What role does gratitude play in your life? From the mentor who gave you that life-altering advice, the ex-fiancé who unexpectedly set you free, to the unwavering support of a spouse through a 25-year-long journey - we're about to embark on a beautiful exploration of gratitude. We'll uncover stories of pivotal relationships and experiences that have shaped lives, redefined trajectories, and more importantly, sparked immense gratitude. This episode is a testament to the profound positive shift that expressing gratitude can bring.
We also spotlight the influence of our inner circles and the significant figures who've left indelible prints in our lives. We'll hear touching stories about a grandfather's faith that changed a child's life, parents who nurtured creativity leading to success in media, and a lot more. You'll experience a powerful mix of emotions, but in the end, it's all about the gratitude we feel for these people. So, get ready to engage with these stories and let them remind you of the positive influences in your life.
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Advice Column - Crowd-Sourced Ideas for Living with Int
Speaker 1:
I am grateful to my maternal grandfather and the generations before him.
Speaker 2:
He took me under his wing and he gave me a lot of great advice.
Speaker 3:
My mother did her best to raise us to be people of character, people of quality.
Speaker 4:
She has been the most patient, understanding and helpful person on the planet.
Speaker 5:
Hello friend, welcome to Advice Column On this podcast. Our mission is to share crowdsourced ideas for living with intention, and I thought it would be really fun for this episode to ask people who they're grateful for. And the reason is my mentor just recently published his TED Talk about the power of gratitude and I thought you know, focusing on gratitude is such a great way to get into a positive mindset, so I thought it would be fun to take a lighter topic this month and ask people about who they are most grateful for. So I don't know these people who contributed and I'm very grateful for their answers and it was really fun and inspirational to hear what they had to say. So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:
The person I am extremely grateful for is Jerome Tulliver.
Speaker 2:
He is my business partner for the last 20 years and also been my mentor.
Speaker 2:
At one point when I was unsure about what I was going to do with my life, he took me under his wing and he gave me a lot of great advice. He took me in as an equal partner when I had really nothing offered but just what equity and he was able to just guide me in ways that I'm forever grateful for. As a result of his teachings, as a result of his advice, I have been able to live a life that I would never imagine, and I'm grateful that he treated me equally. Even though we had a 12-year age gap, he always treated me with the utmost respect. He always allowed my opinion to count and when we were in boardrooms with people that were much older, he made sure that my opinion mattered and my opinion was heard, and it gave me the confidence that I needed to go into the business world. So today I am very grateful for his mentorship, his friendship. He's now considered a brother. He was the best man in my wedding, just an overall great individual, mentor and just a good human being.
Speaker 6:
In 2004,. I was engaged to be married and my wedding was four days away, and I received a phone call from my then fiance telling me that he couldn't go through the wedding and that we had to break things off. I was, of course, devastated, but I also had relief, way deep down relief that we weren't going through with it, and because of this, I am eternally grateful to him for breaking it off when he knew that it just wasn't right, because I also knew it wasn't right, but I didn't have the strength or the guts to go through with breaking it off. And so, as I think back on the year, it's almost 20 years since that happened and I am just eternally grateful, always, just, again and again. Thank you, thank you, thank you for having had the guts to do that, and it allowed me to then go on and do the healing I needed to do and invite in the love of my life, and we've been together now for 12 years, and it's amazing.
Speaker 7:
I'm grateful to my mother, sarah Ellen Vermilia-Buddlemire. She was the most creative person I know. She knew how to shine and step forward and speak her truth. We had a complicated, difficult relationship. I didn't always agree with her. There were years where we didn't speak much, but I always knew that she knew how to be an artist. As a result of her showing me how to be a creative person, I have been able to step into my own work, which for me, is writing. I write books, and so I just want to express my gratitude for her. I wish I had been able to express it as much when she was alive, but I hope she knows how much I love and appreciate her.
Speaker 8:
One person I'm grateful for is my daughter. She's the greatest blessing I have in my life. She brings me immense joy, purpose and reminds me why I'm here. She's my biggest ally and I look to her for inspiration, whatever it is that I'm pursuing in life. She's the greatest blessing I could ever ask for and somebody that motivates me tremendously.
Speaker 9:
I am really grateful for my aunt. My aunt raised me. A lot of people that know me know that I wasn't raised by my parents and I have become successful based on my circumstances. But I would not be who I am today if that love from her wasn't in her to say you know, this is not my kid and his parents gave him up, so let me take care of him.
Speaker 10:
I am very grateful to my old therapist, Katrina Evans. She helped me through a very difficult period of my life. She was a mentor, a sister, a coach and a friend. She helped me refine myself with patience and compassion and I will always, always, be grateful for the support with insight and care and love.
Speaker 11:
I've actually got two people that I am super grateful for in my life. The first is my sister, who you know I've always had wild and crazy dreams and big aspirations and whenever I needed some encouragement she was the first one to say I don't know that I understand what you're doing or how you're going to do it, but if anybody can figure it out, you can. And I didn't know until I was looking back after everything I've achieved that that was just the spark of support that I needed to really get out there and trust myself to figure things out and to do things, because it's so easy to let advice and criticism and worries and thoughts from others stop you from pursuing any kind of big dream, and we're all just a little bit scared of what others will think when we put ourselves out there. But I love that I got that support from her early on.
Speaker 12:
I think somebody that I'm most grateful for is my brother, because he's helped me so much and given me so much advice in how to kill and beat every day and become the best that I could possibly be in life. One of the quotes that I have hanging up in my room says in the darkest hours, when the demons come call on me, brother, and we will fight them together. And that's literally what our relationship is like, and together we always fight things in the hardest times, no matter what it is. Every time we're down, we always see each other when we're down and we help each other get right back up. That's why I'm most grateful, because in the worst times, he's always there to help me up, and in the greatest times, he's always there to cheer me on.
Speaker 3:
There are so very, very many whose shoulders I stand on, but I'm going to pinpoint my mom. My mother taught me how to navigate life successfully, even when life gets difficult. My mom taught me to love people. I saw my mom model in front of us how to live an integrity, how to walk in character, how to be unselfish, how to help people. I learned compassion from my mother. I learned hard work.
Speaker 3:
My mom taught my sisters and I to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that is what I most thank her for. I could thank her for a million things, but that is the main thing that I thank my mother for, because she saw to it that we developed a relationship with Jesus Christ, which has navigated the world. I saw my mother walk with integrity in front of her family. I saw her teach me to be a lady. Teach me to carry myself in such a manner that if I need help, I can get it, whatever that help might be. My mother gave me a lot of love and care and I was able to do it. I was able to do it. All the love she had, and then some to her children. I learned sacrifice from her. Not that my mother was a perfect person. I'm not suggesting that at all. No parent is ever perfect, but my mother did her best to raise us to be people of character, people of quality. She taught me respect for myself and respect for others.
Speaker 13:
The person that I am most grateful to is my mother for showing me how important it is to maintain peace. As I was growing up, I always thought that my mom was real passive, but as an adult now I understand that she was just protecting and maintaining her peaceful position, and she's also taught me how to process things. I would look at her and wonder why she did some of the things she did or why she responded in some of the ways that she responded to situations. I'm like mama just cut them out real quick, but she held her peace because she understood that that peace was more valuable than conflict. As an adult, I'm really starting to learn that and, more importantly, I'm implementing that into my own life. I don't think that we really realize sometimes how much we look up to our parents as role models, even though we look out to other people as role models as well. So I am very, very thankful for my mother for just teaching me how to maintain peace.
Speaker 14:
When I graduated from high school in 1978, I was thrilled to get a letter of acceptance to a local Christian community theater and I thought this was going to be the beginning of an illustrious career in Christian service. Unfortunately, in that job I was physically assaulted and the money that my church had given for my support the president of the theater company diverted to pay other bills. I left disillusioned in not knowing where I was going to end up, and I was so depressed by what had happened in the company that I found it hard to hold a job. And so finally, I got a job selling Avon.
Speaker 14:
Every morning I'd get up and take my goods out and sell Avon and there was one woman about two blocks down from me who took time out of her day and she'd always have cookies and tea for me every Tuesday afternoon and she would talk to me about my future. But she got documents from the local community colleges and she'd pray with me and I didn't tell her everything that had happened to me, except that I didn't have any purpose. But every day she would hand me the papers, until one day I went down to a local community college and I registered for school, still not believing I was college material. Now it took me 20 years to get through college, partly because I made a lot of mistakes that people make who are first generation college, with student loans and also with the difficulty of having to pay my way through and live by myself. But now I have a master's of divinity and I'm doing a job that I love to do. But there's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't bow my head and thank God for that one woman who took me in her house and served me tea and cookies and bought stuff from Avon that I knew she couldn't afford so she could encourage me to a higher education.
Speaker 1:
I am grateful to my maternal grandfather and the generations before him who grounded his family in Christian faith. He challenged me as a child to read and memorize passages of scripture and because of his influence, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior at a young age. I've tried to live for Christ. My entire adult life I've been a Bible teacher and speaker, promoting my faith, as God asked us to do. I am also a worship leader at my church Because my grandfather pursued Christ in his life and encouraged his family to do the same. I made choices that led to a positive life filled with love, joy and peace. Without Christ, my life would be void of so many positive influences. Thank you, Grandpa, for showing me the way.
Speaker 15:
When I was 16 years old, I met the hotel director, a Ramada hotel in Gothenburg where I lived, and I was hired as an extra working at a buffet a Christmas buffet and my job was to take away dirty dishes and bring new food. And I asked the head of the hotel how do you want me to work? What do you want me to do? I was new to this and he said there's only two tasks. You need to do two things, that's it. Every time you go into the kitchen, you bring something, and every time you leave the kitchen, you bring something. That's it. That's it, that's it.
Speaker 15:
And so I did, and it wasn't really about bringing the food or taking away the dirty dishes. Of course, that was kind of the outcome of it, the effect of it, but what he really taught me and I cannot figure that one out late, you know, many years later Basically what he said to me was look around, see if you can add any value and then add that value. I love it, it's so simple, it's so genius, and I've tried to live my life ever since according to that.
Speaker 16:
My mom would have to be my mother, because she taught me that you can help anybody, anytime, anywhere, by just showing up, but also that showing up is not enough. You also have to be the person and be the change that you want to see in the world. Because that's something that she did. She started in Emotions Anonymous chapter in our hometown. She helped anybody out whenever they could and she helped them to become better people, to be more in touch with themselves, to become more spiritual, just to recognize that every human being has value. Even though she went through pain, even though she went through a lot of suffering in her life, she still tried to make the world a better place.
Speaker 17:
I am grateful to both my parents my mother and my father for allowing me and my siblings to be creative, and it allowed me to think outside of just going into the government or the military or teaching. I wanted to do something different and they allowed us to be different. They allowed us to do something different, so that led me to going into the media. In college, I was a Mass Media Arts major at Hampton University and I got a chance to be creative, got a chance to create things, got a chance to be on camera on the microphone, got a chance to work behind the scenes in production, and that not only allowed me to get out there and do more things, but it also allowed me to take a chance, you know. And so now in the business world, I wanted to do something different because it was already instilled in me so it led me to where I can help other people to embrace using media. So I'm grateful to my parents.
Speaker 4:
The person I am grateful for is my wife Emily. She has stuck with me for over 25 years. During that time she has been the most patient, understanding and helpful person on the planet. Early on, she supported me through a bankruptcy. Then she helped me to launch my career in advertising. She gave birth to our son and daughter and helped raise them into amazing humans. She put up with me when I was stressed at work and was unfailingly loyal as I went through a time in my life where I had to battle some inner demons. More recently, she has been my rock after a scary cancer diagnosis. She helps me navigate the doctor's appointments and the insurance companies and the whole health care system. She's helped me to change my diet and she supports my new way of life with the meditating and the needing more sleep and the reading and the long walks. She's been there for every single doctor's visit, medical scan and through a very scary surgery. She loves me unconditionally, truly unconditionally, and for that reason I am grateful for my wife Emily.
Speaker 5:
It is so uplifting to hear who people are grateful to, and I hope you found inspiration in hearing some of the people that our panelists this month acknowledged. And, as you think about your own life, I hope that it brings to mind the people who have had an impact on you. I was really moved to hear how many people the person that they're most grateful for is someone really close to them. And while it makes sense intuitively, I think it's really easy for me in the modern times to be thinking about how I can have an influence on a lot of people or spread the word of what I want to share on social media, and it's sort of become about numbers when it comes to digital platforms for sharing. And, at the end of the day, the people who I think I can have the most effect on and who definitely have the most effect on me are my inner most circle.
Speaker 5:
So mentors were mentioned, even ex-fiancé mothers, daughters, brothers, therapists, but it's people very often in the inner circle. So it's encouraging to me that I can just focus on my inner circle and try to have a positive influence from the inside out and just send ripples out that way, and as I sit and reflect right now I am so grateful to my family, great friends and my mentors for the profound influence that you have had on the trajectory of my life. And, friend, thank you for listening. I hope this was an uplifting episode to brighten your day. See you in the next episode. Bye.
