When I was younger, I always thought people were full of crap when they talked about how dark gloomy weather got them down. I was so full of piss and vinegar that I thought, you are just old and tired. Well, maybe now I’m the one that is old and tired but would prefer to call it being more “seasoned” than anything. With that, the weather everywhere I have been this week has been just that – very dark. It’s been raining every day, cold and windy. Plus, with the time change a few weeks back, it is literally dark when I leave the house and dark well before I get home. This kind of weather is the reason that some animals hibernate, and somedays you feel like you want to be one of them.
Add to the equation for the week a wife who is sick with the flu, a couple of grumpy kids and, oh yeah, a trip out to Iowa where the high temperature was 21 degrees and you can feel like you’ve got a double punch to the gut.
But. in all that darkness and time when you just feel like nothing is going to be bright and full of life, you get an email at 8:09 on a Tuesday morning.
Now, as an employer and person in full-time hustle mode, I do my absolute best to be sure to show a spirit of gratitude to all our employees on their birthdays and work anniversaries. I usually try to do it when I start my day with a phone call or email if I cannot reach them on a weekday and usually a text or occasional phone call on a Saturday or Sunday. I will be the first to admit that I am not perfect and miss some people’s special days, but it is something that I work at constantly to show our team a real sense of appreciation.
Now, back to Tuesday morning at 8:09 a.m.
I get an email from a person who was celebrating one year with the company. And the email was one of the most inspiring things that has ever been sent to me. An employee who was celebrating their first year with the company started out by telling me how glad they were to be there and can’t believe a year has flown by so fast, and then that was it! That was all that person said about themselves and spent the rest of the paragraphs in the email telling me how much they admired how hard I worked, the hours I worked, the commitment I had to the organization and how rare it was to find someone like me who worked so passionately at what they did.
It was breathtaking. I was totally elated not for the praise, but for the sense that someone made the point to tell me how much gratitude they had for what I was doing on a day that should have been devoted to what they were doing. My breath was also taken away because I always try to be the person who reaches out first, and this person beat me to the punch. It was still early in the morning, and I had been busy preparing that morning since about 6 a.m. for a big meeting in Iowa (where, yes, I was still freezing). Not only did this person beat me to the punch, but they beat me over the head with a sense of appreciation so sincere that it is something that I never will forget.
This person changed the shape of my mindset for that day and many days to come in what otherwise would have been a very gloomy day.