you know I think in dire situations and scary situations humans come through I think yeah yeah I may have mentioned this before but I know some people have been wanting to counter the negativity John krinski has a show probably on YouTube but I've seen it on Facebook where it's called some good news sgn and he highlights just fun good things and it's so playful and he's doing really really well with it just to counteract the the negativity so there's a massive appetite for that that the regular news media is not addressing anyway this is not about them all right Dan the second point you make here is that gratitude eliminates negativity and this is such a profound point so let's talk about this for a moment well I think that our brains the emotional component of our brains however that works I think that when you have a mindset of gratitude you know let's just say in a given situation you have a a mindset of gratitude I think it makes it incapable for you to have any negative thought I think that it's mutually exclusive I think gratitude you know you're feeling grateful for things but it starts with the level of appreciation sure and if you're appreciating something or you're feeling grateful about something I think it automatically means that you cannot at that same moment have a negative opinion now here's the thing that might be momentary maybe it's just in this situation and you go back and forth between positive and negative but if you continually reinforce the positive the feeling grateful in a situation looking for the thing to be grateful for seeking out choosing to be grateful choosing to be appreciative then it becomes a permanent Condition it's just not possible for negative thoughts to set up house you know they're they can't come in and make themselves at home you've you've made it almost impossible for negativity to get inside your thinking and I strive for that I strive for that and every time I'm being negative I said oh that's really interesting why am I being negative here I said you know I'm going to get to the bottom of this I'm going to get to the bottom I just spotted a negative thought a negative emotion and I'm going to get to the bottom of that and then when I get to the bottom of it I said well it's because of you know I key it to certain experiences and then I ask myself well how does this help you and I defuse it and the negative thought goes away and then I say well let's replace it with positive thought you know what do you appreciate about this what I find as I do that my creativity goes up you know my creativity my ability to put things together in new ways goes up my collaboration with other people goes up so there's some incredible payoffs for approaching things and people can just pick up on this that's fascinating Dan the number of byproducts that happen when you are positive and you are focused on gratitude that's a really great point because often times well this happens to me at least I'm sure I'm not the only one hope I'm not the only one where I'll be like grumpy about something and I'm kind of mad that people aren't collaborative aren't creative with me it's like but I'm not someone anyone would want to be creative with in that moment which is a good reminder so that's a really cool point so when you start with appreciation and gratitude or get to the root of the negative thought whatever that was or feeling then it just makes you open for all of the kind of positive results that you actually are looking for but you just have to put yourself in the right place for that creativity and cooperation to be able to happen cool yeah and I just want to say that this is my particular choice to be this way you know I've chosen to be this way there's always the discussion I've had with people I've known I've know some people for 50 years and they say well you you refuse to see the negative side and so you don't know all the bad that's going out there and I said that's a true statement I do chose I do choose that and they said well you know there's some terrible things happening in the world and I said I'm sure that's true but I don't choose to participate with them you know and they said well you know I mean and they want me to feel that somehow I have a duty that overrides my choice there's no Duty I checked the shipping papers you know when I arrived here and I checked fine print I went through page after page after page and I couldn't find anywhere that I'm actually responsible for anything you know I land here I mean was I don't remember making a choice to actually be here but I'm here and somehow I've got all sorts of responsibilities and I've got all sorts of Duties simply because I'm here and I said can't find where it says that says that so I said as far as I'm concerned I can make it all up just the way I want to make it up it's really funny and you know it's really funny because it makes them mad and it makes them angry and I think what I'm doing is I'm not going along with whatever they want me to be but I think the other thing is that I could be landing a thought in their brain says the way you are you've chosen to be that way too and that removes all the things that they're blaming the way they are on and so my sense is this thing of just automatically choosing to be 100% responsible that's ultimately I think every human being you either believe that or you don't believe it but if you believe it then what can happen is that you'll become more and more responsible I mean it's actually a reward you actually get to become a more responsible person by the choice to be responsible which also means able to respond yeah creatively Cooper operatively all of those things and it's interesting Dan this is a fun philosophical conversation in my experience with you and you've had a ton of setbacks I mean you listed a whole bunch of them and you take them as kind of information and I'm going to say neutral but you don't go negative so there isn't this immediate judgment on something like oh well that's interesting like most recently was like oh well I thought I was going to be coaching live in-person workshops and next week I'm not you know you took that as information but not as negative and I think there's a really important distinction there like okay what am I going to do with that information I'm going to figure out what I do have and that I think is really the secret to pivoting which is the big big verb happening right now in during our covid-19 scary times is how do you respond creatively which is to Pivot and because you've taken it that way is not inherently negative you are able to have a very different response than most people and it's that not willing to automatically default to the negative that I see has been part of the power of you creating that positive yeah really neat yeah and I'm looking back you know we had a big one in 2008 and 2009 and I'm a lot more skillful at this than I was then and then we had the 911 incident in New York and that's where the original set of 10 strategies came out of that experience but what those strategies say I'm a lot better at doing what those strategies say now than was through 18 or 19 so there's been a real Improvement in my responsible yeah i' got scary times muscle okay I love that Dan the third Point here and you talked about this a little bit already is being brain positive you notice that as you consciously and specifically increase the value of your experiences that you attract other people who also positively appreciate what you appreciate so to me this is part of that making it a habit and we do the positive focus at strategic coach we've got a lot of exercises that really focus on where are you making progress versus where you're not and eventually you start to collect these people around you who are very attracted to that way of thinking because it's gets more done to be perfectly honest and that more and more people show up because that's a very proactive way to operate well the other thing is I'm looking for other brains I mean our brain you know on its own is limited because it's limited to our experience and the learning that's come from our experience so one of the ways I've counteracted aging is that my brain is getting better and what I mean by that is my positive brain has an increasing capability of attracting and interacting with other positive brains so that makes my brain much more powerful you know at the age I am now let's say 10 years ago my brain is much more positive and my ability to very quickly attract and interact and create with other brains collaborate with other brains is much greater and so that's what I'm looking for I mean in order to find other positive brains I got to start with making my own positive so you know I don't know where they are I don't know when they're going to show up and I noticed that things happen real fast now like s happen real fast because I've kind of predetermined who I want to work with and you know and what kind of projects I want to work on and I think it's this taking 100% responsibility for the emotional psychological positiveness of my brain that has allowed me to be far more effective and successful in the world you were talking about Neuroscience earlier you know when our brains are calm in that kind of positive State we are much more creative much more able to respond versus in a feier state which is a survival kind of scarcity or we're being threatened somehow the amount of creativity we have dramatically decreases and that's scientifically measured which is really interesting so this is a very strategic way of operating which is one of my things that I really appreciate is if you want to get more done this is actually the way to do it it's not just a nice to have it's not just positive it's not just a nice to have it really is the way to get much much bigger results and to connect with people who are much more expansive in their thinking and much more abundance minded is to take full responsibility and then again come from this much more positive and grateful way of looking at things yeah very interesting Dan our next Point here is expanding the Gratitude Zone which I love calling it that what does that mean for you well just following through from what I said before you attract one person and there's a increase in capability you get 10 now you're really rolling you get a 100 you get a thousand so when you're adding more positive people with you at the center sending out positive messages in this case gratitude and appreciation that creates a zone that becomes very powerful on the planet it actually influences economics it influences politics it influences General Health you know in an interesting way one of the outcomes of the current scary times is that I think the general level of appreciation and gratitude has gone up y okay it's actually gone up I don't know why I say that and I don't have any actual proof of it but it'll be interesting to see what the crime statistics are during this period of time are suicides just as high as they were before you know it'll be interesting to see some statistical information after they get some distance to actually see the scary times was there more or less annoying criminal behavior during this period of time or was there less you know I have an intuitive sense that it's kind of gone up not the criminal activity but the positive cooperation and the Gratitude and the appreciation has actually gone up we'll see we'll see yeah but but I do know that in war zones humans tend to you know if they're not actually involved in killing or being killed but they're just being affected by the the damage of war and everything else that in certain situations their behavior actually increases they're more helpful well and I think what's really been kind of interesting and in lightning is that right now what I'm hearing an expression of gratitude for is for things that people used to take completely for granted and so it's the truck drivers as you everything they could control exactly they're appreciating what they can control well they're appreciating that they're also appreciating the people that pick up the garbage and people who keep our spaces clean and healthcare workers that go into work and risking themselves every day and and shopkeepers I'm so appreciative for people who keep running the grocery store and the drug store so things that we used to really take for granted and not think was that important all of a sudden in a crisis you find out that's who's important yeah and you know we talked also about just really appreciating the weather or spring you know when this is happening and things that we were too busy for before all of a sudden I can be really grateful for that you know I'm someone who's usually grateful for travel that's not an option right now so now I'm learning how to be grateful for I I'm grateful for technology I'm grateful for being home I'm grateful for my family for you you know there's a lot of things that we have to be grateful for but they might be different than what they were six eight weeks ago which I think is what's really kind of been insightful for a lot of people yeah yeah I noticed it because I was at home and I have quite a big view of nature yeah you know Wildlife actually squirrels and all sorts and I have to tell you I haven't gotten to the point where I appreciate raccoons yet you know I think that I'm going to have to be a more enlightened person to actually appreciate and be grateful for raccoons they haven't quite made it up there and I don't think they've become any more grateful either I don't think the raccoons there's no Gib there you go might be a hard line there Dan so Dan we've talked about the power of appreciation that gratitude eliminates negativity being brain positive which is such a great expression and expanding the Gratitude Zone and lastly greater creative contribution which I think is such a powerful why why someone might want to consider this mindset is you can both feel and measure how this growing community of appreciative individuals is creating and contributing to everything they encounter making life more positive and I would say for everyone yeah yeah yeah it can only start on an individual Choice basis but people who have chos and can get together and I think there's a real multiplier to it I think that 10 people who are appreciative have the power of more than 10 people I think they could be a hundred people you know there's very definitely a a momentum there's a momentum there's a real force behind positive yeah I mean the fact that can happen negatively gets pointed out all the time but what's not so reported on is just how the collective you know these are all individuals who've made the choice that they're going to be responsible for themselves actually great better together and they contribute more together than the opposite well if I think about 10 people who have a negative mindset getting together what are they going to create or probably a longer list of complaints and if I choose to complain that would be me and there will be no improvement no but people who are positive or grateful let's talk about you know expressing gratitude they're going to be grateful then they're going to actually want to make things even more positive which is where I think the transformative aspect of this comes in it's like oh this isn't working right now not from a negative standpoint but oh this could be better so what can we do what resources what capability who do we know what do we have available to us you know how can we make things more positive so there's an interesting energy that goes with it that's like okay this is a really interesting point it's not that it's just La La Land you know pretending everything everything is good this is actually looking at what really truly is available and what we can be appreciative of and then looking how can we use that to make things even better and that's the inmotion momentum part of it rather than just staying stuck so it's an interesting perspective comparing positive and negative mindsets yeah so We've Ended kind of big here you know with scary times success but again it doesn't start unless an individual chooses to take 100% responsibility you know for their responses you know I'm going to hold myself 100% responsible for how I respond to scary times events but that grows into something much bigger than just yourself so the starting point is to take responsibility for your own responses to the situation yeah it's a bit like the airlines you know you're if the oxygen Mass come down first thing is put it on yourself then to the person who you may be responsible for you know right and everything like that and I think that everything starts with the individual well and I think building that own personal capability Dan is so incredibly important especially when we have so many inputs you know used to be just television now it's television and all the social media and your phone which you have on you 247 maybe and zoom so there's a lot of input and depending on what Channel or frequency you're turn to you could be deluged with either one so it's really critical that you make that choice for yourself because that's going to provide that immunity to negativity if that's what you so choose and then you can start to bring people into that and then together create some more great creative collaborative solutions to some of the other things that you'd like to make better let me put that way it's so critical to start with yourself and then the power of it is it's kind of positively contagious if I can use that word which is a great impact and I certainly know where I would rather hang out even if I flip to the negative zone for a little while it's not fun to stay there and I'm so grateful when someone you a different mindset or if by myself go oh hang on a second this is not I don't want to choose this and I make a different Choice then that's a very empowering place to be mhm great conversation Dan thank you so just to wrap up this is about forget about your complaints and to focus on your gratitude and just to my mind see the abundance that comes from that both personally and as a collective so very interesting Dan thank you so much this has been a phenomenal series I know it certainly benefited me and people listening to help them really focus on what they do have and what to be grateful for rather than everything else thank you thank you Shannon