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Cultivate the Attitude of Gratitude in Your Career

How do you feel around Thanksgiving time?

For me, as darkness sets in, sometimes I feel heavy, both emotionally and physically. This time of year, the leaves have turned from red to gold and are drifting down from the trees. The days are shorter, the nights are longer. The air is crisper and cooler. The hubbub of the holidays is upon us.

At work, it's all too easy to get caught up in the rush, rush, rush, and feel pushed and stretched and pulled. We can get caught in all the things that frustrate us, and this adds fuel to the fire of stress.

One way to overcome these negative emotions and sensations: Cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

Simply put, when we feel down, we tend to think negative thoughts and react in defensive ways. When we think positive thoughts, we open ourselves up to a greater range of possibilities and generally find solutions that work for us.

So, when negative attitudes creep in, we can reduce their impact by recalling a positive memory or something for which we feel grateful.

Check out the suggested activity (below) of this month's newsletter, Get More Positive: Grow Your Gratitude. Discover a way to change your neurophysiology and wire yourself for success.

Get More Positive: Grow Your Gratitude

Do you want to feel more positive -- about your career, you social life, yourself?

One of the best practices I've adopted in the past year that keeps me in the "positive range" is to grow my gratitude. Here are some suggestions for you:

Set aside some time (as little as 10 minutes for starters) to consider the things for which you are grateful. Find a beautiful diary or paper and jot down your thoughts. Keep the list by your bedside.

Then, at the end of each day, before going to sleep, review your day. As you think of people and incidents for which you are grateful, add them to your list.

Consider your gratitude for:

a person who helped you a project that turned out the way you wanted finding out someone recovered from an illness seeing a beautiful scene in nature watching someone smile hearing birds sing getting a compliment from your manager or a friend eating tasty food smelling a pleasing fragrance feeling peace in your body

When you are feeling down, go back to this gratitude list. Choose any item on the list, and recall one of the incidents or people for whom you've felt gratitude.

Bring the memory vividly into you mind for at least 20 seconds. Notice how your body reacts. You may feel more relaxed. Your breathing may change. Perhaps you will feel lighter. And, it just may make you feel more positive in the moment.