Ellen Patnaude

Ellen E. Patnaude has been coaching, training, and developing people to achieve higher levels of success in a professional capacity since 1997.

Unconventional Gratitude: The Top Five

As November finishes out and we head into December, we wanted to make one final post regarding what we call unconventional gratitude. As we’ve said before, it’s easy to be grateful for the good things—health, family, success. But focusing on those things doesn’t typically cause any change. No movement forward. No momentum. And as we are in the business of causing change, we just don’t find a lot of value in focusing gratitude there.

Instead, we’ve spent the month challenging you to think about gratitude from another perspective. And to round out this series, we’ve decided to make a list of the top five unconventional things we are grateful for here at LeadQuine.

TENSION. Tension is what causes us to feel uncomfortable enough sitting stuck at point A that we are finally willing to move to point B. Tension causes change.
FAILURE. That’s right, we are grateful for failure. What’s that Chinese proverb? “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” We would add that while you’re getting back up, take a second to think about what went wrong so you can learn from that failure.
CHAOS. Sometimes it’s necessary to dwell in the chaos so that out of the 100 possibilities swirling around, you are able to find the one real winner.
DOING WHAT IS HARD. “I’ve gotten to my pinnacle of success by taking the easy road”, said no one ever.
CHANGE. Embrace it. Don’t fear it. Engage in it. Probe it. Try it out. As our mothers said to us growing up, “If you don’t try it, how will you know if you really like it?” Or if it works? Or if it could change your life?

Thanks for sticking with us during this month of unconventional gratitude. We certainly have gratitude for all the normal stuff—our families and friends, good health, great animals, a stunningly beautiful farm, and a strong community. But we are also truly grateful for all the hard stuff that has gotten us where we are so far, and continues to push us along our own path to greater success. We want you to be on this journey with us. So dive in, and be grateful for the unconventional things.