We’ve written before about the power of saying thank you. It’s a simple thing to do, but it often gets forgotten in the daily dash to get everything done. And the thing is, it’s not nearly as effective if you don’t actually mean it. It’s just never quite as good when you’re just going through the motions.
We don’t always remember the American Thanksgiving holiday. Because it’s not part of our calendar, I seldom think about it until I start to see a scattering of ‘Happy Thanksgiving’s online. It is primarily a harvest celebration and probably had religious origins, but now of course, people see it, and celebrate it, in different ways. This year, I thought it was particularly interesting reading the posts of American bloggers. It’s been a tough year economically, and for some in other ways too.
Here are a few of those that I found thought-provoking:
Josh Hanagarne, The World’s Strongest Librarian. Mostly, he writes about his approach to dealing with Tourettes Syndrome. Today he just says thank you.
Seth Godin considers it the only holiday that matters – for good reasons. No commercialisation, so the purity of the intent is preserved.
And Sonia Simone on Copy Blogger has a fantastic eye for silver linings. She comes up with 10 whole reasons why we should be thankful for the current climate in which we do business.
Up till now I hadn’t really stopped to think about what I would give thanks for this year. My day has been rather full and as I do so often, I put the thinking time at the end of the list. But writing this post has made me think about it. It has been a tough year, without doubt.
We have two business in the family which means, in tightening-the-belt economic times, we all have to work smarter and deliver more value to customers. And we’ve had a key staff member off work for 5 months with an injury, which was challenging for the business, but even more so for her.
But having to deal with those changes has made us more resilient. We’ve improved the way we do things, we’ve been smarter about our marketing, and we’ve tightened up our processes to become more efficient. I’m thankful for the leanness that this year has fostered in our businesses. Doing that has meant that we’ve also had the extra capacity to begin planning exciting projects and some new directions for the coming year.
It’s probably also worth saying that one of the things I’m most thankful for is the ability to retain our sense of humour through adversity of all kinds.
Happy Thanksgiving – wherever you are.
So, what have you had to be thankful about this year? I’d love to hear about it.
Photo credit: RBerteig
Article by Vandy Massey
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Vandy you make some interesting points. One aspect of saying thank you that is often overlooked is the joy you can get when the you see the effect it has. I recently posted a thank you for someone I had worked with. I received a lovely email. It never crossed my mind as I wrote the thank you that I would get so much out of it.
I also liked the bit about appreciating adversity as a chance to become more efficient and effective. This reminded me of a suggestion that we should thank our enemies for the opportunity to practice our patience.
It’s amazing what happens when we show our appreciation of others. I can completely understand what you’re saying about the joy you get from seeing the effect of saying thank you. I think it’s such a pity that we’ve become so afraid of rejection that we often hold back rather than expressing our feelings. Time we got braver about it, I think.