#125: Embracing Gratitude in Challenging Times with Brian Milner

Get ready for a special Thanksgiving episode where Brian Milner shares what he’s most grateful for this year and why a little reflection on gratitude can go a long way. It’s time to embrace the positives and celebrate the connections that keep us growing.

Overview

In this special Thanksgiving episode, Brian Milner takes a heartfelt pause to reflect on gratitude, expressing thanks for his listeners, cherished friendships, and the fresh ideas that continue to shape his Agile journey. He invites everyone to join him in acknowledging the positive aspects of their lives and to practice gratitude, especially during difficult times.

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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian (00:00)
Hey there, Agile Mentors. Yes, I'm not saying my typical opening because this isn't a typical episode. I don't want to make anything cheesy here. It is Thanksgiving. It is around Thanksgiving time here in the US. And traditionally, I've given a little message around this time that's just me. And I won't take a lot of your time here today.

But I do want to just kind of focus in a little bit on that concept of being thankful because I do think it's important for us to try to understand and be thankful for the things that we have in our life that maybe we don't always take time to kind of recognize. And this year has been a very kind of challenging years in some ways for our industry, for the profession, but it's also been exciting in some ways as well.

And rather than dwelling on just things that would be kind of hypercritical or negative, I think it's important for us to maybe focus in on some of those positive things. So I'll just give you a quick hit list here of things that I, I just wanted to think about about three specific things that I thought were things that I am extremely thankful for this year at this point in my life. and in my interactions with people.

The first and foremost, I'm not saving the best for last, I'm doing the best first. That's you, the listeners of this podcast. I can't thank you enough for tuning in and listening. You put out a podcast like this, you have no idea. It's kind of like you're shouting into the void. And you have no idea who is listening and who is not listening, what their desires are, what they want from you. That's why I beg you all the time for feedback, because I just want to know how it can be better for you.

I just want to know how I can make this a better use of your time. But I've had the pleasure this year of getting to go to several conferences and going to those conferences is always my chance to kind of talk to face to face some of the people who listen to this podcast. And it is such a thrill. it, just excites me to no end when I'm at those conferences and someone comes up to me and says, Hey, I listened to the podcast. I really liked the stuff you put out there on that. And it really makes an impact for me. Or, you know, I'll hear someone come up and say, Hey, I just found it. I started listening from episode one. I'm now on episode 10 and, it's all been really, really impactful. And I just really appreciate, what you're doing there. So I, I just want to say a huge thanks to you. I mean, we couldn't keep doing this if we didn't have listeners. So I just, I really appreciate you. I appreciate that you're on this journey with me.

We're kind of both learning together as we go through this because every episode I learn something from these guests that come through. And I know that you are as well. You're learning things as we go through these topics. So I just want to thank you for being along the ride with me. And especially thank you for those who have come up and introduced yourself and said hello to me over this past year. Really, really appreciate getting to meet you and learn a little bit more about you, about the things that you want and the things that you need. So thank you for being listeners. Thank you for being, for the people who send feedback and email us over our podcast at mountaingoatsoftware.com address. I really, really appreciate you. because we wouldn't be here without you.

Another thing I thought I was really, really thankful for this year, the kind of in line with that is just new friends. We do a lot of this stuff, or least I should say, I do a lot of this stuff as a trainer out of my home office and spend several days with people in classes. And I make a lot of new friends through those classes just from people that I connect with and people who stay in contact with me. So I'm highly appreciative of those people that are kind of still on my radar and people that have come through classes with me and have stayed connected with me. But I'm appreciative of the people that I've gotten to spend some quality time with at the different conferences I've been at this year.

There's been several conversations that I've had with people that have been so impactful to me, just really, really personal, sometimes emotional conversations I've had with individuals. And it just reminds you that it's human beings that are at the core of this, It's people. getting to know and understand people, I think, one of the joys of getting to do this kind of work. That you get to meet new people and get to hear their stories and learn how they see the world. So I'm really thankful for the new friends that have come into my life. through the course of the last year. And then I'm really thankful for new ideas.

The guests that have come through here have, you know, many of them have kind of given me new ways of seeing things, kind of seeing things through a new lens that has challenged me. And I'm always really grateful. when an assumption or an opinion I have is challenged, I don't think of that as being kind of an aggressive thing towards me. I think of it as, well, that's kind of pushing my boundaries a little bit. I thought that I knew and understood this in this way, but now someone's challenged me to look at this from a different perspective. I look at this from a different viewpoint. And I am just enormously thankful that as I've... grown in this profession as I've been doing this now for, gosh, I've been a software developer maybe 25 years now, I'm that old. But given that, there are still plenty of concepts and ideas that they're never ending.

There's never an end to the things that would challenge my assumptions or my beliefs about things and get me to really re-examine them. That doesn't mean I'm going to change all of them. But I tell people who come through the class, I don't have any problem with you challenging an idea. The idea isn't me. The idea is an idea. And I change ideas all the time. If I get presented with better information, if there's new data that comes out that says, hey, know that way we've been thinking about this, that's actually wrong, I embrace that. I welcome that. Because it's the reality. Right?

And I don't want to continue down the road that's false. So I just really, really appreciate that idea that these ideas are not stale. These aren't ideas, aren't things that would just go by the wayside. These are things that constantly challenge us and get us to look at things in a new light. This isn't an awards acceptance speech, so I'm not going to go through the list of specific people.

There's lots of people that I would thank and they know who they are. There's lots of people who work really hard for this podcast to work. And people like Mike Cohn who have mentored me and helped me to understand things that I would never have if I had not come in contact with them. So just really, really am thankful for all of those things.

And I encourage you, it may sound like a silly thing, But take five minutes, take 10 minutes and just sit down with a blank piece of paper and just write out, if you were gonna make your top 10, right? What are the top 10 things that this year that you're thankful for, right? You don't have to go through, you know, just the stereotypical things that you might put down, but you know, if you were to think back over the past year, what would be the things that you are most thankful for over the past year?

And as I said, I know it's been a hard year for a lot of people. But I think that when we are able to stop and do that and really understand, hey, here are the things that really have gone well. Here are the things I'm really thankful that I encountered or that happened to me in this last year. It really can have a dramatic impact on your outlook and how you see things and really what you look for moving forward, what you focus on moving forward.

So I just encourage you, it's a week for that. It's a time when we do that here in the US especially, but if you're somewhere international and maybe you have a Thanksgiving on a differe