Being grateful each day keeps the negative thoughts away! Here’s how you can build thankfulness into your daily life. [Fridays: Mindfulness by Miles]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Welcome to today’s edition of “Mindfulness by Miles!”
Each Friday, I am sharing my insights and advice on a topic or event that I find useful in my life. I hope these experiences and personal interests can also help develop your skills, improve your character, and boost your career.
This week in particular, I’m focusing on the topic of thanksgiving.
Did you know that developing a mindset of gratefulness helps positively rewire your brain?
Continue reading to know the science behind this concept. I’m also talking about some ways to build gratitude into your daily life.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Mindfulness by Miles
In a past “Independent Investor” article, we talked about the positive impacts of thankfulness in investing.
There, we discussed that being appreciative of the things you have helps you overcome poor decision-making, which can negatively impact your portfolio.
Other benefits of gratitude in your financial life include:
- Greater satisfaction
- Stronger willpower
- Higher productivity
- Better relationships with others
- Wiser use of money
Let’s look at another angle of this topic. Since we’re using this for a “Mindfulness by Miles” article today, we’ll focus on the benefits of thankfulness in your overall health and well-being.
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Have you heard about or tried the activity where you’ll list down 3 to 5 things you’re grateful for at the end of each day?
According to MBO Partners’ CEO Miles Everson, whenever he does that, he not only recalls his own achievements for the day but also asks his wife and children to share theirs.
He says the entire process takes around 10 minutes, yet the benefits of the activity are exponential!
Photo from Local Adventurer
Everson believes exercising gratitude literally rewires the brain and builds lasting neural sensitivity to more positive thinking. This means the more you practice thankfulness, the more you default yourself to positivity instead of negativity.
Being a “thanks-giver” also has lasting benefits. Everson has personally experienced some of these, including:
- An overall increase in his well-being
- A stronger immune system
- Controlled stress levels
That’s why he’s excited to share this topic with you. He firmly believes adopting a thankful mindset will also enable you to experience the benefits he’s experienced—and more!
Here are some of his recommendations on how you can build gratitude into your daily life:
- Journaling
In Everson’s humble opinion, this is one of the most popular thankfulness practices nowadays. He personally does this whenever he has time to spare!
He says writing down your gratitude is tangible, and it’s easy to remember to always be thankful when it involves a physical object. The process is simple: All you have to do is write down 3 to 5 things you’re thankful for before going to bed.
According to him, this activity will help you turn gratefulness into a habit and default your body, mind, and soul to optimism.
- Practicing Mindfulness or Meditation
Did you know you can still meditate even if you’re busy or always on the go?
Here’s Everson’s recommendation: If you find yourself rushing to get to work, relax. Breathe in, breathe out, and let your frazzled state melt away. Slowing your life down for a few minutes won’t kill you.
Additionally, Everson says when you go up the stairs, try to pay attention to every step, or when you walk on a sidewalk, notice the plants that are growing through the cracks. If you want a formal meditation, sit down for a few minutes and close your eyes. Take deep breaths, relax, and pay attention to your surroundings.
Everson says these activities will help you appreciate the beautiful things you wouldn’t otherwise notice when you’re busy.
- Spending Time in Nature
This is one of the things Everson loves doing with his family! Immersing themselves in nature truly makes them feel relaxed and refreshed.
He states when you’re frequently bombarded with negative news and many other things that could trigger your stress hormones, it can be hard to feel grateful. With your nerves taxed, it’s easy to slip into negative thought patterns.
If these emotions start to creep into your system, Everson recommends getting out in nature and enjoying your surroundings. This will help you combat the negativity rising in your bones.
- Practicing Active Appreciation
Look for opportunities to be grateful throughout your day. According to Everson, this is especially useful when you’re having a bad day or you find yourself focusing on negative things.
Doing this is not about pretending, denying your reality, or lying to yourself. For Everson, it’s more about actively looking for things in your life that you have an authentic appreciation for.
This could be in the form of being grateful for having a cup of coffee every morning, or being thankful that you’re still alive and healthy.
- Combining Gratitude and Forgiveness
Eversons says you can carry a lot of stress—even unconsciously—from anger or hurt. So, to practice combining gratitude and forgiveness, he suggests writing down something that has hurt you, or even simply acknowledging your anger or pain.
Afterwards, look for how that situation helped shape you into who you are today, then let the negativity go.
Everson believes this is a powerful activity because aside from the benefits you can get from being thankful, you also experience the benefits of forgiveness, which include a profound boosting on your alpha brain waves—the waves associated with a calm and focused mental state.
There you have it—Everson’s recommendations on how you can build and exercise gratitude in your life!
For him, gratitude is a daily practice that’s similar to meditation. The more you do it, the more it becomes a natural part of your system.
We hope you’ll take Everson’s tips and apply them to your daily habits!
Keep in mind that what you put into your body affects what you bring out. In this case, your inner thoughts create the world you live in. If you put gratitude in, you’ll likely manifest positivity in your words, thoughts, and actions.
… and by being a genuinely thankful person, you’ll not only experience positive impacts on your overall health and well-being but also enhance how you interact with others and see the world.
Enjoy the rest of the day!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Fridays: Mindfulness by Miles”
High-performance businesses are run by people who think and act differently.
In other words, these are people who are high-performing individuals.
Companies and individuals of this kind have found ways to escape the grind of commoditization and competition by focusing on the RIGHT goals.
High-performing businesses and individuals are also “return driven” businesses and “career driven” individuals. They conscientiously develop unique capabilities and resources that allow them to deliver offerings in ways no other firm or individual can.
Every Friday, we’ll publish tips and insights from MBO Partners and The I Institute’s “The Business Builder Daily” newsletter.
These will help you gain knowledge on the things that Miles Everson, the CEO of MBO Partners, often talks about regarding the future of the workforce.
We’ll also highlight other mindfulness advice on how you can be a high-performing individual both in your career and personal life.
Hope you’ve found this week’s insight interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Friday’s “Mindfulness by Miles!”
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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