The Lost Art of Giving Thanks

My appreciation for the Thanksgiving holiday has matured over the years.  There was a time when all Thanksgiving really meant to me was a great meal by my grandmother that inevitably turned into an eating contest with my younger brothers, followed by a football game on TV as we lay on the floor, writhing in the bloated discomfort of our engorgement.  Then we had pie.

I find myself a lot more contemplative these days about Thanksgiving.  It really isn’t about the turkey dinner or the football game anymore.  And, while my thoughts during Thanksgiving – and the entire holiday season, for that matter – turn increasingly toward my family, I am also reminded that sincere expressions of gratitude are a tremendous source of both internal and external power in business settings as well.

Ours is a culture of expectations and entitlements.  At our Boot Camp events, I talk about the impact of this on our society as it relates to the cultivation of a culture of litigation and lawsuit.  And, I think there is something to this.  Certainly, when we live in a world where we expect things to be given to us, and that we are entitled to riches or reward with no connection to the associated sacrifice and effort, we can’t be surprised that people use and abuse the judicial system to either collect that which we feel society owes us, or to punish those who aren’t playing along with our assumptions.

The more “entitled” we become, the more litigation explodes.

Perhaps gratitude and graciousness are an appropriate antidote to a lawsuit-happy world.  It has been said that gratitude is an attitude, and certainly that is true.  How different my world would be if I took more time to stop and recognize everything I have to be thankful for – and then to go the next step and express that gratitude directly.

If there is power in a verbal thank you – and there is – then how much more power is there in taking a moment to write and send that expression of gratitude?  What would happen to our respective worlds if we did that continually?  It makes me wonder.

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