What's Your Gratitude Quotient?

Many years ago, my Aikido master mentioned that the most important emotion is gratitude. Negative emotions like hate, anger, jeolousy, defeatism, cynicism and contempt can't exist when you're overflowing with gratitude. And maintaining a sense of gratitude to the Universe when you're in the midst of executing a martial move on your opponent is a unique feeling!

Since then, I've consciously attempted to maintain an attitude of gratitude in my daily life. It begins with expressing thanks every morning when I wake up. I thank the Universe for minor blessings (thanks for a good night's sleep!) and major ones (thanks for the new client!) The attitude continues during the day with me expressing thanks to events (thanks for the parking slot received with such ease) and people (thanks to the gas-station attendant for servicing my car.)

When we were young, we were taught that it was polite to thank people . This somehow implied that we needed to thank others in order to have an emotional impact on the person being thanked. However, I've found that you need to thank others and the Universe for your sake and not for anyone else's sake. The act of appreciating has a profound effect on the mood of the person showing the appreciation.

A sense of thankfulness, focuses your mind on the present. It's hard to think about some far-off place, or past or future event while you're consciously thinking about a particular blessing. The added benefit is that such an attitude focuses your thoughts on something pleasant and positive. Our minds are like the Internet with one thought linking to the next. So starting out with an attitude of gratitude keeps you in the pleasanter parts of your mind - an important requirement to deal with the stresses, strains and uncertainties of today's existence.

I posit that in the corporate world, if everybody maintained an attitude of gratitude, corporations would become more productive and entrepreneurial. There would be less office politics and lesser employee attrition.

It would be fun and useful to develop a method to measure one's gratitude quotient. This would be a measure of how much gratitude one feels when compared to the norm.

Perhaps this is a new area of exploration for HR professionals ... What do you say?