I’m thankful for you.

When was the last time you said this?

Here in the US, we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving later this week. It is the perfect time to reflect on gratitude. Gratitude is the feeling of thankfulness and appreciation. It is more of an attitude than anything else. When we are in a grateful state it allows us to be more humble and less self-centered, even for just a moment. Naomi Williams says, “It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same moment.”

I know this year has been hard for many of us. This makes it even more difficult to remain positive and look forward with some optimism. But do this we must. If not, you fall into the abyss and stop moving forward. If we look hard enough we can always find something positive to be thankful for. Watch the TV, read the news or listen to co-worker. There is always someone out there who seems to be a bit worse off than we are.

So how can we quickly and inexpensively start showing our gratitude? It’s a two step process.

Step 1: Choose someone. In order to have a balanced life, we need to be grateful for both our self AND the others on our team. Choosing to focus on one OR the other isn’t good. It doesn’t make us a good leader. A good leader has a healthy sense of self and respect for the others around them.

Start with yourself. If you can’t feel good about you, you certainly won’t be as effective with others. This is hard for people who have been taught to disregard their own needs. Then move onto others around you – an individual on your team, a group of folks who perform a function for you or even an association you belong to. The list is endless. Who do you need to choose? Just choose someone.

Step 2: Tell them. I didn’t say “think” about why you’re thankful for someone; I said “tell” them. If you thought step one was hard, this is even harder. You know how good you feel when someone tells you something good about yourself. So get crackin’ – tell the someone you picked in step 1! Telling can be in the form of a verbal conversation or written in a note or email.

So why don’t we do it? Communicating with someone is uncomfortable, even if it is good news. It also takes effort. We can get so busy with the details of life and work; we don’t make the time to tell people what is on our minds. We see Joe spent extra time to get a job out to a client or notice that Sally highlighted the A/P report this month to save review time, yet we say nothing, except to ourselves. How silly is that? It certainly doesn’t help to build up our team. (Of course we can be quick to tell them what they’re doing wrong!)

Every good parenting book tells you to emphasize “what’s right” with our kids. The same goes for everyone in our work life. Start looking for what someone is doing well and tell them. It sounds so easy but it isn’t.

Here are some quick tips to support you:

• Keep a Gratitude List or journal. Update it regularly, on a daily basis if you can. This will help you stop and make the time to look back over your day for something you feel thankful for. Plus, you will remember the event to thank “the someone” involved.
• Re-read your list as necessary. Being a small business owner can be lonely. We need to tell ourselves what we accomplished because no one else will. J
• Write a heartfelt note. It usually has greater impact than a quick verbal statement. It doesn’t have to be long. It can be an email but a handwritten note is better since it is more personal. If I’m sending to a group of people and want to say basically the same words to each person, I use an online service called SendOutCards (contact me for details). Or, I create a master note and then copy it as I write each person’s card. The main goal is to communicate.
• Get company note cards with your logo on it. If they’re small you’ll have to keep it short!
• Not sure what to say? Complete the statement, “I am thankful for you because…” Or Google “thankful quotes” and start with a quote. Here is one of my favorites.

Leave this post knowing I am thankful for YOU! I appreciate you stopping by to read and learn.

What and who are you thankful for?