Chris Schembra
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
You can either wake up in the morning and focus too much on what's going wrong and not appreciate all the good things, or you can wake up and you can appreciate all the good things and not really focus on the stuff that's wrong. The difference is gratitude and ingratitude. And what I learned in that dark moment on the phone with my friend Scott is that the choice is
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I'm sitting alone doing the whole sourdough and garden, all the pandemic stuff that people got into. I'm doing it. I got nothing going on. And I take this kind of step back. in the empty city streets of New York, 30,000 of our neighbors dying. And I look around and I say, damn, I'm miserable. Right back to where I was seven year, or at that time, five years ago. And I got back from Italy again.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I was lonely, overwhelmed, disconnected, insecure, nervous, cautious, anxious. What am I going to do tomorrow? What might my future bring? And I looked around and I said, oh my God, I'm not alone. There are others who feel this exact type of way. Boom. Let's host a virtual experience. Let's get together. Let's host a virtual dinner. Well, the first one was April 19th, 2020. It was decent.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Eight people came. We didn't really talk about much, whatever. And I looked and I said, my God, it's missing something. What is it missing? Ah, Our signature sauce, gratitude. Not the pasta sauce, the real stuff, gratitude. And so the next one was April 26th of 2020. We asked our signature gratitude question. We had breakout groups. We used the group chat. We facilitated beautiful discussion.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Almost everybody cried. They came in feeling miserable. They left feeling grateful, connected, happy, wiser, lighter, joy. And so we just kept doing it. Every night for the first couple months of the pandemic, we hosted a virtual gratitude experience for our community. 50 to 100 people came every night. And one day, the phone started ringing. The companies, their employees were
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
We're all digital, disconnected, work from home, miserable, lonely, tired, nervous, anxious, the same stuff I was feeling. And we said, oh my God, we got to do this for them. And then it just took off in the two and a half, three, two years, two and a half years since the start of all that. We've served tens of thousands of people, hundreds of companies,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And what we found is that the principles of gratitude and the way that we do it had a 99.998% success rate, guaranteeing a positive, emotional, measurable, meaningful transformation with just a 90-minute Zoom gratitude experience. Whether our clients were bringing 20 people or 200 people or thousands of people, the impact was pretty much guaranteed.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
It was high times in the city where the favorite word was we, we, we. It was live it up and have fun. And that's been going two years ever since to great acclaim. But I think you know what came next.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Thank you for saying that. And with your platform, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of great friends you have online, I can't wait to see how you bring gratitude to the masses after this. But look, you're watching this, you're reading this, you're listening to this. You saw my enthusiasm just before. That was kind of on purpose.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
That's the enthusiasm that American people had in October of 1929 during the roaring 20s where the favorite word was me, me, me. It was live it up and have fun. It was great profits, great family, big new house, great respect, accolades coming in every day. And then it all came crashing down. with a terrifying crack up. It was Thursday, December 30th, 2021.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
If you looked at my life, you would have been jealous. I had everything I had ever wanted. But at 4.30 PM that day, I got on a one-on-one call with a client of mine, Lisa Penn. And she said, Chris, you don't look too hot. We should probably end our hour-long discussion. And we did. And I took note of that because that's the first time a client's ever said that to me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And I went out to dinner that night with my girlfriend to celebrate her new job, our new home, all these great things. I drank too much accidentally. We got in a fight. I got home, felt like a miserable piece of crap, like a fraud, an imposter, a monster. And I engaged in my most recent and largest episode of non-suicidal self-injury. It's called NSSI.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
There's a lot of folks that you know who have been through similar things. It's things like cutting and burning and scratching and self-mutilation. Well, my vice is cutting and I like my kitchen knives. That time I flew a little too close to the sun. I'm lucky to be alive. In the days that followed, I was a pile of mush. I would watch Nancy Meyers movies on repeat.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I would cry at the sight of a lemon. I had friends that invited me to all these things, but I couldn't even muster the courage to show up. One day I was on the phone with my buddy Scott and he said, Chris, you just got so many things going on in your life. He couldn't see the clearing through the forest. And I said, my God, he's so right.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Sometimes in life, we involve ourselves in so many things and we program ourselves only to see the bad, never to appreciate the good. And you're probably going through that right now. And I got to tell you, you're not alone. And it's nothing new. Humanity has been plagued by this for many, many years. I mean, you look at the books on my shelf, I'll point at one book written in the year 63 AD.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
2,000 years ago, this guy wrote a book. You know him as Seneca the Elder. His real name was Lucius Annius Seneca. He was an elder statesman during the Roman Empire. And in that book, he says that the greatest plague to Roman society is that we neither know how to give nor receive a benefit. And of all the vices common in today's society, nothing is more common than ingratitude.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
He said ingratitude has caused the worst in humans. The ungrateful man, homicides, thievery, adultery, all that kind of stuff. They were going through that 2000 years ago. We're going through the same stuff in our country today.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Thanks for having me, Heather. A special shout out to Carrie Siggins for the original introduction, a sister from across the country. Just so glad that we got to make this work today.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
You can either wake up in the morning and focus too much on what's going wrong and not appreciate all the good things, or you can wake up and you can appreciate all the good things and not really focus on the stuff that's wrong. The difference is gratitude and ingratitude. And what I learned in that dark moment on the phone with my friend Scott is that the choice is
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
was mine to either look at my life through despair or to look at my life through appreciation. Now, your life might not look like mine. You may be saying, but I don't have all those things, Chris. Money's tight. My family hates me. I've got no friends. No job? I don't know. Well, here's the thing that Heather was talking about earlier in the call.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
That happiness, woo-woo, positivity, bull crap, it's all fake. It's something that society has fed us for the last 40 years. That self-help space, the positivity gurus, the Tony Robbins of the world, they fed us crap. Here's the truth. Life isn't supposed to look pretty. It's not supposed to be able to be fixed with a filter. It's not supposed to be pretty this and epic that and monumental that.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Life is a form of suffering. How you choose to learn from those dark moments and use those to your advantage is something only you can control. And when I realized that, boy, my life shifted. And that was just a couple months ago.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Great question. And I do want to call out Scott and Caitlin, Sean and Leslie, Alec and Shauna for being there in those early days. A researcher by the name of Philip Watkins from Eastern Washington University did a wonderful research study he would eventually call the grateful processing of unpleasant memories.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And it's a wonderful study that shows he took a number of participants and he said, think about a negative experience. And he split them up into three groups. There was one group who thought about a negative experience and let it ransack their brain and then just carried on with their life. That was group number one.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Group number two thought about a really negative experience and then just wrote about it. That was group two. Group three thought about a negative experience, wrote about it, found the positive benefits in it, gave gratitude to it. That was group three. Group one was miserable. They thought about a negative experience. It ruminated chaotically in their brain.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And then they just carried on with their life and nothing happened. Group two... thought about it chaotically, and then wrote about it. And science shows that when you write down or talk out about a negative autobiographical experience, you de-stigmatize the impact that negative emotion has over you.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
You kind of organize it and normalize it and talk it out or write it down and say, that wasn't that bad. But group number three, they actually wrote about it and then looked at it and said, hmm, Now, did it teach me empathy? Did it give me family closeness or community closeness? Did it give me self-confidence, self-efficacy? Did I actually make money from it?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
If you could say yes to a whole host of those positive benefits, it can actually become one of the greatest things that's ever happened to you. See, it's not when your life is perfect that you actually learn. When you pretend like your life is perfect and your ego gets too big, you stop on the constant life learning process. You think like you know everything.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Then you become miserable to be around. But when you can actually get knocked down into that hole and look around and say, what am I learning? Where can I learn more about what I'm learning? How can I use that as a form of connection with others? So I started... realizing that this scar that I have across my arm, it's actually the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And me communicating that story actually gave me the introduction to my book, which I was struggling to come up with for 15 months.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I'm not going to downplay, and you mark my words, people, I'm not going to downplay non-suicidal self-injury. But if it took me going there, in order to find the words to say to go there, well then, yeah, I'm super grateful for it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
But I'm also the guy who, when I was robbed inside my own home and police then had to come and fill out the police report and I had to cancel three client, well, three prospect sales calls And then each one of them, I said, oh yeah, I was being robbed in my own home when we were supposed to be on the phone. Thank you for rescheduling. I won every single deal.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So did me getting robbed in my own home help me make a ton of money? Yeah. So these are things you could be grateful for. People walk around this world with regret, with shame, with guilt, imposter syndrome, whatever. The opposite of each of those things is a positive emotion.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So the opposite of walking around like an entitled asshole is being a humble, curious, question-asking, supportive, empathetic person. Okay. So what if we could de-stigmatize the guilt you have about being entitled and reinforce the positive of being curious and empathetic? What if we can destigmatize the negative emotion around regret? What do you regret giving up on too soon in life?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Let's destigmatize that negative emotion and actually give gratitude to the positive benefits that came from actually what you did choose to pursue in life. Great. The opposite of every negative is a positive. Ingratitude, gratitude. Regret, gratitude. Entitlement, humility. Adversity, superpower, whatever. And so I just applied some of those things
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Because we had learned that through our virtual gratitude experiences and the stories that people have been sharing through the years.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
You know, Heather, that's a great question. And I'm so glad that you see it or our work for what it is. You know, oftentimes when we go into an experience or an event with a team and they say, oh, here comes the gratitude guy. You know, you see a lot of rolling eyes. gratitude for so many years has been this fluffy, wuffy, airy, fairy, spiritual, only see the positive. What are you grateful for?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I read a book, Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. In it, he mentions the Stoics. On the back, he mentions a guy named Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is a guy that when he was 19 years old, he picked up a book by an ancient Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. And Ryan Holiday became the modern interpreter of Stoics. the ancient Stoics.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
He would write books like The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is Key. It was amazing. And then I read Oliver Berkman's book, 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And essentially what Stoicism is, as defined by Nisam Tlaib, And I've COVID brain, so I need to actually go into my book to get this.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
But essentially what Nisam Tlaib defined stoicism as principles that will help you transform fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. The famous thing that Ryan Holiday quotes that Marcus Aurelius, a great emperor, of Rome 2,000 years ago once said was, the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. So as I started reading all these books, I started realizing, oh my God, the truest answers to life don't come from the positive things, They come from how you accept, conquer, learn from, use to your advantage, the negative things. And so then I just started reading all the ancient Stoics.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And what I realized is, so the great Stoics and then Ryan Holiday and Oliver Berkman and Mark Manson and Sebastian Junger and all these great people, they hinted at gratitude for like a paragraph, right? But they didn't write an entire book about the relationship between gratitude and stoicism. So we wanted to go out there and write that book.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
we will go deeper into the relationship between gratitude and stoicism in future books. Look, every time that I would see someone zig in life, I had the instinct to zag every time, especially now that I see people diving deeper and deeper into like the woo positivity space to like solve their ailments through difficult times. The more I want to go the polar opposite way.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Nobody, nobody has come to me and said, Oh my God, you believe in giving gratitude to the fluffy wuffy. You're so refreshing. No, I've got like one of the coolest people on the planet. You literally saying, dude, you're anti, you know, cultural gratitude. The hard times thingy is refreshing as hell. And I'm like, yeah, that's what we go for. That's what we go for.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So Heather, if you don't mind me asking, what's one moment of adversity you've overcome in your life that none of your listeners know about?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I'm grateful for my health. I'm grateful for the sun. Well, here's the thing about gratitude. We think that to be grateful is to be grateful to someone. And this journey is Our counterintuitive approach to gratitude, the science and psychology approach to gratitude, it started about six years ago. I just got done producing this tribute campaign for veterans.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I'm pretty sure. I think you're the wrong person for me to have asked that too, because you've done so much work around it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Shame is my homeboy. Can I challenge one of you 100,000 people out there to please get like a tattoo of shame is my homeboy and let's get Action Bronson to get it and just like do an episode of Fuck That's Delicious and have a really good time.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Oh man. I mean, Heather, you got me emotional when I was telling that story. You know, I tell that story so much, but I don't actually get the opportunity to feel the emotion behind the story. That's one of the negatives of making your life story, your actual like message in your business and everything is that like it loses its impact on you and you kind of forget about it sometimes.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
But I want to quote Maya Angelou in closing for those of you out there, Maya Angelou, the don't know Maya Angelou is a poet and artist and activist, a Nobel laureate, you name it. And she once said, people won't remember what you did. They won't remember what you said, but they'll always remember how you made them feel. And Heather, you've given me that gift of feeling part of my life story.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And I will never forget this moment. And I thank you for that. It forever bonds us. It's part of Google's promotion to emotion study. The next time you're going to sell me something, I'll pay the premium for it. No, but it's moments like these folks that you got to live for.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
When you're down in the dumps and you're feeling the stuff and you can make that part of your life story, it will not only help you, but it'll help a lot of people around you. So I can't wait to hear some of your stories. And there's a lot of reflection questions in the book. So definitely, you know, complete some of the reflections and feel free to email them into us.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
We always love hearing people's stories and can't wait to learn yours. And if you need any help, just reach out. We're always hosting some kind of community event. We'd love to invite you to.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
LinkedIn, Amazon, Google. I hate to say it like a douchebag, but just Google. You know what I'm proud of on top of the book? I'm proud of our Rolling Stone column. It's been a great joy to write for Rolling Stone over the past year and a half. And I'd say a lot of our great writing is very accessible just through that free medium. And when you just Google Chris Schembra,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Up will pop a couple of our different magazine columns and definitely get a lot of that free content. And if you like what we write, then you can go and purchase the book.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Thank you, Heather.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I'd just gotten back from producing a Broadway play in Italy. I had a lot of weird things going on in my life. On the outside, my life looked pretty awesome on paper. But on the inside, I was completely screaming. I was a complete fraud. It happened around July of 2015.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
was mine to either look at my life through despair or to look at my life through appreciation.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I took a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself and realized, probably like a lot of your listeners out there today, I was lonely, unfulfilled, disconnected, insecure, nervous, cautious, overwhelmed, anxious, alone. You know, all my friends on Instagram saw one side of me, but on the inside, I was just broken.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And, you know, it was in conjunction with me having just come back from feeling a really inspired type of way in Italy. We were over there producing the Broadway play, and it made me come alive. They walked different, talked different, loved different, told different. History story is different. It was intoxicating. It was La Dolce Vita, as they say.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And when I got back here to New York City, I said, I got to do something, do something quick. That felt way too good not to recreate. So I thought back, what was it about my time in Italy that changed my perspective on everything? Well, it was their food. Specifically, it was pasta sauce. And so back home in my kitchen here in New York, I said, I got to recreate this magic.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And I invented, it's going to sound silly and simple. Your listeners are going to laugh. I invented a pasta sauce recipe. And I figured I should probably feed it to people to actually see if it's good or not. And one night I hosted a dinner party. It was 15 people in my friend's backyard in the middle of New York City. And we worked together to create the meal. And we had some amazing pasta sauce.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And when the time was right, I opened up with a simple question. If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you don't give enough credit or thanks to, that you've never thought to thank, who would that be? And Heather, when we asked that question around the dinner table, we realized people didn't give the airy-fairy, farty-warty version of gratitude that we're all used to.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
They told real stories about people. Some were positive. Some were negative. But it was intoxicating. It was life-changing. It was real. And it was that moment, then and there, that I realized there is a whole side to this thing, gratitude. that not enough people have seen before. And I'm going to make it my life's work to showcase it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And that started the journey six years ago, almost seven years ago.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Wow. What a story you have, by the way. The bravery it took and the courage to go out on your own and do what you're doing now. I got to see that in people. I got to have people like you around my dinner table who shared these amazing stories. The stories that they had achieved tremendous amount of success in their life, but they never thought to thank their third grade teacher.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
They never thought to thank their grandfather that drove them to soccer practice. They never thought to thank their mother that never told them that she loved them. The mean ex-boss, that mean ex-girlfriend, that person who told them they'd never amount to nothing. These stories were real and had a way of normalizing whoever was at the dinner table, right?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
We started hosting those dinners way early in our company. We started hosting those dinners just for free in our home for our friends. And Every week, people would pour in by the dozens. The rule was, simple rule, first time you come, you come alone. Second time you come, you bring a friend. After that, you're eligible to nominate someone. And so we'd have people just show up to the dinner table.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I didn't know who they were, but I'd Google them the next day and say, you're telling me that that person last night helped me make peanut butter and then cried around the dinner table talking about their dead dog, holy shit, we're onto something. And not only did the power of community save my life, but the power of gratitude.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So gratitude practice, not in a self-reflective way that just goes in a journal that nobody ever sees, but when you practice gratitude, in small group setting, it feels good to give, it feels good to receive, and it feels good to observe other people doing it. So that was saving my life. I had no choice but to continue it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Yeah. So companies would call us way in, you know, way in those early days, companies would call us and essentially say two things. One, we have a really disconnected team or two. I'm looking to build better relationships with our external partners and clients and all that kind of stuff.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And so we'd fly all over the world, putting on these experiences, large or small, with a sole goal of helping them bring their people together and everybody crying. I know it sounds silly and crazy and kind of psychotic to say my goal is to make people cry, but that's literally proof that we're doing something right. That's our goal.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Yeah. At those early dinners, like those early 18 person dinners, we would count if less than eight people cried, we considered it a failed night. It was very rare that we failed.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
From a psychological safety and trust with internal teams perspective, creating an emotional connection is paramount, right? There's all the studies now about belonging and connection within the workplace, all that stuff. I won't go into those studies, but I'll say,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Studies are coming out that shows it actually pays well to have your team get to know each other outside of work in meaningful and connected ways. Not the bullcrap ways of where are you from? Where is your kid going to college? What's your dog's name? But the meaningful stuff. You're grateful. You've never thought to thank your grandfather who drove you to soccer practice.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
I had a grandmother who taught me how to knit. Oh my God, we have a lot in common. Wow. I like this company where I'm working. I should stay. So from a loyalty retention part, it's huge.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And then, you know, on the client engagement side, anytime that you can bring emotion into a B2B sale, Google found in their promotion to emotion study that your buyers are five times more likely just to consider purchasing, 12 times more likely to pay to purchase and 30 times more likely to pay a premium.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So if you actually help people get to know each other, not just for your product or your price or your, you know, competition in the marketplace, but actually like the human, right? People buy from people, not from companies. They actually get to know the people. You kind of, you're going to do some pretty good business.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
They're going to stick with you when times are bad and they're going to reward you paying a premium when times are good.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
Just Google found in their promotion to emotion study that buyers with a strong emotional tie to your brand are five times more likely to consider purchasing, 12 times more likely to purchase, and 30 times more likely to pay a premium. So if you're Heather... And you either have the option of charging $10,000 for something you do or $2 million for something you do.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And all it takes is a true, deep, lasting, meaningful connection on an emotional level with the people you're trying to do business with. You choose. Google proved it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
You and I had this conversation about overcoming your villains, your amazing book that launched in the middle of a pandemic. I get it, what it's like to launch our first book in the middle, at the beginning of the pandemic, I should say. So going into 2020, God, we were on top of the world, right? At least inside our own mind. We were on top of the world. We had this new book.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
It was going to launch in April. So I grabbed my book and I grabbed my dad and we sailed across to Europe to show Italy what she had inspired in me. And boy, that was amazing. It was late February. We're dining with Massimo Bottura at Osteria Francescana. We're buying all these great leather goods. We're having a good time.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
And then my mom and my girlfriend call up and say, hey, there's this thing in Milan. It's called COVID. You should probably come home early. We ignore them. But we land home February 28th, and the government says, you should probably enter quarantine. I'm like, whatever. I'll do a two-week self-isolation quarantine. This is all going to blow over. Well, it never blew over.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: How Gratitude Will CHANGE Your Life With Chris Schembra USA Today’s “Gratitude Guru” & Rolling Stone Columnist
So the whole world shuts down. Our book is due out April 7th, 2020, a book teaching people how to host their own 18-person dinners. That's kind of obsolete. It's called gratitude and pasta. It's literally the how-to guide to make 18 people cry around your dinner table. Kind of obsolete. So the whole book tour is canceled. All the corporate events are canceled. All our revenue is canceled.