Gratitude doesn’t always have to be about good things that have happened to you.  Why not be grateful for other people’s successes?   

Did someone from your office get promoted this week?  How did you react when you found out that a distant cousin won the mega lottery?  What about your business associate who got the lucrative contract that you thought for sure was yours?  Or the blogger who experienced a huge jump in the number of subscribers within a very short period of time?  How did you feel when your best friend got pregnant at the drop of a hat when you’ve been trying to conceive for months?  Okay, how about this one:  The talented writer who has the magical ability to produce a string of words and phrases that seem to flow harmoniously, almost hypnotically, causing you to become emotionally invested in the story?    

Were you truly happy for them or did it unlock a torrent of jealousy that you didn’t know was padlocked in the basement of your heart?   

If we are genuinely grateful for the good things that happen to other people, it means we subconsciously believe we can also experience the same kind of success for ourselves.  On the other hand, if we’re jealous, what does that tell us about our belief system?  That we aren’t smart enough, talented enough or connected enough to experience the same level of success?? 

Let me start off by sharing my gratitude for other people’s good fortune:  

• Christine O’Kelly of Self Made Chick (featured in Stephen Hopson Interviews in early January) wrote a fascinating article about how her blog grew to 800 subscribers in only 17 weeks (it’s now over a thousand!).  When I read that, I was beside myself with joy because not only did it happen to a wonderful and deserving blogger but it also brought into existence the possibility that if she can attract that many subscribers, so can anyone!  How can you not be grateful for that possibility?  Thank you Christine for shouting out the good news about your blog’s explosive growth! 

Since becoming the world’s first hearing impaired pilot with an instrument rating two years ago, I had been waiting for a long time for someone to join my circle of achievement.  I am thrilled to announce that I now have company in my midst.  Matt Herrman from Iowa just became instrument rated the other day, thereby becoming the 2nd deaf pilot in the world to do so.  My hope is that this circle will expand by leaps and bounds now that Matt has succeeded in knocking down even more barriers.  When I learned of the news, I knew exactly how much he had to overcome to accomplish this very difficult rating.     

For those of you not familiar with aviation, imagine yourself flying in a milk bottle with nothing but white stuff floating all around you.  It’d be pretty disorienting right?  Would you say it’s like flying blind?  If you said yes, you were right!

The only way you can tell whether the plane is climbing, descending or turning while flying through the clouds is by monitoring the instruments on the panel in front of you.  On top of that, you’re required to maintain 2 way radio communication with the controllers from the moment of takeoff to the time an approach is made to an airport for landing.  

So how is it possible that Matt and I can legally act as “blind and deaf pilots” through instrument weather conditions? (i.e. flying through the clouds, low visibility, etc.).  Thanks to a couple of powerful individuals within the halls of the FAA, Matt and I are allowed to fly in these conditions with a qualified co-pilot whose job is to handle the radios and pass along information using something like a dry-erase board (see image above).  

Let’s give Matt a big, hearty round of applause for his stupendous achievement!  I am grateful that he persevered in the face of tremendous odds to make it even easier for other deaf and hearing impaired pilots to follow in our footsteps.  I expect to be posting a follow-up article once newspaper articles and news videos become available for public consumption.  Stay tuned!

• Karen Putz of A Deaf Mom Shares Her World wrote a very powerful story, Steak and Shake Denies Service, where she was denied a couple of delicious milkshakes because of her inability to hear the drive-in speaker.  As the story goes, she drove past it and pulled up to the take-out window to place her order, something she had done many times in the past.  However, even when she tried to explain that she was deaf, the manager on duty had the audacity to tell her to drive back to the starting point and order through the speaker!  Eventually the manager lost patience and slammed shut the windows, essentially telling her to get lost!  As I was reading this, I sensed the depths of unresolved anger rising like a flood of fury.  The emotion surprised me.  Her story attracted media attention with Fox and ABC News reporting along with a huge rally of support from the around the blogging world.  Karen, I am grateful for your show of courage, strength and dignity in order to stand up to a faceless corporation that thinks it can get away with hiring apathetic managers who could care less about providing decent customer service.  Hang in there Karen, we’re all with you in spirit!  

Other things of interest to note:

• In my fight against unscrupulous bloggers (”sploggers”) who make a living scraping other people’s material and passing them off as their own, I was grateful to discover the RSS Footer Plug-in.  Created by a Dutch developer, it can be used to put anything you want at the end of your RSS feed.  In my case, I inserted a line stating that I am the author of the material with a link-back to the article.  While this might not stop automated sploggers from stealing my content, it will at least alert unsuspecting readers of those blogs that they are in fact reading stolen material.
• Late Monday morning around 11 am, I was about to leave the house for a quick workout when the phone rang.  It was my friend Joni who was leaving for a 20-hour road trip to Florida to drop off and pick up a car for a dealership she freelances for.  Did I want to join her?  A quick check of my calendar revealed that I was free until at least the end of the week.  Without thinking twice, I decided I would be adventurous and enthusiastically said, ”What the hell, YES, I’ll go with you!”  While the drive both ways was incredibly long (and at one point scary as we passed through a couple of blinding snowstorms on the way back), I’m grateful I gave myself a chance to go on a trip at the spur of the moment.  Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”  The warm Floridian sunshine was delicious, giving me much needed Vitamin D (they say we all need at least 15 minutes of sunshine a day).  After a restful night at a friend of Joni’s, we went on a little safari of sorts, driving for hours through a huge natural wildlife reserve and encountered all kinds of wild birds and ferocious-looking alligators along the way.  Thank you Joni for inviting me to experience a last-minute adventure that will forever remain indelibly imprinted on the walls of my brain!    
• For the first time since I began speaking professionally, I now have a demo tape for potential clients who are looking for motivational speakers.  I am grateful for people like Terry Bartlett, a full-time minister at a local United Church of Christ, whose true passion is creating professional videos down in the basement of his house.  You can tell he is deeply passionate about it because he goes out of his way to make sure the videos are of top-notch quality and won’t quit until he’s 100 percent satisfied.  When he handed me a copy of the rough version this morning, both eyes were twinkling with joy.  We are a few weeks away from finalizing the tape and I am positive once I make this available to the public, speaking engagements from all over the world will pour in like never before.   Thank you Terry for doing such a fabulous job - I can’t wait to show the world what you have created for me!
• Imagine my surprise and gratitude when I woke up this morning to find that Create Business Growth posted a very attractive snapshot of Adversity University with the now-popular article,  How I Almost Let Fear Stop Me from Accepting a $4,000 Engagement.   Similar to what I do with my gratitude posts, they close out their week with ”Who Said That?” -  a weekly series where they give out link love to bloggers who captured their attention with inspiring and thought-provoking posts.  If you click on the blue icon, you’ll be taken directly to the post where I was mentioned.       

Food for thought:  What are you grateful for this week?

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