Life is good! A couple of months ago I attended the Tampa premiere of a new movie called HappyThankyouMorePlease and the title resonates with my life these days.
I don’t know about you but I’m finding more and more things to be grateful for and to appreciate — and a lot of these are things that aren’t new – I just never really took the time to notice them before.
When I was thinking about this post, I pondered the difference between gratitude and appreciation and stumbled across the following post: Gratitude and Appreciation – what’s the Difference? The author talks about gratitude giving rise to appreciation, and I tend to agree to a point.
I believe that we can be grateful for things and people in our life without anyone else knowing it or being a part of it. The difference is that appreciation begins when you spread or share such gratitude with another (preferably someone to whom you are grateful). I’m grateful for sunsets of crimson and gold, warm (hot) Florida days, friends and family, colleagues who listen to my presentations and read my writing, and pets who keep me company. I can be truly grateful for these and other good things in life – and savor the goodness with and by myself.
But, how much could it mean to someone if I shared my appreciation for them – with them? In this hustle and bustle world we live, we take the time to point out our own or others’ mistakes, and overlook chances to tell people what we appreciate. As a time saving strategy, why don’t we invest 10 seconds to say “thank you” and bypass the hours we labor over how to temper our disappointment? In our Return-on-Investment focused life, the thank you reaps a far better yield than carefully crafted criticism. And what’s the residual value of spreading goodness? It’s not often we imagine how we’d feel if a co-worker or friend or loved one took a moment to say “I really appreciate you today.” It just doesn’t happen.
Let me begin by thanking you for reading these words and spending a few valuable heartbeats on my blog today. I appreciate that you chose to be here when there’s a myriad of other things you could be doing. I appreciate your time and energy – and I wish you a great day. (Now it’s your turn to catch someone doing something right and tell them.)
I love being grateful (it’s a positive feeling) and I’m finding that the next step is to tell others that I appreciate them. Following the title of the film I mentioned earlier, I’m Happy, Thankyou- More please!
Regards,
Carol
p.s., Here’s a link to some gratitude quotes from the posting link above. Enjoy!
Carol Dekkers, Software Measurement and Global Software Development expert, author, speaker. Want to engage Carol to be a speaker at your next event? Email Ms. Dekkers at dekkers@qualityplustech.com or carol@caroldekkers.com or visit http://www.caroldekkers.com for details.
Notes to Self 
Thanks designed for sharing such a fastidious thinking,
paragraph is good, thats why i have read it completely
LikeLike
Hi Carol,
Thanks for making the distinction. About two years ago I incorporated a new facet to my test team leadership tutorial I present at StarEast and StarWest. It occurred to me that people in organizations do things every day that go unrecognized and unappreciated. So, I hand out cards for people to write things they have accomplished. Then, I read those at points throughout the day to break things up. We give the person a round of applause so show our recognition and it does wonders for the energy of the group. Sometimes I give them a valuable RCS ink pen. 🙂 I can see how showing appreciation can do the same thing.
It’s amazing what people have done. I had one lady that had completed trapeze classes to build her confidence!
In the tutorial last week I actually had someone on the eval complain about the recognitions (and breaks). Oh well…you can lead some of ’em to water…
LikeLike
Randy,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. What a great idea to incorporate appreciation in a “learning-by-doing” exercise throughout your tutorial. I don’t think you will truly ever know the full impact of this positive step – I’d be willing to bet that you’ve changed lives through this seemingly innocuous gesture.
I am always amazed when I hear the statistics about the number of times a child has heard the word “no” by the time they reach the formative age of 7 – it’s in the tens of thousands! By then, they (and we) are so accustomed to negative reinforcement that it is a treat to hear kind remarks. In childhood, the word no serves to protect from danger, yet there isn’t ever an end to the teaching. By the time we’ve reached adulthood, we’re ready to impose the same domestication techiques on the next generation of children and unwary adults.
I always appreciate your insights and I hope you don’t mind if I borrow your appreciation technique (I’ll credit you!) Wishing you continued success!
Carol
LikeLike