A Mason's Work

[00:00] Yesterday, I said that gratitude and appreciation can combine and become a nourishing force,
[00:08] something that you can turn into this capacity that increases your agency and your ability to
[00:15] change the world around you. Today, I want to talk about what that actually looks like
[00:19] and how it works because gratitude and appreciation as personal experiences are great.
[00:30] But they're incomplete. Just like a rough Ashlar and a perfect Ashlar, there is a resolution to
[00:38] the internal gratitude that you're going to experience or the internal appreciation.
[00:43] And that is expression. That is when you take the contents from the internal experience and
[00:49] extrovert them in some capacity. You write that handwritten note that says,
[00:56] thank you. I saw what you did. This is something that changed the way we approached a situation,
[01:03] or this made a meaningful difference in the outcomes that we've experienced, or this really
[01:10] brought someone back into the fold. That's different than approval. So to be clear, you're not just
[01:16] saying good job and patting somebody on the butt and going back to the sidelines. This is genuine
[01:24] appreciation, genuine gratitude. The expression of these things is when you express it, it needs to be
[01:31] complete. This is the distinction between sincere gratitude and sincere expression and the kind of lip
[01:39] service that we oftentimes will see when someone says, good job, buddy. And they don't mean it. And you can
[01:47] tell. And this is where folks that are trying to use the secret sauce of gratitude to achieve results that
[01:55] just are false by emulating a behavior and not experiencing it by acting instead of doing.
[02:04] Meaningful expression is super important to the way this must work. People that feel seen,
[02:14] that feel appreciated work differently. They stay longer, they behave, they do the discretionary stuff
[02:21] that no one asked for. When we express this in a meaningful way, you begin this process of changing the
[02:35] hearts of the people around you. When someone feels seen and they feel appreciated and they feel that
[02:43] gratitude, they will behave differently. You are encouraging them to continue doing the things
[02:54] that improve the world around them. This isn't merely an appreciation for the trivial. This isn't just like
[03:08] your hair. Your hair looks great today. Although there's plenty of reason to express that kind of
[03:14] stuff. When we talk about how we've noticed the things in the world impacting other things in the
[03:24] world, people themselves raise their awareness of it that they may not have had. And this conscious
[03:30] awareness increase increase over time across people out in the world is the agent's agency and capacity to create
[03:43] change. This gratitude expression is the application of brotherly love and affection. It is the trowel in motion.
[03:53] And if you just apply it to yourself internally, that's super important to do. You thou shalt. I mean, this is that
[04:03] level of important to do. But if you don't then take it outside and express it with others, that change stops with
[04:11] you. And in reality, we're trying to build this broader capacity to improve the conditions for everyone.
[04:20] So as you are learning to express gratitude and experiencing those deeper levels of gratitude,
[04:29] that surrender gratitude, as well as those moments of appreciation, you're going to cultivate this
[04:35] awareness and that deeper awareness, that stronger awareness probably is a better phrase, is what's going
[04:42] to give you this opportunity to approach this as often as you need to, to recharge your own batteries,
[04:49] to help improve the people that you're interacting with on an everyday life in everyday life. I'll tell you a
[04:57] quick technique that you can apply right now. Go tell someone with full gratitude in your heart or with full
[05:05] appreciation, how much their, their behavior or the way they are in the world, how much you appreciate
[05:13] that. And their day will instantly improve. You'll see it. Their body language will change. They will
[05:20] carry themselves differently. They'll stand a little taller. They'll smile a little bigger. And that,
[05:26] you never really know how far that goes. I can tell you in my lived experience, people will come back
[05:39] and reflect that gratitude back to me and say, you told me something that you were grateful for. And
[05:45] man, I had, I took that, that experience, that positive experience, and I had a great day with my
[05:52] kid. And now they've got this new thing that they want to learn how to do, or this new hobby, or this
[05:59] increased capacity for risk, or what have you, it doesn't really matter what the nature of the change is.
[06:06] What matters is as you begin to express this, you begin to meaningfully change the subjective
[06:13] experience of the people around you. And that sharpens their consciousness and creates
[06:17] this amazing potential. And that's the work.