199 Celebrating 200 Episodes & How to Achieve Your Purpose Through Genuine Gratitude, the Gap & the Gain and Living in Crescendo | Mahan Tavakoli Partnering Leadership Insight

Mahan: 

Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm so excited to have you along with me on this journey of learning and growth, most especially being that we are coming up to 200 episodes of this podcast, Two years of Learning and Growth together. Some of you have been with me from the very first episode. I really appreciate that and I really appreciate you and some of you are newer listeners.

I appreciate you as well. Many of you binge listening to episodes from the very first episode on, So I am filled with so much excitement and genuine gratitude.

As you know, the first Thursday of every. I share some of my own leadership thoughts and perspectives. I wanted to take this moment and share three essential elements of leading purpose-driven lives, and one of them is that genuine gratitude.

Robert Emmonds, who's a professor of psychology at the University of California Davis and is one of the world's leading experts on the science of gratitude defines gratitude as having two parts. The first is an affirmation of goodness. People can learn to wake up to the good around them and notice the gifts they have received. We receive gifts every single day the minute that we wake up. We can take those for granted, or we can take a minute every day to recognize the many gifts that we are receiving just by the fact that we had the opportunity to wake up when we did where we did, and then the many other things that we should be grateful for throughout the day.

The second part of gratitude is recognizing that the source of this goodness rests outside of us. We receive these gifts from other people. It's important to recognize that this gratitude helps us realize that we wouldn't be where we are without the help of others. I really understand and recognize that whether it's my personal life, having a magnificent life partner in my wife, my girls, my family, everyone who is so extremely supportive of me, they are thrilled when the podcast does extremely well and I'm named one of the top global management think. But they could also care less if I stop doing the podcast and no one recognizes me as a management thinker.

So I am filled with gratitude being surrounded by those loving people. I am also filled with gratitude to have you the listeners of this podcast with a growth mindset, you are looking to learn from the leadership journey of purpose-driven CEOs and leadership insights of global bestselling authors and thought leaders. 

Studies showed that who we choose to surround ourselves with makes a huge difference on our thinking and our behaviors. You are choosing at least a couple of times a week when you listen to these conversations to surround yourself with some of the most effective purpose-driven leaders and some of the most brilliant leadership thinkers. So you are choosing to surround yourselves with people who will have a positive impact and influence on your life, and I am truly grateful for that.

Of course, I am also grateful for the incredible guests. They take their time to share their insights on the podcast. They wanna make a difference, and I know it shows based on the many emails that I get from you. By the way, keep those coming, mahan@mahantavakoli.com. Love hearing from you.

And a special shout-out and gratitude for my Partnering Leadership podcast team.

We have a couple of newer team members who have started contributing. I'm especially grateful to Kem who has been my audio magician from almost the beginning. Mark, who creates incredible art through some of the visuals he makes for the podcast, and Inah sup who has been supporting me since before I even launched the podcast and keeps the entire team including me on track.

This is just some of what I am grateful for. There are many studies showing the benefits of gratitude to mental health and to our relationships.

So if you wanna align better with your purpose, take a minute and reflect on what you are grateful for and make it a practice. It's a great way to start every single day reflecting on what we are grateful for. We tend to become used to our surroundings, our environment and take so many things for granted.

Now, building on gratitude is the ability for us to focus more on the gain rather than the gap in our lives. Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy have a great book called The Gap and the Gain, the high achiever's guide to happiness, confidence, and success. A key point they make is the need for us to measure backward against where we started, not against our ideal, because that ideal always remains distance. Every peak of the journey of life that we get to, there's another peak ahead and purely focusing on that other peak or focusing on the peaks, others have climbed robs us of our joy. The only comparison should be to ourselves and where we started from. 

So reflect back on six months ago, a year ago, where were you at? Compare yourself to that point and reflect on that gain rather than the gap of where I want to be or where other people are at this point in time.

I know sometimes that's hard to do, most, especially because of social media. We end up either comparing ourselves to other people who are way ahead of us on the journey or focusing purely on that distant objective that always seems out of reach.

So ask yourself, what are you measuring yourself against? In the game, you measure yourself against yourself and how far you have come, not just looking at where you want to end up. 

So in addition to reflecting on what you're grateful for, focus on your own gain, where you started and where you are, not where you want to end up, and most especially not where other people are at.

And finally, as Cynthia Covey Haller mentioned in our conversation about the book, she co-wrote with her legendary Father Steven R. Covey live life in Crescendo. Your most important work is always ahead of you. That's a mindset that our best work is still ahead of us, and the best work is most powerful if it includes contribution back to others.

So the three ways for us to align ourselves better with living a life that is purpose filled. Our feeling genuine gratitude, reflecting on it for ourselves and expressing it to others, focusing on the gain more than the gap in our lives and living life in crescendo. Our most important work and contribution is still ahead of us.

With that, we're celebrating 200 episodes together. I am filled with gratitude for you while there is a big gap with where I want to take the impact of this podcast, I am honored with the gains we have made together over the past couple of years, and I have no doubt that together our best work is ahead of us.