In spirit of the holiday season theme, let’s consider gratitude and celebration as it relates to business.
Have you woken up in the morning and the first thought that came to your mind was – ugh, I’m not looking forward to work today. Quickly the litany of all the things that could go wrong with the day are meticulously itemized like a shopping list. It begins a day of a downward spiral that can perpetuate into days, weeks, even years.
As you are falling asleep you grudgingly admit that the day wasn’t that bad after all, but then spend time on what was bad to put you to sleep! If you experience yourself frequenting these behaviors you are not only wasting your precious time and energy, you are wasting your career and you are wasting your life. And you are likely making the lives of others around you miserable.
On November 26thwe celebrated Thanksgiving. Edward Sanford Martin (1856-1939) said it well: Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; when really, it can come as frequently as the recognition of gratitude.
Applied to business, we find that gratitude, a recognition and thankfulness of what is right, offers a return. Do you celebrate what’s good? What is right in your business; what’s right with your employees; what’s right with your client’s. Yes, we are in difficult economic times, but the economy is turning to the positive. And it’s at turns like this where great opportunity exists. Gratitude feeds a spirit of optimism and it fuels resiliency.
To paraphrase Newton’s first law of motion – a thought in motion tends to stay in motion.
We see business owners and employees waste opportunities because they are subsumed in “ain’t it awful”. We saw the President of a manufacturing company refuse to increase sales and marketing of his successful product line because the economy was bad – yet there was no evidence that the economy had any impact on his company or the demand for his products. We’ve seen partnerships paralyzed because they focused on what wasn’t right in the other partner rather than what was right – and there was plenty to celebrate. We see self-sabotage, when there is no viable reason for it.
Of course the choice is always yours on whether you see opportunity or whether you see doom and gloom. If you think it is down right silly to be a bright-eyed optimist, then at least try for a balance.
Regularly practicing and acknowledging what is right-celebrating what’s working and your achievements – will build morale and confidence, relationships and forward momentum to produce even greater results.
How do you/your business demonstrate a spirit of gratitude and celebrate what is right?
Copyright 2009 Kubica and LaForest
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