I recently started a new company where I’ve been heads down doing a lot of testing and building. Part of this experience has been working with a new team that works remotely.
From day one, we’ve started to think about our culture – and the focus on culture has been inspired a lot by our advisor Joel Gascoigne and the crew at Buffer. (You can view their culture deck here.)
Among many things, like kindness, humility and authenticity, we deeply value gratitude. The thing about gratitude though, is that it’s not just an attitude – it’s a practice.
Vulnerability research professor and TEDster Brene Brown discusses the cultivation of gratitude in these videos here and here.
“These folks shared in common a tangible gratitude practice. They either kept gratitude journals, they did a ‘1234’ every day, they said something out loud that they were grateful for, or they said grace at dinner.”
and…
“It’s gratitude that makes us joyful.”
Joy is an incredible emotion to harbour while building a company as there’s always more that needs doing and moments of pure contentment are fleeting. Joy is like an energy snack you can pull out when you’re exhausted by the startup marathon.
There’s been a lot of focus on the practice of mindfulness – meditation, yoga, breathing and so on – but I’d say the practice of gratitude has as much of an impact on the balance and outlook of ‘self’.
Gratitude also has a scientific relationship on happiness. You may recall this Soul Pancake video that went viral last year.
With all this in mind, we’ve formalised our gratitude practice at CloudPeeps via ‘The Daily Gratitude’ – a verbal or written note of thanks we share at the end of the day. While our standup meetings in the morning talk about achievements, tasks and blockers, mostly related to work, it’s our gratitude sessions that reflect back on our progress and joy.
Here’s two examples from our sessions:
“I am feeling a deep resilience and confidence with what we’re doing – and that feels so good.”
“I am grateful to be able to completely trust you. Really awesome.”
What’s nice is that we’ve begun to incorporate some personal moments (like simply enjoying a walk in the park on a sunny evening), which means the process is more holistic and contextual.
So, have a go at practising a Daily Gratitude session – I’d love to hear how it goes.
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Image credit: Oil Painting of the Dog Star, Deb Anderson
I can’t decide if I want to write in British or American English anymore so bear with me.
Kate Kendall 
Gorgeous Kate. It’s something I’ve been working to include more deliberately too and it really does have a profound impact. Much love x
Best regards,
Hi Kate,
Enjoyed reading this. So inspiring that you are creating such a conscious business that values wellbeing alongside growth and success.
I wholeheartedly agree that gratitude is an essential component of happiness and wellbeing. The wonderful thing about mindfulness is that it tunes up our attention to more spontaneously take in the goodness.
Check out Rick Hanson’s work if you don’t already know of him – he wrote a book called hardwiring happiness. He was one of the experts interviewed as part of Mindful in May this year.
Much gratitude for your sharing,
Elise