For professionals who work day-in and day-out in a macho work environment – where you “eat what you kill,” and if you don’t produce, you don’t eat – gratitude is often a foreign notion.
More common are words like merit, grit, earning and climbing.
Gratitude can seem soft, vulnerable and passive.
Yet the more mature we become as professionals – and, in fact, as people – the more we can appreciate, if not “what we have been given” (which sounds as though we had no hand in it) then “what we are fortunate to have” (which is the result of luck and hard work).
While we may have made many of our own breaks, we still caught breaks.
Gratitude can indeed be strong and active, as can we when we invite gratitude into our lives. Meditation, playing with young children, hiking, singing, surfing… There are many ways to get ourselves into the right mindset to drop the macho masks we must (or fear we must?) wear every day.
When we are vulnerable, we are also open and approachable.
We connect with others through shared purpose.
We have the capacity to create, integrate new ideas and expand from our current point of view.
We break out of the negative feedback loops that often plague us.
We can achieve change that is the necessary element of growth.
We realize that we are not in control of every detail in our lives. Rather than fighting against the current, we learn to live and breathe in the natural flow.
What will gratitude teach you this Thanksgiving?
How can you bring that feeling into the rest of your year?
Copyright 2016 Anne Marie Segal. All rights reserved.
Segal Coaching LLC 
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