The Financial and Social Value of Being Grateful
I started my first real job at 14 years old. Through my parents “connections” (some people they knew in our neighborhood who owned a franchise), I landed what I thought was a sweet job as a cook at Dairy Queen in Tallahassee, Florida. My pay was $4/hour.
That doesn’t sound like much in this day and age (It really wasn’t much back in the 1990s either), but I remember as a young teenager being blown away at the fact that I could substitute some of my downtime for a chance to work the grill at Dairy Queen, getting paid to make people’s taste buds happy (in most cases: I found out that undercooked chicken made during rush hour looks a lot more like a jelly doughnut than chicken) and doing a job I though was critical to the well-being of the local community. People came from miles around to partake of my chicken sandwiches, kraut dogs and chili dogs, and other tasty menu items.
As I became more trusted, I was given more responsibility, including being the hands behind some of Dairy Queen’s famous dipped ice cream cones and layered parfaits. It took me some practice, but after awhile I mastered the ice cream machine well enough to consistently complete the closed ice cream loop on the end of the ice cream cones, just like you see in the marketing pictures.
A bonus for this job was the ability to work alongside my older brother, who, because he was 17 years old, was qualified to handle more complicated roles than me. He worked at the counter, taking people’s orders and sending them back to me to make their lunch and dinner dreams into reality.
Both of us knew we weren’t going to get rich off working our 15 to 20 hours per week at Dairy Queen. In fact, on an hourly basis, we made much more money on our summer lawn mowing venture, which netted us $12-$15 per hour, than we did wearing the DQ uniform.
One thing that I learned while working at Dairy Queen was this: being sincerely grateful and demonstrating that gratitude regularly leads to financial and social success. A grateful attitude almost brings opportunity and opens doors to bigger and better things.
Being sincerely grateful and demonstrating that gratitude regularly leads to financial and social success
Delivering Pizzas — The Big Tip
When I graduated from high school, I hadn’t developed the skills required to get a legitimate job. I did know how to drive a car. I had worked on and off again at Pizza Hut during high school. Now that I was 18, I was qualified to be a delivery driver, which meant that I could earn in the $12+/hour range with tips.
During one of my delivery rounds, I had an epiphany that has influenced much of how I’ve approached later successes in business and elsewhere.
From my experience delivering pizzas in Orem, Utah in the 1990s, the usual tip amount for any delivery was about $2. Some people didn’t tip at all. Others tipped more.
On this trip, someone gave me a $20 tip. I was thrilled at their generosity. After getting the tip, I hopped back into my car with a little more energy than normal, and I headed along my route after cranking the radio back up to the dance tunes I normally listened to when I delivered pizzas.
That’s when I heard it.
A voice came into my head that said, “Turn off the music and take a minute to show your appreciation.” For religious people like me, we’d refer to that communication as inspiration, a gentle reminder from God about our dependence upon Him for even the breath that we breathe.
I quickly realized that the person who gave me the generous tip wasn’t required to do so, that I could very easily be $15–$20 poorer without his contribution to me. I understood that the universe is not required to be good to me.
I responded with obedience to the voice. I immediately turned off my radio, pulled my car over to the side of the road, bowed my head, and said a quick prayer of thanks.
That experience changed not only how I responded after receiving tips and other good things as a pizza delivery driver. It has shaped my approach to business and life in general. It may be obvious that showing gratitude to people makes them attracted to you and brings about good will from them. However, I believe it goes much further than that. Being grateful very often aligns the universe around helping a person achieve success socially as well as financially.
In the years since that experience, I’ve seen what I believe are effects of being grateful pay off in many ways. I’ve been able to developing several successful online businesses that have provided well for me and my wife, and that have allowed us to have and raise 7 kids who have many more opportunities than I did growing up because of their parents’ financial situation.
I’ve learned that there are many ways to show gratitude, including giving generous tips at restaurants and in other settings, thanking people for doing things that others might take for granted, serving people without expectation of pay or other reward.
Gratitude is closely associated with humility, which is an attribute that makes a person teachable. Grateful people are much more primed to learn what they need, including through their self-reflection, than people who gloss over the what’s been bestowed upon them as if it’s a given.
In the past couple years, I’ve started blogging about behaviors and attitudes that cause people to be prosperous. As I’ve written about how to approach budgeting, increasing your employable skills, investing, and other topics, it seems like the ultimate development of most of these habits and attitudes depends upon a person’s ability to sincerely feel and express gratitude.
Developing a Gratitude Habit
Last fall, I attended a conference for business owners at which the Rabbi Daniel Lapin spoke about the habits that produce successful people, especially people who are entrepreneurs.
During his speech, he made a suggestion to us, recommending that we adopt a new habit. The habit he asked us to try out was a quick, 15-minute exercise to be used at the start of the day. His suggestion involved keeping a gratitude journal. At the beginning of the day, he told us, we should jot down in a notebook or at least somewhere on paper (even if we didn’t intend to keep it and simply threw it away right afterward) three things we were grateful for.
I tried Rabbi Lapin’s experiment. I found that following his suggestion really does provide a larger context for what I’m working on and gives me motivation to focus on doing what needs to be done to contribute towards the bigger picture for myself and my family. Spending some time to consciously remind yourself of blessings you’ve received naturally moves your mind into a setting where you’re able to more assertively pursue more of those blessings in the future, including as you spiritually create today, tomorrow, this week, this month, and the longer term that will follow.
As I learned more about Rabbi Lapin, having only heard of him and listening to Dave Ramsey’s radio show, I discovered that he is the author of a book called Thou Shall Prosper. This best seller discusses the ten commandments of business and money. One of the underlying principles of those commandments is maintaining a grateful demeanor. In my own successes, I’ve seen that mindset work repeatedly.
The direct opposite of gratitude is entitlement.
Gratitude Versus Entitlement
The direct opposite of gratitude is entitlement. A person who expects good (i.e. materially valuable) things to continuously come to him without appreciation for what he has already received, and who doesn’t understanding that effort and merit are required to be truly worthy of material blessings is entitled. Entitlement is especially common among kids who grow up with parents who make the mistake of handing down to them everything they want without instilling in them a sense of appreciation, or in many cases, denying them things that are either unnecessary or detrimental.
Entitlement also often develops among kids who are not told no. This kind of entitlement is wreaking havoc on American society today, including and especially among the black culture, where the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement has appealed to black men and others who share the common misfortune of not having a good father in the home to discipline them. When kids don’t learn respect for legitimate authority, when they don’t understand that they can’t have everything that appeals to them, whether it be the new Nike’s they haven’t saved up for or the cushy job they haven’t qualified themselves for, entitlement is almost always the result.
Warning: Don’t Invest Your Money or Partner With Entitled People
I learned the hard way recently that it’s a bad idea to invest money with people who are entitled or to partner with anyone who has that persona. (I also learned through the same experiences that it’s important to give appropriate vetting to anyone you’re considering partnering with to any significant degree, especially in business.)
Last summer I was asked for a business loan by a person I’d been introduced to at some business meetups that a good friend of mine invited me to. This person needed roughly $142,000 to help him and his brother purchase an online business that they were sure was going . I hadn’t known either of these brothers long enough to understand the extent of the sense of entitlement both of them possessed.
In their sales pitch to me, these two expressed what appeared to be sincere appreciation for what I was doing for them. However, soon after I transferred the money to them, it became apparent that they were anything but grateful, and that what appeared to be appreciation was simply part of their sales pitch. It was clear that they didn’t know how to work hard. They’d set appointments and make commitments without any intention of keeping them. They manifested so many traits of being entitled.
I’ve had to hire legal counsel to help them keep their obligation to repay the money I owed them. Meanwhile, not coincidentally, the business they purchased using my money and others’ is failing. Their lack of gratitude (lack of work ethic being a severe symptom of that) coupled with a lack of integrity will likely make them go bankrupt.
How to Become a Grateful Person
Gratitude doesn’t come naturally for most people. The growing turmoil in our society, including riots and general disrespect for the law and order that has made America prosperous for hundreds of years, can be directly traced back to a lack of gratitude on the part of the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who feel like society owes them everything, that they can be perpetual takers while giving back little to nothing. That’s simply not how things work.
So, for those who want to gain a little extra fulfillment from being grateful, how can that be done? Here are some of the things that have helped me.
- Develop your faith and commitment to spirituality. My religion has been key to keeping me grounded when it comes to having and expressing gratitude. We sing hymns about it, read scriptures about it, and are consistently reminded at church and in other church settings that being grateful is a core component of our religion.
- Take time each day to identify things that you’ve been blessed with. As Rabbi Lapin suggested, keeping a gratitude journal is a good way to get a daily dose of gratitude.
- Be generous to others. Generosity is a close relative of gratitude. Whether it’s tipping the waitress a little extra, treating someone to lunch, giving employees unexpected raises without them having to ask, or any other method of voluntarily sharing your financial resources, being generous will help you be grateful.
- Find opportunities to give service. Giving service always helps you to see how much you have been blessed personally. Recently I took my family to help clean up after a tornado ripped through the Nashville, Tennessee area. As we picked up pieces of shattered homes and stacked debris for the garbage pickup, my kids commented regularly how much sorrow they felt for the people who had been unfortunate enough to have been in the tornadoes path. They also realized that our home could very well have been in a similar predicament, which made them appreciate the fact that we had been spared.
A grateful attitude is an attribute worth pursuing for many reasons. In addition to the fact that having gratitude is what the nobler elements of society consider to be associated with fulfillment in life, I’ve seen gratitude pay amazing dividends in terms of financial benefit and business success as well as with building relationships, including with immediate family and with others.