Last week I was at a conference for Christian Women which was fantastic. It was a great few days with lovely friends and one of the things that really came out of it for me was about gratitude. There were people I was there with and people who were talked about, stories that were told, experiences that were shared that showed me just how lucky I am. It made me think of the saying “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” which if you’ve never heard it before, means don’t count on something before it happens or expect all of your hopes to be fulfilled – now if you’re like me, I’m there already with the counting chickens, I was on Facebook the other day and someone was talking about how they were looking at a new home and they’d mentally moved into it and I said that I do that ALL the time. I’ll find a property, I’ll fall in love with it, I’m living there in my head planning exactly how it’s going to be. Our home isn’t even on the market yet! That might be a little foolish, maybe counting your chickens before they’re hatched ISN’T always a great idea, although I do think a bit of positive visualisation isn’t always a bad thing.
But how often do we count our chickens AFTER they’ve hatched? How grateful are we for what we already have? Or are we so focussed on where we want to be that we forget about where we are now?
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Today I made a list of things that I’m grateful for and I started with obvious things – my family, friends, nice place to live, health – that kind of thing – and then I thought of the different areas of my life and what I’m grateful for there. One of those was of course, my business.
I was able to make a pretty big list – let me share some of those things
– I have lovely clients
– I get really great, thorough feedback
– my clients tell me nice things
– my clients do things for me!
– money!
– I get to work on some absolutely fantastic projects!
– some of my clients become friends
– I LOVE my job
Thinking of all these things that are great about what I do, makes me smile and I really wanted to make YOU smile today.
I’ve made a printable for you, which you can print out every week and fill in every day with good things that you are happy about in your business – counting the chickens that you’ve got now. This should make you feel really great about yourself because even though running a business is not the easiest thing in the world, even when things are not going too well, there’s bound to be something that’s keeping you going. Great feedback, learning something new, gaining a new contact, sending an invoice, managing to actually finish you accounts – whatever!
I find that sometimes I get lovely things from grateful clients and sometimes I get thank you cards from suppliers for sending work their way and I love that too.
This has really made me think about how I express gratitude to my clients and suppliers myself and I have some ideas which I am going to put into practice because I really am grateful to all these people for either hiring me to work on a great project and being wonderful clients with it, or for providing an excellent service which helps me run my business better or in many cases, for recommending me to someone else. I did a quick google search and found this quote from David Horsager:
“My own academic research on trust has revealed not only that gratitude makes a difference but that people don’t require big gestures, just heartfelt ones. Simple but genuine thank-yous or small, handwritten notes of appreciation can mean the world to people. So if it’s so easy, why don’t we do it more often?“
This is so true. Two words are not difficult to say! So I’ve thoughts of a few simple things you can do to show gratitude to people in your business, these could be your clients, your suppliers, your staff – anyone who deserves it:
– Send them something – maybe a card, or a handwritten note or even a present. I have also created some Thank You printables, which you can print out, fill in and give to someone. Download them below.
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– Tell them how grateful you are – remember to SAY thank you.
– You could write a blog about them.
– You could mention them on social media.
– You could recommend them to someone who needs their services.
– Zig Ziglar said “Our favorite attitude should be gratitude” – he even made a wall of gratitude – so that’s something else you could consider to show people how grateful you are for them.
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