159: Chris Schembra: Expressing Gratitude

Do you feel gratitude toward people who have helped you? Do you express that gratitude more than enough, not enough, or about right? You're probably familiar with research that expressing gratitude and feeling it improve people's lives. I loved my exercise of writing ten gratitude messages a day for a week. Here is the Inc. piece I wrote on it: I Wrote 70 Gratitude Emails. Here Are My Awesome Results. Today's episode is Chris Schembra interviewing me as part of his project including Bill Gates, Simon Sinek, and other luminaries. He asks us: If you could credit or thank one person that you haven't enough, who is it? The conversation doesn't directly relate to the environment, but does to leadership. The leadership part of this podcast is about joy, passion, meaning, value, importance, purpose, growth, and so on. And what Vince Lombardi says about winning, that it's not a sometimes thing but on all the time thing, applies to leadership. Too many people say things like that coal miners in West Virginia simply have to accept that times have changed, we can't keep digging coal, and if that means your community suffers, well, you'll be better off after the change. These people then refuse to consider polluting less themselves: we just have to accept that their job or their family requires flying, or they love meat too much, or whatever. So today's post is my answer to whom I feel gratitude toward but don't express it. It's personal but so is leadership. I wasn't sure if the conversation was too personal or distinct from the environment, so I won't mind if you let me know if I should share more things like this conversation or less. Chris also hosts regular dinners, so I feel a brotherhood in how we work, based on my famous no-packaging vegetable stews.