High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 654: An Attitude of Gratitude

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Regularly practicing gratitude is powerful because it has a lasting impact when doing it regularly. Gratitude is connected to better health, more optimism and resilience. Remember, you can shift your focus at any time to what is good and what you are gratitude for in the situation. Choose to take the perspective of a resilient person and draw the good from a difficulty. Power Phrase for This Week: “I choose to intentionally practice gratitude each day.” Quote of the Week: “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”—Oprah Winfrey

Hi, friends. My name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week, I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. It's time to check in with Cinder Kampoff today. We talk about an attitude of gratitude. What a great topic for this time of year. Cinder, start us off with a quote.

I love this quote by Oprah. She said, be thankful for what you have. You'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough. So why is this topic so important for us today? Well, today we're talking about having an attitude of gratitude, which is perfect time to think about this at this time of the year. But this is so important because having a regular practice of gratitude can have a really large impact on your life. For example, Lisa, one study found that just acknowledging or writing down three good things every night for two weeks had a lasting impact for six months.

Oh, nice. Yeah. So that's one way to practice gratitude. But we also know gratitude is connected to better health, more optimism, stronger mental health, increased resilience. Even on athletic teams, it can improve team cohesion. And so people also who practice gratitude as leaders are more likely to be seen as trustworthy, helpful, and outgoing. So those are all the many reasons we should practice gratitude. But we're not automatically filled with gratitude.

So what exactly do you mean by that? I mean by that is, you know, gratitude is more than just saying thank you. It's really about seeing difficulties as opportunities and problems as gifts. And it's not about taking the small things for granted. And so what you just said is true. We're not automatically thankful or grateful. Gratitude is really an intentional practice that heightens our own performance, our grit, our passion.

And just kind of think to yourself, like when is the last time that you've been actually grateful for, you know, maybe a poor job performance review or an argument or injury or some kind of loss, right? Normally, we aren't thankful for those types of things. Well, how would you tell us to start having like a practice of gratitude? So the first thing is to remember that one way to practice gratitude is just by shifting your focus. So think about your attention like a spotlight on the top of your head. You know, you're always focused on something

and by shifting your attention to what's great, not what's just what's wrong, increases neuroplasticity in your brain. And you can also shift your focus to what's good. You know, that comes from the difficulty just by seeing the good, even when things are really hard. So attention is the first step. Why is gratitude really important for us right now? I think it's important because this can be a really stressful time of the year, right? And gratitude can help you cope with that. And our minds generally go to the future, often kind of imagining the worst case scenario. But what gratitude does is it helps us appreciate the things, you know, that we can't control, things that we can't necessarily count.

Right. Things like friendship and improvement. And just by being grateful, it helps you stick with what you love and tap into what makes you tick, which helps you just get better. Now, Cinder, can you tell us a little bit about events in our lives that might be difficult and we should be grateful for those things, too? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's okay to be frustrated and angry and sad when things don't go exactly the way that you planned, or if something's really difficult. I think the thing to remember is emotions provide us information on what's important to us, and they're important to feel those emotions, right? But we can also take a perspective of a resilient person and draw from the good, you know, a really difficult experience.? But we can also take a perspective of a resilient person and draw from the good, you know, really difficult experience. And so we can shift our attention to the gifts,

to what we're learning, you know, what opportunity is coming from the difficulty. And this is going to continue to help you practice gratitude. So how would you summarize today for us? I would say regularly practicing gratitude is powerful because it really has a lasting impact when you're doing it regularly. And it's connected to better health, more optimism, more resilience. And then just remember that you can shift your focus at any time to what's good and what you're grateful for in a situation. And we can choose to take a perspective of a resilient person and draw from the good from the difficulty. Can you tell us this

week's power phrase? It is, I choose to intentionally practice gratitude each day. All right, Sindra. And if we want to follow along with you, where can we find more about your work? You can head over to Dr. Sindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. And both of my books talk about gratitude as a part of the section in that book so you can check it out there. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump.

Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.