Andy Stanley - Give Thanks An Attitude of Gratitude

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, Welcome back and happy Thanksgiving A few days early, right, hey,
I hope you'll have an opportunity to celebrate with friends
and family this week. For several years, for several years,
a friend of mine and I would get up really
really early on Thanksgiving morning and participate in the Atlanta
Half Marathon. I know a lot of you have probably
participated in that. I've noticed. I didn't say we ran

(00:22):
the Atlanta Half Marathon. Some years we ran, but sometimes
we just participated. But the great thing about starting off
Thanksgiving with a really long run is guiltless eating all
day long.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Honestly, that was several years ago. These days, it's just
guiltless eating all day long now. If you know anything
about the history of Thanksgiving, you know that it began
as a really small community's response, then a colonial response,
and ultimately eventually our nation's response to divine provision and
divine protection. Because gratitude or feeling thankful is actually a

(00:59):
universal expers I mean, when good things happen, or when
we're on the backside of a rough stretch, there's something
just intuitive, instinctive in all of us. There's just this
automatic feeling of gratitude. For some folks, that's thank goodness.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
For others of us, it's literally thank God, but thank
somebody or thanks something. Right, we're just all instinctively thankful,
though we may express it in different ways. It's it's
almost like we can't help it. Now, I say, it's
almost like we can't help it, because when it comes
to expressing our gratitude gratitude to each other, it's not
always so intuitive, right, it's not always so fluid, it's

(01:37):
not always so instinctive. Not only can we help it,
oftentimes we.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Do help it. We withhold our gratitude.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
And when you withhold gratitude, when I withhold gratitude, we
actually create a gap in the relationship, an unfilled space.
There's unfinished business, which creates a glitch in the relationship,
and if it goes on for too long, it actually
undermines the integrity of the relationship. Or to put it bluntly,
few things sting in this true, few things sting more

(02:07):
than in gratitude. And here's why, Because ingratitude communicates I
don't see you, I don't even see you. I don't
recognize you, I don't recognize what you've done. I don't
recognize your effort. I don't recognize your sacrifice. Ingratitude communicates
you know what you owed me that, So why would
I thank you for that? Ingratitude stings because it isn't neutral.

(02:29):
It's the opposite of what was expected or earned or
perhaps even deserved. So it hurts, which is odd because
the other person really didn't do anything to us.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
They just didn't do anything.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
You thought they would hit the tennis ball back, but
they just stood there and let it bounce against the
fence behind them. So there are few things more hurtful
than in gratitude. But at the same time, but at
the same time, in this true there are few things
more uncomfortable than pointing out someone's ingratitude, right, I mean
it feels kind of childish, like, hey, what about a
thank you every once in a while, or hey, you

(03:03):
didn't say thank you, or you never show me any appreciation.
I mean, who wants to say that? To say that
makes us feel small and insecure, not to mention, you know,
when you say that, the other person says, wait a minute,
I'm so sorry. But what we hear is I'm so sorry,
little baby who needs constant reassurance and affirmation right, So

(03:24):
even asking about or bringing up the subject of ingratitude
is so uncomfortable. Ingratitude is a strange thing because well,
it's not even a thing.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
It's more a lack of a thing.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
But it doesn't always come packaged in silence or a
lack of response. Sometimes ingratitude is actually expressed verbally.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
You've been in this situation.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
You do something for somebody else and instead of saying
thank you, they explain that, well, you didn't do it right,
or you chose the wrong color. But mostly, in most cases,
ingratitude is an absence of words, an absence of recognition
of something that we've done that come on that deserves recognition.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
The other odd thing.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
About ingratitude is this it looms large when we're the victim.
I mean, it's all we can see when somebody has
been ungrateful. We can't possibly miss it, but it's completely
invisible to the perpetrator. I mean, think about it, when
we create a gap through our ingratitude, it's all the
other person can see, but we can't see.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
It at all.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
We're clueless, which is obvious to the other party, which
in the moment makes the pain that much worse. Or
to put it simply, the recipient. The recipient is always aware, right,
but the culprit is rarely aware. It's so odd now
for me, I have to be really careful because outside
my family, it's easy for me to just write off

(04:43):
ungrateful people. And I hate to say that, but it's true.
I mean, I'm kind of I can be a one
and done person. Gratitude goes a long way with me,
and ingratitude it goes a long way with me as well.
There are people, honestly that I would have a difficult
time extending generosity with my time, or my influence or
my resources because of how they didn't respond last time

(05:03):
I was generous to them with my time, influence, or
my resources. And that's something I've got a monitor because
as a Jesus follower, I'm required to be generous regardless
of how people respond. But come on, it's a whole
lot easier to extend generosity to grateful people. And my
reason for bringing this up, and my reason for bringing
me up, is this, you're in gratitude. Your ingratitude, which

(05:27):
you might not even be aware of. Your accidental ingratitude
is leaving a mark. It's undermining your respectability, and you
don't know it. I mean, the ungrateful people I struggle
not to write off have no idea. The people who've
written you off because of your ingratitude, you have no idea.
And if you're not family, they're not gonna tell you.

(05:48):
They just move on. And the uncomfortable thing about me
even talking about this is I'm sure there are people
watching or listening who have experienced a lack of gratitude
for me. And you know, here's the point, I don't
know who they are. I'm clueless, and I'm kind of
glad no one's here to say amen. Now, many years ago,
when I was starting off on my quest to become

(06:09):
a good organizational leader, I had the opportunity to meet
with a pretty high profile business person for lunch in
the Atlanta area.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
It was a friend of my dad's. That's how I
got the lunch.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
I was in my late twenties, and I only remember
one thing about our conversation, and it was not what
this gentleman intended for me to remember. In fact, I
bet he doesn't even remember saying this. But as you know,
negatives are generally stickier than positives. I knew he had
a meeting in his office right after our lunch, and
we were going a little long, so I interrupted him

(06:39):
and I said, hey, hey, I know you've got a
meeting to get to. And then he interrupted me, and
here's what he said, and I'll ever forget it. He said,
no problem, no problem. They all work for me, no problem.
I don't need to rush back. They all work for me.
This is my only takeaway from that lunch. This was
so offensive to me, and I didn't even know any

(07:01):
of the other people, but when he said it, I
made a decision. I will never take the people who
work with me or for me for granted. In fact,
I refuse to use the phrase my people or our
people when referring to people that I work with.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
I don't have any people.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
No one deserves to be talked about or treated like
there's somebody's people. And I'm sure he didn't mean it
that way, perhaps, but it made an impression. It struck
me as extremely ungrateful because he was what he was
taking them for granted. They'll wait, they've got nothing better
to do. They owe me. I don't owe them. Have

(07:39):
you ever felt taken for granted? It's terrible, isn't it.
It's dehumanizing. It's one of the worst things you can
experience on planet Earth.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Now moving on, if you've ever been accused, think about this.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
If you've ever been accused, and we all have, If
you've ever been accused of being ungrateful, if you're like
most people, you probably got defensive. And the reason you
got defensive is because you felt like somebody was accusing you.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Of not feeling something. Isn't that true?

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Somebody says, I don't feel like you're grateful. I think
you take me for granted, and we immediately get defensive
and we're like, oh no, and we feel like they're
judging us, and we get defensive because we think, hey,
how could you possibly know how I feel, which, of
course is the point.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
They don't know how we feel. They know how they feel.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
They feel unappreciated, they feel taken for granted, but we
feel otherwise. So we push back and we get defensive
and we say things like this, but I am grateful translated,
I am grateful on the inside. I have grateful thoughts
and feelings towards you, which, while it's true, it's meaningless,
isn't it. Because and this is the point of today's

(08:47):
discussion unexpressed gratitude.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Think about it.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Unexpressed gratitude is actually experienced by the other person as
in gratitude. Unexpressed gratitude is experienced by the other person
as the opposite of what we convince ourself we really
feel and we really think. Through the years, I've met
with lots of men in particular who are super busy
and find themselves a little bit alienated from their families

(09:14):
and their children.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
And here's the advice I always give them.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
I say, look, you love your kids in your heart,
but you don't love your kids on your calendar. And
the calendar is what counts. The calendar is what connects.
The calendar is what communicates what you feel. And the
same goes for gratitude. It's the expression of gratitude. It's
the expression of gratitude, not the emotion that completes the circle,

(09:39):
that closes the.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Gap, that maintains the connection.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Or to put it another way, gratitude and ingratitude are
relationally determinative.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
This is so important.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Gratitude and ingratitude actually determine how much of you you're
willing to entrust to someone else, and it determines how
much he or she.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Is willing to entrust to you.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Because when you feel taken for granted, when we feel
taken for granted, we instinctively it's not a decision, We
instinctively withhold part of ourselves in order not to be
hurt again. Gratitude and ingratitude are relationally determinative. They determine
something about the relationship. Or think about it this way.
Our hearts, and you've experienced this, our hearts actually gravitate

(10:25):
toward recognition and gratitude.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
It's not a decision, it's a response.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
If you're married, or if you're in what you hope
to become a permanent relationship.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Here's a tip. Here's the tip. This is so important.
Don't let anyone, don't let anyone out grateful you.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
What I mean by that is be the most grateful
person in your loved one's life. Because our hearts, their
hearts gravitate toward recognition and gratitude. Now, if you're a
middle schooler or high schoolers still live in a home,
I want to tell you something, but I don't want
you to tell your parents that I told you this.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
If you would like to get your mom and dad
to be more yes than no.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
When you ask for things, I mean, when you want
more freedom, if you want more, yes and no.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Be grateful for everything out loud.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
And here's why your parents and parents in general are
so accustomed to being taken for granted. If you're the
typical middle schooler or high school student. And I know
you don't think you're typical, but if you are, here's
how you might think. Well, of course I have a room,
and of course I have cool clothes, and of course
I have more food than I should eat, and of
course I get a ride to school. That's what they're

(11:39):
supposed to do. They're my parents. But middle schoolers and
high schoolers don't be typical. I'm telling you, turn up
the gratitude.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Here's why.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
First of all, your parents deserve it. But second, it
will melt their hearts. It will melt their hearts because
gratitude is the language of the heart. Besides, they don't
actually owe you anything. Here's a life lesson for you.
At the end of the day, everybody, everybody is a volunteer,

(12:09):
even your parents. So be ridiculously grateful. Now, there's a
famous narrative from the Life of Jesus, and we talked
about this about five years ago if you were around then.
And every time I read this narrative, honestly, it kind
of feels like the gratitude bar gets raised.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
A little bit.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
I immediately think about the people I'm grateful for in
my heart that haven't heard it from my lips or
my pen. Now, Luke, who thoroughly investigated everything in the
life of Jesus, begins this narrative like this. He says, Now,
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, and he traveled
along the border between Samaria and Galilee. And if we
had a map, I always show you this area. This

(12:49):
is a very remote area, sparsely populated.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
It's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
And as he was going to Texas, and as he
was going into a village, ten men who had lepers
met him. People with leprosy, they basically hovered between life
and death. They weren't dead, but they couldn't really live.
And worse than that, imagine they stood at a distance
and they watched everybody else live their lives. As you know,

(13:16):
in ancient times, leprosy was considered highly contagious. People afflicted
with leprosy don't experience pain, the way the rest of
us do. And in a culture, this is the part
we can't really understand. Sometimes, in a culture that required
physical labor just to survive, this often resulted in injuries
that either went unnoticed or unattended to, so their bodies

(13:37):
would visibly deteriorate over time.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
And the law.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
The law actually required somebody who had leprosy to live
on the outskirts of town in a designated area, and
anytime they came toward town or came towards civilization, they
had to warn people that they were approaching. Consequently, lepers
often created their own communities, They grew their own crops,
and they survived the best that they could, and it
would come theres no surprise to Luke's first century readers

(14:02):
that a community of Lepers were kind of eking out
a living in this remote borderland between the predominantly Jewish
territory of Galilee and the area inhabited mostly by Samaritans.
Now this has nothing to do with the story, but
I think it's worth pointing out.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
At the end of this account.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
We discovered that this particular community of Lepers was comprised
of both Jews and Samaritans, two groups who normally would
have nothing to do with each other for both political
and religious reasons. But here's the thing, pain suffering and alienation.
Pain suffering and alienation have a way of minimizing differences

(14:40):
and maximizing what people have in common. When people need
each other politics and religion, they are just not front
burner issues.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Just to thought anyway, Luke continues, He goes on.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
He says this, these lepers, the ten Lepers, they stood
at a distance with their faces covered because they had
to cover their faces, which sounds familiar, right, They stood
at a distance with their faces covered, and they called
out in a loud voice from a distance.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Jesus, Master, have pity on us.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
I mean, they're basically out in the middle of nowhere.
He's in this little tiny village. They have apparently come
into the edge of the village to get supplies. They
recognize it's Jesus, they knew him by his reputation, and
they call out Master, which was really unusual because this
was a term pretty much reserved for those who were
continuous followers of Jesus his disciples, and clearly they were not.

(15:30):
But desperate times call for desperate measures, and if he
could do what people said he could do. He was
their only hope, and the text says Luke says that
when Jesus saw them. When Jesus saw them, he shouted out.
He shouted back to them, go go, which was not
really what.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
They were expecting. I mean, that's what they'd heard for years.
Go is in go away. But here's what Jesus said.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Jesus said, go and show yourselves to the priests, which
they must have f go and show them what there's
nothing to show. And besides, the priest aren't all that
anxious to see us. In fact, nobody is. But Jesus
had a triple intent here. According to the law, anyone
with any kind of skin disease, after being quarantined had

(16:15):
to go to a local priest to be given the
all clear before they could go back into society. The
implication was by the time you get there. When Jesus
said go, the implication was Jesus was saying, by the
time you get there, When you go, when you see
the priest, you're gonna get the all clear. But there
was even more to it than that. Imagine this when
ten healed lepers. When ten healed lepers show up, the

(16:40):
priest would certainly ask how all ten of them were healed,
and that would be an unprecedented event, and it would
clearly be a miracle, which again would add to Jesus' reputation.
It would be impossible to argue that something extraordinary hadn't happened.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
And here's the third thing.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Their willingness to go before anything had changed would certainly
be an expression of extraordinary faith in Jesus. And if
nothing changed on the way, it would make fools of
the lepers. So there was a lot at stake, and
there was a lot behind this request to go. So
if you're in their situation, what do you do in
a situation like that? It reminds me of the advice

(17:15):
that my great grandfather gave my father when my father
was a teenager. He said this, He said, grandson, if
God tells you to run your head through a brick wall,
start running and.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Trust God to make a whole.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
So Jesus said go, and they went, and not because
it made any sense, but.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Because Jesus told them to go. And you probably remember
what happened next.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
And as they went, as they obeyed, as they went,
they were cleansed. They literally walked by faith This is
a phrase we throw around a lot in the Church
and in Christianity, to walk by faith. This is literally
what it means to walk by faith. They responded to
the promise in the prompting of Jesus before they knew
the outcome. That's what it means to walk by faith.

(18:00):
But then the twist in the story and the reason
we're even talking about this, one of them, one of
these lepers, when he saw he was healed, he turned around,
and he came back. He turned around, he returned, He
completed the loop. He filled the gap. He came back

(18:21):
to text says, praising God in a loud voice, and
he literally threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.
No more social distancing. He walked right up to Jesus
and fell at his feet. He was not content. He
was not content to feel grateful. He demonstrated it, he
expressed it, and think about it. As much as he
was ready to get back to living among the living,

(18:42):
as much as he wanted to put all.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Of this behind him, he knew he had to close
the gratitude loop.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
After all, Jesus had just given him his life back.
So he did what we all need to do. He
went back, He went back to think the one who
had enabled him to move forward. He went back to
thank the one who enabled him to move forward with
his life.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
And Luke, looking back.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Over the story arc of jesus life, I think he
must have smiled when he penned these next four words
in Greek, five words in English.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
And he talking about the leper.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
And he was a Samaritan, the implication being the other
nine probably weren't this man. This man had experienced alienation
and discrimination on multiple levels.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
He was extra grateful. And I think the.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Reason for this added seemingly unimportant detail comes to light
when you read the entirety of Luke's gospel, because over
and over in his gospel, Luke highlights jesus encounters with outsiders,
people that his first century audience would never expect Jesus
to have anything to do with, and over and over
it was the outsiders who expressed the most gratitude.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
They were not confused about how undeserving they were.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Their pride and their busyness did not get in the
way of their effort to close the gratitude loop, especially
with Jesus. But this incident doesn't end there. Jesus asked
a question. He said, we're not all ten cleansed. Where
are the other nine?

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Now?

Speaker 1 (20:15):
In the Greek text, it's interesting because the interrogative where
is actually at the end of the sentence for emphasis.
Here's how it reads in the Greek, literally the nine
where the nine?

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Where are they?

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And of course Jesus isn't really expecting an answer, He's
just making a stinging observation. Something is missing, someone is missing.
Some ones are missing. The other nine have missed the moment.
The other nine have missed their opportunity. Something was missing, incomplete, unfinished,

(20:49):
open ended. The circle isn't closed, but now the window
to close it has closed. Now, if you're a parent,
you understand what Jesus is getting at here. And for
those of us who can remember how our parents raised us,
we understand what Jesus is getting at too. When you
were a kid and somebody gave you a gift and
one of your parents was standing there, they would immediately
say what they would say, say thank you, as in

(21:13):
right now, say thank you. There was urgency like quick,
say thank you right now. Time is running out. Close
the circle, connect the dots, and this is Jesus's point.
The other nine missed the moment, and the moment had passed.
How ungrateful their entire destiny been changed apart from Jesus,

(21:33):
apart from his intervention, They're going to spend the rest
of their lives eking out a living in the middle
of nowhere. They'd been restored to their families and their children.
They could work again, they could worship again.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
And where are they?

Speaker 1 (21:45):
And when we read this story, isn't it true? We
respond the same way Jesus did. Yeah, yeah, where are
those guys?

Speaker 2 (21:51):
But before we judge too harshly, I imagine, I imagine if
someone had confronted the other nine about their apparent lack
of ingratitude, their apparent lack of gratitude, I should say,
I imagine that they would have been quick to respond with, like, what,
We're not ungrateful, We are so grateful.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Our hearts are filled with gratitude. I mean, the other
nine had to have felt it, right. The problem is,
like us, sometimes they didn't express it. And Jesus, like us,
was baffled. And the ask, has no one returned? Has
no one returned to give praise to God? Except this foreigner?

(22:32):
Only one returner? And again the question is a rebuke,
and it also implies that the other lepers may have
been Galileans like Jesus rather than Samaritans. Then he turns
back to the one who returned, and he says, once again,
rise and go. And of course this is the second
time he's told him to go, but this time there
would be no reason for him to return. The circle

(22:55):
was complete. And then this final statement, your faith has
made you well. So as we wrap up, I want
to make three quick observations to carry with us throughout
this next week. The first one we've already touched on
that unexpressed gratitude. Unexpressed gratitude communicates in gratitude, there is
no neutral ground, and our feelings don't count because our

(23:20):
feelings don't connect. Our feelings of gratitude don't close the loop. Worse, worse,
the gratitude we feel.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Think about this.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
The gratitude we feel but don't express, is felt by
the other person as the opposite of what we're feeling.
We feel grateful, they feel unappreciated, taken for granted. And
this is important. Telling other people how grateful we are
for someone else doesn't count either, even if that person
over heres here's us, and here's here's why.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I say that.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
And if you're married, you know there's a tendency to
do this sometimes right, bragging on your spouse to other
people in front of your spouse, but never brag on
your spouse to him or to her privately. Never expressing
gratitude directly to them does not close the loop. In fact,
in some cases, in some instances, expressing gratitude to other

(24:10):
people about something rather than to that person can actually
be insulting. Second thing is this, ingratitude feels like rejection.
Ingratitude feels like rejection. Over time, unexpressed gratitude has the
same effect on people in a relationship as rejection. It
creates a gap. Again, our hearts gravitate toward acceptance. Real

(24:34):
or imagined appreciation feels like acceptance. So, if you want
the heart of your child, or your spouse, or an
employee or associates, if you want their heart, express gratitude.
You want to be surrounded by people who just do
what they have to do to get by withhold it.
Take them for granted. They get a paycheck, it's my husband,
now she's my wife. I mean, this is what they

(24:55):
signed up for. This is what they're supposed to do.
You may keep their hands, but you will never have
their hearts. They may stick around, but the relationship will
eventually be void of intimacy. Last observation is this unexpressed gratitude.
Unexpressed gratitude may indicate an inflated view of self. And

(25:16):
here's why I say that. The message of ingratitude is this,
I could have done this without you, so I don't
really owe you anything. Isn't it true that arrogance and
ingratitude are generally found under the same rock. I mean,
arrogant people are generally ungrateful people, and ungrateful people usually
come across as arrogant. So I want you to be

(25:37):
really honest for just a moment. Is expressing your gratitude
difficult for you? Is expressing gratitude difficult for you? Are
you more comfortable pointing out how something could have been
better rather than recognizing.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
How good it actually is?

Speaker 1 (25:54):
If so, have you ever done any work digging around
trying to figure out why you're kind of wired that way?

Speaker 2 (26:01):
If not, I'll give you a starting point. Here's a hint. Gratitude.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Gratitude feels like an admission of weakness. I mean, it
makes you feel like you may not have been able
to accomplish what you've accomplished without help. Guess what you
couldn't in the wake of your progress, in the wake
of your success in your rear view mirror, professionally, academically, financially, relationally, athletically,

(26:31):
are dozens of people who facilitated your progress. Who facilitated
your success, and acknowledging their role is not weakness, it's maturity.
It's evidence you've let go of an inflated, unhealthy sense
of independence. Gratitude is evidence that you have life improper perspective.

(26:52):
You would not be where you are without the support
and the help of other people. You do actually owe
them a debt of great and that's okay. So back
to Luke's account for just a moment. Let's be the one.
Let's be the one rather than the nine. Let's decide,
let's make up our mind to be like the one

(27:13):
who went back to thank the one who enabled him
to move forward. Why not make it the habit of
our lives to go back to the people who've allowed
us to move forward. So here's a question, who helped
you move forward? Who helps you move forward? Have you
thanked them recently. I mean, sure you pay them. I'm

(27:34):
sure they married you. I'm sure it's your mom right.
But have you expressed your gratitude lately? You may feel
it when you think about it, but have you expressed it?
And if not, why not? Could it be you are
in fact more like the nine than the one that
you took what was given. You got distracted by the

(27:54):
new opportunity, the new freedom, the new recognition, and then
you just went on your marry way without circling back
to say thank you. I mean, if somebody told your story,
or when somebody tells your story, will you be the
story of the one or the story of the nine?

Speaker 2 (28:09):
And here's some good news.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
You get to decide, But you decide that story one
expression of gratitude at a time, gratitude that we feel
but don't express, is simply ingratitude by another name. So
let's close the loop, right, Let's get in the habit
of circling back.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Let's be returners. Let's decide today to be the one