The importance of showing your appreciation

After I taught a creativity course recently, one of the students invited me to her property on the South Coast of NSW to collect material for my art as a way of saying thank you because the course was transformational for her.

I can’t even tell you how much that meant to me as I only use foraged material, so finding places to collect is hard. (Coincidentally, every single one of the works I made from this collecting session sold in my recent exhibition.)

I have this thing about saying thank you and showing appreciation. In business and life, we want acknowledgement for the things we do. We have an innate desire to feel appreciated and valued by others. And I believe our workplaces function much better with a praise culture.

So how do we make sure we say thank you more, and acknowledge the people around us?

Saying thank you

When we pitch a story to a journalist, and the story gets a run, the journalist is just doing their job right? They got a great story because we came up with the idea and sent it to them. In my Agency, we have a policy of thanking the journalist. We acknowledge their effort and time, by emailing a simple thank you. You should to.

Give when no one is expecting it

I’ve spent every weekend for the past three weeks at a gallery where my solo exhibition was being held. In between visitors, I sat on the floor and wove sculptures, which gave me some thinking time in that space.

I thought, I have expertise that all of the other artists involved in the gallery could benefit from. So on the last day of my exhibition, I put enough copies of my book From Unknown To Expert for everyone on the shelf in the storeroom. So simple.

Don’t take people for granted

I’m sure we all have people in our lives we take for granted. Colleagues, best friends or even the person that makes our coffee in the morning. I know I do. So from time to time, take stock of those people and acknowledge them. Let them know what their action’s personally mean to you.

Run a gratitude exercise with your team/friends/family

With my team, we sit in a circle with one person in the centre and tell them why we are grateful for them, being specific about moments, lessons and impacts. We talk about how we have changed because of their impact on our lives.

The power of thank you has the power to change a workplace culture, start a beautiful friendship or make someone’s day. It can also change your life.

Tweetable: The power of saying ‘thank you’ @CatrionaPollard http://bit.ly/2A1wm53

By Catriona Pollard, Thought Leadership

When you find gratitude, you find happiness.

A few weeks ago I was standing in the pounding Indian Ocean feeling the force of the waves and I had a sense of such deep gratitude for my life, both the joy and the obstacles I’ve faced this year and the people I love.

I was standing there because a friend said, “I feel like I need a friend at the moment”. So I jumped on a plane and was there. That was about friendship, but it was also about the gratitude I have for the place she holds in my life.

Gratitude is such a simple way to access appreciation in your life. It can switch the mundane to the magical. Cultivating gratitude increases wellbeing, happiness, energy, optimism and empathy.

More importantly, when you show gratitude to the people in your life (not just at home, but at work too) it creates a kind of wonderfulness; a vibration that you can feel.

I recently ran a gratitude process with my team… and it went something like this.

Gratitude circle

With my team, we sat in a circle with one person in the centre and told them why we were grateful for them. We were specific to moments, lessons and impacts. We talked about how we had changed because of their impact on our lives

See gratitude on paper

With paper and pens (a bunch of colours of course) we answered these questions:

This year I am most grateful for:
The five things I’m grateful for this year:
The person I am most grateful for is:
Three other people who touched me this year are:
The things I did this year for other people include:
The things I feel most blessed to have in my life now are:

You can do these exercises at home and at work. As one year morphs into the next, there are so many forgotten moments and people left unthanked who contributed to our lives. With these exercises I hope the grace of gratitude invokes much abundance and love into your life – personally and professionally.

By Catriona Pollard