Gratitude is Positivity in Action

This post’s title came from a presentation by Peg Stookey, a personal brand, leadership and career strategist I had the opportunity to hear speak recently.

Peg’s point, which I found compelling, is that it’s not always easy to be positive. Yes, if you keep practicing, it eventually becomes more ingrained and easier to do over time. But you aren’t likely to suddenly become more positive simply by telling yourself to be. It needs to be intentional and consistent, which means work. But, boy, is it some of the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.

I’ve spoken before in this blog about being positive and being an optimist and, if I were to place bets, I suspect it’ll come up again in the future. But Peg’s statement was one of those “aha” moments you have when someone causes you to consider something from a different perspective.

At this point in my life, I see myself as generally a pretty positive person and so being positive is – arguably – easier for me by now as I practiced and reinforced it earlier in life. However, recognizing that we are all at different points on our journey, gratitude might just be the “secret sauce” you were looking for.

Where being positive is an internal state of mind, expressing gratitude is an action that you have direct control over. You don’t even need to necessarily feel upbeat to convey to someone else that you appreciate them and what they mean to you. However, the simple act of expressing gratitude to someone else will pay dividends back to you and can help to reinforce the change to a more positive point-of-view.

Here are some ways you can express gratitude:

• Hand write a note to someone to express what you’re grateful for about them. An email is fine too but I’d challenge you to go old school on this. It takes more effort to write clearly and mail the card, plus there’s that connection of knowing that you both have held that note. Hokey? Probably, but still pretty powerful
• Say your “please” and “thank you’s”. Those simple words, when expressed sincerely, can have a huge impact. A recent example – my company sponsors an annual holiday lunch which requires our on-site cafeteria workers to work extra hours all week so that 1,400 people can get their free meal. As I went through the lunch line, I made a point to thank each person I saw for making that extra effort. By their reactions, you’d have thought I was the person who was serving them. It was a small, but humbling, realization of how easy it is to take someone for granted
• If you lead meetings, make a point of regularly recognizing someone’s extra efforts in front of the group… though be careful how you phrase it and be careful that your “target” is not always the same person
• This last one comes directly from Peg Stookey. She devised what she called her “stealth campaign” and planned a week of things to do for her husband. She did not draw any attention to her efforts, she simply acted… and, from what she shared, her husband never picked up on what she was doing. But that wasn’t really the point. Peg wasn’t seeking her husband’s thanks or even recognition; rather, she was affecting her own outlook by intentionally doing something selflessly for another person

So, if you’ve already decided you want to have a more positive outlook in your life, congratulations! That is arguably the most important step. However, you next need to look for ways to shore this up until the mindset becomes second nature. Intentionally expressing gratitude is a great way to accomplish that… while also making the world around you just a little bit better.

I’m pulling for you!

In what ways have you shown gratitude? The comments section is open for whatever you’d like to share (and it’d be great to have a list of ideas that others could use and build upon).