Kevin's Story - Gratitude Found Him

It’s kind of funny for gratitude to have become the focus of my life’s work over the past 5 years. I wasn’t looking for gratitude…it found me.

Gratitude changed my life so much that on September 10, 2020, I decided to start a gratitude business without knowing how or if I could do it. I didn’t know anybody who was fully in “the gratitude business."

The story dates back to April 17, 2018. It's amazing how many actual moments I recall on my journey of gratitude. That’s how vivid the journey has been.

It was a Tuesday morning. I don’t remember what the weather was like outside, but it was a gloomy gray day. A day I struggled to drag myself out of bed.

That’s quite uncharacteristic for me. I’m an early riser, usually by, or before 5:00 am — without an alarm clock.

But that morning, I had awakened several times; looked over at the clock and thought, “Not today, I just can’t face it.”

I couldn't recall any particular event that prompted the despair. If you’ve known despair, you know it can arrive with, or without, a specific trigger.

I’d had a couple of bouts with depression in my adult life. I recognized what I was feeling that morning as the onset of some dark days…if I didn’t do something.

I didn’t feel like doing anything. Fortunately, I had reconnected with an old mentor a couple of years before, and he asked me if I’d join him in a daily habit of praying 15 minutes a day. He explained it as more like sitting in the silence and hearing what God might want to speak to me rather than me rambling on for 15 minutes.

That was a HUGE ask. I couldn’t remember praying 15 minutes in the preceding year…or two. But I agreed to start the journey.

April 17, 2018, was Day 744 of that daily prayer journey.

But that morning, there wasn’t much to pray about. I remember crying out for help and asking the Holy Spirit to spark creativity in me. To free me from the scarcity mindset that seemed to hold me captive.

45 minutes later, there was an idea to create a 90-day journey and a name for it. We called it The Extraordinary Experiment. The goal was to help ordinary people like me who want to live an extraordinary life. It was about finding ways to do that by embracing a new challenge each week.

During Week Six, our theme was The Gratitude Challenge. I started questioning the difference between being thankful and being grateful for the first time in my life as I prepared for that week.

That fueled my quest even more. I was learning so much about gratitude…primarily as the key strategy for getting out of scarcity. (For the sake of time, I’ll save that for another post.)

I kept leaning into gratitude and kept incorporating gratitude into everything I was doing.

On June 17, 2019, during my morning prayer and meditation, I had a sudden thought: "Host a Gratitude Challenge?"

That’s how the idea presented itself…as an invitation.

I quickly agreed and asked my new friend Steve Foran if he wanted to co-host a Gratitude Challenge as he was joining me as a guest on the podcast I hosted at the time.

I thought Steve would have all kinds of questions and objections. “Count me in” was his response.

Later that day, Steve, Christy Kern, and I jumped on a Zoom to imagine what a “Gratitude Challenge” would look like.

We landed on hosting a 10-day session. A period long enough for people to feel gratitude and short enough for them to stay active and energized.

On June 19, I felt “there was an artist who would join us and contribute art work” to make this even more fun. I didn’t know any artists.

The hunch wouldn’t go away. So I did what I knew to do: posted a Tweet about it. Eight hours later, Garry Turner, a friend in the UK, retweeted that. A few hours later, we had met Cat Hase who would become the Artist-in-Residence for The Gratitude Challenge.

I had envisioned hosting a single gratitude challenge. We worked like crazy to recruit 100 people to join the session.

Two days before we were supposed to start, Steve Browne, an amazing person, learned about our Gratitude Challenge and asked if he could share it.

Of course!

He shared. In less than 48 hours, 194 additional people joined the session. We closed the doors to run this as a closed cohort for data collection purposes. 24 hours later, there were 100 people wanting to join. Some of these others even started to support the journey!

What did we do?

We hosted another successful session. Then another, and another. Ultimately, we ran 22 sessions of that 10-Day Gratitude Challenge, attracting over 2,800 people from 73 countries in the world.

Somewhere along the way, I became The Gratitude Guy. I didn’t set out to be the Gratitude Guy. Gratitude found me. It became the guiding light that led me out of a dark place.

I discovered gratitude is the gateway to abundance.

I had incorporated gratitude into everything I was doing. Every session I facilitated, we found a way to ground it in the good soil of gratitude.

All of that was BC — Before Covid.

Since the onset of Covid, the importance of gratitude has increased significantly.

Then, on Thursday, September 10, 2020, on my morning walk, I had another question drop in my mind.

“Of all the things that energize and excite you, what is the ONE THING with the broadest appeal and greatest impact?

Instantly I knew GRATITUDE was my answer.

That was the day I said YES to making gratitude the focus of my life and my life’s work.

Since then, it’s been an amazing inspired and organic journey. A journey of discovery, of relationships, and creating environments and opportunities for people to explore, express, and experience gratitude.

I had an epiphany, “Gratitude experienced is better than gratitude explained.” And we discovered that gratitude is better together.

My friend Taylor Zansberg tagged me in her response to Devin’s post about becoming the COO for Gratitude Plus, and I could tell something amazing was happening... and it is!

I joined Gratitude Plus and created The Gratitude Shift Circle, and we’re now growing that circle as one more way for people to discover and experience the Power of Gratitude and that gratitude is better together!

Join Kevin's gratitude community, The Gratitude Shift, on Gratitude plus here!

Learn about Kevin's gratitude business here!

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