Your Best Self #6: The Art of Gratitude

What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. This week on Founder's Journal, we're doing things a little but differently. We're dropping a mini-series focused on being your best self. I'm giving you mental models, strategies, and tips to get you in the right mindset before the new year. That means instead of just one episode Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this week we're giving you two: a new show that you won't want to miss, plus a classic episode you maybe haven't heard before. If you haven't listened to today's classic episode, go back and check it out. Today, I am talking about the power of gratitude as a daily practice. Let's hop into it. 

We are good at living on autopilot

So I've come to the conclusion that we are really, really good at living life on autopilot, working hard day to day, finishing that next project, getting that next promotion, hitting that new milestone, doing all of these things and thinking about what's next for us to achieve. And I know this because I've done this exact thing for as long as I can remember. In the early days of Morning Brew, I was always told by my family and by seasoned entrepreneurs that had quote unquote made it, they would say, enjoy the journey, celebrate the little wins, take pause, and appreciate all that you've done. And for the longest time, I was great at parroting their wishes and telling the world in talks and on Twitter and when advising younger founders, how important appreciation and celebration was. But when push came to shove, I really didn't practice what I preached. When we won a start-up competition on campus, my co-founder and I got excited for exactly 10 seconds. And then we said, what's next? When we hired our first employee, my co-founder and I got excited for 10 seconds also. And then we said, what's next? We did the same thing when we hit a million subscribers, 2 million subscribers, 3 million subscribers. We did the same thing when we hired our first senior leader. We did the same thing when we got our first write-up in TechCrunch. And we did the same thing when we sold the majority of our company for eight figures. And why is it that we, and when I say we, not just my co-founder and I, but all of us that are collectively competitive careerists, why is it that we find it so difficult to feel gratitude and take ourselves out of autopilot? I have a few theories. 

Why don’t we celebrate success more often? Some theories

The first theory is that it could be that we worry celebration and appreciation causes us to get complacent. And the second you get complacent you're toast. Another theory is that we want to be humble and to celebrate feels self-congratulatory and egotistical. And then there's a third theory that it simply just could be that celebration doesn't feel mission critical. And when you're so focused on your goal, whether it's a startup or in any profession, you will only do the things that push you closer to that goal. Now, regardless of what story is true, these are all just that: stories. They are our interpretation, but they're not necessarily real. And I can now say that with confidence because I've seen how the power that gratitude has when I'm at my highest and when I'm at my lowest. Now, before you shut off to the word gratitude and this topic of being grateful, let me just tell you that I was wildly skeptical before practicing it myself. And while I was a skeptic, I am now a champion of the practice because more than anything else in my life, gratitude has been the greatest key to happiness and fulfillment. And it's also been the best unlock for me feeling happy and settled today while striving to achieve my next professional goal tomorrow. Gratitude is a mindset and it is a choice. It's a choice to appreciate all that we receive, whether tangible or intangible, and whether in control or out of our control. It's also a choice to acknowledge all of the goodness in our lives. So if I was to practice gratitude, whether aloud in the shower, in my head while meditating, or my journal at my desk, it goes something like this: I am grateful for the opportunity to be creative each and every day. I am grateful for the privilege of a huge platform that I can use to improve the lives of others. I am grateful for a partner and fiancée who is my biggest cheerleader and who helps me see my beauty when I don't see it. I am grateful for my loving family who accepts my idiosyncrasies and shows me daily love and affection. I am grateful for my health. I'm grateful for my education, and I am grateful to have access to incredible resources that allow me to grow myself every single day. Whatever modality I choose to express gratitude, I would repeat speaking, thinking and writing that for at least 10 minutes a day. And I admit if you haven't done gratitude practice before, it feels strange. If you're the skeptic, you may be thinking, this is a complete waste of time. If you're the analytic, you may be thinking, how is this more helpful for me in my career than going through a strategic plan or running a model in Excel? But you have to understand: We all have two experiences in life and in work. We have the experience of what objectively happens in the world around us, and then we have the experience of how we perceive what happens. Gratitude is a muscle that is built up through practice and consistency that allows us to perceive the world as abundant, to see what's possible, and to be optimistic about our future and the future around us. Without gratitude, it's easy to see the exact same set of events in a totally different way. A world that’s scarce, seeing what's wrong, and being cynical about all of the things that are thrown our way and are throwing our world into a tailspin. But I'm not just telling you to have faith that this works. You don't have to be spiritual to believe in gratitude. Just look at the science. Gratitude as a practice has clear physiological benefits. It helps people feel more positive emotions, have greater awareness around good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. And there are so many studies that have consistently shown this to be the case. 

The case (studies) for gratitude

So let me give you a first study. In this one study, one group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. And then a second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them. And then a third group wrote about events that had affected them with no emphasis on being positive or negative. After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation. Now in a second study, which was by Martin Seligman, who basically is the pioneer of positive psychology in modern society, he tested the impact of gratitude on 411 people. Each person was then compared with a control assignment of people writing about early memories. When their week's assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. And this impact was greater than that from any other intervention with benefits lasting for a month. Now, the impacts of gratitude on happiness are so profound that people have even called this a natural antidepressant, not just because of the longevity of happiness created by gratitude, but also because of changes to the brain at the neurotransmitter level. When we express gratitude and receive the same, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, basically the two crucial transmitters that are responsible for our emotions and they make us feel good. They enhance our mood immediately, making us feel happy from the inside and by consciously practicing gratitude every single day, we can help these neural pathways strengthen themselves and ultimately create a permanent grateful and positive nature within ourselves, where it actually becomes the default act rather than us having to overtly do it every single day.

My own experience with cultivating gratitude

And if you don't believe the signs, maybe you'll believe my personal experience. I talked about this in a recent Founder's Journal episode, but after the sale of Morning Brew and my move from the CEO role, I felt pretty helpless. I felt like I didn't possess many skills that I had peaked in life, and that I would never built a great business again, nor did I know what I wanted to do next. I started a regular gratitude practice in my journal, writing out lines, similar to what I just shared earlier. And after a number of weeks, my overall baseline mood and level of optimism and self-belief were noticeably different. And again, I just want to highlight, I'm normally skeptical about these things, like I'm skeptical about the person who gets hypnotized up on stage thinking they're always in on the act like, that's how I default to thinking. I started saying things like Alex, you're wildly creative and a great storyteller, find ways to use those superpowers or Alex, you've been given the gift of time, a gift that people would kill to have the privilege of. Is it possible that there were other factors at play other than gratitude? Sure. Will we ever know if gratitude as a practice is solely responsible for my shift in perspective? No, we're not going to. But I am confident in enough in its impact on my temperament that I continue to dedicate time to being grateful to this very day. 

Not buying it? 

Now, say you've gotten to this point in the episode and you still think it's a load of bullshit. You think gratitude is a waste of time and it has no impact on your happiness being grateful to yourself. Well, let me ask you then, do you share that same cynicism about being grateful to others? Because as a manager or a leader or a founder or an employee, I don't think there's a more powerful tool in your toolkit than genuine gratitude. When an employee feels appreciated for the work that they do, they will be more motivated and dedicated in their job. It's as simple as that. And another study, one from Penn, even prove this. So researchers randomly divided university fundraisers into two groups. One group made phone calls for alumni donations in the same way that they always had. You know, those random calls you get at three o'clock on a Saturday from someone looking for money from the school, you went to? Those people. Then the second group, which was assigned to work on a different day, they received a pep talk from the director of annual giving, basically the head of donations, who told the fundraisers she was grateful for their efforts. During the following week, the university employees who heard her message of gratitude, the head of giving, they made 50% more fundraising calls than those who did not. So all of that to say, even if you're skeptical of self-gratitude, which I hope you will have openness to try moving forward, I implore you to practice gratitude towards others in order to be an effective leader. 

Gratitude in leadership

And also just a few final things to think about when dishing out gratitude work. First quality is more important than quantity. Too much gratitude and you may be perceived as disingenuous. Only give when you genuinely feel it. Only give when you genuinely are grateful for something someone else has done. And finally, gratitude is an amazing lever to build trust and trust is an amazing tool to help develop your people. If you remember in this recent episode I did on radical candor, to be a great leader you need to challenge people directly and you need to care about them deeply. Practicing gratitude towards others is an amazing way to show that you care deeply, which then allows you to challenge directly. 

So to recap, as you reflect on 2021 and prepare for 2022, try as hard as you can to commit to a week of gratitude. You can write a daily thank you note to someone you're grateful for, and then you can choose whether to keep it to yourself or share it. You can thank someone mentally, whether it's taking time while getting dressed or showering, to visualize someone you're thankful for, and actually thanking them in your head, or you can keep a gratitude journal, that's what I did, where you write down two things that make you grateful for others and two things that make you grateful for yourself. Or finally, you could practice something like a loving kindness meditation, where you repeat the phrase “I am,” and then you fill in the blank with an adjective of your choosing to show love for yourself. So something like, “I am smart. I am focused. I am creative.” 

I want to hear from you

Now this was a very different type of episode in the sense that it wasn't about business, it wasn't about career, but I just think it's so important for personal and professional growth, given gratitude changes how we see the world and how we see the world impacts our experience throughout life. First of all, do you agree or disagree? And do you want more episodes like this, more in called, like the self-help personal growth mental arena, or do you want me to stick to the business and career stuff? There are no wrong answers. I want to cater these episodes to you. Shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com and let me know what you think. Also make sure to pound the subscribe button for Founder’s Journal if you haven't an Apple, Spotify, or the podcast player of your choice. It's the number one way that we grow the show and it's also how you find out about content when it drops. One last thing: in the spirit of gratitude, I need to express my greatest gratitude for the team that makes this podcast possible. Our show is produced and engineered by Dan Bouza. Our associate producer is Bella Hutchins. Brian Henry is our executive producer. Alan Haburchak is Morning Brew’s director of audio. Holly van Leuven is our factchecker. Noah Friedman is our video producer and editor. And I'm your host, Alex Lieberman. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.