00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 69. I'm Matt and I'm Jocelyn from the family life movement podcast. We challenge you to find a way to balance your work and your family. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast by my friend, Scott Mader, To actually say thank you, how hard is it to find someone who's given you some help,
00:00:38 some assistance, some something that has paid benefits in your life and seek them out and say, thank you, pick up the phone and call that person and say, thank you. Write them a note and say, thank you, send them a letter or a card. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be,
00:01:04 then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired sturgeon podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about the power of giving things. I share how the simple thank you can go really far.
00:01:34 And why making a habit out of this attitude of gratitude takes you very far in life. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this,
00:02:03 and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
00:02:32 But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash The power of thank you. Truth is that giving things this week is Thanksgiving here in the United States and that's a week and a day where we're supposed to stop and have gratitude for things.
00:03:09 But the truth is every day should be a Thanksgiving. Every day should be a day where you make a habit of giving things, finding those things that you really should be thankful for and finding the gratitude in those. Even the simple things, you know, the truth is if you look to the Bible over and over again, you hear about thankfulness and,
00:03:36 and the Collosians passages. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with thankfulness in your hearts to God, do everything in the name of Lord Jesus giving. Thanks. Those are just a few of the passages and there are literally dozens upon dozens of these where either Jesus has giving. Thanks are we are asked to give thanks and to do things with thankfulness in our hearts.
00:04:05 The truth is giving thanks is powerful because it identifies that a giver in the case of these, the giver is God, but it could be another person. Even it identifies a receiver yourself, and it acknowledges that you need others in your life. It activates faith. It activates belief that there are others and there is good in the world. It's a rather simple but powerful system.
00:04:37 The truth is that gratitude actually makes us better people. There was a study in the early two thousands where they went into a workplace and they asked people to give feedback on someone's cover letter, to just give feedback to someone else on their cover letter, where they were looking for a job and people did that. And then, then they either got a letter back from the person expressing thankfulness and asking for more help,
00:05:07 or they got a letter back from the person, simply asking for more help asking for another review on another letter. And what was interesting is that in the group where they didn't get thanked only 23% offered feedback and in the group where they got think 66% went ahead and gave additional feedback. And here's the interesting thing. They then a few days later had another request from a totally different person.
00:05:37 So this is not the person that actually gave thanks for the first review. This is a stranger. And in that case only 25% of the no gratitude group offered help and a whopping 55% of those who had been thanked offered help. So the gratitude extended and paid forward gratitude can linger and create lasting change, not just in the person that gave things, but in the person that received it because you see they've also studied.
00:06:11 And when someone says thank you to someone else, they report feeling happier and more fulfilled themselves. They actually report being more connected to others and having a better connection and feeling of wellbeing. It's true that it even causes physical changes like lowered blood pressure and things like that. But the truth is being more gracious, creates lasting change, both in the giver and in the receiver of the things.
00:06:46 So this is, this is my question. How hard is it to actually say thank you, how hard is it to find someone who's given you some help, some assistance, some, something that has paid benefits in your life and seek them out and say, thank you, pick up the phone and call that person and say, thank you, write them a note and say,
00:07:10 thank you, send them a, a letter or a card, or reach out to them in some other way and say, thank you for all that they have done in your life. And the interesting thing is this attitude looking for at least one thing every single day that you can say, thank you for, and on top of doing gratitude journals and other things,
00:07:31 the actual act of saying the words, thank you for what you have done and being specific in identifying the actual gift that the person has given will go far to serve you in this life. And it will help you and it will help others. So this is my challenge to you next week. Now that we've moved past Thanksgiving, actually bring that forward into your day when you were turned to work on Monday,
00:08:01 find and seek ways to say thank you to anyone who you meet, who does you a good deed go out of your way to do that at least once a day for the following week and see how you feel next Saturday. Oh, and one more thing if you're hearing this this week, if you have gotten this far into the podcast and you've been listening,
00:08:26 whether you're a brand new listener or you've been listening for a while, I want to thank you for listening as well. Thank you for following and listening to my words, because it does me great honored to reach even one person. And over the last few months, I've found myself increasing the listenership of the podcast and reaching now literally hundreds of people and thousands of people each month.
00:08:52 And I'm greatly honored by this. And I wanted to say, Thank you for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, please,
00:09:22 please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact The world.