I know I have heard plenty of times how powerful gratitude can be. I experienced it first hand when I expressed gratitude to my coworkers that have been instrumental in my career success and the success of the project that recently came to a close. I noticed that it washed away any frustrations I could possibly have since I focused on the truth of why these people matter to me. Those truths led to such powerful feelings of love and connection that it was impossible to have any feelings of frustration.
I realized that I wanted to continue this practice. In my mind, I wanted to get bold and I wanted to give a Thank you card to two members of upper management!
Last Friday, one of my managers quite literally exploded at me about a job that needed to leave the department. He came at me and quite literally yelled, ‘This order, do you understand how important this is? What do we need to do, who do we need to kill (while choking the air), to get this fucking order out? I am getting run up the fucking flagpole. I don’t care what you need to do! Just get it done! Don’t work on anything else, just do it!’
I think in the past if I had seen this behavior, I would have panicked. I was remarkably calm the entire time and also very understanding. I actually felt connected to what he was feeling because I had gotten that frustrated and stressed as well. I told him I’d get it done, and while that turned into being a whole disaster, I did end up finishing it on Saturday.
When I came in on Saturday and finished that order, I then finally got to write the cards I had been planning about for my upper management. I thanked both of them for their leadership during such a challenging project (and global pandemic). They taught me the importance of doing and not thinking which has truly helped to balance me out. I thanked my director for giving me a letter of recommendation.
I had a slight feeling of panic that my director might see this as some sort of passive-aggressive attack since he literally just yelled at me, but I was confident with my words.
They both reached out and messaged me over messenger/ email to thank me for the cards. I asked one of them my question, ‘If there is one book the developed you into the person you are today, what would that book be?’. I hope he responds.
