Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Gratitude

No Need to Send a Thank-you Card for a Thank-you Card

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As a rule of thumb, feel free to send a thank-you note whenever the impulse strikes you. But a thank-you card (or a thank-you gift) sent to you is already a token of appreciation, so putting in yet more effort into thanking somebody for thanking you is purposeless, irritating even. It’s kind of morally superfluous.

Now, failing to acknowledge a thank-you note is a universal annoyance. By all means, you can text them, “Got your note. I’m glad you had a good time,” or inform them the next time you run into them in the hallway. However, no need to perpetuate a recursion of thank-you notes.

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When to Send Customers Gifts

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Gifts are crucial marketing tools, which can help customers remember you throughout the year, not just during the holidays:

  • Send a gift after a sale. Saying thank-you does more than complete the sale—it helps build the relationship.
  • Send gifts after receiving referrals. One of the most rewarding compliments a salesperson can receive is a referral. Send a thank-you soon after getting a referral.
  • Commemorate anniversaries. Observe the day you signed your first contract with a customer, making it a special date to celebrate each year.
  • Remember birthdays. Send customers some birthday cheer, not just a card. Be creative and personalize the gift—send tickets to a sports event that the entire family can enjoy, for instance.

Idea for Impact: Business gifts can help solidify sales relationships and earn even more business. Pay attention to the things your customers enjoy and show your appreciation. As long as your gifts don’t seem patently insincere, they’re likely to welcome them.

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Don’t Underestimate Others’ Willingness to Help

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The biggest barrier to generosity may not be getting people to give but people’s reluctance to ask for what they need.

Mostly, people enjoy helping (but not so much that they can get burned out by their own goodness.) They want to give and be recognized for their giving.

People can’t give when they don’t know what others need

According to the University of Michigan’s Wayne Baker, a solution to the awkwardness of asking for help is the notion of reciprocity rings (or reciprocity bulletin boards.) Boeing, Citigroup, Estee Lauder, General Motors, Google, IBM, Novartis, UPS, and others have implemented informal networking groups to facilitate asking—and giving.

In All You Have to Do Is Ask (2020,) Baker explains that these onetime or recurring networking meetings have individuals explain one by one the specific issues they’re facing. The rest of the group taps their knowledge, resources, wisdom, or networks to help the requestor. In a sense, a reciprocity ring is an expanded version of the “daily stand-up,” “daily huddle,” or “scrum meeting” that many teams use to talk over what they’re each working on and where they need help.

Wharton School’s Adam Grant popularized the concept of reciprocity rings in his book Give and Take (2014.) He argues that reciprocity rings normalize asking and giving. They build trust and relationships by creating new and fast connections where they may not exist otherwise.

A charitable mood sets in—reciprocity rings engender altruism.

Helping others without the expectation to have that help reciprocated is the foundation of altruism. A reciprocity ring cultivates an environment of giving. According to All You Have to Do Is Ask, a reciprocity ring helps people overcome their hesitations and fears about asking for help because everyone’s making a request. Baker cites research that the takers in the groups tend to give three times more than they get. Over time, people tend to make more significant requests.

Idea for Impact: Assemble an informal network and facilitate opportunities to ask for and help one another. It’s an easy and effective way to build connections and strengthen the spirit of the community.

Take a cue from Bay Area career coach Marty Nemko, who organizes his own informal reciprocity ring. Nemko’s “board of advisors” meets for an hour every month, and each person talks about a thorny personal—or professional—problem they’re facing and requests input from others.

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How Darwin Lost His Beetles

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Around the time when naturalist Charles Darwin was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in 1828, collecting beetles was a national craze. Darwin collected avidly and became obsessed with winning a student accolade.

One day, Darwin had already collected two ground beetles when he noticed a rare crucifix ground beetle. He tried putting one of the other beetles in his mouth to clear his hand, but it discharged an acrid fluid down his throat, prompting him to spit it out and lose all three.

Darwin recollects this episode in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1898; edited by his son, the botanist Francis Darwin):

My research began when I was yet in college, at Edinburgh, Scotland, where I began to collect beetles in earnest. No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing my first beetle identified in Stephens’ Illustrations of British Insects; under the illustration were the magic words, ‘captured by C. Darwin, Esq.”

I will not soon forget one afternoon in particular.

As I was walking along, I came upon a tree where some bark was pealing loose. There I spied a beetle. Without a net or collecting jar, I snatched it up in my hand. In almost the same moment I spied a second, distinctive beetle and snatched it up into my other hand. Soon after, under the edge of the bark, I saw a third unique species of beetle. What was I to do? Two hands, three beetles, I popped one beetle into my mouth to free up a hand. In that same instant the beetle squirted an acrid fluid into my mouth. My tongue, lips and the inside of my cheeks burned with this acidic fluid. What would you do? Exactly what the beetle would want you to do. You would spit out the beetle, as did I. The third beetle, the one I was about to scoop up also escaped.

Darwin’s experience suggests a pearl of wisdom: Don’t neglect what you have chasing what was never yours. You’ll risk losing all.

Idea for Impact: Focus on appreciating what you have. Concern less about what you don’t. Practice gratitude.

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An Appointment with April

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From Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes (2000,) a story about the Spanish-born philosopher and poet George Santayana:

When Santayana came into a sizable legacy, he was able to relinquish his post on the Harvard faculty. The classroom was packed for his final appearance, and Santayana did himself proud. He was about to conclude his remarks when he caught sight of a forsythia beginning to blossom in a patch of muddy snow outside the window. He stopped abruptly, picked up his hat, gloves, and walking stick, and made for the door. There he turned. “Gentlemen,” he said softly, “I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.”

To complement, an extract from the Anglican clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley’s Letters and Memories of His Life (1877):

I am not fond, you know, of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still—hushed—awe-bound, as the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south! Then, there to praise God!”

Idea for Impact: Rekindle a Love Affair with Nature

Depending on where in the world you are, the glory of Spring has arrived.

And it has transformed the world in an outburst of renewal and regeneration.

Nature flaunts her bounty, and there’s life everywhere.

A miracle is unfolding—leaves erupting, flowers blossoming, trees budding, birds making nests, bees buzzing. Indeed, “the Earth is like a child that knows poems,” as the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke rejoiced in ushering Spring.

Beckon your fullest blossom this season by soaking up the atmosphere of the season.

Nature offers not just escape but reassurance during the current COVID-19 epidemic.

Unplug from your contraptions and get plugged into Nature.

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A Grateful Heart, A Happy Heart // Book Summary of Janice Kaplan’s ‘The Gratitude Diaries’

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At one dismal New Year’s Eve party, veteran author and journalist Janice Kaplan heard a woman gripe and grumble. While reflecting on this experience, Kaplan realized that she herself had much to be grateful for, but frequently wasn’t. She resolved to “spend the coming year seeing the sunshine instead of the clouds.”

That self-declaration was the genesis of an inspiring yearlong experiment in living gratefully and concluding that being thankful really does offer a conduit to happiness.

'The Gratitude Diaries' by Janice Kaplan (ISBN 1101984147) Kaplan recounts her transformation “from grumpy to grateful” in her book The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life (2015.)

Throughout the year, Kaplan maintained a gratitude journal and wrote down three things that she was thankful for each day. She also decided to “find one area to focus on each month—whether husband, family, friends, or work—and become my own social scientist. I wanted to see what happened when I developed an attitude of gratitude.”

Here are a few highlights from The Gratitude Diaries:

  • Kaplan started her yearlong gratitude experiment by appraising her marriage and recognized all over again what a good man her husband was. “When you expect everything, it’s hard to be grateful for anything. So I decided that now was the time to put aside impossible expectations and start appreciating [my] husband.” After she expressed appreciation to her startled husband, “the warm feelings between us [grew] stronger than ever…. Gratitude was making us both a lot happier.”
  • Discussing the importance of not overlooking one’s blessings, Kaplan writes, “We get used to something—whether a husband, a house, or a shiny new car—and then forget why it seemed so special in the first place.”
  • One month, Kaplan instituted a “no-complaining zone.” Writing about the need to emphasize life’s positives over its negatives, Kaplan mentions, “If you can change something that’s making you unhappy, go ahead and change it. But if it’s done, gone, or inevitable, what greater gift can you give yourself than gratitude for whatever life did bring?”
  • Kaplan discusses the story of her heartfelt and earnest reconciliation with her sister. This meaningful experience was the beginning a “new friendship” and had both women “appreciating the good in the moment rather than fussing about the past.”
  • Kaplan concludes, “gratitude lodged deeper and deeper into my heart and soul…. Gratitude affected how I looked at every event that happened. Being positive and looking for the good had become second nature—and that made me much happier.” And, “by living gratefully, I’d had the happiest twelve months I could remember.”

'The Gratitude Diaries' by Janice Kaplan

Recommended: Speed Read. Janice Kaplan’s The Gratitude Diaries confirms that gratitude truly is an attitude—how you feel has less to do with events that occur in your life and more to do with your attitudes. Kaplan’s experiment substantiates that keeping a gratitude journal boosts your sense of wellbeing. With interviews on gratefulness with psychologists, friends, and other thankful people, The Gratitude Diaries encourages you to pause, take stock of your blessings, and be grateful for what you have in life in order to make life more pleasant, gratifying, and peaceful.

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Kindness: A Debt You Can Only Pass On

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Paying It Forward

Life is a journey enriched by the people you share it with.

Over the course of this journey, you’ve encountered many people who have worked hard and gone beyond expectations to support you.

They’ve been a great source of pleasure, celebrated your triumphs, and stood by you in times of distress.

From time to time, they’ve even sacrificed their interests to do you a favor or two.

How, then, will you return their generosity and affection?

Sometimes, life will have moved on and you can’t pay them back, even if you want to.

The only way to return people’s favors is through your own social roles—as a parent, spouse, child, brother, sister, friend, caregiver, facilitator, supervisor, teacher, mentor, manager, leader, volunteer, benefactor, or philanthropist.

Life assigns you these roles to help you honor your debt to the people who have touched you. That is a debt that you can never fully pay back, but must simply pass on.

“Why Do We Have Children?”

The following essay drives home the importance of paying it forward.

One day after years of trying, a father finally succeeded in getting his daughter to comprehend the love he felt for her. The young woman had just given birth. Naturally the baby became the center of her world. “Now you understand how much I love you”, her father said to her.

Except on rare occasions, a parent’s love is absolute. Children come first and get the best. Savings, housing, friendship and leisure time—everything revolves around the child. What is the cause for this strong attachment? Why do we happily sacrifice our pleasures, our money, sometimes even our lives? Why do we have children?

Many explanations have been given: we procreate to perpetuate the species, out of duty, for normal and religious believes, to reassure ourselves, out of carelessness or passion. But the focus, the center from which everything starts to make sense, is the child himself. We make babies because we need them: we need them because they need us.

We give our children everything: life, support, protection, tenderness. But in giving our all to them, we become the source of everything. This bond that makes us be sons to our fathers and fathers to our sons is indestructible. Nothing can undo the fact that we are born by this woman, our mother, just as nothing can undo the fact that we are parents of this girl, our daughter. A sage Jew, Rambam, once suggested to his son the objective necessity of this parental chain. “You are not only my son”, he told him. “You are also my father’s grandson”.

We have children to honor our debt to our parents. A debt that can never be paid, only transferred. Whatever the meaning and the price may be, one must marvel at the inexhaustible abundance of this love. It was the first and remains the basis of all the loves to come.

[Source: From an issue of Reader’s Digest India circa 1989. Author unknown.]

This comports with what American feminist writer Nancy Friday (1933–2017) considered in her My Mother/My Self: The Daughter’s Search for Identity (1977): “The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.”

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No Duty is More Pressing Than That of Gratitude: My Regret of Missing the Chance to Thank Prof. Sathya

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I’d like to relate an incident that reiterated the value of human relationships and genuine outreach.

Guruswamy Sathyanarayanan, Lehigh University and Indian Institute of Science

Prof. Guruswamy Sathyanarayanan was a Fulbright scholar at the Indian Institute of Science, where I worked as a research assistant in the year 1999. “Sathya,” as he was fondly known, was a visiting professor from Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA.

Upon our acquaintance, I had observed that Sathya seemed stressed out from his work and had struggled to get his computer programs to run. I had offered to help him with computer programming and research on manufacturing processes. Our interaction had quickly evolved into a bond of mentorship. He was not particularly joyful, but was always genial and inquisitive. Over coffee breaks, we had many an interesting conversation about the relevance of Eastern Philosophy in the modern world.

At that time, I was applying for graduate school in the United States. Sathya had advised me on the schools to which I should apply based on my specific interests, the nuances of the application process, and the many components of the applications. On a particular day when my applications were due to be dispatched, he had me revise my personal essay repeatedly until he felt it was succinct enough to reflect my academic ideas and interests. When I thanked Sathya, he asked me to thank him only after receiving an admission and to keep him updated on my applications.

Three months later in March 2000, one late night, I received a call from a prestigious school. The school had admitted me to its graduate program with a 100% tuition waiver and a generous stipend for research in my area of choice, a precursor to 3D Printing. I was extremely delighted, but did not call Sathya because it was late at night.

The next morning, I learnt that Sathya had died the previous night of sudden heart attack. When I visited his home that afternoon, Sathya’s wife informed me that he had complained of uneasiness after a heated debate with a fellow-researcher on the progress of their research work. Sathya’s death came as a shock to me since he was only 47 years old and had a six-year old son.

I profusely regret not having called Sathya on that fateful night to express my gratitude for his mentorship of my application process. I am given to wonder if my success could have cheered him after his tense conversation with the research colleague—I’ll never know.

I never thanked Sathya in person, but I dedicated my master’s thesis to his memory.

Thesis Dedication: To the memory of my mentor and a great friend, Dr. Guruswamy Sathyanarayanan, Lehigh University

Call to Action: Practice Gratitude

There’s plenty of anecdotal and empirical evidence that practicing gratitude can considerably increase our sense of social well-being and happiness, yet we fail to acknowledge our blessings and thank people who’ve made a difference in our lives.

“The learned have prescribed penance for the murderer of a pious man, a drunkard, a thief or for one who has violated a solemn vow. But there is no pardon for the ungrateful,” asserts the Panchatantra, a collection of animal fables from ancient India.

Dear readers, there is no excuse for not conveying your feelings to your loved ones today. There is no excuse for not expressing your gratitude and appreciation today. There is no excuse for not taking a few minutes of your time to check-in on somebody who has influenced your life with his or her gift of kindness.

NOW is the time to appreciate the people who have helped you. This is your opportunity to do it—RIGHT NOW, while there is time.

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