#1113 WARNING: This has nothing to do with Sales, Communication, or Business

FIRST, A BIG WELCOME TO ALL OF THE NEW FOLKS I MET AT RISE LAST WEEK IN RHODE ISLAND

If you're reading this, I will take a leap and assume you have a warm, dry place to lay your head at night. Let's start there.

If you ever find yourself feeling ungrateful for your home, your family, or your friends. If you take your morning coffee and bagel for granted, I invite you to stand with me for 30 minutes in Newark's Penn Station.

I did that last week, waiting for a train to Providence. If you spend 30 minutes in the main hall, you will be accosted by no less than a half-dozen people entreating you for money. Another dozen people will move through your vicinity, making you concerned for your safety. The commingling smells of human waste and garbage are an assault that the meager food smells cannot obliterate, and only the transit police (God bless them) give you any sense of security.

When the PA announces that your train is arriving, and you move to the track, you'll see flocks of pigeons and their droppings sharing that space with you and small rodents walking the tracks carefully to avoid the many rat boxes on the platform. That platform on which you will stand and wait for your train is swathed with a patina of grime so thick it looks intentional - like masons troweled it on to create a movie set depicting crime, filth, and fear. 

Now look to your left, just at the top of the stairs, and see a few people huddled together WHO LIVE THERE.

It can be tough to maintain a sense of gratitude actively. Sometimes, the trials of the day get the better of me, and I complain about an espresso that's only lukewarm or the Amazon person leaving a package on the uncovered steps to get wet rather than on the porch. (Cue the violins)

At the holidays, I open our family meals with this prayer that I wish I could remember in those moments: 

Please, God, when I am home, let me remember that people are homeless.

When I have food to eat, let me remember people are hungry.

When family and friends surround me, let me acknowledge the lonely.

Please let me always remember that people cry out daily for so many of the things I take for granted.

At the start of each day, I try to remember to write a line or two in my journal expressing gratitude. 

It could be anything from appreciating a visit by the grandkids to feeling grateful for my aging parents' health to petting my gorgeous hound dog, Goose. It starts the day off right for me, but still, I'm writing it in the comfort of my home.

I'm a New York City kid born and raised. I'm not startled by poverty or crime, but my visit to Newark has me doubling down in my gratitude journal. I guess I need a stark reminder from time to time. There are people in my periphery suffering in ways that are unthinkable to me in my suburban home, and I never want to mistake my first-world problems for real suffering.

I hope I have painted the scene well enough to stimulate your gratitude gene so you don't have to experience it firsthand, but I implore you to absorb it, know it and appreciate how far away your life (no matter how challenging) is from there.

Be Grateful…