Why Being Grateful Can Improve Your Life So Much
Are you grateful for all the good things in your life? Or are you too busy focusing on all the problems you have to solve?
My mum lived to be 100 years old and like everyone else she wasn’t perfect, but as my days are passing by and I hurtle towards the ‘vintage’ years of my life, I reflect increasingly on some of the life lessons my parents taught me as they navigated the incredible changes in lifestyle and technology that have come about since the days when they listened to their wireless radio and the internet was not ‘a thing’.
My dad also lived to reach his 90th birthday and their 70th Wedding Anniversary before he passed. You try finding a 70th Anniversary card – they don’t make many of them! Consequently, they both gratefully received several cards from the Queen, and for their 70th, they even received cards from the Prime Minister of Australia, the Leader of the Opposition and the Premier of WA. I guess that all adds up to acknowledging that it’s no mean feat to achieve that milestone in this day and age.
The Gift – How Gratitude Bestows Resilience
One of the glues that kept their marriage stuck together until death literally parted them, and I also think was a major component of why they lived such long and vibrant lives, is that they both had ‘attitudes of gratitude’.
To begin with, they were grateful for having met and falling in love. My mum was an unmarried mother, a truly scandalous situation in her younger years, whereas now it’s fairly commonplace. My father fell for her at first glance – one of those Hollywood-style thunderbolt moments and he took on her son as his own without hesitation. They went on to have another five children together, though sadly one girl didn’t survive, and the brother I never met, Michael suffered a heart issue and died after only six months.
They were married in war time, in 1941, and at just nineteen years old, my father found himself on Malta as a Flight Sergeant, overseeing a young team of engineers who worked on the Hurricanes and Spitfires that were fighting the German and Italian air forces, while the Island was being bombed relentlessly. They were starving because the island was under siege. Convoys of ships bringing supplies were frequently sunk by German U-Boats.
It was vital that the British and Maltese held on, for the security of Montgomery’s allied army in North Africa. Had Malta fallen, the German planes could have used the island as a base from which to bomb the British Eighth Army, possibly turning the War. Meanwhile, my mother worked back in England in a munitions factory to support the war effort and was living on food ration coupons.
They had several big reasons to be grateful. My father once avoided a bomb that landed where he would have been had he not stopped to talk to a colleague. On another occasion, a bomb destroyed the barracks where he would have been sleeping, except he and his team were working 24 hours on and 24 hours off.
One day, back in the relative safety of Chester in England, my mother answered a ring of the front doorbell to find an RAF officer waiting to meet her with a telegram in his hand. She knew what that dreaded telegram meant. All the wives waiting at home for their man to return from the War knew what that piece of paper would tell them.
She opened it and read the first line, “Mrs Inman, we regret to inform you that your husband…”
Vera fainted in the hallway.
When she regained consciousness, she discovered that he had not in fact been killed in action, but that he was gravely ill with meningitis and had been admitted to St. Paul’s Hospital in Malta. A flicker of hope was restored.
Despite the relentless bombing, despite the hunger, and despite the illness, Flight Sergeant Inman pulled through. When Malta survived its siege and held out against the Nazi blockade, he travelled with his squadron to both Italy and Egypt, keeping the RAF planes flying.
As World War Two ended, Bill and Vera were reunited and stationed in Aden in the Middle East. They had a new fresh start to married life together after the War, feeling initially like strangers again, and were filled with gratitude that they had survived the ordeal. Many people didn’t.
Their sons, Peter and Geoffrey were healthy, and they had a good lifestyle in Aden, with Bill playing the accordion while glamorous Vera sang and featured as the lead role of Robin Hood in the RAF pantomime.
Then came baby Michael, but he had a heart problem. They returned to England to seek treatment for the baby, a condition whereby he could easily have been saved today, but not in those days. He died at six months to the grief of the family. When the RAF NCO in charge of accommodation callously remarked that with one less child they would be much lower on the married quarters waiting list, Bill was so angry after everything he had been through to serve his country, that he bought himself out of the RAF for 50 pounds.
Although they had lost a child, they were very grateful to move to the English Channel Island of Jersey, a haven for British tourists, to start over and add Cheryl to the family.
How Struggles Are Conquered by Gratitude
Bill was a man who could fix anything. He’d just take it apart and figure it out, then put it back together again. It’s what they had to do to survive on Malta. So, he worked as a mechanic for six months before joining as an Engineer with British European Airways, who later merged with BOAC to form British Airways.
They bought their first home. Then calamity struck. Bill contracted polio and Vera had to take in a lodger to help pay the mortgage.
Once again, he pulled through this serious condition and the tradition of turning a bad situation into an opportunity, the idea of a lodging house stuck in my mother’s mind.
They were fortunate to get a loan to buy a guest house. Vera had also worked in Chester’s Grosvenor Hotel in her youth and had learned a lot about the hotel business. While he worked on aircraft, she ran the guest house. Then I came along unexpectedly!
They worked extremely hard and were so grateful that they had the opportunity to do so. Gratitude generates optimism and self-belief, so it was no surprise that the light of a golden opportunity shone on them.
An elderly couple had a hotel that they wanted to sell, so they agreed a deal to vendor finance my parents into buying it. This was a much bigger hotel, with a bar, chefs and silver service waitstaff.
Bill and Vera were a tremendous team. She had the business brain and could talk the leg off a chocolate frog to welcome new guests, and he could decorate, renovate and fix anything. He also played music in the lounge bar with his band. As a toddler, I even sang in that bar. They rose to the challenge of running a business, whilst he held down a tough job and they raised a family.
As my mother would say, ‘To cut a long story short…’ (always the start of a very long story with multiple deviations from the main tale), they bought and sold businesses as my mother developed, then grew tired, before getting bored, and going back into business, several times. I also grew up in that environment, learning the hotel business and about management from them, helping decorate, taking bookings, serving in the bar, cleaning the kitchen, shopping for supplies, checking in late night arrivals – you name it, I did it.
My first real job after school was washing and delivering hire cars for Hertz, whilst helping run the hotel, including manning the bar, for my keep. When my parents took a holiday, I managed the bookings for the coming season. Eventually my mother admonished me for not getting a ‘real job’ and I became a Trainee Supermarket Manager, becoming a Deputy Store Manager at just nineteen.
Key Philosophies around Gratitude
Later on, after a career in retail management, I found myself taking on my own lodging house with sixty guests, getting my own bar, playing guitar and singing in it, and with a fleet of my very own hire cars, and several apartments nearby. This was evidence of one of my mother’s beliefs that, ‘What goes around comes around!’
Or, by extension, ‘Do as you would have done to you’. (also called ‘The Golden Rule’) So, ‘Treat people well and that’s what will come back to you. Work hard and it will pay off. Do the right thing and don’t lie – always be honest!’
Sure enough, I gained the experience, worked hard and reaped the benefit of all that experience and hard work later on. As Steve Jobs said in his famous Harvard speech, ‘You can connect the dots backwards.’
Whenever my parents suffered setbacks, and they had many in both life and business in their time, she would adopt what I now know to be part of Stoic Philosophy, and say, “Never mind, it obviously wasn’t meant to be, but there will be something better around the corner.”
She was able to work with what she could control and surrender to the Universe those things that were outside her control.
When things were very bad, especially for example when she suffered health setback in her old age, she would say, “I mustn’t complain. There are plenty of folk out there who have it much worse than me.”
Bill’s biggest mantra that stuck with me was, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” I think that was one he got from my grandfather, who had served in the artillery in the First World War. I was so grateful for this maxim that I paraphrased it and entitled my first coaching and self-help book, “If Life’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Well”.
He had incredible tenacity, especially when it came to fixing things and solving problems. He wouldn’t give in until he had exhausted very possibility. I think the War taught him that one.
I am extremely grateful for the upbringing and education they gave me. When I look back, they sent me to a fantastic school, but they taught me way more about who I should aspire to become as a decent human being. Money was never really their focus, other than paying their bills and never letting anyone down.
They were grateful for the rewards of their efforts, and they travelled, a lot! On many occasions I went with them as a child and absorbed their fascination for the big world out there. We were very grateful to British Airways because one of Dad’s perks was heavily discounted air travel. No surprise that my sister became a BA Stewardess. One brother became a helicopter pilot in the services, then flew privately for a multi-millionaire, and I gained my Private Pilot’s Licence at 19, and set up many of my own service businesses, whilst the other brother became a Police Inspector – all service-oriented jobs which prioritised people.
My Personal Gratitude
I’ve enjoyed a really varied and interesting life, taking the baton from my parents and balancing working ridiculously hard in my younger years, whilst still having fun, and now massively relishing my chance to give back, through life and business coaching and mentoring work, and by presenting and writing. I like to help people to learn both from my successes and my setbacks, but I especially love to see them achieving their potential. Sometimes people need to see that someone else believes in them even when they may struggle to believe in themselves.
I ran my accommodation business and my other businesses – car sales, hire and servicing, serviced apartments, adventure tours and charters, cleaning services, to name a few, all following the same mantra as my parents – ‘Look after the people first, and the rewards will follow.’
These days, in my slightly slower paced lifestyle, I love studying Stoic Philosophy and self-help books with my wife, taking our dog for a walk in the amazing Perth Hills, swimming with our grandchildren in the pool, playing guitar and singing in a local bar, and travelling to amazing destinations and meeting new and interesting people everywhere. Our family and friends are the ultimate gift and we’re extremely grateful for the life we lead.
I believe that focusing on the things you’re grateful for, every day, will change your life for the better. You will literally manifest the good stuff into your life. (It’s the Law of Attraction). And always remember that ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’. (Another of my parents’ quotes.)
- What are you grateful for, right now, in your life?
- Write it down and remind yourself. Try it for thirty days and see what happens.
- Then keep doing it! Enjoy 😊
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