Gratitude is so important. Because it’s so important, it’s nice to take a second and think about what it really is. Frank A. Clark said that if you aren’t thankful for what you have, you probably won’t be very thankful for what you get. This seems very simple, but I think it has a deep lesson.
The lesson of this short, simple quote is that gratitude isn’t just saying thank you. It’s understanding the process of how things come to be in your life. To say thank you is nice, it’s the right thing to do, and it lets people know you appreciate them, but it’s only part of gratitude.
Gratitude is a way of looking at your life and seeing all the relationships and complexities that go into making something happen, to see your part and the part of others and be hit with the feeling of wonder that goes with success. That feeling is gratitude.
When you see gratitude this way, you see coaching differently. When someone I haven’t heard from in a while calls me up to get back into coaching, they will often say something about feeling like they were doing really well and could skip coaching for a while. Until they needed it.
We’ll go into a conversation and explore the matter, and most of the time the story is the same: they thought that they would stop for a while and come back at some point because they would need coaching, that there would be a moment when they would run out of water for the journey and need to dip back into the well.
Yet often that moment doesn’t come and they still come back to coaching. Why?
These calls are important because they bring up the biggest misconception about coaching: that it’s only about goals and you only need coaching until you get to a certain point. That there’s maybe something unnecessary about trying to improve beyond that. All those who’ve been in coaching for a long time are smiling as they read this.
No, these calls all have a similar truth, and although everyone explains it differently, it’s always an amazing lesson for me. They’re calling not because they’re in desperate need of advice, but because they have recognized the true value of coaching, beyond setting goals and making plans.
Coaching delivers something that helps each one of us break down and see the process of making changes and bringing new things into our lives. Coaching makes the process of changing your life meaningful, because it helps you practice gratitude in the fullest sense of the word.
When you are in touch with what you do best and the value you bring, and you learn to see the value that others bring when they do their best, you then start to look at situations differently. When you’re in a coaching frame of mind, your life is a collection of opportunities and potential collaborators, and because of this, the world is a different place. And that is the power of gratitude. I love to coach because I love to see the world change for the people in my life.
I can’t begin to express my gratitude.
Thanks a billion!
Dave