Episode 37 – How Gratitude Makes You More Productive 

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to the underground marketer podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:25    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth of our marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor. And today in the last episode of the underground marketer for 2021, I would like to talk to you about something that’s relevant to the time of the year that we find ourselves in and that’s gratitude. And I think that this is something that’s not often talked about in business circles, but it’s nevertheless very important. And the idea that I want to put forward to you is that gratitude has the ability to make you a lot more productive. And it’s not just about being happier. And I’m going to go through this and try to explain to you exactly how this works. So, first of all, gratitude, if we are to define it, it’s basically seeing the half full side of the glass in your life and being aware of the things that are going well and the things that you can be thankful for.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:34    And when you do this, what actually ends up happening is that you focus on your own resources and on potential solutions rather than on problems. And this is a thing that happens all the time in life. And that’s the fact that we tend to get closer to what we focus on. And it’s just like, when you’re driving a car, right, you want to focus on where you want to go and not on what to avoid and practicing gratitude, being grateful. It’s going to enable you to access the resources that you have and develop solutions that are actually going to move your head. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s basically focusing on what you’ve achieved so far and on your goals, on what’s positive and not on the negatives, on what you don’t have yet and on what is not working. So that’s why I, this is something that I do personally, and I recommend to pretty much everyone, you know, every morning when you wake up, take five minutes to think of three things that you’re grateful for.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:02:48    You know, it doesn’t have to be more than that. It just has to be three things and they don’t have to be big things. You know, maybe you’ve had a very rough time. And the only things you can be grateful for today are that you’re still alive, you’re breathing. Um, and you’re able bodied, right? You, you, you haven’t lost an arm. You haven’t lost a leg, you’re healthy. Maybe that’s the only thing. You can be grateful for whatever it is, you know, every day find three things. And what you will discover is that no matter how bad your day is and or how rough, the times that you’re going through are you’re always going to be able to find those three things that you’re grateful for. And literally no matter how bad your situation is, there’s always three things that you can be grateful for.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:03:39    And it’s, it helps you change your perception, basically, because we’re always the way our mind has evolved, right? The mind is always attracted by problems, by things that are not going right, because evolutionarily speaking, you had to discover the things that were not going right and do something about them, but that’s no longer so useful in our societies because I mean, frankly speaking, we have more things that are going right then wrong. For the most part, you know, we live in a society where we can get, most of our needs met. You know, we have access to food, we have access to electricity. We have access to knowledge. We have access to things that people a thousand years ago didn’t even dream of having. So there is a lot that we can be grateful for and you have to practice this. You have to do it consistently every morning to perceive the mindset shift that’s actually going to happen.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:41    Um, because you’re going to start noticing these things, you know, because our mind is so used to focusing on the negatives. We never actually noticed the positives. And once we start changing that, you know, by forcing our mind, basically to spend some time to, um, realize the positive things that are going on and not just the negatives, suddenly we’re going to be able to put things in perspective. W w our emotions are going to be a lot calmer. We’re going to be a lot more pleased with ourselves. Our self-esteem is going to be better, and we’re going to be able to feel a lot better about who we are and where we find ourselves in. And it’s very important to be able to do this because it’s going to allow you to access energy that you’re going to be able to use to reach your goals and reach your dreams much faster.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:35    You know, so this is not just some woo stuff, you know, let’s be grateful just for the sake of it, because we’re some happy hippies or whatever. It’s none of that. This is something that’s very pragmatic batting, and it’s very practical. You know, if you’re going to be grateful, you’re going to start being at war with yourself. And you’re going to be able to focus your energies towards your dreams and towards your ambitions and towards your goals. And I do this every morning and every night as well, you know, because every night I always ask myself a slightly different question, you know, rather than what I’m grateful for in general, you know, as I do in the morning when I asked myself, what am I grateful for today? And I ask myself general things that I’m grateful for every night. I ask myself, what am I grateful for, um, towards this day?  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:28    You know? So then every day, no matter how bad that day has been, I can find at least three things in that past time ever since I was awake, that I am grateful for. You know, maybe it’s that I’ve had food to eat, you know, maybe it’s that I’ve been able to breathe, clean air, whatever it is. Uh, again, they don’t have to be big. They might be big for you, or they might not have to ma might not be big, but there’s no necessity for these things to be big, you know, so long as you start noticing, and you basically train your mind to start noticing the positives, uh, and you do this consistently. You’re going to see a very big difference in your life over time. Um, and again, I’m not talking about a difference here that you see just in your level of comfort or happiness, it’s going to be a difference in your productivity and your ability to achieve your goals.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:21    And I mean, here’s how this works, because the mistake that a lot of people make when they think about this is that they think, oh, no, you know, gratitude. That’s where people who don’t have any ambition. You know, I mean, if I’m happy with things now, why would I even want more? You know, the, this is actually bad for my dreams. That’s what they think. Um, and gratitude is not actually going to help me, but that’s wrong, you know? Um, that, and the mistake that happens there is that people assume that somehow, if you are happy, you’re not going to desire more. Um, but that’s not true. You know, you can be happy with what you have instilled. One more thing, nothing says that if you’re happy and if you’re satisfied with how things are now, you can desire for things to be better, you know?  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:08:13    And because there’s people who make this confusion between the presence of happiness and the lack of desire, they confuse them to be the same thing. They can’t understand how gratitude can actually fuel their dreams. But you know, that I think that it’s quite the contrary. I mean, if you’re grateful, you have a lot more energy to pursue your ambitions. And, you know, as you start practicing the, uh, three things, you’re grateful for exercise in the morning and the evenings just as you wake up and just as you’re about to fall asleep, just to say suggested to you, you’re going to start noticing these things for yourself. You know, you’ll see that you’ll have more energy, you will be more positive. You find more solutions in your life. You can resolve problems, quicker problems that might have kept you stuck for a long time. Suddenly you just know what to do, and you’re able to trust yourself.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:09:08    And you’re able to feel happy about who you are. Um, and I mean, if you think about this, all that gratefulness ultimately means in this context is that you are at peace with yourself. And when you are at peace with yourself, what that means is that you can take all the inner resources that you have, you know, your motivation, your happiness, and all of that, and use it as fuel to achieve your goals. And, you know, instead of using it as self-flagellation and being at war with yourself, you know, punishing yourself, you know, whoa, why don’t I have this? Why haven’t I achieved this yet? And all these things, that’s the state of being at war with yourself, right? Because you have one part of you who is unhappy and who is basically criticizing the other part of yourself and saying, look, we’re not where we were supposed to be.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:10:05    Things are going too slow. Um, we’re never gonna get anywhere and all the negative stuff. So you were in conflict with yourself. Suddenly once you start being grateful that conflict evaporates, and rather than being fragmented, you know, with one part of you fighting against the other part of you and all the energy that’s involved in that, you know, because when you start paying attention to that, you realize that a lot of your daily energy goes to this inner struggle. And once that inner struggle is dissolved and it’s no longer there, suddenly this large amount of energy is freed up and you’re able to use it to pursue your more meaningful goals and your meaningful ambitions and your dreams. That’s why gratitude is so powerful. And it can really be life changing. Once you learn how to channel this. And once you learn how to unleash this, and it’s about doing it consistently day after day, and you know, the most successful people that I know they practice gratitude, but the always one more, you know, it’s not like, because they’re grateful for where they’re at the, they don’t have dreams of something that’s even better.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:22    You know, they have both and paradoxically, it’s their gratitude and their happiness that allows them to be as successful as they are. You know, if you’re always stressed out. And if you’re always at the brink of burnout, you know, there’s only so much energy that you can invest in actually pursuing your dreams and goals, because all the rest of your energy goes into holding yourself together, right? You need to hold yourself together because there’s so much on you. You’re going to break. If you don’t put that energy to hold yourself together, um, and issues spend some time every day, you know, and just pay attention to how you’re feeling inside at different points throughout your day. You’re going to notice that many times in your day, you will feel negative. And when you feel negative, you’re less driven to make things happen. And you have less energy, right?  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:12:21    Whenever you are in a negative mood, whenever you’re experiencing negative emotions, you feel less powerful. You know, you never feel more powerful by experiencing a negative emotion. Um, and I mean, there is a difference, obviously. I mean, some negative emotions are worse than others. Like if we think about shame, for example, or fear, right? If you’re shameful or you’re afraid, then you’re going to feel a lot more paralyzed than if you’re angry. We also, in comparison, many people say, like,  oh, it’s very nice to be angry, you know, because you have so much energy. And I mean, that’s true compared to the state you’re in, when you are ashamed or when you’re afraid, you do have a lot more energy when you’re angry, but equally compared to the state that you are in when you are ecstatic and when you’re joyful. And when you’re grateful, you have less energy when you’re angry.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:19    Right? Um, so it’s about learning how to stay positive and how to unlock this higher level of energies so that you can channel them to be more productive. A lot of people, they make the mistake of thinking that productivity is about just putting your nose to the grindstone, as the saying goes, and, you know, just driving yourself as hard as possible. And sometimes that is helpful, but I mean, in the long run, if you don’t practice gratitude, and if you don’t learn to summon positive emotions, um, what’s going to happen is that sooner or later, your mind is going to be filled by negative emotions. You know, the mind has a tendency to avoid, avoid, right? You know, the mind doesn’t want to be empty. So it’s either that positive emotions coming or negative emotions coming. Um, so if you don’t practice what’s going to help you produce more of those positive emotions.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:14:21    You’re going to attract negative emotions around. And I mean, you’re going to, it’s very easy to get negative emotions from the people around you. You know, if somebody is negative that sort of translates to you, you know, those negative thoughts enter your mind, and then they start multiplying there. And that brings you down. That brings your productivity and your ability to, um, create and to do great things, to build your business. It brings that down. And if you’re a leader, this is even more important, you know, as, or as a leader being capable of being grateful is, I mean, I can’t even put into words how important this is going to be. Because as a leader, you set the tone for you, for everybody who you’re leading, right for your employees. For example, you set the tone, you show them, you are the model of how they’re going to be.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:15:18    So if you are ungrateful and for things all the time, and you’re all the time in a negative mood, that’s how they’re going to be as well. You know, if you’re ungrateful about things, you’re going to wake up realizing that your employees are complaining, that their pay is too low, that they’re working too hard, that you’re making too much money from them and all of that. And you think that it’s about them initially, you know, we always have this tendency to think that, um, it’s about the outside world, but very often the outside world ends up being a reflection of who we are inside. And once we change who we are inside the outside world changes itself, uh, to match that. And the way this works is that how we feel inside has a very big impact on the decisions we make, right? And our external life is nothing more and nothing less than the sum total of the micro decisions that we take every moment, you know, and every day there are thousands, you know, maybe more than thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of decisions that we take.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:16:32    And most of those, they’re not big decisions, but they’re, there’s more decisions that their, their decisions like, um, you know, should I get out of bed now or stay there five more minutes? Should I wash my hands with cold water, warmer water? Should I? You know, everything that you do goes through a process of decision-making. Most of us, we don’t even realize the humongous numbers of decisions that we take every day. You know, um, even something as simple as should I reply to this email or not, should I say hi, first name or not? Should I, uh, whatever it is, you know, there’s thousands of small decisions that we take all the time and the sum of all those decisions, they end up being our external world. You know, we shape the external world through all those decisions that we take and what controls those decisions.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:17:27    Well, it’s our emotional state. You know, if you’re in a negative emotional state, you are primed, which means that you’re more likely to make decisions that are going to be destructive for yourself and for others. And the opposite is also true. If you’re in a positive, emotional state, you’re primed to make decisions that are going to be constructive for yourself and for others. So that’s why it’s very important to learn, to practice gratefulness and learn, to get access to this tremendous energy that you can access once you, uh, stop the negativity and you open up to, um, what’s going well in your life. And you open up to the resources that you have into your capacity to find solutions. And I mean, once you learn to take charge of this energy, it’s very easy to direct it towards your goals and achieving them is going to be a lot easier not to mention that you’ll actually going to be able to enjoy your time much more, you know, and rather than just thinking that all your joy is going to happen when you reach your destination, you’re going to be happy along your journey as well.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:18:45    And that actually makes the journey not just more pleasant, but it makes it quicker. Um, eating enables you to get your goals much faster, and also with a lot more certainty, you know, because you have access once again to your full energy. That’s not distracted by any inner words that are going inside of you. And I mean, you can also think about it in this way. If you don’t learn to be grateful, even if you reach your destination, even if you’re successful, you’re not going to be able to enjoy that. Right. Um, because I mean, it’s going to be the same thing as now. You’re going to keep looking into the future for that one thing that only if you had that, you know, then you will be, um, enough, you know, but you have to understand that you have to learn to be enough to yourself the way you are right now.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:19:34    You know, it doesn’t mean that you don’t want to get better. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to improve, but you have to learn to appreciate who you are right this moment. And if you don’t learn to be grateful, even if you’re successful, you’re simply not gonna be able to enjoy it. And if you don’t enjoy it, I mean, what’s the point of all that effort that you put in, you know, there’s no point, right? The point is for you to be successful in a way that you can enjoy, and that makes you even more grateful for being alive. So that’s the whole point of this. And once you start practicing gratitude and you learn to be grateful each and every day, you’re going to notice over time. It’s not going to be instant, right? I mean, it does take time over time. You’ll notice that your results are much better.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:20:25    You are achieving a lot more and you’re doing it with a lot more ease. You know, it doesn’t feel as hard. And the reason why he doesn’t feel as hard is that you have a lot more available energy that before you use to funnel towards being afraid or towards being angry or towards being upset or whatever negative emotion it was. So that’s my final message for 2021 to you. And once again, this is the final episode for 2021. I would like to take a few moments to appreciate what we’ve managed to build together here, uh, in the past year, uh, we’ve come a long way. Uh, we’ve published a lot of episodes and we’ve added a lot of value in a lot of people’s lives. I am very thankful to all the listeners that we have. I am very thankful to the impact that I’ve been able in the rest of my team, that we have been able to make on their lives.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:21:27    I’m very thankful for the team that I have set up to help with running the podcast, uh, my editor, and also my virtual assistant, who both of them there, they’ve done a tremendous job. Um, and all the people that we’ve worked with, uh, this past year to make this podcast, everybody involved, they have done a tremendous job to make this a success and to bring all these materials to you. So, um, you know, take a moment to think about the stuff that you are grateful for as well. Um, and, you know, feel free. Um, if this has made an impact, um, on you, the podcast to share it with other people and let other people know as well, we’re going to be back on the 10th of January with a new episode, and we’re going to take it from there. And hopefully, things are going to be even bigger and even better in 2022 and beyond. Um, I certainly have some very cool guests planned and some very cool episodes for next year. So, um, thank you to our listeners. And I look forward to talking with you and I mean, providing great content to you, uh, in 2022 and beyond. Thank you.