When I’m coaching any of the 20 or so CEOs I work with, one of the biggest skills we work on is self-awareness (the first foundational stage in Emotional Intelligence). In order to accomplish this, we often will do a gratitude exercise. What is it you ask? It’s super simple.
The gratitude exercise we work on goes like this:
Each and every morning upon waking, think and write down three people, things or achievements that you’re grateful for. Commit to doing this for 21 straight days.
Why 21 days? That’s the timeframe that the human brain needs in order to build new neuro connections that form an unconscious habit – well, not really unconscious but a habit that is hard to break. What you are doing is moving the activity – expressing gratitude – from your neocortex to your limbic brain. Kind of like when you first learned how to tie your shoes. You consciously thought about each and every step in the process of tying your shoes and, after a period of time, you were tying your shoes without thinking about it.
Expressing gratitude improves your self-awareness of everything around you so that:
When you express gratitude for someone in your life, make it a priority within that day to call, text, email or carrier pigeon them a word of thanks.
Let me know how this works for you.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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Tags: Achievements, Business Goals, Emotional Intelligence, Goals, Gratitude, Leadership, Leadership Qualities, Leadership Skills, Personal Achievements, Robert Murray, Robert S. Murray, Self-Awareness
