The Ultimate Gift #1067

In our last +1 we talked about David Brooks’ two mountains and connected them to the metaphor of stepping out of our shiny race cars and into the pit crew to help OTHERS win THEIR races in life.

I encouraged us to get tactical about it—picking three people and thinking of one thing we could do for each of them.

Then I said that I could feel my Love engines revving just thinking about that and that the misters went on in Ojai as I thought of my Big 3. 😍

Then…

LITERALLY right after I finished typing that last line, I heard my beloved “tap-tap-tap” on my office door.

I’ve been working on using my willpower wisely to install a Love algorithm-habit that now runs on autopilot so…

If I hear the “tap-tap-tap” on my door EVEN IF I’m in Deep Work mode (← Big ‘even if” for me 🤓)…

Then I stop working, smile, get up and, as I open the door, I get on one knee and open up my arms so I’m ready to receive a huge, jumping hug from Emerson (or Eleanor!)!

So…

I hear that “tap-tap-tap,” I get up, smile, open the door and do my crouching thing ready to catch a flying kid and…

… It’s Alexandra!! (Hah.)

That’s never happened before so it was a pretty funny and sweet moment. 😇

We laughed as I celebrated my algorithm-ritual and told her about the +1 I was just working on. Then the kids came up and I was able to give them all my pit-stop-crew Love for the morning. 😍

But…

That’s not quite the point of Today’s +1.

Today I want to talk about gratitude. More specifically, I want to talk about seeing life as a GIFT.

It’s so easy to take life and all its potentially precious moments for granted. But, science says that the happiest among us have cultivated the ability to see it ALL as one big gift.

We’ll talk more about the science of gratitude in the days ahead.

Today I want to focus on some wisdom from Robert Emmons (the world’s leading researcher on the science of gratitude) and his great book Gratitude Works!

He tells us: “I believe that gratitude is the best approach to life. When life is going well, it allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. When life is going badly, it provides a perspective by which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary experiences. And this is what grateful people do. They have learned to transform adversity into opportunity no matter what happens, to see existence itself as a gift.”

Gratitude.

When life is going well, it helps us AMPLIFY the awesome.

When life isn’t going so well, it helps us gain perspective to navigate the temporary adversity.

In all scenarios, it helps us “see existence itself as a gift.”

That’s Today’s +1.

Let’s step back, quit taking it all for granted and see existence itself as a profound gift.

🎁