Building your business through GRATITUDE

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. -- John F Kennedy

Have you ever stopped to expressed gratitude for those who have helped you hone your ideas, answer your questions and given you support while developing your business? According to Wikipedia, the definition of gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. Gratitude is an emotion that occurs after people receive help, depending on how they interpret the situation. Specifically, gratitude is experienced if people perceive the help they receive as (a) valuable to them, (b) costly to their benefactor, and (c) given by the benefactor with benevolent intentions (rather than ulterior motives).

According to M.S. Greenberg (1980), A theory of indebtedness and K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg & R. H. Wills (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research: New York: Plenum, "Gratitude is not the same as indebtedness. While both emotions occur following help, indebtedness occurs when a person perceives that they are under an obligation to make some repayment of compensation for the aid. The emotions lead to different actions; indebtedness motivates the recipient of the aid to avoid the person who has helped them, whereas gratitude motivates the recipient to seek out their benefactor and to improve their relationship with them."

A large body of recent work by M.E. McCollough, R.A. Emmons and J. Tsang (2002), A.M. Wood, S. Joseph, and J. Maltby (2008), along with T.B. Kashdan, G. Uswatte and T. Julian (2006), has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance.

These authors have also suggested that grateful individuals have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try and avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

So when you find yourself criticizing others or feeling/ saying that, "It is never good enough," look at how your thoughts parallel what is going on inside. Perhaps your expectations of yourself and others are unrealistic at times. Coming back to a sense of gratitude can help you move forward in your career.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.-- Melodie Beattie

Special thank you to Daniela Filimon, Dietetic Student at Madonna University who compiled information for this article and volunteered for Jump Start Consulting, LLC's patient programs in Fall of 2008

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About Beverly Price, RD, MA, RYT

Beverly Price is a Registered Dietitian, author, newspaper columnist and public speaker who made a name for herself with her unique approach to nutrition counseling. After 11 years in private practice, she sold Living Better Sensibly -- one of the largest private nutrition practices in the country - to a private nutrition consulting firm, and started Jump Start Consulting specializing in management and marketing strategies for dietitans and other healthcare professionals, along with distance learning products for continuing professional education. Beverly currently operates a private practice, in Royal Oak, Michigan, where she specializes in eating disorder recovery and yoga therapy.

Jump Start Consulting, LLC is a Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Accredited Provider with the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR).


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