As a leader, it is your responsibility to demonstrate gratitude each and every day, and this responsibility is certainly not a small one. Human assets are the most integral part of any business and leaders need to stay connected to put their people at the forefront. With all the pressures you experience, how you ask, will you find the energy you need to sustain a disposition toward gratitude?
When you put building and sustaining gratitude at the core of your business proposition, you have already taken a very important first step.
There will be days when expressing gratitude will be more difficult than others of course. On those days, it’s important to look within yourself and ask why this is so. Perhaps you need to breathe new life into your personal outlook?
To keep your personal compass for gratitude pointing in the right direction, you need to continually refresh your capacity to experience it and share it with others. Allow yourself the luxury of time to stop, reflect, refuel and redirect your energy to meet life’s challenges. This doesn’t mean planning a week of vacation away from work once a year. It means that you need to find creative ways to rebuild your energy on a regular basis in whatever manner works best for you.
It takes a strong sense of self-worth to value ourselves enough to take the time we need personally to refuel our energy. In order to give generously of ourselves and show our appreciation to others, we absolutely need downtime to keep ourselves focused and motivated. When you find yourself in need of a break to refuel, take it seriously. Find a way to delegate, postpone, or cancel those tasks and appointments that are keeping you from your refueling time. Whether you attend a yoga class or leave the country on a cruise, disconnect and respect your need for refueling
A truly genuine support network helps by keeping you grounded, and at the same time, they wholeheartedly encourage and help you become the very best version of yourself. Your support network is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. And when you share with those in your network how important they are to you and express your genuine gratitude, those relationships grow even stronger.
Research shows that the health benefits of sharing gratitude are valid because of its effects on our consciousness: “if we can change our inner world through gratitude, empathy, compassion, and meditation, we can make our outer world more peaceful.”
No question about it, gratitude and respect are valuable currencies of exchange both in business and in life. It’s about being real and recognizing and respecting the full humanity of all the people with whom we interact.
Clearly, showing gratitude to others helps make the world a better place for all of us.
Originally posted on Forbes.com
