Your mom told you, “‘Tis better to give than to receive.”
I’m going to give you something better than anything you can buy. On the day North America goes nuts buying things, I’m giving you a promise:
Things don’t make you happy (you knew that part already.)
Actions DO.
Service will make you happy. But happiness is gold, buried in the mine of your other emotions. You have to go looking for it and hold it up to the light.
While we, in North America, wait in lines to consume things, I’m going to give you something that will definitely make you happy: a weekly practice of mining happiness in your brain.
It’s not Black Friday. It’s Bright Spots Friday.
Every week in the private Two-Brain Facebook group (you can’t join until you’ve finished RampUp), we practice happiness. Hundreds of gym owners will share their “bright spots” for the week: wins in their gym and their personal lives.
The purpose is twofold:
1. We all get to read hundreds (literally hundreds) of great ideas from other gym owners every week.
2. In the act of thinking about “What worked well this week?” we take five minutes to reflect on the things that made us happy. And guess what? The act of looking for happiness makes us find it!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this:
“I didn’t think I had any Bright Spots this week until I went looking for them.”
We also practice Bright Spots in the private Catalyst Facebook Group, and it’s equally powerful.
You can’t keep people in your gym until you let them into your heart.
I’m very careful about protecting the borders of both groups, because that’s what you do when you love people: you keep their space safe. So I won’t share any of their Bright Spots with you. Instead, I’ll share mine:
“BSF: This is coach Miranda. She injured her ankle on a run last week. Rather than miss a single class, she bought a hands-free crutch. She has plenty of stress in her life, and serving others–especially teenaged girls–is her escape.
“Mary shattered her single-day sales record AGAIN. Pumped to see local entrepreneurs thriving on Two-Brain principles.
“We held our first live seminar in the Workshop. Nine local entrepreneurs showed up. The seminar was on Facebook Marketing; some didn’t even have a website. So I scrapped the whole presentation and said, ‘Here’s what I do.’ I told them about Affinity Marketing, love letters and storytelling.
“A member showed up at the cafe with her husband. He shows up to help at Catalyst events, but won’t work out. We dragged him onto the InBody and he signed up for a nutrition plan. They left, and he came back with a gift: two sets of bleacher seats from the Memorial Gardens, our city’s historic hockey arena that was torn down 10 years ago. We’ll put them in the ‘hockey room’–one of our themed offices at the Workshop.
“Robin and I are off today to pick up our little tractor, a new snowblower for the rink and my repaired chainsaw. Lots of wood to cut at the cottage and (soon) lots of snow to blow in our neighbors’ yards. Some people might call that stuff work; I’m lucky to have a different context of ‘work’ after working 17-hour days for so many years!
“I’m thankful for you all, and I’m going to eat one piece of pie for each of you!”
Those are my Bright Spots for today. Imagine hundreds of those every single week.
The best part: it’s not bragging. I literally started writing with one Bright Spot in mind, and up popped another, and another…and now I feel amazing!
What effect would that have on YOUR gym family?
A bit of warning: if your members aren’t used to open sharing like this, it could be hard to get Bright Spots Friday–or any practice of gratitude–started. But THAT is a sign, right? Start with Love Letters, and then intro BSF in a few weeks.
As our culture becomes wealthy to the point of hurting ourselves, we’ve lost the ability to find happiness. We eat ourselves sick and stress ourselves awake. The practice of gratitude and reflecting on WINS will make you–and your members–happy. It’s part of a larger process of changing lives, but a critical one.
