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Harnessing the Power of Gratitude

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“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorns have roses.” ― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

Gratitude. Traditionally, it’s a word we’ve come to associate with the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. Yet, the practice of gratitude has long been demonstrated as a powerful tool to cultivate happiness in both our personal and professional lives. Why, then, do we tend to focus on expressing gratitude primarily in the month of November and fall away from it the rest of the year? Imagine, if there was a medicine that promised greater effectiveness at work, enhanced well-being, less stress, and better overall health, we’d be lining up for a prescription! While that doesn’t exist, we can, with no potential negative side effects, learn to sustainably reap the benefits of gratitude in our lives without spending a dime.

So, what makes it difficult to instill a year-round habit of expressing gratitude? Evolution has caused our brains to focus on the negative. In prehistoric times, those who were alert to threats were more likely to avoid danger, live longer, and pass their genes along. Today, that leads us to more frequently focus on what isn’t working or what is missing from our lives. Consequently, we need to notice this negative slant and develop a new habit to reframe our way of looking at things.

How do we instill a habit of gratitude? With concerted practice. For example, notice when negative thoughts start to stream through your brain. Then, stop and practice looking for something to be thankful for in the moment. What is the opportunity in the situation at hand? What is one good thing that happened to you today? Who are the special people in your life? What is something that brings you joy? How else could you look at what happened that would support you better?

This is not to say that there aren’t difficult and challenging parts of life. Nor is it about ignoring those aspects when they arise. In fact, it’s during times when we are down that gratitude becomes even more important. No matter what is happening in our lives, we get to choose where we place our focus and attention. Remembering what we have in our lives to be grateful for positively impacts our sense of well-being and peace.

Let’s not wait to start being grateful. Proactively focusing on the positive things in our lives builds the habit of gratitude. This powerful approach strengthens our gratitude muscle so that it’s more readily available to us. What are you grateful for? Some of the things that come to mind for me are the beautiful autumn leaves, the scent of a wood stove, sharing a laugh with friends and family, my health, music, reading books, the ability to play the piano, tulips in the springtime, freshly fallen snow, a brisk walk… I encourage you to make a list of your own.

A Few Ideas for Practicing Gratitude

  • If you enjoy writing, then keeping a gratitude journal might be a good place to start. Consider spending 5 minutes per day jotting down the things you are grateful for. As you build the habit, you might move to once a week. Greater frequency in the beginning will be most helpful to instill the new habit.
  • Take a moment at work to appreciate and thank a customer, co-worker, or direct report. Be specific about what they have done that you are thankful for.
  • When you feel the urge to complain arise, stop, and make a gratitude list.
  • As you prepare to go to sleep, take a moment to reflect on what you are grateful for that day. Even if it’s been a bad day, find at least one thing to be grateful for.
  • Make a game out of looking for things to be grateful for throughout the day. If you know that you’re going to jot items down 2 or 3 times per day, then you’ll train your brain to be on the lookout for things to add to the list.
  • Pay attention to how you feel when you’re being grateful. Notice how it is impacting your life in positive ways.

Over time, as you practice, you will notice a subtle shift and you may find that your new focus has led to enhanced contentment and an enriched life. What ideas would you add for practicing gratitude?

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Enjoy Your Vacation: How to Detach from Work and Return Refreshed

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Summer is almost here and hopefully, vacation plans are in high gear! Yet, what is ideally a time to rest, renew and refresh can become a time filled with stress. Why? Because, though you may be physically away from the office, work may still be taking up precious space in your brain. Projects in progress, never-ending to-do lists, that upcoming difficult client meeting, emails piling up, all vie for your attention.

Here are a few tips to help you detach and truly refresh, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

  1. Plan

While it may seem obvious, take the time to identify the key people who need to be aware that you’ll be out. Ensure that each person has what they need to carry on while you’re away. Doing this at least a week prior to leaving allows time to iron out any questions that arise.

Review what is coming up during your first week back in the office. What steps can you take before you leave to prepare for those meetings and deadlines? Upon your return, a quick refresh will be all that’s needed.

Block at least the morning, if not the entire first day back in the office. Doing so, provides time for you to review what has transpired during your vacation and prioritize what truly requires your attention.

  1. Enable Your ‘Out of Office’ Autoresponder

This simple practice goes a long way toward reducing stress during your vacation. In your ‘out of office’ message, advise people that you will be away and who to contact in your absence. If you work as a solopreneur, advise people of when you will get back to them. This sets a clear expectation that you will not be responding immediately. Most situations can truly wait a few days for your return.

Then, allow yourself to scan your emails, for no longer than 30 minutes, at the beginning or end of each day or so. While this may seem counter to what I’ve suggested above, it gives you the opportunity to scan for important issues and respond with a quick note, if absolutely needed. This is also the chance to delete spam and move emails to folders for review when you return. There is stress relief that comes from knowing that you won’t be returning to an inbox filled with hundreds of messages. The key here is to stick to no more than 30 minutes and then shut off the device.

  1. Set an Intention

Create a vision of what you will be doing during vacation rather than what you won’t be doing. When you focus on the fact that you won’t be working during vacation, you are actually keeping ‘work’ at the forefront of your thought process. If, instead, you focus on what you will be doing, such as hiking, playing games with your family, seeing new places, experiencing exotic foods, sitting by a firepit toasting marshmallows, relaxing on a beach – whatever excites you about this vacation – your mind will be filled with these activities. Thoughts of work will be less likely to intrude.

Despite your best intentions, thoughts of work may still pop up. If that occurs, have a plan in place for how you will manage those thoughts. Pick up a book, work on a jigsaw puzzle, go for a walk. Select a strategy that works best for you to shift the intrusive thoughts to focus on the non-work-related activity.

Final Words

Taking time off is shown to significantly increase levels of happiness and overall quality of life while reducing stress. Additionally, research from Project: Time Off, 2016, shows that “if you take 11 or more of your vacation days, you are more than 30% more likely to receive a raise”¹. So, there go those ideas that working harder and taking less time off makes you more successful at work.

Bottom-line: When are you taking your next vacation? Mine is already planned. How about yours?

¹ Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan. “The Data-Driven Case for Vacation.” HBR.org, 13 July 2016.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Building Workforce Resilience

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While people may love the work they do, many people today are suffering as they don’t know how to deal with the associated stress of a demanding job and environment. Add to that the personal and professional ramifications of a world-wide pandemic and the levels of stress and anxiety have only escalated over the past 20 months.

Never before has it been more important to focus on building the resilience of our workforce at every level. Resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to adapt to stress and adversity. Your level of resilience is defined as your capacity to bounce back from a negative experience to your normal state of functioning. Resilience is not an ability or trait you either have or don’t have, everyone is resilient and can improve their level of resilience. It is typically enhanced by engaging in activities or techniques that help facilitate good physical and mental health. Highly resilient people are able to effectively balance unpleasant and pleasant emotions and make effective responses to them.

Traditionally, organizations have placed more emphasis on physical health versus mental health or well-being in the workplace. As our work environments transform, employees and leaders now face the most demanding environments and roles, which is resulting in a significant increase in anxiety and work-related stress issues.

According to a pre-pandemic article in Harvard Business Review, burnout “costs the U.S. more than $300 billion a year in absenteeism, turnover, diminished productivity, and medical, legal and insurance costs.”¹ Those numbers are trending upward amidst the upheaval that COVID has introduced to our lives.

The studies have shown that no matter the type or level of job, anxiety and stress touches all industries and roles, every socioeconomic status, as well as every race and ethnicity.

Genos International, a leading provider of emotional intelligence assessments reacted to this by creating The Science of Well-Being Program. This program equips employees with the tools and techniques to help them build higher levels of resilience and well-being in the workplace.

The powerful 4 session virtual program (90 min – 2 hours each session) is designed to help employees at all levels improve their mental, physical, social and environmental well-being. The Science of Well-Being is built on the science of behavior change and healthy habit formation. Rolled out across your workforce, this program will result in lower levels of stress and stress-related leave claims, lower levels of absenteeism and higher levels of productivity and employee engagement.

Steps to becoming more resilient:

  1. Look at ‘how you are seen to show up at work’ – a review of your emotional intelligence behaviors.

Every attendee completes a Genos Leadership Assessment. They complete a self-assessment of their EI behaviors, then they select individuals they’d like to receive feedback from. Instead of receiving a numerical or unactionable response like “You’re EI/EQ level is 52,” the Genos assessment is unique in that it measures how you are seen to show up at work and how important your raters deem these particular behaviors to be for your position. They gather input on six emotionally intelligent behaviors:

  • Self-Awareness
  • Awareness of Others
  • Authenticity
  • Emotional Reasoning
  • Self-Management
  • Positive Influence (non-leadership roles) or Inspiring Performance (leadership roles)

Each attendee receives a customized workbook for the program that includes their assessment results, along with a development tips workbook to help them develop key EI behaviors.

  1. Take part in The Science of Well-Being Program facilitated by, Sherry Dutra, a Genos Certified Practitioner.

The course dives into the neuroscience of emotions along with the effects of pleasant and unpleasant emotions on us. Studying emotional intelligence helps participants understand and interpret their own EI Assessment results and how to hone in to key areas for development. The program then goes through techniques and strategies to develop higher levels of personal resilience.

  1. Develop an action plan to boost resilience in multiple areas of your life

Attendees work through strategies for this in four areas: mental, physical, social, and environmental. Then they dive into powerful models for developing resilience in each of these areas.

Developing the levels of resilience for your workforce can be truly life changing for themselves and everyone around them. With the Genos facilitator, each person documents insights and builds an action plan to take back to their lives and workplace so they can start having a more positive impact immediately. It’s a comprehensive and enjoyable program to experience. Let me know if you’d like to learn more.

If you’re interested in hosting The Science of Well-Being Program in your organization, please contact Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

¹Peart, Natalia. “Making Work Less Stressful and More Engaging for Your Employees.” hbr.org, 5 Nov. 2019, hbr.org/2019/11/making-work-less-stressful-and-more-engaging-for-your-employees.com. Accessed 30 Nov. 2021.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.