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Gratitude is a secret weapon for attracting more opportunities
- qazxcvbnmlp 4y agoGratitude certainly unlocks more opportunities. The neat thing about gratitude is that if you practice it you find inner peace and don’t need the opportunities to be happy.
- slothtrop 4y ago
- Slow_Hand 4y agoOnly a fool would carry that idea to point where they ignore their biological needs. The cheeky suggestion of this image seems to be pushing the concept of having enough” to the point of absurdity.
- yamazakiwi 4y agoI've gotten in the habit of reflecting on gratitude whenever I'm sad or in a bad mood. It really changes things around for me personally. You don't have to force yourself, just thinking about gratitude in general is useful.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThis is one of the tenets of Seneca’s stoicism, as I understand. “It could be worse, therefore I’m grateful it is not…”
- odysseus 4y agoMy wife and I do this regardless of mood: Each night during our moments of quiet time together, we talk about a few things that happened during the previous 12 hours that we're grateful for. This has become one of the best parts of the day for us. Reviewing the day with gratitude is a core tenet of Ignatian mindfulness. I do an expanded version of the talk with my wife, with God, using a version of the instructions shown at https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen/how-can-i-pray/ https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-exa...
- skeeter2020 4y ago“My Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now, one of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?" So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, "If this isn't nice, what is?” -- Kurt Vonnegut
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoGratitude, kindness, and explicit acknowledgement of appreciation for others really does go a long way. However, I feel like I've been meeting more people in the workplace who read articles like this and implement it in a robotic, forced manner. Like they're using it as a tool to get what they want out of others, as opposed to a genuine expression of how they feel. Genuine gratitude goes much further than just going through the motions because an online article said it was a good thing to do.
- bjornsing 4y agoLinkedIn post: ”I am humbled and grateful to announce…”
- netsharc 4y agoReminds me of a movie adaptation of "A Brave New World" where everyone greets each other with "Hey how are you I'm great thank you".
- daseiner1 4y agolikewise in Godard's (RIP) Alphaville
- galaxyLogic 4y agoWhen I moved to US I was at first startled when neighbors and others asked me "How do you do?" while walking past me on the side-walk. Of course it just meant the same as "hello". But I wasn't expecting it. So I started thinking how do I do? And what should I tell them about that? By the time I had come up with some kind of answer they had already passed me by. I didn't realize I was supposed to answer by asking the same question from them, or some slight variation thereof.
- euvitudo 4y agoLike in Brazil. “Tudo bem?” “Tudo bem!” I have a Peruvian friend who had a similar experience. He would relate that when you would ask someone in his country how they’re doing, it was expected that that would be the beginning of a (possibly brief, but probably not so brief) discussion.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoI did like the (probably fantastical) characterisation of Oskar Schindler in Spielberg's movie.
- xwowsersx 4y agoI've always been profoundly struck by Dostoyevsky's depiction of the devil. In The Brothers Karamazov, the devil says: "My best feelings, gratitude, for example, are formally forbidden solely because of my social position." It's something I think about very often.
- zwkrt 4y agoThere are a lot of personal attributes and social behaviors that unlock opportunities. In the US a positive attitude, gratitude, and genuine interest are among them. In general just being pleasant to be around and personable will get you far in the engineering world because those qualities are often times lacking. When people managers are making decisions about resourcing I think that they are not honest with themselves about how much them 'liking' a person goes into their decision making process. Same for hiring. If you are a terse and dour person, it isn't that you will experience more rejection per-se, it is just that opportunities will not even be presented to you because the person with the opportunity doesn't want to spend time in your presence.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
- jean310 4y agoBeing pleasant to be around is very different from kissing ass. Being unpleasant is commonly known as being an ass in America ;)
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoIf I am pleasant to gain mobility or status, because, as you said, it provides opportunity, that’s being a kiss ass. I am in no way suggesting walking around just being negative, instead, being negative, not unpleasant, but being negative, when appropriate is honest, and humble.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> being negative, when appropriate is honest, and humble. It neither honest nor humble necessarily. It's a mindset, a perception, and a choice. You filter reality through your mindset. You choose to respond negatively or in some other way.
- hosolmaz 4y agoGratitude = Weapon? Some real 1984 type shit
- ncr100 4y agoWe should kill that type of article! /s
- PradeetPatel 4y agoWeapon does not automatically imply killing and being on the offense. The existence of weapons can also be used to defend the helpless and conduct peacekeeping actions. It is important to keep an open mind about this.
- technoooooost 4y agoI sometimes use my dick as a weapon, but only in defensive situations.
- wincy 4y agoI believe in Hacker News circles this is called “the Erlich Bachman maneuver”
- dymk 4y agoThis is even more newspeaky than what the GP was implying
- llanowarelves 4y agoSure, you can weaponize anything. But the word weapon here is a much tamer metaphor meaning tool you pick up to achieve victory: resources (usually capital: money, social, cultural etc), many times in an adversarial environment (youll always get some pushback no matter what you're doing). "Battle" metaphors are common.
- LanceH 4y agoBefore I had much of a network, and I was going through recruiters to find jobs, I would give them feedback on the interviews they sent me out on. A lot of times, they only had a vague idea of what they were filling, and this would help them out in narrowing their search. I know this could have been prepping my own competition. I know that there are lots of opportunities going through each recruiter, and I want them thinking of me. It seemed to work well. Sometimes you just have to train them, and I was training them to be a better recruiter in general, but also for me.
- anm89 4y agoYeah, this is what the trust fund kids I know keep telling me. I don't get why it works for them and not for me!
- andirk 4y agoPlease avoid the compliment sandwich. And please, as Jerry Springer would tell us, "Take care of yourself, and each other." And don't bounce checks.
- scottLobster 4y agoGratitude is overrated and over-applied, and often prescribed disingenuously. Resentment, it's opposite, is poison in the modern world. Resentment is an impulse that amounts to a shallow middle finger, and if you try to use it for long-term motivation you become unstable. Many people turn to intentional gratitude as an antidote to resentment, but it's often an overcompensation. Become too grateful and you deny the state of the world, your motivation shifts and you become an unwitting agent of the status quo. And maybe the status quo isn't all that bad, but it does prevent striving to make it better. Monks and Nuns of various religions are probably some of the most active practitioners of intentional gratitude. They also have minimal impact on improving peoples' quality of life. No wonder corporations love prescribing it, corporations are ultimately authoritarian dictatorships and/or oligarchies. Gratitude nips any rebellion in the bud at the lowest possible cost. Why create a startup that out-competes an old, incompetent dinosaur of a business when you can spend those hours appreciating ice cream and the fact that you have a roof over your head, didn't die in a car crash that day, and don't suffer from any chronic diseases that don't usually hit your age demographic anyway? So by all means, don't be resentful be content, but save your gratitude for improvements, strive to enact those improvements if you can. And don't be afraid to use negative emotion as a pointer for where to start.
- nonethewiser 4y ago> Monks and Nuns of various religions are probably some of the most active practitioners of intentional gratitude. They also have minimal impact on improving peoples' quality of life. If monks and nuns didnt pursue gratitude so intentionally, do you think they'd improve people's lives more? Seems to me that's just not their role.
- elevenoh 4y ago
- sirmarksalot 4y ago> And don't be afraid to use negative emotion as a pointer for where to start This is so important. My therapist would say that negative emotions like anxiety and anger are information from your body. It's not always useful information, and maybe acting on your first impulse isn't a good idea, but you shouldn't just ignore it because it's supposed to be bad.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mud_dauber 4y agoTranscribed from @mhdksafa: "I noticed that our lovely janitor gets treated like an outcast, so I made sure to drink my coffee with him daily in front of the gate. Today I was in a hurry to get to my office, so he came to my office with a cup of coffee and awkwardly goes "Thank you for being my friend."
- chris123 4y agoGratitude is a secret weapon for pretty much everything.
- Immerse7795 4y agoWhen I think of gratitude in corporate setting, I get reminded of Mary Beth Brown, the secretary who worked for Elon Musk for twelve years. She got fired for asking a raise after twelve years [1]. I think she must have been more grateful for having a job and should not have asked for a raise. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-known-about-Elon-Musks-long-time-assistant-Mary-Beth-Brown https://www.quora.com/What-is-known-about-Elon-Musks-long-ti...
- wolongong942 4y agoI was in a few finance/crypto spaces (voice chat rooms on Twitter) with CEOs/CTOs/industry experts over the past week and it weirded me out how everyone would do this 30 second ass-kissing speech before and after speaking. Some people would even randomly butt in out of nowhere and start giving gratitude to all speakers, triggering a chain of gratitude speeches from other speakers which provided no value at all to the discussion. Not sure if this is an American/corp-speak thing but it was the first time i really noticed it taking up so much bandwidth in the conversation to the point of annoyance.
- johnchristopher 4y agoThis is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_capital at play and people chirping at each other "are we still friends ? I am you friend. Am I your friend ? yes ? Good, I am also you friend then". I am a on a cynic ride at that moment so take that with a grain of salt. But I have seen what you describe in other situations. I have noticed this on US news snippets "Thaaaaank you so much for being here, I want to say I am really glad you came, now about <subject at hand>". I think these people just mimic what they see as "professional" and since it's a chat room... yeah, lots of chirping going around.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y agoIt is also possible that with the crypto market imploding at the moment, each one is feeling very vulnerable and is trying to compensate by being particularly ingratiating.
- wolongong942 4y agoI was going to mention that as a possibility, a lot of these people are likely to be unemployed soon. There was a lot of "We should stay connected, I'd love to exchange Twitter follows/email" type of thing.
- nicbou 4y agoI've witnessed it in Europe too. I think it's corp speak.
- langsoul-com 4y agoGratitude only works when it's serious, instead of a target metric like described here.
- anongraddebt 4y ago“Once we have made the decision to turn back to the ways of duty, gratitude will flow naturally into us, and… gratitude is the precondition of joy. Only those who give thanks are able to rejoice, for only they are conscious that life, freedom and well-being are not rights but gifts.“
- pyinstallwoes 4y agoI think what matters more than anything is authenticity. Setting your intention on authenticity with the mindset of appreciation is what allows genuine gratitude otherwise it generates phonyism. Then you get comments like @wolongong942
- bitwize 4y agoThere's a system at Amazon that lets customer service reps communicate with you after a call. I think it may even be a successor to the one Steve Yegge wrote about whose UI was Emacs. Anyhoo, I called to complain because of the two orders I placed at Amazon in the past few weeks, one -- a video game -- arrived without media and the other didn't arrive at all. I'm beginning to think that with inflation and Amazon working conditions being what they are, there are people in the fulfillment chain just helping themselves to customer orders and reporting them delivered as intended. The CS rep processed the refund on the second package (I ordered a replacement for the first that arrived just fine) and I recommended she relay my complaints, with a word that these incidents jeopardize my willingness to do further business with Amazon, to higher ups at the service department and she agreed to do so. I thanked her for her help and ended the call. Few hours later I get an email through this system. The rep, whose name is "Princess", sent a personal note to tell me how much she appreciated how I was on the call, citing my "warm approach". Wherever you are, Princess, know that it was nothing. It's Jeff Bezos who needs to get his act together, and people like you are just on the front lines, catching hell from cranky bastards like me. I'm happy to show appreciation for help when it is given.
- TedHerman 4y agoIf gratitude is transactional (seen as a way to increase likelihood of getting something later) -- is it really gratitude?
- poulpy123 4y agoI mean if you are grateful because it could attract more opportunities you're not very grateful, just opportunist
- FrontierPsych 4y agoPeople like to think that this is something that you can "just do" if you try hard enough. While there is some control, much of the positive attributes a person can have are genetic, as much as 50%, I've read. Nothing you can do about it. For example of this, let's look at infants. We all know some infants and babies are wonderful and everyone wants to be around them, and others are not. You know what I mean - the baby who smiles and coos and giggles and holds their arms up to be picked up, even by strangers, they are happy and trusting. Meanwhile, some kids cry, frown, are fearful. This all happens in infants, before they even really understand the environment or get kicked in the teeth to make them like that. Kids are like this almost straight out of the womb - 2 weeks into the world. All I'm saying is that there is a massive genetic component to disposition, I don't think this is too controversial if you think upon it. So those people who are born with a great disposition go through life that is easier if people like them more. People with bad genetic disposition can work on it, sure, but they are starting from a 50% disadvantage, and having to work twice as hard is extremely difficult, because it is a 24/7 thing. It's not natural, so you have to be thinking about it all the time, whereas in one with good genetics, they are at 100% right at birth so they don't even have to bother working on being a good person that everyone likes. Opportunities come to them unbidden. Even the people giving the opportunities don't see it that way, they just do it, because...why wouldn't they? This is only a rough framework, I know there are many variables. It's a stripped down view. But that's how I see it.