One of my favorite past clients just had a great year.

Their industry just experienced a down economy. Their gross revenue was also down. But they experienced an increase in profits.

Best of all, they were able to retain most of their employees.

When I first started working with them they kept repeating the phrase, “If we just do the right things, the right things will happen to us.”

Initially, I found this a little frustrating. We were trying to set goals. They didn’t seem interested in goal setting. Instead, they wanted to focus on doing the right things.

For them, I found that this meant treating customers well and becoming more efficient in management and operations.

A pretty simple recipe.

Sometimes, we can make things more complicated than we need to.

Sometimes, it’s worth just figuring out the right things to do.

Happiness is a choice

The field of psychology, particularly the sub-specialty of positive psychology, teaches us that happiness is a choice.

We choose happiness first and then success and positive experiences tend to follow.

As opposed to the reverse. Which is pursuing success and experiences and hoping they’ll add up to happiness.

Happiness is a choice. It’s also a skill, a habit and a personal practice. It’s something we do.

I started practicing the habits of happiness a few years ago.

I was surprised at how simple they are and how important they’ve become in my life.

Gratitude is vital

One of the ingredients of being happy is to practice gratitude.

Nearly all thought leaders in the fields of leadership, success and personal development emphasize that gratitude is the vital attitude for personal growth and development.

Gratitude is the ability to: A) See goodness or value and B) Be humble enough to recognize that others brought the goodness or value.

The more gratitude I have, the more I see the goodness and value in my life. The more I see that others are bringing this into my life, the more it changes how I see others. And how I see life.

Gratitude is also a skill, a habit and a personal practice.

Some people seem to naturally be grateful. I had to learn it. I practice it.

Most days, I journal three things I’m grateful for.

It’s pretty simple. When I first started it was hard. You can only be thankful for coffee so many times.

But it became easy. Then I started to enjoy it.

Then I noticed it started to shift how I saw and experienced life.

Meet Gratitude’s sibling: Appreciation.

Most often, I feel gratitude towards something that I find a benefit from.

Appreciation, at least the way I’m using it, is very similar to gratitude. Except it is expressed towards something that I may not benefit from. Or someone who is acting more distantly from me.

It probably doesn’t matter which word you use. Don’t get hung up on that.

The point is being able to appreciate people and things that are outside of us. That don’t benefit us.

Here are some things that we often struggle to appreciate:

• The efforts of an elected official to improve a neighborhood that we don’t live in.
• The success of a business that we don’t benefit from.
• The sacrifice of volunteers for a cause that we don’t normally pay attention to.

There are other things to appreciate too. Like the power of weather. Listening to other people being happy.

What’s interesting is how often all of the above can actually provoke anger or frustration or indifference.

I think the world could do with some more appreciation.

Or at least Facebook could. Maybe a couple of news companies, too.

My New Year’s Resolution: 2018 A Year of Appreciation

I can’t help but set goals.

I think in goals. Goals just pop out of me.

I have a focused group of goals for this year.

However, as I was going through my normal process of setting my business and personal goals, I wondered: What’s all of this supposed to add up to?

I realized none of it matters if I can’t appreciate it. If I can’t be grateful for it.

Then I realized that I can appreciate things right now. I can be grateful right now.

I don’t have to accomplish the goals or experience certain successes to be appreciative and grateful.

So, my theme for 2018 is Year of Appreciation.

This year, I really want Appreciation to become part of how I naturally, habitually see life.

I still believe in goal setting. But I’m learning that if I do the right things, the right things often happen to me.

Learning to live appreciatively, for me, is a good “right thing” to start working on.

If I choose happiness, my days are happier.

If I choose gratitude, I enjoy my relationships and work better.

If I choose appreciation, I might enjoy life better.

How will I do this?

It’ll be a learning curve. I’m not an appreciation expert. But here’s how I’ve started. It seems to be working:

• I made a list of 10 groups of relationships or topics or issues that I could be more appreciative of.
• Every day, I’ve been taking one of those 10 groups and writing 10 things I can appreciate about each.

At first, I thought this was going to be this difficult moral chore. Like wearing camel hair underwear for a year.

Which I’ve never done. But it sounds itchy.

My appreciation experiment has been interesting: I have found that I have plenty to write about. Even when I write about people or issues that I thought I mostly didn’t appreciate.

Also, I feel good when I’m done with the exercise.

Better, I can already see that my perspective is changing.

Now, I think 2018 is going to a pretty great year.

I hope you have a great year too!

Christian

P.S. If you are interested in the habits of happiness send me an e-mail. I’d be happy to share them with you!

Would you like a Personal Leadership Strategy Session? Would you like to talk to me, one-on-one, about how you could rapidly grow as a leader? Would you like to change behaviors or mindsets that are holding you back?

Curious? Contact me:

During this complimentary call I’ll help you identify:

• The priorities that will matter most for you in 2018
• What challenges you’ll need to prepare for to meet those priorities.
• What resources you have at your disposal to help you succeed.
• What I can offer you that will help you ensure your success.

Contact me to learn more: christian@vantageconsulting.org or 907 522-7200.