After six AFib-free years, it happened again. The whole experience reminded me how easy it is to completely devalue the significance of simple everyday actions.

When I woke in the morning I noticed my heart but thought <more>

Comparison is the culprit yet again.

Every day, I work with CEOs, business owners and executives and through my interactions, I’ve witnessed their generosity and gratitude so I’m convinced they genuinely embrace gratitude.

New research has emerged suggesting <more>

We just went to our first concert in more than 2 years. It was awesome and for me it felt a bit surreal being in a stadium with 9000 people.

Just as the band is coming on stage I look at Lyn and say a classic “dad line”, <more>

I finally got around to a research article in my reading pile on the connection between supervisory behaviour and employee gratitude. It is fascinating. Behaviours of work colleagues and that of supervisors in particular, get inferred <more>

Do you still live in the home you grew up in ? I don’t.

Over the years however, whenever I drove by what I considered The Foran House, it just felt so weird not being able to <more>

A few weeks back I slipped, fell and unfortunately broke a couple ribs. The doctor says, “There’s not much we can do. Take an over-the-counter pain medication and gradually reduce your dosage as you heal. Be careful and every hour make sure you’re <more>

Every week or two I usually either pick up or drop off our grandson, Max at school. Every time I do so, I see his principal, Mr MacNeil, walking up and down the street in front of the school. He’s waving to students, talking to parents and teachers. I’m sure he has a bunch of other important things he could be doing but <more>

In a recent program a person asked, “How do I deal with the inner conflict of, 'I know I should do my gratitudes but I just don’t feel like doing them and in reality, it won’t matter that much if I put it off until tomorrow.' ?“

She’s right, it probably doesn’t matter much, if <more>

Last fall, I’m on a retreat and someone shares with the group, “As I was growing up, I spent all my energy doing everything I could to get away from the small town in which I grew up.” He pauses and we can tell he’s getting emotional as he barely gets through the rest of the sentence <more>

It’s November 2006. I just finish my master’s research project on gratitude and leave my job to pursue the dream of one billion happier people—although I described the dream a bit differently back then.

At the time I’m very confident that I know most of what there is to know about gratitude—hey I just spent two and a half years researching gratitude !

And over the next 15 years, I <more>

My grandson and I got Turing Tumble as a joint gift for Christmas. It’s a game with switches and ball bearings where you build logic layouts that essentially becomes a mechanical computer. It’s super cool.

Max and I love playing it together. There are 5 or 6 types of switches and the puzzle layouts you need to solve get progressively more challenging. We’re at the 16th puzzle and still haven’t been introduced to all the switches yet and I can tell you this, <more>

The kids were over the other day and we were talking about playing the game pandemic a few months back. It was the first time I had played a co-operative board game—that’s where everyone plays together “against” the board.

Anyhow, it was a pile of fun and in the end, we overcame the pandemic and won the game.

It got me thinking <more>

There is no shortage of ideas being thrown around to make sense of what is happening in the labour market today. Here’s what I’m seeing: <more>

Last week I’m doing a debrief with a client. I ask, “What did you like best about the program on grateful leadership ?” Without skipping a beat, he says,

“I was looking for it and I didn’t even know I was looking for it.”

His words stop me in my tracks. I’m not sure what to say next, so I say, <more>

Recently, we had a power outage that lasted about 5 hours. We have a new gas fireplace and after several unsuccessful attempts, I couldn’t get it to light when the power was off—this was the first time we tried to start it without power.

When Lyn got home she asked,

“Did you <more>

After hundreds of gratitude programs and teaching thousands of people about building a gratitude practice, we’ve found that for some people, their practice sticks and for some, it doesn’t stick.

We’re continually improving the stickiness of our training but when we follow up, we discover a much larger number of people than I would like, have discontinued their gratitude practice.

So when I ask, “Why did you stop your gratitude practice ?”

The number one response is, <more>

According to the latest research, and it’s from here in Canada—humans have on average, 6200 thoughts per day. I don’t know how many are positive vs. negative but have seen statistics that claim 85% are negative and 95% are the same thoughts you had yesterday.

This is likely the result of what I call “The <more>

My last blog post was published on April 9, 2021—that’s 10 months ago. When I see a blog that's forgotten and ignored, I can’t help but think that the creator is asleep at the switch and is really not focused on their business.

When that creator is me, I can quickly go to feelings of guilt or shame thinking that “I should be writing content” or “I should be doing more” or “Who do you think you are—an expert but you haven’t posted anything fresh in 10 months—what a loser !”

But I’m not going to do that—instead <more>

Researchers in Chile released a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health this week confirming that gratitude at work (not my company, but the actual idea) reduces workplace materialism.

Workplace materialism is the tendency to <more>

We’re hearing a lot about finding the good in 2020 and being grateful for it. I fully support this idea, but we have to be careful in crossing the line into judgement. In spite of believing you can find lots of good in 2020, I don’t believe you should be grateful for <more>