If you, like me, are still scrolling through email today, you’re hoping to check easy things off your list.
Try this: List three things you’re grateful for.
I’ve been doing this more or less every day — at the suggestion of Anne, one of my Adamantine colleagues — for the better part of a year. The idea is to give thanks for the non-obvious.
It has been a real-life gamechanger for me.
You might resist. If so, know this: I was once just like you.
I wasn’t born giving thanks for things — quite the opposite. Even when I first moved to Colorado in 1996, I was inclined toward doldrums and drama.
These days I choose to cultivate a different life — one into which I invite gratitude and grace. I’ve been inspired to do so by the many game-changing leaders in oil and gas I work and talk with. These leaders make crystal clear: Gratitude and grace in the workplace are gamechangers. These qualities slow you down, help you see the big picture, and help connect you with your biggest superpower as a leader — everyone else in your company.
On this day to give thanks, here’s my longer list of what I’m grateful for. What’s on yours?
- My health. Seems a bit obvious in a pandemic, admittedly. However, the past few years I’ve struggled with chronic migraines, and now I can really appreciate the blessing of a day full of energy and free of pain. Yay today!
- You, the reader. You give me a reason to pull together my optimism, articulate my best thoughts, and strive to make a difference.
- The progress of incrementalism (aka getting older and seeing the long view). Because I have more, ahem, time on my side, I can see that small efforts (like daily gratitude!) or writing a weekly email add up to something meaningful.
- The occasional grace of teenage boys. Once in a while I get a “I love you, mama” said with a kind of sincerity that can carry one through a pandemic.
- Daily walks with a guy I still like. In 2021, Brian and I will celebrate 20 years of marriage. Lucky me!
- The miracle of a company with a crazy vision. We are five years in, and somehow I get to run a company where we work with an industry we love in order to build bridges to the future that should be impossible.
- Interns who stay. I haven’t yet written about Gen Z, because I’m busy learning from Scott and Kelsey how much they have to offer the present and the future.
- Work soulmates. Is there such a thing — never mind two? If so, I’ve found them in Anne and Lindsey.
- The 2021 holidays. In the greater Denver area, we have a huge, crazy, fun Schuller clan, whom I used to see at least monthly, and it was one of the great joys of my life. I miss them terribly and look forward to 2021 holidays with all of them healthy.
- The pecan pie. That I’m going to make today.
Wishing you and yours (alone or together) a wonderful Thanksgiving.
