Tag Archives: GRATITUDE

Are you a victim?

Do you feel like you are a victim sometimes? We’ve all had bad things that happen to us. Are you still living in the past with those bad things and thoughts? And are you still acting and believing like you’re a victim? You need to change that now.

Your identity is not that you’re a victim.

I’d like to suggest that you find some people or even one person that is full of hope, full of vision and full of happiness. Then, you need to start being grateful and appreciate all that life has brought you so far.

When you start to do these things you’ll start to have hope.

Appreciation brings hope.

And when you have hope, you will start to see and experience a vision for your life, for your business, for who you are to be in the world.

“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” – Robert H. Schuller

My question for you today is are you still wearing the victim label? Step out today and associate with others that are full of hope.

When you have hope, you can change what you thought was a victim into a victor!

At Confidence Coach, we are here to help and encourage you to build a better future. Feel free to reach out for a free consultation if you’d like to learn more about how we help people build their confidence and hope for a great future.

by Scott Ballard , June 13, 2021

Gratitude and Circle of Encouragement

Here’s a winning combination for your Thanksgiving dinner (no matter how big or small your gathering is this year).

Incorporate Gratitude along with the Circle of Encouragement. If you haven’t heard me talk about the Circle of Encouragement before here is a short explanation.

When you are all gathered together in a circle, have one person start by turning to the person on their right and saying a word of encouragement or something they are grateful for about that person. Then that person does the same to the person next to them. Keep going around the circle til everyone gets a chance to be encouraged.

After you get back to the person who started, switch and now go the other direction and do the same thing. I guarantee everyone will feel special and you will all be blessed by giving and receiving these words of encouragement.

We hope this will truly make your Thanksgiving Day a special day to remember with those that you love.

Happy Thanksgiving from our house to yours!

by Scott Ballard , November 25, 2020

Focus on Your Gratitude

When times get tough, everyone has to make a fundamental decision: to complain or to be grateful. What do you choose?

In an environment where negative sentiment is rampant, the consequences of this decision are much greater. Complaining only attracts negative thoughts and people.

Gratitude, on the other hand, creates the opportunity for the best thinking, actions, and results to emerge. Focus on everything you’re grateful for, communicate this, and open yourself each day to the best possible consequences.

What are 3 things you are grateful for today? Start with the small things and then you will build on your gratitude muscle.

At Confidence Coach we offer business owners a place to reconnect and rebuild their confidence; which leads to their better future in the days and years ahead. Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like to talk. Let us help you make progress.

by Scott Ballard , April 19, 2020

Self-Care During These Times

As leaders, we naturally jump into things and meet challenges head on. Sometimes this can be at the risk of our own self-care however. During these difficult times, you need to be really mindful of how you are taking care of yourself. You need all of your strength and emotional reserves for the long game, not just for a week or so.

Here are a few tips to help alleviate stress that I would suggest you do on a daily basis.

Give thanks. As I’ve said before, expressing thanks to others will lift your own spirits.
Write in a journal. If you examine negative thoughts and emotions, they will lessen.
Take a walk. Get out in nature and you will feel refreshed (exercise also relieves stress).
Listen to soothing music. You can do this while you are on your walk or make it part of an evening ritual before bedtime.
Give a friend a call. We are all missing human connection during this time which is a very vital need that we all have.
Tell a joke or read a funny book and share it with someone. Laughing is good medicine, especially when shared.
Drink water. If you are dehydrated, you don’t feel good. Stay hydrated.
Take a break. Walk away from the laptop or project periodically.
Hold hands. If possible, keep the human connection with family members.
Turn off the news. We all need to get an update because things seem to be changing fast. However, get your update, then get out. Don’t obsess over things that you can’t control.

We will get through this.

At Confidence Coach we offer business owners a place to reconnect and rebuild their confidence; which leads to their better future in the days and years ahead.

If you’d like to talk, reach out today and schedule a free call. We’d love to help you make progress during these difficult times.

by Scott Ballard , April 3, 2020

Are You a Grateful Person?

Do you consider yourself a “grateful” or positive person?

Are you in the HABIT of being grateful for things that happen in your life or do you tend to be a pessimist?

I want to encourage you that you always have a choice to react in either a positive or a negative way. Even in difficult circumstances, if you develop the practice of thanksgiving and gratitude, your outlook and attitude with improve.

What is your first reaction when things aren’t going the way you want? Next time this happens, stop and think twice about how you are going to respond.

As we say, think about your thinking. Here are some questions that come to mind that you should ask yourself first:

How am I going to react to this?
How am I going to process this?
How am I going to think about this?
How am I going to respond?

That’s what it all comes down to: MAKING A CHOICE to be thankful and grateful in spite of your circumstances.

Do you choose to view a situation positively with gratitude or dwell on the negative?

Gratitude was a choice that I made at a very young age.

School was extremely difficult for me, and I had teachers telling me that I was stupid! (Hopefully this isn’t happening in the schools now like it was back in the ’60s.)

Luckily, I had an extremely loving and caring family so all my self-worth was not based on the education system. I also had a faith and belief in God that sustained me. (I wrote a book a few years ago that tells my whole story and the practice of gratitude.)

I decided at a very young age to think about everything in my life that I was grateful for.

Every night before I went to sleep, I sat in my little bunk bed and thought about what I was grateful for. Here are a few of those things I thought about:

I’m grateful for my grandmother and how much she loved me.

I’m really grateful for how much my parents care about me.

I’m really grateful that today I got to play football.

This may sound trivial because it’s just a little kid thinking about little things. But, it’s that kind of thinking that has made me the positive, encouraging person I am today. In fact, that’s the number-one thing people say about me: that I am one of the most positive, encouraging people they’ve ever met.

The reason for this is simple:

GRATITUDE.

I’ve made it a daily practice in my life to list out all the things I am grateful to God for. Gratitude has allowed me to be able to serve people without any expectation of them ever being able to do anything for me. Instead, I am simply grateful for the opportunity to serve and how good it makes me feel in my heart and soul.

Often people wonder why they are so discontented, unhappy and stressed. They have anxiety. One of the main reasons for this is spending too much time thinking about what we don’t have instead of what we do have.

Gratitude is like an inoculation against being discouraged, upset, afraid or depressed.

We all have low times, but gratitude can help us make our way through them.

When I am feeling down or depressed, I stop and think about what I am thankful and grateful for. When I focus on those positive things, I start to appreciate them more, and they become more valuable to me. I think about God, my wife and kids, grandkids, friends, clients, experiences, places, etc., and realize how very blessed I am!

You too can live a different life with a different purpose and a different intention. Start leading a life of gratitude. Take into account – on a daily basis – everything you are grateful for.

Please share with us how gratitude or choices have made a difference for you and what you’re grateful for today.

For more on Gratitude check out The Biggest Disability is a Bad Attitude.

by Scott Ballard , November 10, 2019

Thanks for the People that Said We Can’t Do It

Today I want talk about and thank all the people that have told you and me over and over that we can’t do this; that we can’t be successful in our business; that we’ll never make it.

Hopefully you’ve kept a list or have a memory of who those people are.

Quite frankly, I find them inspiring!

When I start to get fatigued or it gets hard or it seems to be taking longer than I think it should for the results that I want to get, I always think back to those people.

I always try to recall their words and the sentiment of them saying this is impossible, you’ll never be able to be anything or do anything or build a business or have success in your life.

And I live off the energy of those people.

I don’t have a lot of them in my life anymore.

I wish I did, but I know you do, so I want you to go back and think about them. Let their disbelief inspire you to dream bigger, to work harder, to put more into yourself, into your business to win bigger in the future. Then let us know about it.

Yes, I say thank you to those people! It’s exciting to see the amount of motivation that they can give us in our life.

Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , March 10, 2019

The Gratitude Experience

Gratitude is something that I’ve been practicing for the better part of my life. A process called The Gratitude Experience is also something that we teach our clients.

I’ve found that gratitude is deeply important to me both in my business, personally, and also in my faith life. The practice of gratitude on a daily basis is something I started as a young child not even knowing what it was called then. I realized early on that gratitude could carry me through the most difficult situations and had great value in creating more of what I wanted out of life.

The things that we are grateful for grow as we become more aware of them, so that’s why we talk and teach about The Gratitude Experience. Here is a little simple formula that I follow and want to share with you so that you can practice gratitude too.

Record Daily 3 Things You are Grateful For – answer these questions for each thing that you write down:

WHAT am I grateful for?
WHY am I grateful for this?
What PERSONAL IMPACT does this have for me?

I’ll just talk you through three examples and let you see how I would answered in each scenario.

Question: What am I grateful for?

Answer: I’m grateful for my wife Orlena.

Question: Why?

Answer: I am grateful for her faithfulness and love that she’s expressed to me over the last 40 years.

Question: What’s the personal impact?

Answer: Her love and faithfulness give me confidence, peace, joy and love that only she could give me.

The second grateful statement might be I’m grateful today for my granddaughter Ellie. She is our first grandchild.

Question: What am I grateful for?

Answer: My granddaughter Ellie.

Question: Why?

Answer: She’s a gift from God that has come into our life when we thought that there may not be a possibility of a child – but she’s here now and a year and a half old.

Question: What’s the personal impact?

Answer: For me being a grandfather is a great joy for my life; more than I could have ever imagined or hoped for.

Maybe the third one would be work related.

Question: What am I grateful for?

Answer: I got a new coaching client.

Question: Why?

Answer: By coaching them I get to see their transformation and see them experience all the success that they want in their business and personal life.

Question: What’s the personal impact?

Answer: This is what I was made to do. This is where I get energy. It doesn’t feel like work; it just feels like something I want to get up and do every morning. I’m passionate about it. Coaching is my thing. It’s my God given ability, purpose, and mission in my life.

So these are just some quick examples of how to record the three things you are grateful for. We also have a course on gratitude. If you want to know more about it or if you’d like to implement this in your personal life, company or for your own business, just reach out to us and let us know.

By incorporating The Gratitude Experience at work, you’ll find it is also a great way to end a meeting, a week or a project that you’re working on. If you use the gratitude experience, you’ll not only see your attitude changing about things, but the attitude of all your employees and your customers will be impacted by practicing this on a daily basis.

The practice of gratitude is something that we believe is a lifetime thing. We believe it changes the quality and experience of your life in the most positive way. As you can see, we love to teach and talk about it!

The book that I wrote (The Biggest Disability is a Bad Attitude) actually has a whole chapter around The Gratitude Experience. I share the whole story of my coming into gratitude. If you’d like a free copy of my book, you can sign up on our website and we’ll send it to you at no cost or you can get it on Kindle or Audible.

by Scott Ballard , January 13, 2019

The Practice of Gratitude

Something that most business people don’t think about, and it’s something that we do in every coaching session, is focus on the act and practice of gratitude. In our coaching process, at the end of each session, we ask our clients what things, both personally and professionally in their business they are grateful for. We have them speak these things out and then write them down. We do that in order to help them experience what gratitude does for people. Gratitude expands the things that we’re grateful and thankful for in our life. These things get bigger as we acknowledge them. I encourage you to make this a daily practice in your business and your personal life as well.

A lot of people practice gratitude at Thanksgiving or at a certain time of the year, but I would encourage you to make this a daily practice. Start by writing down two or three things at the end of each day that you’re grateful for both personally and professionally and share this with someone. What you’ll find is that there’s so much that is good in life that you have to be grateful and thankful for. Unfortunately, life just kind of goes by you and you don’t stop and acknowledge these things. We want to help our clients create a grateful attitude and see them experience and have gratitude in their life. This is why we do this on an ongoing and regular basis. We teach gratitude and make it really practical.

— What are you grateful for today in your personal life?

— What are you grateful for today in your work, your company or business?

— Write these things down. It can be just two or three things, but get into the habit of acknowledging and writing down what you are grateful for on a daily basis.

Over time, your mind starts to acknowledge and to identify all the things that you’re grateful for and/or that you can be thankful for. As you’re thankful and grateful for them, more of these types of things will show up in your life. You become aware that there’s so much you have to be grateful and thankful for. Gratitude and thanksgiving transform our mindset, our thinking and our whole approach to life. They create a wonderful culture and mindset.

And so that’s our thought for today — PRACTICE GRATITUDE.

My wife and I do it every day, and we also do it with our clients as we work with them. We’ve seen lives transformed — from being ungrateful and not really recognizing all that there is to be thankful and grateful for — to this person who has a mindset of gratitude. This is profound because it changes not only you, but the people you work with, your team around you and your customers.

Make it a great day! Practice gratitude and tell us how it makes you feel.

by Scott Ballard , October 28, 2018

Thinking About Your Thinking

Finding a better path is all about thinking. Our mind does not control us; we control our mind.

Many people don’t realize that they are actually in control of the supercomputer in their head. They let their mind take them wherever it wants to go rather than consciously thinking and making #choices. And for most people, myself included, if we don’t consciously choose to do

by Scott Ballard , October 5, 2016