Lauren: You’re a high octane business owner. You’ve got a team on paper. It looks like you’re rolling in success, but there’s a voice inside of you. Whisper screaming. This isn’t sustainable, something feels off and I’m gonna lose it all.

Sound familiar? That’s where I come in.

My name is Lauren Goldstein and I’m the CEO at golden key partnership. I help top level executives like you avoid burning out and burning down as you’re scaling up Hal by harnessing your superpowers, finding and hiring your ideal team. And then simplifying the heck out of your business operations. That was easy.

It’s my mission. And the mission of this podcast to help you see operations in a whole new light to help you diagnose the real root cause of your company challenges and to bring your business back to a healthy flow and profit, they call me the business doctor, and this is the biz doctor podcast.

Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about today’s show because I have special guests, Chris Schembra, my friend, and best selling author of gratitude, pasta, the secret sauce for human connection and his newest book gratitude through hard times today. I’m chomping in the bit to really dive into how gratitude can literally change everything.

From overcoming trauma, easing conflict, improving leadership, building better teams and cultures, enhancing customer relationships and personal relationships and leaving a meaningful legacy and something else that’s even more close to my heart, which is improving mental health. Now before we get too far along, I do wanna take a moment to properly introduce Chris.

So you can see for yourself what a powerhouse he is and why you’re so lucky to have him on the show. Today, as I mentioned before, he’s a bestselling author two times over USA today, calls him their gratitude guru. He’s a founding member of rolling stone magazines, culture council, and he sits on the executive board at fast company.

He’s the founder of 7 47 gratitude experience an evidence-based framework used to strengthen client and team relationships in profound ways whose clients include Microsoft, Google IBM, Dell TikTok, S and P and hundreds more. He’s used the principles of gratitude to spark over 500,000 relationships around the dinner table.

Serving fortune 50 CEOs, Olympians academy, award winners, Grammy award winning number one. Recarding artists, super bowl champions. And. As a viral marketer, his gratitude campaign, giving tribute, and thanks to veterans earned over 36 million views. 1.2 million shares and two Emmy awards. Recently, he was honored alongside Michael Phelps, Chris Evans, kid Cutty, and several others as six successful.

Men’s smashing the mental health stigma by good men project. And most recently his book just hit the number one wall street journal. Best seller. I’m so honored to not only have you on the show, but to call you a friend, welcome to the biz doctor podcast Chris. 

Chris: I’m excited to be here, Lauren. I’m so excited that you’re doing this because so many of the great things that you bring to the world, uh, revolve around asking good questions, leading with courage and, and serving great people.

And so to see this as an extension of what you already do so well, God, I’m excited for the world too. 

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. That was so sweet. Uh, well, I’m especially grateful, no pun intended to have you on the show because I know your book just came out, so I’ve not fully finished it, but gosh, it is amazing.

And I think, you know, something that I want to start with is really the beginning, because I don’t think I realized. The magic, like the true magic of gratitude, cuz you, you touched on this in the book that sometimes people roll their eyes when they, you talk about gratitude, but it’s like, it’s actually so powerful.

And having had the honor to bear, witness to your magic in action at a few of your virtual gratitude dinners, I’d love for you to tell. Our listeners about that amazing experience and how that came to be. And really just the beginning of, of how you came to be the gratitude god.

Chris: oh, gratitude. That’s son of a bitch.

um, Right. It’s so cool that you literally say like, most people roll their eyes. When you talk about gratitude. I was just talking to someone in a different country yesterday. Who’s bringing us on board to do some fun projects with, with her, uh, with their team. And she said that, you know, gratitude is, um, In her country is mainly thought of in a spiritual, mystical religious context.

Uh, but luckily we we’ve had a great opportunity to learn that there’s a whole lot of other sides of gratitude that people didn’t get. You know, a chance to learn growing up the science, the psychology, ancient philosophy of gratitude. And, and, uh, you know, we got to be able to write about that in our recent book.

So we love this topic. It saved my life. It’s been with us for the last seven years. You know, if you want me to tell a story of when I first, you know, found gratitude, I gotta take you back to, um, July of 2015. now, if you looked at my life, then yeah, you would’ve seen a, you know, not too dissimilar of the guy you see in front of you.

My life looked good on paper. I had some nice accolades. I had some good projects I was involved in, you know, it was, it was what people would call the good life. Right. Mm-hmm uh, but on the inside I realized, uh, I felt the opposite. I felt broken.  I felt like a fraud. Lonely overwhelmed, disconnected, insecure, completely at odds with myself.

And, and that was not a good look for me. I’d just gotten back from Italy after producing a Broadway play over in, in Rome. And when I got back to New York realized this life, this, these motions that I’m going through, um, didn’t exactly fulfill me on the inside. Made me scream from the inside. Last time I had felt that kind of inauthenticity was in my early twenties.

Let me down a deep dark path of suicide, depression, jail, rehab, all these, you know, things. So if you’re watching this and you’re walking around feeling like you’re just walking through the motions, checking off all the boxes you and I, uh, we were probably in a similar. And what happened was, you know, I, I said, I gotta do something quick about this.

So I thought back to my time in Italy, like, what was it about Italy that made me realize how bad I actually have it. Hm. Was it how they walked? Was it how they talked? Was it how they loved language and honored history? No, it’s how those motherfuckers ate specifically. It’s how they ate pasta sauce, right.

With their friends in community, with tons of wine to the wee hours of the morning. And I said, God, that that’s living. That’s amazing. I should do some of that back here in New York city, try to find a little bit of connection. So I set off to a pasta sauce. Recipe sounds silly and simple to say, but, uh, it was step one.

It was a minimum viable product. And I figured I should probably feed it to people to see if it was even good or not. So I decided to host a dinner party and at that fir very first dinner party, I had people come over with a bottle of wine. We worked together to create the meal. We served each other. We sat down for.

Decent pasta sauce had a good time. But towards the end, I asked a simple question. Now this question came out of nowhere. It was like I was accessing some mystical, super conscious sentient being in my soul. It’s like here. And I asked a simple question. If you could give creditor thanks to one person in your life.

That you don’t give enough creditor. Thanks to that. You’ve never thought to thank now. Who would that be? I don’t know where the question came from. I wasn’t asking people what they were grateful for. We weren’t asking what their biggest fear or failure, shame or regret was. We were giving them a platform to share an authentic story.

Someone who’d help them genuinely in their past. And Lauren, when we asked that question, The people came alive. And that, that was my first moment of realizing the power of gratitude. So we haven’t stopped since we’ve used those principles, that question, these concepts, uh, to meet a lot of people, serve a lot of people.

And most importantly, it saved my. And, uh, for that I’m grateful. And that was, that was the beginning.

Lauren: I love that story. Like I get goosebumps every time I hear it. And when I read it and you know, I just, there’s something that you said that I wanna touch on because I really, so for those listeners that don’t know me, that well, one thing that I am so, so passionate about is entrepreneur mental health, because something that happens a lot.

His imposter syndrome or you’re just a duck where on the outside, everything looks fine underneath. You’re just like paddling, like mad trying to stay afloat, or the thing happens where everything’s going. Great. So great that you try and burn it down because you’re like, I just, I can’t, I can’t do this.

And. Something that I love that you shared about is like when you were in those different throws, both with that story and the story in the book, which guys run out, get this book it’s seriously. So great. Um, that gratitude is what was your north star and brought you back. And it sounds like I suffer full disclosure.

I suffer from imposter syndrome all the time. It seems like from what I’m gathering through our many conversations and the book is bringing it back to center. That gratitude is something that makes all of those. I don’t know, demons. Is that a fair word to use? Get quieter?

Chris: Yes. And tell me yes. And I’m so glad you didn’t just say. Gratitude helps make the demons go away. Mm. What I’d like to reframe that and what I’d like you to think about all you imposter syndrome, CEOs and founders out there that are watching this listening.

Lauren: listening, maybe watching one day 

Chris: listening, listening to this is that those demons will never go away.

Hmm, you will never rid yourself of that imposter syndrome. You will never rid yourself of those middle of the night anxieties on what do I need to do next to hit payroll? What do I gotta do next to feel fulfilled? What do I gotta do next? Not to be a miserable motherfucker, so don’t wish them away instead.

Learn to be grateful for. Hmm, the odds are you started your company because there was a problem that you were good at solving. Make your own anxieties, your own attitude, your own mental wellbeing, something worth solving that you get to work on all the time. You’re never gonna get over it. You’re never gonna perfect. It. But that imperfection is actually comforting and it’s a source of connection and it’s something to be grateful for.

I love that. So gratitude, gratitude is not that bullshit. You know, like there’s a lot of the people in LA right now that are doing all the woo. Woo. Yeah. Let’s clear our limiting beliefs. Let’s manifest our destiny. We can get anything we never want in life. Gratitude’s not. Right. It’s it’s just not, I, I don’t, I don’t wish for people to use gratitude as a tool to have less bad shit happen to them in their life.

I just want them to use it as a tool to process that tough shit. You’re a founder for a reason, because you have some sort of tolerance for risk and anxiety and pressure and resistance. Mm-hmm . Now I don’t want you to wish those away because you would lose your edge. Mm. Yeah. Oh 

Lauren: gosh, this is so juicy. Cuz I think there’s so much like woo.

That comes with gratitude where it’s like, I’m just gonna pretend I’m fine. And what you’re saying is you don’t have to pretend. You’re fine. You have to be grateful for. The bumps, the bruises, the imperfections. Yeah. Cause that’s what makes us resilient business owners. Is that what I’m hearing? 

Chris: Yeah. Oh yeah. Business. I mean, you know, um, first of all, studies show that some of the world’s most profitable companies were actually founded during a period of recess. So the world falls and whoever can go withstand the forces of diving deep into that hole and creating something when everything else is against them.

They’re usually the ones who win in, in the book. We call it the, the found when you’re down syndrome or symptom or, uh, Time, right. Uh, when, when the world is down around you, that’s where the greatest opportunity for growth lies. And so you almost kind of have to architect these really dark times in your life in order to learn from them.

Um, because when, when times get too good as a founder, um, what’s the incentive to innovate. What’s the incentive to change. Nothing really like happens. No, you gotta be told when you’re wrong. You gotta like face your fucking demons and then you gotta persevere through that. Right? The impediment to action is the thing that advances action, what stands in the way only becomes the way, you know, mm-hmm old dudes like Marcus, Aras have been saying that for 2000 years.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I don’t believe in clearing our, our roadblocks, I believe in literally like going and like fucking them in the soul so that like, you can go somewhere in life with them. Right. Use them as your advantage. 

Lauren: Yeah, it sounds like, it sounds like gratitude is a tool to build res not resistance, resilience, both in your business, in your life.

Chris: Yeah. And just really make peace with all the things that may or may not be working in your life. Which I, again, I wanna challenge 1, 1, 1, uh, one part of that statement. Uh, yes. We don’t believe that gratitude is a tool to make peace. We believe that gratitude is a tool to gain clarity and the overwhelming acceptance that you might not ever find peace, but that’s all right.

That’s all right. Right. You can be grateful for the learnings that come. Through the acknowledgement that you will never find peace. Oh, I practice gratitude every day. And I’m the most unpeaceful man ever for sure. 

Lauren: I think you might have just broken my brain. That’s really that’s so interest broken your brain, huh?

Broken my brain, cuz I mean, how many of us are searching for peace? 

Chris: So maybe that’s kind of sometimes the acceptance that peace will never be found in itself is a moment of peace. Yeah, 

Lauren: kind of reminds me of those, those of you that know me well know, I love kids movies, but KSU pan, where he’s like inner peace.

Chris: And he’s just trying to figure out what the heck that means. I feel like that’s, that’s where we’re going. the minute, you know, so, so the, the quest to find inner peace in and of itself is like an open-ended journey that’s filled. Like likely, uh, unmet expectations and unrecognizable outcomes. Like the quest defined piece is something that you hope to have in the future.

And the more you hope to have things in the future, the less you’re able to process what you actually have here in the now mm-hmm . And that’s why we think that, um, you know, gratitude is a tool to dive us into the past. Because the pass has already occurred, we can control our, our response to. Right. Most of us, if you’re a, you know, seven figure entrepreneur or founder out there, you are hoping to have that next big breakthrough.

Right. You’re hoping that tomorrow might bring, uh, your next best new hire to solve your problems or, or the recessional end. And you can go back to fundraising, uh, like this is all like future oriented anxiety. Well, the more you’re anxious about the future, which is great unknown, which is filled with insecurity and doubt and uncertainty, the less you’re the less, you’re able to acknowledge how you’re doing in the present and what needs to be changed right now, or even appreciate what you’ve done in the past, which is actually what builds up the strength needed to get through those further trying times.

Lauren: Wow. Yes. 1000%. I feel like so many people miss out on the gifts of the present because they’re not present to it. Yeah. I love that. That’s a great, that’s a great reminder. 

Chris: How can you, how can you appreciate the [00:19:30] great poet? Uh, Mary Oliver once said that attention is the beginning of devotion. How can he actually experience anything that you’re not experiencing?

Whoa. Come on. Whoa, you gotta be here right now. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I think that’s something you also touch on in, in the book is that, um, that America and the world is really disconnected because you know, we’ve, we’re not living in the present. We’re living with technology and like things that have made us. Um, what did you say soul bankrupt?

Chris: Is that mother Teresa once said that the poverty of the soul of America is one of the greatest poverty she’s ever seen in the history of the world. Yeah. Right. When you have a, when, when you have a, when you have a, a capitalistic society, the emphasis is on, um, optimizing, uh, it, it, it. In, in a, in a, in a capitalistic society, we, the people are actually instruments.

Mm-hmm , we are instruments to be used for great profit. And what happens when you instrumentalize people, they then go and instrumentalize their time. What happens when he make every moment of time in your life need to be measured and need to amount to future profit. You lose the ability to just play and be in the moment and enjoy stuff.

And what happens when you can’t do that is you become emotionally bankrupt. You become emotionally impotent mm-hmm . And ultimately what happens when you become emotionally impotent, it actually limits your long term earning. So this massive focus on profit and hustle and squeezing every element of productivity out of your time, ends up hurting you in the long run, both in just the amount of time that you’ll be able to spend on this earth and your ability to actually enjoy your time on this earth.

Right. And then that makes people wake up in the middle of their life and say, what the fuck am I doing? What’s the purpose of any of  this? Any of this? Yeah. They don’t know themselves anymore. And we can all go through those moments, whether you’re at the top of the ladder or the bottom of the latter. I think actually the richer you get, the more.

Probably prone to then instrument instrumentalize your time to the N degree, because then you’ve got a billion dollars at stake instead of just, you know, the, the, the price of a hotdog or something. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I think that comes back to the mental health of entrepreneurs, the mental, all of us in society. We’re fucked. Yeah. But gratitude. 

Chris: The the, um, the, the narrative for the last, like two years has been, oh my God, the COVID pandemic is wreaking havoc on these employees. Like, oh my God, these employees are so disconnected. So overwhelmed. Doing this, doing that, whatever, but nobody was talking about the employers.

And recently my buddy, Dan Shaw bell came out with a big groundbreaking study with Oracle and, um, Deloitte and all these, these great places and hundreds of media outlets covered it. And he essentially said, Hey well, everybody’s, you know, focused on the employee. Nobody’s focusing in on these employers and they’re crumbling by the wayside.

Their mental health is. Zech. Um, and it’s, uh, look, we’re saying, I mean, look, the, the Propent the, the suicide and depression rate amongst founders and CEOs is, is like astronomically high. Um, mm-hmm , you know, we could. Because we’re all strange to begin with the, the rate of ADHD among founders and CEOs is like higher than the like American national average.

Like we’re, we’re like more prone to be ADHD, depressed and anxious, and nobody’s talking about it. 

Lauren: I know. And that’s why this is such something I’m so passionate about and why we integrated mental health into our C-suite service. Oh, absolutely. Like if you, if you don’t have. Awareness on what’s going on between your ears.

It can impact your team, your business faster than you can imagine, which is I think a great segue into the mental health thread that you’ve woven with gratitude in this book. So, yeah, let’s segue. Can I raise 

Chris: my hand? You can. I want to invite you to go one step deeper. Tell me it’s not what’s between the head.

It’s, what’s not what’s between the ears it’s, what’s roaming around in the heart. If you can help your people, founders that you so brilliantly serve, uh, if you can help them feel more of the, their shit in here, that’ll filter up to the head, which then filters out of their mouth to their people. That’s a big one.

One of the great, one of the great gals who’s doing, this is my dear friend, grace. She runs a group called, uh, Grace Smith hypnosis, GS hypnosis.com. Get grace TV or get grace app.tv. I don’t know. Anyways, she’s, she’s a hypnosis person. And so she only operates in the here and what she’s done for my friends.

is ridiculous. I’ve seen someone literally make a hundred million dollars extra per year after just like six months of working with her. Wow. Right. So if you hit, if you unlock this shit, which will evolved, then it goes up to here and then it goes out to there. Of course, tear, tear, tear. So starting here is not bad, but, uh, the people are feeling it here.

Lauren: I love it. So starting the heart and in their loins, but that’s not, that’s a whole other thing. That’s a different podcast, not this podcast. 

Chris: the, um, no, I, I mean talking about the loins and, and it being pride month and, or no, July finally, um, pride month is every month for me, but, um, no, so many, so many people through the years have gone on to not only.

Um, shift their mindset after working with us or being exposed to our teachings and then change their heart, of course. But some of them have even, you know, finally come out of the closet or done this, or so I think there’s a lot more CEOs out there who are  really hiding their two identities. 

Lauren: I think you might be right.

I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s just a lot of stuff that comes with the feeling that as CEOs, we gotta have our shit together and not let, let whatever’s happening underneath out. And I, man, I think it does more harm than good to your point. And, and, you know, that’s why I’m so grateful that you put out this book and I, I would love for you to dive a little bit more into the goodness that readers can expect from it.

And maybe two, maybe three of your favorite lessons that they can look forward to learning more about in the book. Cuz I think that, I don’t think I know that you guys are onto, so. With the gratitude experiences and the work that you do with clients. And it’s just, it’s really powerful to see. 

Chris: Thank you. Ooh, two or three lessons, two or three, um, or, you know, overarching, whatever. Well, I I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna start by saying, um, something. That I had said a few, uh, or I think you had said a few minutes into the podcast, which is that, you know, most people just think of gratitude as this woo woo. Mystical, magical spiritual positive thing.

Um, we went out with this book to kind of show the opposite. That one can be grateful for the hard times. And let me walk you through that journey. I’ll tell you a few minute story and it happens to be my story. And maybe some of you can, uh, can relate to this given, uh, you know, similar positions that you’re in.

So, right. All right. Started the, started my company back in July of 2015 and then built a nice company. And then pivoted during the pandemic went virtual, expanded our offerings, hired more people, good stuff. And then. If you looked at my life in December of 2021, like seven months ago. Yeah. Same, you know, same guy as you probably feeling right.

Got a good resume. Got a good team. Got good money. Got good friends. Got good family. Spot a new home girlfriend just got a new job,  lots to celebrate in life. Right? Mm-hmm uh, Thursday, December 30th, 2021 at 4:30 PM. I get on a phone call with my, one of my clients. Uh, Lisa Penn, an executive SAP and 30 minutes into the phone call.

She says, Chris, you don’t look so hot. Maybe we should end our call early. You should go meditate. Hmm, I don’t look so hot. What are you talking about? No client had ever said that to me. I know how to show up with a brave face for my clients, but nonetheless, we ended the call and I went to go meditate that night, Molly, and I would go out for dinner.

Um, she was leaving early the next morning. Uh, new year’s Eve to go home with their parents. And we had a lot to celebrate that night, our new job, our new house, all these great things. So we went out to dinner at lure fish bar in Soho, in the middle of New York city. And all of a sudden people want to talk to us and they’re coming up to buy us drinks and people are this and that.

And this and a whole crowd center is around us. And, and we have a lot to. and I open up my mouth and I say something very stupid in a kind of flirty way to another person. And that starts a fight between me and Molly. Oh no. And I get home, we get home and I feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet.

I feel like a fraud. I feel like an. I feel like a monster. I feel like a menace. I go into the kitchen, take out my biggest kitchen knife and run it right across my rest. Oh no. Still got the scar. Mm-hmm now laying in a pool of  blood. We go to take a bath. We wrap the wound. We go to bed. Molly wakes up the next morning and flies.

To Detroit to be with their family. Mm-hmm so I’m left all alone for the next six days in the middle of New York city mm-hmm . And so I just started crying and, and I hadn’t cried like that in a long, long time maybe ever. I mean, I’d walk down the street and see a taxi cabin. I’d cry. Mm-hmm I’d go over to, you know, take a scooter ride to central.

And I’d cry. Mm-hmm . And I finally got on the phone with my best friend Scott, and I said, Scott, here’s everything that’s going on. Here’s what’s what I’m feeling. He said, well, I said, what do you think I did this to myself? He said, well, it’s pretty, pretty obvious, Chris, you got so many good things going on in your world.

But you couldn’t see the clearing through the forest. You’re appreciating none of it. I said I’m appreciating none of it, but I’m the gratitude guy. Mm-hmm , isn’t that just what I do? Well, what I realized was I fucking reaped of in gratitude. Mmm, the ancient Stoics talk about it 2000 years ago, they say you can either wake up in the morning and only see the bad and maybe appreciate some of the good, or you can wake up in the morning and appreciate the good and maybe focus on fixing a few of the bad one is in gratitude.

One is gratitude mm-hmm and I’d become in gratitude’s most recent victim. Mm, but here’s the good thing that happened time would go on. And I immediate, I mean, after, after Scott told me that story, I literally hung up the phone and went and wrote the first 39 pages of my book. It was, it was a massive chunk that I was, well, we had already written 80,000 words for the book, but I was fucking stuck on what’s the point of the book?

Where, where is it going? How does it even relate to my. So I sat down and I wrote the 39 page introduction and I felt unstuck for the first time in 15 months, I was like, holy shit. So I started letting time heal a few things. I didn’t change much in my life. I just acknowledged that I reeked of gratitude.

And then slowly I looked back a couple weeks later and said, holy shit. M almost killing myself was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Oh man. And so man, for that, I became grateful. So in the book we have something that we call the positive benefits checklist. I don’t even know where my books are, where are all my books?

Lauren: Well, while you look, I know some of you listening might be caught off guard by this subject. Chris has actually been. Vocal about this and shared his story, both in the book and publicly. And I, I think that it’s, yes, it’s a, it’s a sensitive subject suicide, but it is something that it’s occurring more and more.

 Chris: Yeah. Non-suicidal self injury. I should say. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to end my life, but I accidentally because all I was doing was crying out for help. And that manifested itself in self. Yes. 

Lauren: And, and that’s, and that’s something to go back to what we started talking about of mental health. Like this is something that’s increasing and alarming rates.

And so I believe the more we talk about it, the more we band together, the more we connect, the less incidences of founders killing themselves, or mm-hmm, , you know, people injuring themselves. We can really make a difference in mental health. So yeah, if that shocked you, my apologies, but you’re here for the ride.

hell yeah. Tell us about the checklist. 

Chris: We, we, we have to, we have to say shocking things in order to get people to wake the [00:36:00] fuck up. Cuz right now we’ve got a whole lot of sleepy people and you who are listening are included. Um, so what happened was. You know, I, I look back and I said, holy shit. I, I think that non-suicidal self injury as we call it.

N SSI episode was actually a really good thing. And I opened up my book and I opened it up to page 134 to our positive benefits checklist. And I looked at this checklist. Which we invented as a way to help people find positive benefits in their negative autobiographical experiences. And I started going one by one down the line out of 11 things.

Number one, did my non-suicidal self injury teach me empathy. Yes. I stepped into the shoes of another person who have gone through things similar to me, understand their feelings and perspectives. And now  I can do things with that. Did it teach me acceptance? Yes. It taught me to accept the things. I cannot change in my own life and give me the wisdom to know the difference.

Did it teach me appreciation? Oh yeah. I started appreciation my so many things. Did it bring my family closer together? Yes. Were they scared shitless? Yes. But you become close when you’re scared shitless. Did it give me a community to get closer with? Yes, because we. Telling our story, tens of thousands of people have now heard this story, whether it’s in our book or through our events or whatever.

And it helped me connect a lot with people. Did it give me faith in people? Yes. Did it teach me compassion? Yes. Did it give me a positive self view? Hail fucking, yeah. Did it gimme self confidence and self-efficacy that? I now know how to pick myself up through my darkest hour. Yes. Did inspire a lifestyle change?

Yes, I went on. To literally lose 28 pounds since the non-suicidal self injury. Wow. And finally, the 11th question, did it give me your material gain? I will not lie to you January the month, following my non-suicidal self injury most profitable month in company. Wow. That’s not an accident. So now I can look back at that and say, I’m grateful.

That I engaged in an almost life threatening episode of non-suicidal self injury, because it taught me compassion, appreciation, faith in people self-efficacy gave me a positive lifestyle change in all this stuff. And if we can tell that story, oh man, that’s gratitude. No kidding. Yeah. 

Lauren: I love that. And, and thank you for sharing.

Chris: So the whole book is kind of modeled around that flavor of gratitude, how to turn, you know, grief into legacy, anger, into compassion, regret into regret. I don’t know what the opposite of regret and our book is, but, um, adversity into a superpower, right? Post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth. Um, you know, all these kind of things that would normally be on the negative side of a really like really bad thing that happens to you can actually create things that will help you come out on the good side of a negative thing happening to you.

Lauren: I just, I love that so much. And I think what, you know, impresses me most about the book and your work and this whole journey is that when you make gratitude, the gratitude you’re talking about. Part of a daily habit, then it can, it can help in so many facets of your life and your business. Yes. You’re ranking your hand.

Chris: I wanna invite one thing. I wanna invite one thing. Mm-hmm those that are listening. I wanna challenge the word habit. Ooh. Okay. So. In my belief, which just a guy on the side of the screen that you’re you’re listening to, um, to me, sometimes habits can become redundant and can lose their impact over you.

I never want gratitude to become one of those things in your life. I want you to give gratitude when you feel it, and only when you feel it, right. If you gotta go back and give that gratitude to someone that you haven’t thought of in a hundred years, go back only when you feel that authentic. You know, gratitude, uh, if you gotta go pay it forward, when you’ve been inspired by some benefit that you’ve received, go and do that, but only do that.

Then if we, if we put, uh, uh, habit or, or, uh, constraints,  it, it mm-hmm, , it, it can, it can sometimes just be thought of as a checklist or just another thing I have to do. So I just challenge the word habit. I 

Lauren: I’m I’m here for that. Yeah. And I think that’s actually one of the things that I love most about our friendship is we challenge each other.

Chris: Of course. And I, and I, and I love that you’re, you’re bringing different perspectives and, and challenges to it. Cause I agree. I’d rather people I’d rather  people go and I’d rather people only practice like one massive moment of gratitude in their year. Um, like my non-suicidal self injury is the most grateful thing that I’ve ever been grateful for.

Hmm. But I deeply felt the benefits that I received from that self-harm episode so much that I’m still, I, I still feel it in my soul, those great benefits. Wow. You know, and so I’d rather people have one of those. Moments of gratitude for the good or for the bad, then like a thousand small, you know, checklists of gratitude.

Um, yeah, one, one thing that we’re on a war against is like, self-reflective gratitude. Like we, we believe that, um, to sit. Like to sit and make a list saying what you’re grateful for to us is alright, whatever you can read, what Dr. Oz says about the benefits of gratitude for journaling or whatever, but the best way to practice gratitude is in a prosocial environment, whether it’s in a diad or in a small group setting, cuz to be grateful, we believe to be grateful is to be grateful to someone.

Mm, I’m not grateful for my health. I’m grateful for my friend, Emily who taught me how to meditate and gave me something to wake up to every morning. I’m not grateful for the son. I’m grateful that our real estate broker helped find an apartment for us to buy with a huge window in my office. These are meaningful, measurable.

Moments that you have direct control over. See, most people give gratitude to really woo things that they have no control over. I’m grateful for the sun. I’m grateful for my life. This is like leaving fate up to some mystical. Creature that you’ll never meet or touch or can ever name now for all the, like the religious fanatics on this call.

I’m sorry, I’m not knocking your religion. I’m just saying my version of gratitude gives you agency and ownership over the decisions you’ve made in your life. 

Lauren: That’s a great distinction. That’s a great distinction. Thank you for that. Oh, so we’re gonna wrap up, we’re gonna wrap up here in a, in a few moments, but is there anything else, any last words of wisdom lessons that you wanna leave our listeners with before we wrap?

Chris: Well, I, I think it’s a unique, I think it’s a unique timing of recording this podcast because. There comes a point in one’s life where you feel the dissatisfaction of having yet to achieve what you want to achieve. And then there also comes a dissatisfaction from having just achieved all that you’ve wanted to achieve and both lead to misery mm-hmm

And so having just been on the heels of literally having the number one best selling book in America, yeah. I’m kind of sitting here saying. Well now what? Hmm. Right. We just mm-hmm we just did the impossible right now. What? Yeah. And so to all of you who are sitting there saying. That you have either the dissatisfaction of having yet to build a hundred million dollar company you’ve always wanted to bring, because you’re gonna be so happy and life’s gonna be so perfect when you hit that a hundred million annual reoccurring revenue, or you feel the dissatisfaction of having done that.

Mm-hmm . and saying, fuck now what mm-hmm , I’m there with you. And that’s the greatest piece of wisdom I can say is that your level of misery and discomfort in your own life? You’re not alone. There are other people going through that is. At the same place you are the same feeling you are so reach out, that’s it.

I don’t wanna teach you something new. I just want to tell you you’re not alone because that’s the only thing that actually makes me feel something on this planet. 

Lauren: I love that. And that’s a great reminder that we’re not alone. And I think that, that, you know, to bring it full, full circle. Why I’m so passionate about the mental health of entrepreneurs is so often we talk about just the successes or the highlight reel and then compare it to our own behind the scenes and think that we’re in it alone.

So that’s a great reminder that, well, most things are temporary and also,

and also that you’re not in it alone. We’re in it together. Mm-hmm and. Having community having support, having people you can lean on, learn from like, that’s, that’s really the magic 

Chris: mm-hmm if you weren’t going through actually forget that, cuz that I would go off on another tangent for 20 minutes. So we’ll just clear it with that.

Lauren: Okay. Okay. I mean, let’s be honest, you and I could talk about this for probably hours and it would be like a three hour long podcast. I just wanna say, holy cow, like this episode has filled me up and I’m so happy to have had you on so you can share so much wisdom. Challenge me around gratitude, share all the amazing juiciness of gratitude.

I mean, I knew it was magic before, but I don’t think I actually realized how much until we dove in. And you gave more context and I can’t wait to finish the book and I don’t know about you listening, but I’m gonna go back and listen to this to squeeze even more juice out of it. And y’all go get his book today.

I’m gonna post it and absolutely the link in the show note. But it’s called gratitude through hard times. If you wanna know more from Chris, be sure to follow him on Instagram at Chris dot Shera and tell us Chris, how else can listers connect or get in touch with you or better yet work with you? 

Chris: I mean, look, if, if you heard anything that, that you agreed with here today, I want you to go out and act.

Now that that’s the greatest way of, of, uh, of honoring my time on this podcast is to go out and, and do something about it. Right. Go out and, uh, go out and think about some of those hard times in your life and really search around for how it might just have developed some pretty positive benefits in your life.

And yeah, I’m gonna go radical and say, uh, the cancer diagnosis of your. Or the death of your dog or the firing of your co-founder find the positive benefits in those things. Even if it’s just one or two positive benefits, you can give gratitude to it. You can talk about it to destigmatize the negative impact it has over you.

And you can start to release some of that negativity that’s associated with it. Yeah. 

Lauren: And get some of your power back and that’s on page. 1 34. 

Chris: Well, the whole book is about that, but just the positive benefits checklist. Yes. Turn to, so don’t, don’t skip the start and don’t skip the end, sit through the full 320 pages and then, you know, email us and let us know how much you hated it.

 Lauren: I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s such a, it’s such an easy, fun read and you just, you do a really great way of telling the story and making it relatable and it’s a page Turner, so I love it. All right. Guys that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. I know we covered a lot of things.

Maybe stirred up some stuff in you. So I’d love to hear from you your biggest takeaways. So make sure you’re following along. Tag me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or on LinkedIn, wherever you hang out on the interwebs. Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to the biz doctor podcast. You’re probably wondering what your next steps are. Hmm. So here are some options for you.

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