Gratitude

Hey. Good morning team. All right. So here we are, another Wednesday. Wednesday Workshop.

I want to talk to you a little bit about gratitude. Gratitude, right? Life has a way of sometimes happening in such a way that it makes us better or it makes us bitter. Have you ever had something in your life that has taken place that has made you feel a little bit bitter, a little bit upset?

When I talk about gratitude and I talk about those things or I think about those things, the reality is that we as people are not very grateful.

It doesn’t come naturally. Selfish comes naturally.

I’ve run into people that will tell me…I remember when I was a young man, I had a director one time that told me, she said, “Well, I just think that given the right thing to do, given the opportunity to do the right thing, people will always do the right thing and make that choice.” I just kind of looked at her and I said, “Have you ever been to a nursery?”

I mean, think about it. You take two small children, 17 months, 18 months old. They are just barely walking and can’t talk yet. You give them each a toy, you put them in a room. One child will crawl over to the other and steal their toy. Because we naturally are not loving, kind, and we don’t show a lot of gratitude. We just don’t normally do that.

I know there’s a Shakespeare quote out there that says “I was upset because I didn’t have shoes until I found a man without legs.” Life has a perspective sometimes. We look at it through our own lens. I think everybody that’s watching this video right now if you think you probably know somebody that isn’t very grateful. That’s always grumpy. That’s always upset. And if you don’t know that person, you should spend a little bit more time looking in the mirror.

Okay. So, notice I made a little joke out of that. Yeah. If you don’t know somebody that is grumpy and upset and not very grateful, then maybe you’re the person somebody else right now is thinking of. And that’s really true.

Gratefulness. Gratitude.

What makes us in life have a grateful attitude? Sometimes it’s a choice. I really believe many times it is a choice, I know for me it has been, I have to choose to be grateful. I have to look for reasons to be grateful. Instead of looking for reasons, it really kind of goes back to your attitude. What what are you looking for? Are you looking to be grateful or are you looking to, you know, be Eeyore?

If you’ve read any Winnie the Pooh, it’s like you have that one character. You have Eeyore and he’s sitting there and somebody says, “Oh, look, the sun is shining.” “Yeah, but the clouds are probably on their way.” Right? That person, that it’s like “Hey, I help make you a shelter.” “Yeah. It’s probably going to fall down in the next storm.” You’ve got that individual, and then you got Tigger…”TFN, tatta for now.” Hey, what’s happening here? Everything’s great, you know, and they’re bouncing around.

It’s about perspective many times.

And it’s in that gratitude that you can have that will change your perspective. Sometimes the bitterness will burn away or melt away. Well, I mean, let’s say it melts away. Bitterness can burn away at your soul and it can eat away at you. And it can probably, well, I think there are even studies on this. It will take life years away from you if you let bitterness boil up inside of you. But bitterness will melt away when you allow gratitude to come into your life and when you will purposefully look for things to be happy about.

Look for things that you can be grateful for instead of the things you don’t have.

Instead of looking for things you don’t have, look at the things you do have. Because we have it pretty great here in America. We have a pretty great here and in our society. And sometimes we only can focus. And I mean, in this last couple of years with the pandemic and the different governmental overreaches, they have had an impact, even on me, in such a way that it takes away some of that gratitude if I let it come into me and I can get bitter.

Most of you know and if you’re new here, you have heard about it. But, you know, we give raises every quarter and we have people that have been getting raises. And over the last five years, we’ve given, you know, well, we’re I think, running into 2 million three hundred thousand or 2 million and four hundred thousand, somewhere around there, that we’ve given in raises.

And in all honesty, I would probably say anywhere from 10% to 15% of the company has ever reached out to me personally and said thank you. Or to Karen, or I’ve never heard another leader say, hey, so-and-so said thank you for their raise. Or, you know, they told me how grateful they were that they got a raise. I don’t hear that very often. And this isn’t me saying to you, Hey, you should really if you get a raise next quarter, reach out to me and say something. It’s me just want to point out to you what the reality is.

The majority of us don’t seek to be grateful.

Because even though I’ve got team members that have had eight or ten raises in the last two or three years. They still haven’t come and said thank you. And again, I don’t get bitter about that. It’s just it’s a point of fact.

But let me tell you about somebody that does. We have a team member that came to work here a couple of years ago and has received a few raises and stuff. And recently, when I sat down with him and explained to him that they were getting a raise, again, I told them what it was going to be and what it was going to bring their salary to. They brought to my attention, and I didn’t notice that when they left their last company and made a decision to not work there, which was a very large corporation, they were making a significant salary and they took a significant pay cut to make the decision to come to Northwest Enforcement, Inc.

And in just around two years, they are going to be making basically the salary that they left their other company. That’s a significant difference. And the thing about this team member is that they have on every occasion that they’ve received a raise, which there have been multiple raises over the last couple of years because there are four quarters in a year. So they’ve had at least eight or ten opportunities to get a raise.

This individual has written me a note and Karen a note and said thank you for the raise that they’ve gotten almost every single time that they’ve gotten a raise. And when they told me that they just now are going to be making what they were making two years ago…

It made me feel compelled to want to give them more.

I want you to understand what I just said. It made me compelled to want to give them more. Not because of what they do here. Not because of the greatness they display here, which they do in great amounts. Every team member here that gets a raise is showing value and excellence.

That’s not the reason I felt compelled to want to give more. I felt compelled to want to give them more because of their consistent gratitude with everything they have gotten while they have been here. That is the difference. They live a grateful, gratitude, filled life.

And it’s that kind of thing that propels us to continue to have greatness in our life because we’re constantly looking for good things and we’re being a part of good things and we’re not doing less because we’re making less.

We’re doing more because we care. Because we are driven to care.

And it’s that kind of gratitude that we want to build Northwest Enforcement, Inc. on. So as you’re thinking about this Wednesday Workshop and as you’re moving through to be valuable because nothing less will do the rest of this week and moving forward through the month of February. And the fact that next week we are coming up on Valentine’s Day, what a way to be grateful is to share with your loved ones a little bit of reason why you’re glad to have them in your life. I want you to think about the fact that life is always going to throw and hit you hard. You can either get bitter about that or you can get better.

You can focus on the good things that are happening to you.

Look for something good. Look for a silver lining. Stop looking for the clouds and the rain. Stop looking for those. Look for the sunshine in your life because there is some there somewhere there. There is some there. And if you remember that and you look for that, you’ll probably find it.

All right, guys, I want you to give somebody a hug this Valentine’s Day. Send somebody a card. If you’re married, that should probably be your wife or your husband, maybe your kids, significant other, mom, or dad, right? They did some stuff for you.

I wish you the best. God bless. And I’m looking forward to seeing you guys at a party that we might be holding here in the coming months as we get closer to spring. I think we’re going to do another Cinco de Mayo. So let me just kind of tickle that in there. Who doesn’t like tacos? Right? So we’ll be doing something like that.

All right. Happy Wednesday. God bless.