Episode Transcript
Richard: Welcome to the Humanizing Work Show. I'm Richard Lawrence here with Peter Green. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. we wanted to do something a little different, something more personal, but still practical for our listeners. But not just a list of gratitude items, 'cause everybody does that now.
Peter: There's a lot of research showing that any gratitude practice, as long as it's genuine, leads to higher life satisfaction, better mental health and lower symptoms of depression, and anxiety. and gratitude practices that include a focus on other people and how you're grateful for them, leads to more happiness and stronger social connection.
Today we're gonna introduce a specific kind of gratitude practice that most people have never heard of, even though the research behind it is really compelling.
Richard: It's called counterfactual Gratitude. The idea that you can deepen your appreciation by imagining what your life would look like if a good thing hadn't happened.
Peter: Psychologists call this mental subtraction. It's kind of tapping into the loss aversion bias in our brain. If you imagine the absence of something really meaningful, it sharpens how much it matters, and the research around this approach shows much stronger positive effects compared to just listing what you're grateful for.
Richard: So instead of asking what are you grateful for, which can be good, but often leads to an obvious list and limited insights, we can ask more interesting questions like, what almost didn't happen that you're now deeply glad did happen? Or who showed up when there was no guarantee they would? Or what's one ordinary thing you take for granted that you'd miss immediately if it disappeared?
Peter: Richard, you put together a list of 23 of these questions. We'll share that in the show notes. And when I read that list, I immediately started getting emotional thinking about these. Hmm. And you did a lot of the groundwork for the episode, and I appreciate that, you bringing up this approach. It feels very Humanizing Work to me, where we see these kind of blurry lines between our personal lives and our work lives. We think we can make both of them better by asking better questions, surfacing some hidden variables, and noticing things that we may have previously overlooked or taken for granted.
Richard: Now we, we don't wanna just share some concepts around gratitude. So today Peter and I are each going to answer a few of these counterfactual gratitude questions. We're gonna work off this PDF that I made that you can download on the episode page, and take them with you and use your favorites. You can think of this as us modeling a practice you might wanna bring to your Thanksgiving table tomorrow.
I'm gonna start with number 20 from our list. So, Peter, what are you grateful for now because you know how different things could have been?
Peter: Uh, I'll tell you, the thing that immediately comes to mind for me is that as a teenager, um, I was a knucklehead. I was, I was actually headed down a pretty dangerous path, and I've seen how other people that were on that path with me at that time, um, things have not turned out great in their lives.
The thing that happened is that my dad came to, I remember this very specifically, and my dad came to me with a very pointed question one day about my identity. That woke me up. It changed my trajectory.
And then, as I tried to sort of recover from that path that I was on, my mom helped me avoid the shame spiral that a lot of people in that situation fall into. She just was my cheerleader and saying, look at all the great things you've done in your life and you've got this.
And then eventually, a few years after that, meeting the woman, Annie, that would become my wife, helped me really want to work hard over many years to be a better person and get off that path and on a completely different trajectory.
And really everything that's good in my life that I have now, I can credit to their positive influence along with many others who have helped along that path.
Richard: Hmm. That's awesome.
Peter: Okay, Richard, I'm gonna go with number three. What's something good in your life that you nearly missed out on?
Richard: I can think of a lot of things where it just kind of narrowly happened, but the one that immediately came to mind is that, one of the things I'm really enjoying in my life right now, is that one of my sons and his wife moved to live close to us here in, in Western Colorado. And our relationship with our sons as adults has been fantastic in ways I didn't expect.
But the thing that led to Brennan and Sarah moving out here was that, when we first moved out to Western Colorado last June, we needed to find a church. 'cause we're heavily involved in our, our church community and we were searching around, figuring out where to go, and thought we knew we were gonna go on that first Sunday.
And then kind of weren't sure about it and searched again. And the one that stood out to us, the place we ended up visiting that day was about to close job applications for a kind of music director role two days later. And I realized this would be really good for my son.
Called him up and said, you should apply to this thing, skidded in right under the wire, and actually ended up getting the job, which made it possible for them to move out here. And I get to collaborate with him on music and wine and everything, and it's been such a joy in our lives.
And if we'd waited one week to visit that church, none of that would've happened.
Peter: Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, I can think of so many similar examples in my life. It actually reminds me of a a thing with my own daughter and her music.
Much younger than Brennan, but, uh, the, probably the right question for this one is "what happened this year that could easily not have happened," which is number two. And that's that my daughter, who's 12, she's very young, has been telling me for a few months that she's got an entire album written. And I keep thinking, what does that mean to you, Molly, that you have an entire album written?
And she's also been bugging us to get on social media, which we have just put our foot down on, like the research on this is too strong. Like it's not gonna be healthy for you to have social media.
Well, about a month ago she came to me and she said, dad, you know, I've got this album, and as soon as I release that, I've gotta be on TikTok and Instagram, because that's how you promote music these days, right? Almost like a, look old timer, you may not know this, but this is how music works now.
And so I said, great! When the album's all recorded, let me know and we'll talk about it.
Well then I was doing some training. I was on the road and I came back from one of those trips and Molly said, oh, by the way, dad, while you were gone, I was in your office and I recorded the album.
I said, what, what does this even mean again? What do you mean by recorded the album? So I went in and she had opened Logic on my computer and set up a click track and recorded all the vocals to all the songs. And they were good, like really good well-written songs, emotionally poignant. I was like, she's got a real talent here, and I've been sort of dismissing it. I've been saying, yeah, I bet you do. I, you know, how cute. Yeah, how cute. And, and I, I listened to the song. I was like, these are great, like awesome songs.
And they didn't have any music. They didn't have a track to 'em, right? It was just a, a vocal in most cases. In some cases, she had recorded herself playing cello. In a couple cases, she had opened up a little, um, patch and like done a, a guitar, a two note guitar thing to get the idea of what she wanted.
And then in each of those songs, she had written a note to me. For example, a song called Fields of Despair. She had just written a note in Logic that said, this one just needs some piano and then it'll be ready.
"Just" is doing a lot in that note.
So anyway, I brought her in. I said, well, let's work this out. And we were, we were working it out and started coming together. And I remember there's a, there's, there was a lyric
Music: "just lying in bed, writing a song."
Peter: I came up with a cool melody and we recorded that in, and I was smiling. I was like, ah, I love it. And she looked at me, she goes, dad, you really love this and you're really good at it. You should do this for a living. I said, well, you know, Molly, my degree at college is actually in music, and I did this full time for several years, and her response was, "you went to college?"
Uh, and so it's been a joy to work on those songs with her. And I think if I had not said, yeah, we'll talk about social media once your album is recorded, that never would've happened. I wouldn't have realized and seen her talent there. Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't have had the joy of working on music together with my daughter.
Um, so that's something I'm really grateful for. Um, Richard, let's do another one for you. Which difficulty turned out to be a necessary doorway to something better? This is question 16 if you're following along at home.
Richard: Let's see. For this one, uh, a work thing actually comes to mind. As you know, our, our core business for a long time has been agile related training and coaching, and we've helped a lot of teams and organizations be successful with that stuff.
And as we've discussed on previous episodes and newsletters, and you see it all over social media, there's not the same kind of demand for that, that there used to be. And us and others have tried to make sense of what's going on with this. It still seems useful and necessary, but it's not really selling in the same way.
And so we started talking with our current, past, prospective clients about their challenges and and things, and it became clear in that process that CAPED, which we've talked about a lot on the show, met an unmet need and it made sense to invest in that more strategically.
And I think if the Agile stuff had continued going as well as it had for the previous decade, we would've just happily continued on with that and done it well and made a good living from it, and just treated CAPED as an interesting variation for certain edge cases like medical device development.
But the sort of forced shift in our perspective was powerful and necessary for our future, I think continuing to help clients like we've done in the past.
There's an ironic twist to the story, which is that once we invested in CAPED and started building up the Certified CAPED Consultant program and some of the other things that we've done around it, a bunch of agile for teams and product owner courses emerged, and we've kept busy with those in parallel.
So it really feels like we just needed that nudge of difficulty to get us to do something good for our long-term future.
I mentioned in the intro that in the research, interpersonal gratitude reflection, like reflecting on how you're grateful for other people, not just things, whether you share it with the person or not increases happiness and social connection.
It gets even better if you layer the interpersonal with the counterfactual. So let's finish by both answering one of those. Um, how about number seven? Who showed up for you in a way they didn't have to?
Peter: Actually I had this happen just, um, two days ago. A leader in my faith community, someone that I have a huge amount of respect for, who's been honestly, quite a role model for me and, on how to lead a faithful, caring, appropriate life as a father in this world, sent me a very kind text message after I had, after I had uh, um, made some comments, where he just shared how much he loved me, what an example I was in, in his life. Uh, and thanking me for the work that I do, and how I'm encouraging people to move forward and how I'm such a blessing to his family.
And it just brought me to tears. And there was no need for him to do that. I already know this guy. I already love him. But, um. Anytime somebody that I look up to that much also mentions that, Hey, I look up to you in certain ways as well. It just meant the world to me when, when he sent that to me and uh, I immediately went up to him after and and said, Hey, I really appreciate that text. That meant a lot to me.
Um, so that was really meaningful to me. Um, another work one, Richard, you mentioned, um, some of the, the sort of headwinds we've had on a business side and our good friend Adam Weisbart, another fantastic scrum trainer who's going through some health challenges right now, has been referring some of his clients to us that he's not able to help.
And, uh, one of those just turned into an amazing engagement. Uh, great leadership support. It's making a big difference for the client. It made a big difference for us this year and going into next year.
And it reminded us of some of the biggest successes we've had in the early days of Agile. It just felt like a return to, when we get down to the principles of this stuff and really get everybody speaking the same language and understanding how complexity works and how agile techniques are really just a response to managing complex work.
Mm-hmm. It just, everybody lit up and we started to see ideas for how to make all the things that had been challenging recently work more smoothly.
That also led to the first public certified CAPED Consultant course being a much better experience for us because they sent some people to us, they helped us, uh, with some of the logistics of that, and it really helped set us up for future success there.
So the leaders of that organization are a joy to work with. So thank you, Adam. We appreciate your support, your friendship. Uh, how about you, Richard?
Richard: Hmm. Um. The thing that comes to mind for me is the support we've received from the wine making community out here has just been stunning. We moved out to the North Fork Valley specifically because the people we talked with were really supportive.
But they've showed up for us in ways beyond what we expected. All we're bringing here is a, a, a big vision and an interest in, in this. And people could easily focus on doing their own things and kind of wait and see what we can accomplish. But instead, we've been receiving so much generosity. There are three people in particular who've, who've really done that.
Um, Yvonne, the retired winemaker who's been letting us use his cellar and equipment and collaborating with us on our, our first few rounds of wine making. He retired for a reason and I, I think he was, uh, tired of it in, in some ways, and he is putting in this extra effort to help us get going, which means a lot.
There's a, a guy named James, a winemaker in Palisade at, at one of the more successful Colorado wineries, who has helped us in so many ways, even providing us some fruit this year that he wasn't going to use. And he'll just occasionally call me and ask how the fermentation is going and give me some advice.
And again, he's busy doing his own thing. He's already got a successful winery. Why should he help out two random people like us with no credentials in it.
And then there's one more wine maker about a mile from us, Alex who, who moved here from Napa and has a great vision for making this a, a really great wine region. And he just the other day went and walked a vineyard with me that we were considering leasing and gave me all his feedback about it.
And like, these people don't owe us anything. We don't have anything to give back, certainly in the short term. And they're all really busy with their own projects, but they've been so supportive in ways that they totally didn't have to, and I'm really grateful for it.
Peter: As you were sharing that, Richard, it was occurring to me that the media that most of us consume is biased to bad news. Mm-hmm. And focuses on bad people doing bad things. The gratitude practice is reminding me that almost everybody's good. Mm-hmm. And we can go find those good people and, um, amplify that.
That in some ways counteracts sort of the, the commercial media message coming at us and berating us and saying, click on this, click on this, click on this. Um, and it can ground us in, people are really good.
Um, and life is hard. It's been a, you know, it's been a hard year for us. It's been a hard year for me, uh, in some ways health wise, you know, and things going on. We've had our struggles. But, uh, as, uh, we've taken, I dunno, what has this been? 10, 15 minutes. Just going through this gratitude practice. Um, I feel, uh, uh, grateful, not surprisingly.
But I feel more connected to you. I feel more connected to the people around me. Uh, I feel more hopeful about how things are going, and I'm more excited to get to work on things.
So the power of this practice, even when the cameras are rolling and I know I'm being recorded, is, has been super meaningful for me. So thanks for suggesting this episode and, and doing the groundwork on it.
Richard: Yeah, likewise. I'm, I'm so glad we had this conversation. Now for our listeners, if you wanna try this yourself, maybe around the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow. Maybe just in a conversation with a friend or a family member, here are two great counterfactual prompts that you can use. First, what's something good in your life that almost didn't happen, and second, who showed up for you this year in a way they didn't have to.
Peter: Hmm. Yeah. Both of those questions create some pretty meaningful reflection as we experienced Richard and, and more meaningful conversations than the standard, "hey, what are you grateful for this year" list, which we've probably all done at the table and we've probably all seen, uh, "I'm grateful for this food we're about to eat," right?
And if you want more options for those conversations or for journaling, visit the episode page on our website and download the PDF with 23 great counterfactual gratitude questions that Richard has put together.
Richard: Which almost didn't exist. If I hadn't dived into the research this week, I would not have been reminded about this. Uh, and I'm grateful for that. And before we wrap, one other thing we're grateful for is you, our, our listeners, our community. And not in a, a vague thanks for listening way, but specifically when you write to us with a challenge.
When you share a LinkedIn post about how you've used an idea from a show or a newsletter, when you share an episode with a colleague, that's the fuel that keeps us inspired and full of new ideas.
Peter: So whether you're listening on your commute or preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, whether you're a Canadian thinking, why are you a month late? Or living in Europe and saying, what is all this mad Thanksgiving-ness? Uh, we're glad to have you with us. Happy Thanksgiving and we'll see you next week.
