The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 199: John Kralik - The Power of Gratitude (A Simple Act of Gratitude)

Episode Date: April 9, 2017

Episode 199: John Kralik - The Power of Gratitude (A Simple Act of Gratitude) Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Until you are grateful for what you have, you won'...t get what you want." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Common themes of leaders who sustain excellence: Being grateful for what you have will lead to continued excellence How his second divorce impacted him: "The second time around, it's your fault" The power of writing thank you notes -- Learned from his grandfather "Until you are grateful for what you have, you won't get what you want." Writing one thank you note per day for one year "When you're negative, you're angry." His thank you note to his son prompted his son to take him out to lunch... What happened next? Life changing "He took out an envelope and paid me back $4,000 that he owed me." -  Writing all of your employees thank you notes: Why you should do this but most don't "Instead of being mad about my bad clients, I started thanking my good ones." -- The impact this had on John's business was immense "It turns out the one thing I had to be grateful for was my 8 year old daughter." -- "She loved this awful little apartment we lived in" "There are so many things to be grateful for" "When things don't go well, stay positive, stay grateful... Good things WILL happen" How to shift a negative mindset? -- Use a pen, write it out. Write thank you notes.  Use gratitude journals.  Trying to find out the person's address without asking them is part of the fun and the surprise. John has written over 1,100 thank you notes since starting this process Focus on the people supporting you everyday.  Say thank you How to write a great thank you note? -- John describes: 4 Sentences Always start with "thank you" Recognize the gift (or whatever they've done that's created your gratitude) Write one true sentence -- Why you're grateful Tell that person what they mean to you Listen as John reads a thank you note he wrote to his daughter (you might cry). Continue Learning: Read: A Simple Act of Gratitude  Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing John Kralik on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Rhone.  Use the code "Hawk" for 15% off.  Rhone... premium activewear engineered with principle, performance and progress for the modern man.  Rhone builds clothing around 3 main tenants: Cutting-edge Performance, Premium Comfort, and Simplistic Style.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You send out this gratitude in a tangible way. And the tangible way that I found was thank you notes. And it comes back to you. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. What an important conversation this was with my featured leader. I'm honored to have him.
Starting point is 00:00:24 It's John Kralik, bestselling author of a book titled A Simple Act of Gratitude. How learning to say thank you changed my life. book is a life changer. I would encourage people to invest in it. John shares how his life was not going as planned in 2008. He's walking the hills of California and made a decision based upon the fact that he received a thank you note and how positively impacted him. He thought, what if I wrote 365 thank you notes this year and see if it could possibly impact my life by showing gratitude, by focusing on the things he did have as opposed to the negatives. And that's what John and I discussed during this conversation.
Starting point is 00:01:06 In addition to that, we talked about the power of living a grateful life and how it could positively impact you. Then how to change your mindset and focus on the positive aspects as opposed to the negatives and an example of writing a great thank you note, how we all can do this immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so grateful for John Kralik. All right, John, thanks so much for being here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Welcome to you. Ryan, it's a privilege. I, you know, I was just telling you in our pre-recording conversation that your book, a simple act of gratitude is one that I sent out in my weekly email, I call it the Mindful Mondays, that I sent out and said, this is a life-changing book. This is something that you all should read. It's actually relatively quick.
Starting point is 00:02:00 you share the story of gratitude and the importance and some of the details behind that. I'd love for you, John, right now, to start, to share where you were at the beginning. And I think that's always an important place to start at the beginning prior to writing this book and why it was important for you to write it. Well, I think that I was at a real low point in my life. I had gone through a whole year of working. I was a private attorney and at a little law firm. I had about seven employees.
Starting point is 00:02:37 But I had worked the whole year and I had made a negative amount of money. And if you know, if you have a small business, I'm sure many of your listeners do, that when the business makes a negative amount of money, that's what the owner takes home. And I was going through my second divorce. I think that when you go through your first divorce, you generally think of it as perhaps the other person's fault. Second time around, I think you think maybe it's your fault. I went through, I had lost a case that I thought I had won. I had a million dollar jury verdict and the judge threw it out.
Starting point is 00:03:19 And that was very disappointing. I lived in a tiny apartment that the air conditioning didn't really work in. And I was really pretty miserable. It was New Year's Day of 2008. And because it's the one day when I couldn't work, I generally worked almost every day. But I couldn't work on New Year's Day in Pasadena where my office was because that's where the New Year's parade was. So I climbed up into the mountains above Pasadena. and they have a beautiful view on that day, but I sort of left the view behind me,
Starting point is 00:03:57 walked into the mountains, and I got lost. And while I was lost, I heard a voice that said to me, until you learn to be grateful for the things you have, you will not get the things that you want. And this was a voice that it was an internal voice, but it was very insistent. it really spoke to me and it didn't seem to come from me because at the moment I really didn't feel very grateful for anything. In fact, I was pretty upset at everything that was going on. So I didn't really know what to do with it.
Starting point is 00:04:36 Now, eventually, if you go downhill, you find your way out of the mountains. It's just, you know, kind of a rule and eventually I did. And on the way down, I thought of my grandfather. And my grandfather had tried to teach us to write thank you notes. And the way he did this was that if you sent him a letter, he would send you a silver dollar. And if you wrote him a thank you note for the silver dollar, you would get another one. And the thing was, I wasn't bright enough to figure this out. some of my cousins were and, you know, gathered quite a bit of wealth in their younger years
Starting point is 00:05:21 from my grandfather. But I did not get the message. So I only got one or two silver dollars. But I also remembered on the way down that I had a whole bunch of notes that I had sitting out. And one of the things that was happened to us was that we were losing our office. And so the address on those note cards was going to be no longer viable. I needed to use them up. And so I decided to write one note a day for the year.
Starting point is 00:05:56 And I just wanted to see if it would make things better. And so that's how the idea came to me. As I say, it was a voice that I don't think came from me, but I'm grateful that I heard it. So you begin this quest for the year 2008 to write a thank you note, 365 thank you notes for the year. And can you share as you got into this process of showing gratitude? One, how did you identify who to write to and then followed up by how did you, you know, how did your life begin to potentially change as you got into this practice of showing gratitude on a daily basis? Well, you know, when you're in that kind of a negative spot, you really are mostly angry, I think.
Starting point is 00:06:50 You know, you're not really thinking about what's good in your life and what's touching you that is good for you. I, you know, I can imagine that there are people in the world, you know, who are really having such difficulty that even an objective person couldn't find that much. to be grateful for. But, you know, it seems that a lot of times those people are very grateful because they respect what's good in their life. In the United States, I think we have a lot of things, and we don't necessarily appreciate them. I, at the moment, didn't feel very grateful for anything. But I remembered that I got some Christmas presents. So that's where I started. And I didn't really start actually till like the fourth day because it was pretty typical for a New Year's resolution. You go along three days.
Starting point is 00:07:50 You don't do anything. And then you consider maybe I'll give up. That was just a bad idea and I don't have time for it anyway. But I had received a note from a young woman who I was dating and who had broken up with me like day before Christmas, thanking me for the Christmas present. It was a beautiful note. and so that inspired me to write to the people who had sent me Christmas presents. And I had gotten a really nice Christmas present actually from my son, my older son,
Starting point is 00:08:24 who was really just starting to make his way in the world. And he had sent me a coffee maker that was one of those fancy ones that makes the coffee one at a time. And it was a really nice gift. And so I wrote him a thank you note. He was really the first one. And it was really pretty amazing what the reaction was. He called me up and he said, you know, I'd like to come to Pasadena and I'd like to take you out to lunch. And I said, okay.
Starting point is 00:09:01 And so we go out to lunch. And, you know, at the end of the lunch, the most amazing thing, he picked up the tab. which was like a really new thing at the time. And he then took out an envelope and he pushed it across the table. And there was $4,000 in $100 bills. And I said, what in the world is that for? And he goes, well, I'm paying back a loan. And, you know, you make loans to your kids.
Starting point is 00:09:36 Right. And you look kind of young. So I'm not sure maybe. You don't have kids old enough that they borrow money from you yet. Oh, I mean, I think they borrow money on a daily basis. The oldest is 10. Well, you know, you don't really think of it as long. Right.
Starting point is 00:09:52 Even when they get their 20s, you're not really expecting to get paid back. So this was kind of a shock. And my first reaction was, you know, I would just give it back to him. But, you know, at the moment, I was really in a financial crisis. and I actually needed the money. So I said, okay, and that was the right thing to do because I think he was growing up and really in the process of becoming a man.
Starting point is 00:10:21 And that was very important to him to recognize, you know, that his manhood was really coming into being. And it just, when I walked away from that lunch, I thought, you know, wow, this thank you note thing really works. And so I decided to keep going. And, you know, I had at the time, I felt really bad because I hadn't been able to pay Christmas bonuses to my employees who I really valued. And so I wrote them all thank you notes. And I thought that they would say, oh, man, that really didn't cut it, you know.
Starting point is 00:11:02 But they all wrote notes back to me and they wrote notes to each other about how much they appreciated each other. And it just, it was really wonderful and really picked up our spirits. We were, as I said, we had to move our offices. So those of you who are in business know that means coming up with first and last month's rent and other kinds of security for the landlord, moving expenses, business disruption, everything that's going on. But another set thank you notes that I wrote in that first couple of months seemed to pay off because I, I was very troubled by clients who weren't paying their bill. There was one in particular that owed me $170,000. And they had no good reason for not paying the bill.
Starting point is 00:11:52 I had collected a couple of million dollars for them. And it was actually in my account, but they directed that the money be wired somewhere else without paying me. And I had to follow that direction because that was the requirement of legal ethics. but I was left not being able to pay all the people who had worked with me on those cases so I instead of getting angry
Starting point is 00:12:18 about things like that I decided to be thankful for the good clients I had and I had some clients at the time who paid me every month and they paid very well and I wrote them thank you notes saying you know thank you for paying so promptly for keeping us
Starting point is 00:12:37 going and keeping our business successful. And they started to pay faster. And a couple of them said, you know, I went to one of their offices and I saw my thank you note up on the wall. And he said, you know, I pay hundreds of thousands of bills every month. And not one of the law firms has ever written me a thank you note. So I want you to know that when the bills come in, yours get paid first. And so I had people who sent me cases, for example, cases of clients that would pay their bill, cases who had legitimate legal problems, cases that I could win. And, you know, when you talk to lawyers, they like cases they can win. And so I wrote thank you notes and for those referrals. And the lawyer said, gee, you know, I didn't really think you wanted any cases.
Starting point is 00:13:37 But now that you say thank you, here's another one, you know. And so things began to turn around very quickly, actually. It was pretty amazing. 2008 was a really difficult year for business. One of my clients was a major bank that went into receivership. But despite that, our business picked up all throughout the year. And so from a business perspective, it really turned around. it turns out the one thing that I had in my life that I had to be the most grateful for
Starting point is 00:14:11 was my eight-year-old daughter she was the most amazing thing and I was not noticing what what an incredible person she was thankfully she's a teenager now and I'm home and she's she stayed over a friend's house last night so she won't hear all of this but she was completely amazing. And she just loved this really awful apartment that we were living in. And she created this beautiful space behind this old couch where she had all of her toys and her drawings. And she's an amazing artist. And she would just go back in her fort. She called and he played in play. And she just, she would cheer me up. I remember, uh, you know, sometimes we get too self-pidious and some things are not going right.
Starting point is 00:15:09 And, you know, we got to buck up and move on. And we, she would always insist on going swimming in the swimming pool of this apartment, which was unheeded. It was really awful and had looms floating in it and it was just disgusting. But she would just jump in and I would be like, oh, huh? I, you know, maybe I'll just watch and she just said to me when I'd, oh, be a man and jump in. And so we did. And, you know, really the most important note that I wrote was a note to thank her. And I know she still has that note. We've moved on to other houses, much better houses. And I think every time we moved, we set out an area that is her fort, you know, her place that it was just like.
Starting point is 00:15:59 like it was there, you know, and the things that are in the fort have changed. They've become more grown up. She's a fabulous artist now. She's got many other talents. She's going to science and math. And unfortunately, she drives. And unfortunately, you know, the thing that happens, she's going to go away to college. But it was an amazing gift in my life to have this daughter.
Starting point is 00:16:27 and I had two sons. And, you know, there were so many things I had to be grateful for. I really didn't run out of things. You know, there were times when I struggled through the year, when things didn't seem to be going well. But every time, and I feel this way to this day, you know, when things don't go well, just stay positive and stay grateful and find the good things because there are so many good things in our life that we don't notice. I mean, at the end of a day, maybe 10 things happen to you, but it's the one bad thing
Starting point is 00:17:17 that keeps you up. I mean, I've had some difficulties at work recently and, you know, it's those difficulties to keep me up, but I try to refocus myself on the things that I'm lucky to have, the things I should be grateful for. And it seems to work every time. It seems to pull me back to an area of positivity. And the other thing is, things go well. You send out this gratitude in a tangible way. And the tangible way that I found was thank you notes. And it comes back to you. Do you think, I think as people are listening, they're saying, while it's, it's, it's, it's, it's remarkable, I think calm about you, John. That's it, it's, it's reassuring. I think it feels good as a listener to see that you've probably fought through some tough moments in your life.
Starting point is 00:18:12 And if you read the book, you, you can, you can, you can get into more detail. But what is it? Because it's, it's very easy, especially people who are perfectionists, high achievers, people who, uh, really strive for big things, which are a lot of, the types of people that listen to this podcast, right, John? And so I'm thinking they are the ones who struggle the most with when they have 10 things happen in a day and one of them is bad that they focus on the negative to try to fix it or they can't stop thinking about it. So is the act of writing thank you notes of showing how grateful you are for others? Is that what's the routine or the trigger which can change the mindset to always be thinking from a positive perspective as of, oh, I can't believe I got that bad email or I messed that up at work or that other person's not a good person where you focus your energy in the wrong place.
Starting point is 00:19:06 You think that's the act. What I hope to have happened, John, after people listen to us, is that they're like, you know what? I actually have a lot to be grateful for. But how do I regularly think in that mindset as opposed to just having a brief moment where they're like, oh, yeah, he's a good idea. but then they go back to what they did before, which was focused on the negative, unfortunately. Well, I think that writing thank you notes is kind of a uniquely good thing and using a pen and writing it out.
Starting point is 00:19:39 I think there have been studies recently in connection with learning that people learn more by writing things out with a pen than they do by typing them. and a lot of the studies, happiness, research, et cetera, that have focused on gratitude, have recommended gratitude journals where you make a journal and you indicate what you're grateful for each day. And I think that that's fine. But I think that the writing of the thank you notes is a uniquely good thing because you can take. it and you sit down and and really the first thing you do is you try to figure out the person's physical address which many of us don't even know where people live because we interact with
Starting point is 00:20:31 them online and that gives you some way of focusing on that other person rather than on yourself and on their the impact of what they did and and the effort that they made to do something good for you and so you take the focus off yourself and then writing it out, writing is actually kind of a calming thing. I mean, especially when you slow down and try to write so that you're legible. I mean, I think to a large extent, some professionals especially simply abandon what they learned in grade school and just write madly and nobody can really read it. But slow down and write it so somebody can actually read it. And the thing is you get really good at writing thank you notes.
Starting point is 00:21:17 I actually think I'm pretty good at it now. How many have you written? Not counting just ones that were responding to people who wrote me a nice thing about the book, but personal ones. Well, let me check. This computer actually, I think, has my spreadsheet. You have a spreadsheet, right? Yeah, I remember reading about your spreadsheet.
Starting point is 00:21:41 And I think I'm somewhere like 1,000. It's over 1,100. personal ones. So I've kept track of them. I would say, you know, this being discouraged and giving up, put the, buy a pack of thank you notes. They don't have to be special. Thank you notes are not expensive. I, you know, I have a certain image to keep up at this point about writing thank you notes. So I've gotten some special stationery. But, you know, I leave them on my desk or various places, my backpack. And I don't make myself right one every day because that's really quite a discipline.
Starting point is 00:22:25 But having them always there and when you're feeling negative saying, well, what do I need to be grateful for? It just really refocuses me. And it also helps you, you know, focus on the things, the people who are supporting you every day. Your spouse or your significant other in some way, the person who's there for you every time, a lot of us have parents, you know, who are actually always doing stuff for us and they don't get thanked very much. And keeping a spreadsheet, you know, maybe that's too disciplined for some people, but I think that that too is very valuable. On the spreadsheet, you write,
Starting point is 00:23:13 kind of a first draft of the thank you note so that it comes out better that way every time you redraft something. So you actually write it twice once in the spreadsheet and once when you write it out by hand. And what the spreadsheet then is, it's a reminder of all the great things that have happened to you. The last couple of days have been somewhat difficult for me. but I always have that spreadsheet, a list of things that tells me all the good things that surround me in life and to be grateful for them. A couple, I want to get to some tips that we can share with others.
Starting point is 00:23:49 And let me, I want to, since you're really the become the master of this, I want to share some of my thoughts and get, get what you think of what I do in regards to showing gratitude. One, when somebody gives you a compliment, so many people fail and how. they respond to the compliment. They will try to almost be demeaning. And I think the best way to respond to a compliment, in my opinion, is to look them in the eye and say, thank you. And that's it. Don't say, thank you. Oh, I got lucky. Or, oh, no, it's so and so. Or just look them in the eye and say, thank you. It's amazing how many people don't do that. But it's, it's, it actually shows that you're grateful for them for giving you a compliment. And it, and it honors the person giving you the compliments. So do not demean a person or discount the fact that they took the time to say something nice to you or your show has really impacted me in a positive way.
Starting point is 00:24:45 The first thing you're going to hear is if I see them in person is a look in their eyes, shake their hand and say, thank you. Thank you. Sometimes it's multiple times. That means a lot to me. Something along those lines is how to say thank you when someone gives you a compliment. Okay. Well, I think that's perfect. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:01 And I don't think this made it into the book. the woman I was dating at the time. Grace? Grace. And I named her that because she was a grace in my life. And when she would compliment me on things, I would tend to do that same thing. And grace could be very direct in such times. And she would always correct me and make sure I just said, thank you, and looked her in the eye.
Starting point is 00:25:31 And I think making taking notice in that way You know, of course somebody sends you an email You should also respond to that email by saying thank you And also you know sometimes writing a thank you note if somebody is is constantly being supportive It's so few people these days are supportive of each other It's a you know it's a problem we're also competitive and our culture has become so aggressive, such a takedown of every victory has to be a zero-sum game in which you win and somebody else loses, but to be thankful for their support. I think that what you do is absolutely
Starting point is 00:26:16 the right thing. And as long as I've started talking about, you know, antagonists, you know, I would, I was always trying to work things out. I wasn't an antagonist as a lawyer, I believe. except when an, you know, actual assertion of rights was the only alternative. So when I, my opponents would meet with me, cooperate with me, work towards a peaceful resolution of a case, I would always thank them for meeting and write them, you know, for coming to the meeting. And very often some extremely difficult things ended up getting worked out
Starting point is 00:26:58 because I was grateful for the decency that would be shown. And it's a big thing today to recognize that. So for people who maybe have not done a good job writing thank you notes, how do you write good thank you notes? What's the process? Do you have a specific manner in which you would teach somebody to write a great thank you note? yeah i like i say i do a spreadsheet where i make sort of a draft first in the spreadsheet sort of what i said uh it turned out to be helpful actually because when i got done my life
Starting point is 00:27:39 had changed so much that i decided to write a book about it and uh people wanted to know what i had said in these thank you notes so uh that was helpful for that reason but it like anything you get better at it. After a thousand notes, I think I am pretty good at it. But it's not a complicated art form. You have four sentences basically to work with. And I always say thank you.
Starting point is 00:28:12 I always say the words. I don't let it be conveyed by if I bought a thank you card and the great big thank you outside on the first cover. I make sure I say thank you because the act of saying thank you and being grateful is really the spiritual thing that's affecting you. And you need to make sure you recognize what the gift was since they know that you got it and you got the right one.
Starting point is 00:28:44 And then I think you have to write one true sentence. it has to be true about why this gift was something good for you, why it was something you should be grateful for. And then I think you ought to think about writing the third sentence about what that person really means to you and how they have helped you perhaps in the past. So it's really about that person. I think that's why it's helpful to write.
Starting point is 00:29:20 a written thank you note using the U.S. mail. I'm not trying to plug them, but knowing where that person lives, when I was writing those thank you notes for Christmas presents, I realized, as I put them in the mail, that those people were probably getting the credit card bill in the mail that January for all the gifts that they had given. And to get a thank you note would be a great thing for them.
Starting point is 00:29:47 I don't know. We'll really write thank you notes for Christmas presents, but we all get them. Yeah. It's a great point. And so could you maybe read one of your thank you notes so we could see an example of one? Well. Or you could just riff on one since you've done it 1100 times or something would go. I mean, if you don't want to get too personal.
Starting point is 00:30:11 No, I, well, you know, the one note that, the most to me was one that I wrote to my daughter because I described the process in the book where I would come home each night and I was just in turmoil by all the things that happened at work. But we played together and I read to her and, you know, her favorite book was Pollyanna. And she insisted that I read it again to her. It really changed me and lifted my spirits to be with her. she was and still is just a calming positive force. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:30:57 I think God made her that way. It's not particular that I did. But the note that means the most to me, and I think always will, is the one that I wrote to her that night. And it just said this. It said, Dear Katie, thank you for being cheerful and happy
Starting point is 00:31:14 when I pick you up in the evening. sometimes I don't have a very fun day but when I see you and we talk about things and have fun I feel better thank you for being the best daughter ever loved that so that was the note that meant the most to me wow what did what how did how did she respond when she gets a handwritten note from her dad she still saves them and you know she in her fort she had a special place and when we moved into our next house
Starting point is 00:31:46 she had a special cupboard in the fort. And she keeps things in there like my thank you notes, like little rocks that she collects, jewelry and everything. So people do keep them. They're like gifts. I mean, I think that when you get something that's generated by a machine or typed or something like that,
Starting point is 00:32:10 we all have the feeling that that maybe came from a machine. You don't feel a person. And I think even in typing words, obviously I type a lot, but there isn't the same feeling. If I have a really important letter of any kind, I usually type it out and then handwrite it because it just creates this feeling. And it creates the feelings in you, too, that are so important. I really felt like no one was being grateful to me. when I started on this journey. And, you know, for many reasons, I guess.
Starting point is 00:32:53 But the truth is I probably get more thank you notes than any other normal human being in the world. I mean, they just come flowing to me, hundreds of them from readers. How do people know where to send them? Well, I, you know, they just figure it out. because for a variety of reasons, I didn't publicize my address. I did just establish a post office box, and I can give that to you. I'll text to you or email it to you. I don't have it in front of me, but I established a post office box so people could do.
Starting point is 00:33:31 I didn't know if you wanted to share with the broad audience so people, if they got something out of this, they could potentially email you. It's completely up to you. I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but I didn't know if that's something you're going on. I, you know, now that I've written a book, I have to be, you know, out there like we all do. But, and it's just generally the home address. I've given my home address out, but I don't like to do it a lot. And so I just established a post office box.
Starting point is 00:34:04 I'll be happy to give it to you. But I would say, if you're inspired by this, find the one person. your life that you should be most grateful for, like in my life. It was my daughter. And it might be your spouse. Maybe, you know, I've been really blessed and I've been remarried and I am happily married again. And I think that I've written almost 30 thank you notes to my wife, who just constantly does spectacular things for me. So I would say rather than write to me, find the one person.
Starting point is 00:34:46 I think people who go on this journey, a lot of people write 365 thank you notes of their own. And so somewhere along the line, I get one of those. But I wouldn't be the first person that you should write to, I'm sure. So find the other people in your life. And maybe the 365th note you could write to me. Awesome. Well, John, thank you so much for being here. I mean, I have to tell you, it is a, I wrote it in my, in my Mindful Monday email newsletter from learning leader.com, a simple act of gratitude will change your life in a really positive way. And it will pull at your heartstrings, especially if you're a dad or a mom, I assume, but me as a dad, I was texting with my friend Omeid, Homiya, who connected, Omeid is the best. And he connected us. And I told him, I said, said, oh, mate, I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit this to you, but this book made me really emotional in a big way. And he said the same thing. We had like a little bit of a connection.
Starting point is 00:35:50 It was really neat. And he's become a good friend of mine. And I'm appreciative that he connected you and I, John, and the fact that you were able to share your message with my great audience here on the Learning Leader Show. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I think there's still something up regarding the book. I think it's at, simple active gratitude dot com that's about
Starting point is 00:36:16 I'm pretty sure that's still there I have a full-time job now so yeah that I'm very blessed to have but my job changed as a result I think of this journey so I'm a little behind
Starting point is 00:36:34 on my net presence share what that job is because it's a pretty pretty incredible job you have I was privileged to be appointed as a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. So it's a great privilege. I'm, you know, very blessed to have that privilege. I was reelected too, so I'm very...
Starting point is 00:36:56 Good. That's awesome. I love the story. And it truly is a real life, authentic story of when sometimes are tough and how you responded. And you responded with just pure gratitude and being thankful for what you have and showing that. physically doing it by writing, and I think we could all implement that, and it will change our lives for the better. So, John, thank you so much for being here. A simple act of gratitude
Starting point is 00:37:18 encourage people to get it and look what we have coming up next. And I absolutely want to continue this dialogue, John, as we both progress on our leadership journeys. Thank you so much, man. I look forward to that. Ryan, thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks morning. You too. Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time
Starting point is 00:37:55 on the Learning Leader Show. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed with the growth of the internet. There's never been more opportunities for the self-employed. To meet this. Send, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly. The all-new Fresh Books is not only easy to use, it's also packed full of powerful features like create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online
Starting point is 00:38:43 payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to freshbooks.com slash learning and enter Learning Leader in the How Did You Hear About Us section.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.