Gratitude is not just a virtue, it’s THE virtue above all others. It’s also the key to living life with an abundance mindset. Cicero knew this, and so does Tony Child. He’s the CEO and founder of Elevated Worldwide.
Being grateful allows us to live in an abundant universe. So how do you make that happen in your life? What are the 3 levels of gratitude? How can we feel genuine appreciation for those around us? Well, there’s a plan for that. Join Adam and Kate this week as they discover how to live a life elevated on today’s episode.
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In today’s episode, Adam Nugent and Kate Strong discuss the difference between a scarcity vs. abundance mindset with Tony Child. Tony also makes a distinction between practicing gratitude and being grateful—its an important and key variation, one that often gets overlooked.
TC: There’s one of two ways that our brains see the world. In fact, it was Albert Einstein that said that the greatest question you can answer in your life is the following: “Do I live in a hostile or a friendly universe?” That’s the greatest question your brain can ever answer.
If you can split the population, you can split it right down the middle. In fact, it’s probably not down the middle. It’s more on the hostile side than the friendly side, but you can split this population.
And the population is either gonna say “I live in a very hostile universe. The universe is out to get me. I am very unlucky. It’s everything that’s missing from my life. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough love. I don’t have enough good health,” whatever it is. It’s literal. The brain is conditioned to see life through a lens of everything that’s missing and not enough.
AN: Scarcity.
TC: Lack. Right? And then the other side is that my brain is conditioned to see that the universe is out to conspire for my good, that it’s always for my good, that there’s an abundance of everything. There’s always enough time. There’s always enough love. There’s always enough of whatever it is and gratitude—what I’ve found in all my research over the last decade now, cause it’s been a decade of researching this—gratitude is the flip from lack to abundance. It is not a flip. It is not one of the ways, it is the way. This is why Cicero the late, great emperor Cicero said “Gratitude is not just a virtue, but it is the parent of all others.”
And in the research that I’ve done it’s not just some cool thing to practice. If you are not practicing it, you are in lack. It’s simple.
There’s a difference between practicing gratitude and being grateful. And most people just practice gratitude. It’s like, “I write down things I’m grateful for every day.” It’s awesome. Great practice, amazing things. But being grateful is when you just automatically see life through a lens of “Man, we are so blessed.” There is so much goodness around us and, and you see everything that is, instead of everything that’s missing.
Our brains are so powerful and they have what’s called confirmation bias. Are you familiar with confirmation bias?
KS: Yes.
TC: Confirmation bias is my brain being conditioned to confirm to me what I already believe about the world. So if I live in a universe that’s hostile, that’s lack based.
That’s not enough. My brain’s searching. It’s saying, “See, I told you so. There’s not enough money in your account. There’s not enough love in your life. There’s not enough health in your body. There’s not enough resources in your job. See, I told you, you live in a hostile universe.”
And it’s confirming that to me every time something goes wrong. That, yep. That’s my life. That’s the universe I live in.
Gratitude allows it to go the other way. Gratitude allows it to flip. To say “Man, I live in an abundant universe. There’s so much around me.” Then the cool thing about confirmation bias is it will confirm to me, it will show me. Yes, you do. Here’s all of the amazingness of life around you and literally life changes.
To learn more, visit keepelevated.com.
► You’ll also like: Episode 42: Your Full Life Components with Henry Ammar and The Science Behind Practicing Gratitude by: Craig T. Smith.
