The Game-Changing Power of Gratitude

In this episode, Jill discusses the transformative power of gratitude, especially during the Thanksgiving season. She shares her personal journey from burnout to fulfillment, emphasizing the importance of recognizing one's values and the role gratitude plays in shifting perspectives and fostering resilience. The episode  encourages listeners to embrace gratitude as a practice that can lead to a more intentional and joyful life. Through Jill's own experiences, she highlights the significance of rock bottom moments as catalysts for change and self-discovery.

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Transcript

Jill O'Boyle (00:04.684)
Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Jill O'Boyle. And hey, if you're new here, I am so glad you've joined. This is a community of individuals who are ready to ditch the burnout, embrace our God-given purpose and live life with intention. And so if you are joining us for the first time, stick around, you're gonna love this podcast, you're gonna love this episode that I have for you today. So today we are approaching Thanksgiving.

A wonderful time, right? To just be grateful. But more importantly, let's be honest, to really soak in all that good food. That's what I'm down for. I'm down for the sides. I'm down for the sides and the appetizers, the turkey. Yeah, it's good, but I'm really, really all about the sides. So today, I really want to dive into, honestly, it's a topic that's really close to my heart. And that is about gratitude and very timely as we approach

Thanksgiving. But I'm not going to bore you with like, you know, list the three things that you're most thankful for or grateful for. Yes, you should do that. But you know that already, right? And so what I would love to do is actually just want to go a little bit deeper into the topic of gratitude and how gratitude really can be a game changer for overachievers like myself, like you.

who feel stuck, you feel overwhelmed, you feel like you're just lost, you're spinning in all of the busyness and the chaos of what life just throws at us on a daily basis, right? And so maybe that's you, maybe you're feeling like you have just really lost sight of what really matters in life right now. And so I wanna take some time to just really talk to you and share a story from my own personal life that I think you might relate to.

And so if you've been following this podcast for a while, you might know my story if you're new today. I want to tell you about a story and a time in my life when I felt like I was living someone else's story. Like on the outside, I really had everything that that should have made me happy. I had the family, the career, the picture perfect life. Right. was everything was good on the outside. But honestly,

Jill O'Boyle (02:29.056)
On the inside and maybe you feel this way too, like on the inside, I was just empty. I was lost.

And the stress of just trying to juggle it all and to keep up the smile every day and the face that it's all good and everything's all going well in my life, like started to just be exhausting. And it left me feeling extremely burned out, disconnected and searching for something like anything that would just feel the emptiness that I was feeling at that time in my life. And so

I started chasing. I started to just chase after things that I thought would make me happy. And so as a high achiever, that was accolades, that was achievements, that was validation of others. Like, if I just do this and they see me working so hard, well, they'll promote me or they'll advance me or they'll just give me that like reassurance like Jill, you are so great. And that's what I needed back then. I needed to hear that I was great and doing something and I'm mad.

And so I thought if I can just do more, if I can just accomplish more, if I can just be more than maybe, just maybe I will finally feel enough or have made it. Anybody ever feel like that sometimes? Like you feel like I just got to keep pushing. I just got to keep doing more. If I get here, then I will have made it. Right. But no matter how much I achieved, it was never enough.

I bet you felt like that too. Like you get to A, B, and C that you thought would make you happy. And then you're like, well, what now? What now? That's not it. There's still this void. There's still this emptiness inside of me. And so instead of like looking inward or upward, most importantly to God, I just kept searching externally. I chased after temporary things that would make me feel

Jill O'Boyle (04:41.58)
happy or good. And so those were things like escaping at night with wine, you know, just trying to numb the stress of the day, trying to numb that deep discontentment in my soul and the daily stress of like trying to just do everything on my own all the time.

And let me hear me on this. There were many people in my life at that time that was probably so willing to help. But it was like, I had this thought that if I had to get somewhere, I had to get it on my own. Like I was afraid to ask for help. Like asking for help meant that I was weak or I was incapable of doing it. And so I'm just gonna do it all because I'm Jill and I can do it all. And I don't need your help. And I got it.

and I put on a really good front on the outside that I did have it all together, but inside I was flipping a mess. My heart was aching. I was so lost. It was so broken. It was so empty. And so in that midst of searching for something, I found myself on a path that I thought I would never have taken. Got caught up in an inappropriate relationship with a coworker.

And at first it felt like it was a way to just escape the pressure and the pain I was feeling. But what I thought would bring me like instant relief, only of course, of course, brought me more heartache. Of course left me more broken, more ashamed.

Jill O'Boyle (06:19.18)
totally ashamed more than I had ever felt in my whole entire life. To one point, I remember standing in front of my mirror and I just couldn't even recognize the woman staring back at her. Like, I just couldn't recognize myself. I was so far off course that I didn't even know how in the world I had gotten there or how in the world I was gonna find my way back. I was so desperately wanting to find myself back to the true Jill.

but I had forgotten who she was, completely forgotten. And it was in that moment that I will always say it was a very much a rock bottom moment in my life. One that I would have never thought I would have ever been in. And I bet if you're honest with yourself, I bet there's things in your own life that you are so shocked that you found yourself in a certain place.

Jill O'Boyle (07:20.022)
But here is the beautiful thing, whether you've been there before, whether you're in it right now, or something to remember if it's heading your way is that there's a beautiful thing that happens about hitting a rock bottom moment. Sounds crazy, right? That's how gratitude is so grateful though. like there is a beautiful thing about hitting a rock bottom moment in your life, whatever that moment is for you, because it...

What it does is it forces us to just stop.

forces us to stop running.

It's really what I was doing, running. Running away from confronting my feelings, running away from opening up and communicating about things that were going on in my life. Just running from it, numbing it, distracting it. Right, so the beautiful thing about hitting rock bottom is it forces us to stop.

Stop running, stop hiding. It forces us to slow down. And most importantly, it forces us to finally look up.

Jill O'Boyle (08:28.812)
And that's what I did.

I opened up my heart to God and I started asking him to just please guide me Lord. Show me. Show me where I had taken a wrong turn and how in the world do I get back on track. Lord just show me.

It was in those moments. I was so desperate to find answers. I stood in that mirror and I asked myself over and over and over and over, what are you doing?

Change your ways.

Jill O'Boyle (09:09.472)
And so I finally seek God and I asked him to redirect my steps.

Show me where I went wrong. Show me how, why was it that I made this wrong term? What am I searching for?

Jill O'Boyle (09:25.89)
And let me tell you, it wasn't easy because I had to confront the pain that I had been running from, the choices that I had made and the ways that I had let my worth, my own self-worth be defined by anything but God.

But in the midst of that process, I discovered something so profound. I didn't need to chase external things to find fulfillment. And I say that and you're probably like, yeah, duh, right? But that's what we do. If you're really being honest, that's what we do. We chase external things to find fulfillment. You grab the bottle because in that instant moment, everything in the world goes blank and you feel fulfilled.

So you grab the wine, you grab the beer because it just numbs everything and you're like, okay, I'm happy now because I don't have to worry about all those other things that are constantly replaying in my head.

Jill O'Boyle (10:25.792)
or we chase the handbag or we chase the shoes or we chase the purse or the outfit or the guy or whatever. Fill in what you go to when you don't want to deal with the pain.

And that's what we do. We search and chase for those external things.

Jill O'Boyle (10:47.276)
But what we need to realize and what I finally realized that what I needed was already within me. Like it was already placed there by a loving God who had been patiently, so patiently waiting for me to turn back to Him.

I replay that over and over in my head all the time. I'm like, my gosh, I just wonder how many times God was like my GPS, just like trying so hard to be like, you know, no, no, you're getting way too close to that guard rail again. Like get back in here, get back in here, Jill. Like he had some work he was doing up there. Like he had some work, but thank goodness we serve a patient, patient God. And he's just waiting.

He is just waiting for that day that you throw your hands up and say, God, I can't do this on my own. I can't. I never have been able to. I've tried. It's not working. And so I surrender to you.

And I will never ever forget that day that I did that. And the immediate peace, immediate peace in the sleep that I had that I have never had in many, many, many, many months I had when I did that.

And so that journey is a definitely, it's a healing journey, but it wasn't just about the healing. It was about honestly rediscovering who I truly was. I had forgotten who Jill was through the noise, through the distractions of this busy, busy world. Like I simply forgot who I was and gratitude.

Jill O'Boyle (12:36.162)
played a huge role in that process, slowing down stillness. I talk a lot about stillness on this podcast and journaling. And that's why I wanna also incorporate gratitude today because gratitude did play a huge role in that process. It helped me shift my focus from what I already, shift my focus from thinking of all the things that I lacked in my life.

shifting my focus from all the things that I had done wrong, right? Because I could have sat there in that season of my life and wrote a book of all the things that I had done wrong.

But really what gratitude did was it shifted all of those things. It shifted to what I lacked or what I did wrong to what God was making right in my life.

shifting to what I already had in my life, shifting my thought to looking at literally what was standing right in front of me my entire life. That is such a blessing and I'm so grateful for it.

And so I share this story with you because I know how easy, believe me, I know how easy it is to just get caught up in the chase, especially as us high achievers, overachievers who wanna do it all. We wanna do it all, we wanna be it all, we wanna have it all, we wanna make sure others know that we have it all and that we're doing it all and that we wanna be visible and seen, right?

Jill O'Boyle (14:16.566)
But what I've learned is that gratitude isn't just something that we feel, right? It's actually a practice that we can start to incorporate in our lives that will completely transform our lives. And so today I wanna share with you through my own journey and through my own story, I wanna share with you three powerful lessons that I learned about gratitude through my own detours.

and how I think it's going to be super helpful for you as you find and navigate your way back to a life of peace and joy and purpose. And so if you have been in any kind of season that I have been in, right? I think this is going to be super helpful for you. We all go through seasons of life and we all go through areas of life that we don't understand. Right? And so, well, you know, your story is not the same as mine.

but there's things that I'm sure you're going through right now that doesn't make any sense. And you're like, I can't find anything grateful or gratitude in this season. I bet if you just sit down and ask yourself a couple of things, I bet you can. And if you can't right now, I bet you're gonna look back in a month or two months or three months and you're gonna see that God was working all things together for the good. He always does. Romans 8 28, absolutely my favorite scripture. Testimony of my life for sure.

So when I hit my own rock bottom, I realized again that I was focusing so much on everything that I didn't have or everything that wasn't going right or simply at the pace that I wanted or needed it to, right? Come on, high achievers. We want everything now. We wanted to actually back then. We don't know why we don't have it now. Like nothing is ever soon enough, right?

And so gratitude helps us flip that script. So instead of focusing on what is missing, it allows us to see what's meaningful, what's standing right in front of us. That is such a blessing.

Jill O'Boyle (16:26.007)
And so the biggest takeaway there is I want you to think about gratitude shifts your perspective.

It does, it automatically just shifts from what you're feeling right in this instant when you sit down and you really think about everything else that's going on around you, what you can be grateful for, it will shift your perspective. And so something that you can do, and this is something that I did, is whether it's in the morning or night, let's talk about like the night, because I think it's easy to think about your day. So like every night this week, write down,

one unexpected blessing you notice during the day. And again, it doesn't have to be anything big. Like maybe it's the way that your child laughs. Like, and it just lifted your spirit. Like when I hear my oldest son, Griffin, I think he's got the best laugh ever. And when he laughs, like you can just hear the joy come out of his soul. And like,

So maybe it's just like something like that, like at the dinner table, like your son just like totally made you laugh and it just took the pain that you were feeling away for just even that instance. Right? And so every night before you go to bed, just write down one thing, or if you're a morning person like me, great thing to do in the morning. Great way to start your day is just write down one thing that happened yesterday that just really was an unexpected blessing for you that day. Okay.

So that's like number one, like it can really change your perspective on life if you start to get in a habit of just recognizing it and being, writing down all the things that are, you're grateful for, or that was a blessing to you that day. The other thing that gratitude does is it fuels our resilience. Like life is so full of detours. And for many of us overachievers, high achievers, like it's so easy.

Jill O'Boyle (18:28.428)
to feel like every setback is a failure. my gosh. Like anytime something goes wrong or doesn't go the way that I had planned it to be, I immediately, immediately think, my gosh, I just, like I completely just failed on that. Or what are they gonna think of me because that didn't go the right way it was supposed to. Or it goes to the, there we go.

that didn't work because I'm just not enough. That's right. I don't have enough education. I don't have enough expertise. I'm just not good enough. Right. We go through, mean, our mind is so crazy and how it just goes from one thing to the ultimate extreme. And so gratitude will allow us to see those detours as like not a setback because they're not, they are not.

They are a redirection, really. Like I love that quote that says, rejection is God's protection. I remind myself of that all the time. Like it's an opportunity for us to look at that scenario, not as a setback, but an opportunity to lean into that area to either grow in, gain more wisdom or experience in, an opportunity for us to.

to look upward and ask God for clarity around that situation.

I think there are so many times that I have looked at something in my life as a setback and thinking, my gosh, like why in the world did that not transpire? And in reality, I look at it and I'm like, thank goodness that didn't transpire. Like that was, that would have been terrible. I mean, I look back in like my way dark ages when I was thinking I wanted something completely different and God protected me of that.

Jill O'Boyle (20:31.618)
I'm so gracious he did. Like he knows our paths so, so well. And I can also think back like, so my husband and I, I grew up in Ohio. Some of you already know this. I grew up in Ohio and I love the Carolinas, destined to be a beach girl, moved to South Carolina, dream place that I always wanted to live and was there. And then...

After living there about five years, I decided, you know, if we're to have children, we should move back to the Midwest and we should be closer to family. And then after we got back here in the Indiana area and then we started to have kids, I remember thinking to myself, like. That was dumb, like you like you always just worry about other people and and you loved South Carolina, like why did you move? But like.

Now I can look at it back and I'm like, no, no, no. Like. The God knows what he's doing and do I love the Midwest with the winners? But I do love our school system. I love our neighborhood. I love that are our community here in Indiana. I love that I have downtown. I love to go do things. So in hindsight,

I believe it is, we are right exactly where we are supposed to be in this season of our life. I mean, I think about our family business, Jack's starting to boil transportation. Everything that God is doing in our season right now, what I'm trying to get at is everything is so purposeful. And he knew exactly what he was doing back then, even though I might've said, just made myself, I just went against my own words that I was just gonna.

follow and be a beach girl and all this and now I'm here back in the Midwest with a minivan and diapers and blah, blah. Like, no. Like God wanted me to be in a place to realign me with my purpose and realign me in so many other ways that I'll probably get to on a future episode just in marriage and life and what's important right now to me. So.

Jill O'Boyle (22:48.706)
When we practice gratitude, like we really do open ourselves up to seeing God's hand in the most unexpected ways. And I'm going to talk about that at the beginning of the year on some things that I've just been seeing happening so unexpectedly in our lives that is truly grateful for. And so.

What's a way that you can actually put that to action? How can you as an overachiever, high achiever, look at gratitude as a way to fuel resilience? Not to look at things as a setback all the time. I think one thing that you could do was just simply kind of what I was just processing as I was talking out loud to you guys is think of a recent situation or a recent detour, In quotes, like,

that happened in your life, like write down one way that that detour, right? It might not have been the plan or the way that you envisioned that going in your life. But what is one way that it's shaped you for the better? Is that, guess, a good way to put it? Like, yes, that might not have been the way that you saw it going, but how did it shape you for the better? I bet you're going to come up with something that you hadn't even thought about.

Okay, last one is look at gratitude as it relates to your values. What I found was gratitude helped me to realign my values. And so for years I had attached my whole self worth to my career. I completely lost sight of my core values. Like to be real and honest, like I didn't even know

what my core values were. Like I didn't even know that we were supposed to have core values for our life. Like didn't even know that this was a thing. I knew what my company's core values were, but I didn't know what my personal core values were. So I hadn't even thought about it. But after spending some time, right, actually after hitting a rock bottom moment and being forced to slow down and sit down and think, whoa, what has just transpired in my life?

Jill O'Boyle (25:07.13)
It forced me to actually stop running and sit down and think about what are the things that I do value.

What are the things that I stand for? Because a lot of times we find ourselves in situations that are not pleasant because we don't have values. We don't know what we stand for. We don't have boundaries in our lives. And when we don't have boundaries, we let everybody walk all over us.

Jill O'Boyle (25:45.186)
case in point for me for sure. So what are the values that I stood for? So it was an opportunity for me to sit down and think, okay, Jill, like go back to your younger years. What are things that really, really mattered before the world got in my head, before work took over my life? Like what were things that I absolutely stood for and was strong about? One connection for sure. people person right here.

I need connection in my life. I need to be meeting with people. I need to be talking to people. I want to also grow always. So growth was a huge value of mine. Connection, growth that I was learning and growing and developing. Authenticity. I was a huge, huge advocate of just being real. Like growing up I felt like I was pretty true to myself in my younger years. I think my...

good old St. Mary's friends could say that. Like, I was just, this is Jill, this is who she is, this is what you get, take it or leave it. Like, I own that. Man, and then I just lost that. And then I just started caring about way too much about what other people think. And then the other value of mine was fun. My good old St. Mary's girls can know in a test that I am fun. I still believe I am.

But fun is important to me. Like I want to have fun in life. think if for now I'm fun, then what is the point? Like God wants us to have fun. I do believe that. And so fun. So connection, authenticity, growth. Like those, as I sat down and I really, really started to reflect on what I stand for, what matters most to me, those were the top four things that kept coming up. And they were the same things that was not in my life at that point. Like I was not growing.

I was stagnant in my career and I think I had reached a point where I was like, this is really as far as I'm gonna get with this company and that didn't sit well. And so again, trying to overachieve, prove that no, I can go further. Connection, mean, outside of people at work, I was not connecting. It was a lot of just burnout, go to work, do the job, come home, raise the kids, go back to work, do the, you know.

Jill O'Boyle (28:07.772)
not really getting out and connecting with people. Authenticity, I was not being authentic in those years at all. I was hiding a lot in those years. And fun, I mean, I think I was having fun, but I...

but not the fun that I was wanting. Like, I was searching for more, like, intentional fun things, like,

like trips and quality time actually with my kids, like doing like fun excursions and things like that. So yeah, so I think you can sit down and I think you can start to like really think about what values do you stand for? What are the values that you have in your, that really are important to you? And then take a look at that and see, are you living in those values right now?

Right? Because like I said, I was not aligned with any of those values. And so being grateful and really looking at, okay, these are the things that matter to me and how do I incorporate them back into my life? And so through that exercise, it just really started to remind me that success isn't just about doing more, Jill. Like success is not about doing, like it's about living in alignment with who you are.

Living in alignment with those values, like who God created you to be. And you know, God puts those things on your heart. Like those values are, He knows us. He created us. Like He knows the things that we need. And so right there, like just ask Him, God, what do I need in this season of my life? And just sit and listen and ask, just listen to the Holy Spirit and what He brings to you. Because He always knows exactly what we need.

Jill O'Boyle (30:03.756)
So I would encourage you to set some time aside this week and try that. Reflect on your values. Do you even know them? Are you like I was nine years ago? Are your daily actions aligning with those values? Write them down. And if not, they probably aren't, if you're feeling burnout and stress, you're probably not in alignment with your values or...

the place that your work is contradicting your values, you know, that was also definitely apparent in my situation. So what small shifts can you make? What can you do to add and stand more in authority with your values? So if fun is a value of yours, what's one small thing you can do this week that is fun for you? Back then,

I would have said something fun for me was to go and sit at a coffee shop and just have coffee by myself because you know, the kids were so young and I just needed time like to myself. So that would have been something fun for me that I wasn't initiating or, or expressing to my husband that I needed back then. Right? I mean, how, how silly is that? Like we just spin our wheels. But if I would have said, Hey babe, I want to go just have coffee and sit here for

an hour, can you handle the kids for that time? Like, you think he's gonna say no? No, he's gonna be like, yeah, go take what you need. So unmute your voice and stand in what you need is my recommendation for you. So I would strongly encourage you to grab a journal and reflect on these three things and just.

Start small. Like again, don't like write all these down. I like you have to do all of these in one in one week. Like you'll burn yourself out doing that. So just just take one of these and say, OK, I'm going to commit to doing this today, whether that's figuring out your values this week, whether that's, you know, taking time each morning to get up and reflect on a blessing that unexpectedly happened to you yesterday, whether that's journaling about a detour or a setback that happened in your life and how you can see

Jill O'Boyle (32:26.314)
a blessing through that detour that actually shifted your thoughts on it. So I would totally encourage you to do that. think as we approach Thanksgiving, finding time for yourself is huge because holidays are coming up and it can be even more chaotic, right? So make intentional time for you to practice gratitude.

I just know for me it was a lifeline, it was a game changer. And I truly believe that gratitude is the lens through which we can see God's faithfulness in every, every season, even the challenging ones. Like I can look back now and I can see that he was faithful, even when I didn't feel like he was. Like even when I was spiraling out of control, he was so patiently waiting.

And he will wait, but he also wants us to take that initiative, like to reach out and say, I need you God. So when we pause and we are intentional about being grateful, I think we then stop striving and we start trusting. We let go of that just hustle mentality and we start to just embrace God's peace over our lives.

Jill O'Boyle (33:52.246)
So friends, as we are stepping into the Thanksgiving week, I ask that when you start to gather around that Thanksgiving table this week, I challenge you to take a moment to not just give thanks, right? But to really reflect on how gratitude can guide you in your life. Like guide you back to a life of just purpose and joy and abundance. And remember like,

This is not about being perfect. It's not about perfection. Like I know you high achievers, that is such a struggle for us. Like we wanna do everything perfectly. And I just laid out three things and you're gonna go back and you'll be like, I gotta do all three of these things to get my life in order. Like no, it is totally about progress. Progress over perfection. Like write it down, put it on your, put it on your mirror. All right, that's a reminder I have to give myself all the time. Progress over perfection, Jill. But go to gratitude.

often, like especially when that perfectionist mindset creeps in, cause you know it does all the time, like use this gratitude tool as like a GPS, like recalibrating you back to saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not going back to that, you know, mindset thinking, but rather it's going to point me to the life that I'm meant to live. I'm going to be grateful for the season that I'm in right now because of X, Y, Z like just shifting your mindset is just so, so powerful.

hugely can change your situation. So, okay friends, if we...

Jill O'Boyle (35:31.424)
If I have talked about anything today that resonates with you, like if maybe, maybe literally you've been sitting here listening to this and you're like, I can relate to so much of what you're saying. Like if you feel like you've been running on empty, like disconnected from your values or unsure of your true purpose, like I want you to know that you, you are not alone. I think there are more people like that than you know of. And so you're not alone.

And so rediscovering who you are and what truly matters, like isn't just possible, it's a journey that I am telling you is so worth taking. But you have to stop hustling. Like you actually have to be intentional and you have to see that is a need that you need right now. And so if that feels like something that you need, let's connect. I'd love to walk alongside you and help you uncover your God-given purpose. I would love to help you realign your values.

Right? Like have somebody with you that can sit down and say, okay, let's go through some of these. What does matter? Cause sometimes it feels so intimidating to do this stuff on your own. And so that's why I love coaching is cause I can come alongside of you and we can work it out together. And there's things that just with my gift of discernment that I just see when I, when I meet with clients where you'll be talking and I will just instantly feel something. say, let me, let me ask you something. And so many times the clients are like,

Yes, I didn't know how to put the words to that. But yes, that's exactly what it is. And so I want to help you create a life that just really feels intentional. want to help you create a life that is joyful and fulfilling, not hustling, not burning out. And so if this resonates, I would love for you to reach out to me so you can visit my website at Jillaboyle.com or you can reach out directly. Jill at Jillaboyle.com is my email and lunch.

schedule a conversation. Let's explore, you know, how you can take that next step towards living the life that you were designed for. Let's start 2025 off on the right, right foot. All right. Okay, friends, I hope that you have an excellent Thanksgiving. I hope that you can find some time this week to really be intentional about journaling, about gratitude.

Jill O'Boyle (37:53.994)
and some of the key things that I talked about. And I hope you have an excellent and amazing holiday season. And until next time, go out and make it a great day. Be you, love life, and rise up.