Gratitude is good for business.

With the acknowledged risk of venturing into “Hallmark” cheesiness, our team discussed gratitude in our weekly innovation meeting. This time of year can stir many emotions, and like any good thing, there is opposition. It’s easy to get caught up in distraction, but when given proper focus, gratitude can be a powerful force in our lives and our business.

Gratitude is typically categorized as a “personal” quality to work on, not too related to business. But since this is a business column, I’ll focus on the business side of it and what we learned as a team. Why practice gratitude in your career?

Gratitude increases our ability to operate under stress.

It’s difficult to run a successful business, the stressors and pressures are real. Our minds lose the ability to navigate tough problems at some fatal point in the doubt/stress cycle.

Practicing gratitude has been proven to increase feelings of positivity, improve our sleep, and increase neural pathways for feel-good neurotransmitters; dopamine and serotonin.

Practicing gratitude (even for the things causing us stress) resets us and deflects doubt and the crippling inaction of stress. It calms our minds and enables us to function at a high level. The daily problems we face in this industry can be resolved in part by gratitude.

Showing gratitude improves relationships and loyalty.

You can’t run a successful business alone. Business is relationships. We relate to coworkers, vendors, customers, and more daily. If those relationships are compromised, our business could be as well.

Showing gratitude (even for small, seemingly insignificant things) strengthens the ties to those around us in a positive and meaningful way. It opens the door for other positive emotions besides gratitude.

Sending gratitude “out” cultivates goodwill for the future. This could be the difference in a loyal key employee, a critical discount, or a renewed contract that is vital to business.

How do you cultivate more gratitude in your business?

Gratitude is 3-dimensional, we can be, feel, and act grateful. It’s important to address all three dimensions of gratitude for the full effect. Some personal practices our team reported with great success are the following:

• Visualizing (some at night, some in the morning) 3 things they were grateful for.

• Imagining what life would be like without something, and allowing the pain to create a sense of urgency and gratitude.

• Visualizing the importance of what we have, but also what we do not have.

• Writing down snippets with pen on paper and displaying them somewhere prominent watching them collect over time.

• Making phone calls and expressing gratitude over the phone while driving.

The Allmoxy team challenges you (as we have challenged ourselves) to work on gratitude. It’s easy to get caught up in negativity, stress, and the difficulties of life. When we match those emotions with gratitude, they will dissipate, making life (and business) sweeter.

We would love to hear about your experiences with gratitude, what has it taught you? How has it enriched your life? Do you have any unique gratitude practices of your own? Please share!