Just say it

William Arthur Ward once said, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." To me, the latter is pointless, and therefore, so is the prior. When thankful, say, "thank you." It's a simple thing with a tremendous impact.

Being gracious, saying thank you, expressing love or joy or happiness - all of these things only have the opportunity to make you, the deliverer, and the other person, the recipient, better. I've never quite understood ungrateful people - ungratefulness, I believe, stems from ignorance. Even more than those who choose to be ungrateful or ignorant, I have a lack of understanding for being thankful and grateful for someone and rarely or never telling them. How are they ever supposed to know the impact that they're having? How can they know that they are making your world a better place or doing that for others they are around? Perhaps, it's just in their nature to know what they're doing is good, but why the hell not just recognize it? 

Say thank you to the team of staff members you have who work 8+ hours a day for you or alongside you. Tell the friend who picks you up and always drives (because you hate city traffic) that you appreciate them taking over the wheel and the patience that comes with being behind it all the time. Tell your sibling who invites you over for dinner when you'd be eating at home alone otherwise that you are grateful for the meal and the company. Share with the friend that calls you just because that it made your day to be able to catch up. Don't just have the conversation and hang up without expressing what you feel. Tell the folks that greet you at the front desk every day that you love their happiness. Let the person who you spend the most time with how much you enjoy them and their goodness.

Lack of expression is not only imprudent, it's also unhealthy. 

Really, it's not good for you.

Gratitude, and expressing it, is good for your health. Here's proof from HappierHuman.com:

Gratitude increases sleep quality, reduces the time required to fall asleep, and increases sleep duration. Said differently, gratitude can help with insomnia. It makes you more likely to exercise. In an 11-week study of 96 Americans, people who were instructed to keep a weekly gratitude journal exercised 40 minutes more per week than the control group. Exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy. (Elle Woods told us that in Legally Blonde, so this is something you should already know.) Experiencing gratitude in the present makes us more likely to remember positive memories and actually transforms some of our neutral or even negative memories into positive ones.

So just say it. Say, "Thanks." Say, "I appreciate you." Say, "You are good at life." It takes ten seconds. It makes a difference, and a pretty righteous one at that.

My Third Place

Sometimes, you want to go where everybody knows your name, right? Cheers is a pretty good place to be, no matter what or where your Cheers is.

A couple of months ago I wrote about the goodness that takes place every day at 18403 Blanco Road. That is one of my third places. I could tell a million more stories about it, but a good part two took place just recently at a place where maybe not everybody, but many of the bodies know my name, Whole Foods.

To you, it may just be a grocery store, but to me, it's much more. I went to pick up my coffee a couple of weeks ago - like I mentioned in the related post, it's where I go to get my coffee with one of my favorite people in the world every day. This day, I was picking it up for the both of us. I was just about to pay, and I remembered that I had to get water on the opposite side of the store. I asked Evan, one of the baristas, who had already engaged me in conversation and had our Americanos going before I even ordered (because service comes first with these folk), if I could run and get it even though I was essentially mid-pay, and he said, "You can do whatever you want to do," with one of the most enthusiastic tones I had heard that early in the morning.

Obviously, I'm not the boss of Whole Foods, but they make us feel like we're part of the family. Simply put, they care, and you really just don't find that everywhere you go. A lot of grocery stores (and stores in general) have replaced quality service with robotic convenience. And frankly, I think that sucks. Interacting with the customer and showing them the value that they provide to the company gives that customer good reason to pay what they pay for the value that they get. Complex sentence? Perhaps. Again, simply put - you get what you pay for. It's not just a coffee. It's an experience, and an enjoyable one at that.

There are other examples - the baristas go out of their way to make the coffee just like we like it. They ask what's too much and too little, and at this point, they just know. They ask our plans, how my morning is, how my workout was, how I enjoyed that movie we talked about a week prior. When I was buying ingredients to make sweet potato brownies (the most delicious thing in the world), one of the cashiers asked what I was making. I started talking to him about the brownies, eating natural and my avoidance of sugar. He didn't just smile and nod. Instead, he told me that he had just gotten back from the Sundance Festival where he watched a documentary called Fed Up. He said he thought I would be interested in it, because of my eating habits, and he gave me the website and told me when the documentary was going to air.

Maybe it sounds like just a conversation, but if you think about it, this doesn't exist just everywhere you go. It was Ralph Nichols that said, "The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them."

Listening rules. So does caring, providing a positive experience and showing value. Every day, I look forward to this time of my day. Quisas it's because I get to spend it with one of my favorites, but it's also because it is more than a run-of-the-mill visit to the grocery store or coffee shop for me. It's an experience that makes each one of my days filled with more joy, and it's contagious, so I get to share that joy with others. It's a third place that is pretty much first in my book.*

*If you don't know about third places, or don't have one, read this article by Eleanor Brown.