A Sad Monday Morning Story And Why To Be Grateful Everyday

A Story Of Gratefulness:

Today while I was at work, a lady came in. She comes in almost every day. Her story got me into thinking about how grateful I have been being. She hikes the trail right next to our store. She would come in just to use the bathroom and rarely bought anything. When she came in today, I could see that something was different.

We greeted each other as we usually do every morning. She told me that she recently had a stroke and apologized that she had trouble speaking. She thanked me for allowing her to use the bathroom and went about her business. I said I was sorry as I walked into the backroom.

When she came back out of the bathroom, I was in the back doing work. She yelled to me from the front counter. When I came up to see what she needed, she told me that she was so thankful for how nice we are to her and for allowing her to use the bathroom.

She told me that she wrote to corporate explaining her illness and how welcoming we are to her in our store.

We started talking more a little more.

She went into detail and said that this was her second accident she had in her life. Her first was when she got hit by a car in 2012. The accident causing permanent brain damage that she never recovered from.

She is now going to therapy to help her speech after having the stroke.

When she couldn’t pronounce one of the words she was trying to tell me, she started to cry. This really got to me and I almost started tearing up myself.

As she was leaving, she again thanked me for always welcoming her into the store. Before she walked out the door, she turned around and said,  All of the employees always look so busy when I come in, but that never stops them from greeting me with a smile and cheering me up.

Grateful For Monday Mornings:

I never expected to be hit with such a sad story this Monday morning. Most people wake up on Mondays and immediately feel dread for the week ahead. Instead of waking up on Monday feeling ready to crush the week, we look at it as this terrible burden. That is, until we get back to the weekend that following Friday.

I’ve been trying to change my habits in 2017 and be more positive overall. A big thing with being more positive is to be grateful.

Grateful for the things we have, grateful for the people that are in our lives, and grateful for waking up every day ready to conquer our goals.

We don’t take into account that we’re never promised tomorrow. We don’t know if we’ll have a life changing accident, like getting hit by a car or having our health taken away from us in an instant.

Focus:

The focus needs to be on the things we have control over. Our health and our relationships.

When a customer comes into the store, I have no idea what happened before they entered or what will happen after they leave. I need to be focusing on being the best person to them in the small amount of time that we have with each other. When people come off as rude or are just plain mean, I have no clue what could be going on in their lives in that moment.

I can’t control how people are going to treat me, but I can control how I treat them by being on the offense of positivity

The Offense Of Positivity:

As you know, I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. I listen to his podcast and watch his videos daily. A message that he’s been preaching recently is: We have a 400 trillion to one chance of becoming a human being.  At any second or any minute, our parents could have done something else. It could have resulted in us not being here.

Gary reminds himself of this every single day. It allows him to feel massively grateful for being here and pushes him to work harder towards his goals.

I truly believe in this statement. Even on days when I’m not showing gratefulness or I’m not in the best of moods, I sit back and think about this statistic. It puts things into perspective for me.

Gary talks about being on the offense of positivity. I really am trying to implement this more in my life, not letting negativity totally consume me.

I need to be more positive towards everyone around me and most importantly, myself.

Three Ways I Am Being On The Offense Of Positivity:

1. The first thing that I do every morning is my 5 Minute Journal. This daily practice gets me out of my head. It allows me to list three things that I’m appreciative for that day and three things that will make today great. The journal gets me in the best mood that I could be in first thing in the morning.
2. The second thing that I do has been one of the most challenging things that I’ve ever done. The 21 Day No Complaint Challenge. Anytime you complain, criticize or gossip, you take a wristband (I use the rubber band) and move it from one wrist to the other. This signifies you failed the challenge for that day. The goal is to go 21 days without complaining. That’s no complaining, no criticizing and no gossiping. I find that a lot of my conversations would focus around complaining or gossiping about things that I can’t control. Things I have no reason to be discussing. I have a lot of work to do, but when I do complete the challenge for a day, my overall mood is extravagantly better.
3. The third thing that I do to stay positive is working out. Getting some physical activity is something that I strive to do every single day. Whether that be weight training or just walking on the treadmill. Mike Cernovich had a really good quote in his book Gorilla Mindset. He said, No matter  how you feel before going to the gym, you will always feel better afterwards. That quote has got my ass into the gym more times than I can count this past month. When the thoughts arise that I’m too tired or that I’m too weak to go that day,  I remember that I’ll always feel better after getting the workout finished. Weight training gets my stress out and gets me into a positive state. It allows me to build discipline with myself and hold myself accountable for showing up everyday.

In Closing:

All in all, what I’m trying to say is to take a step back at least once in your day. Try to be more grateful in your day-to-day life and realize that we’re never promised tomorrow. The time that we spend here is very short.

We need to do what we can every single day to get closer to our goals and to make sure that we’re living the best life that we envision for ourselves. We need to be more on the offense of positivity. Making sure that we’re doing things to get out of that negative state and into a positive one. If that’s either by doing the things I listed above or doing something on your own. There’s tools out there to help.

Let me know what you think and let me know your tools that you use daily to be grateful and more positive in the comments section below