Lessons from a year of gratitude

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” - John F. Kennedy

In March, I completed a personal, year-long project in which I concluded every week with a LinkedIn post, sharing my #gratitude for the people who had a positive impact on my career. The first post was dedicated to my parents, and then continued to explore the 30+ year journey of my career, wrapping up with a celebration of my 15th anniversary at 谷歌 .?

The undertaking was one of the most comprehensive, challenging, and rewarding projects I have ever attempted. Over 53 weeks, I shared more than 26k words in recognition of 270 people.

The story of the project has two parts, from its genesis, to what I learned along the way. Because the lessons learned are most important (and probably more interesting), I will start there…

Lessons Learned:

• Gratitude begets resilience: While my stories reflected a mostly positive emotional stance, the days between posts were sometimes filled with difficulties and disappointments. Through my own self imposed timeline, I was forced to change my mental framing every Thursday evening to write that week’s post. As it turned out, this alteration wasn’t temporary. It closed the week on a significant high, providing me with great positive energy heading into the weekend, and enabling me to start the next week on a stronger, more focused footing. This mindset adjustment provided me with a mechanism that blocked any potential for the prior week’s challenges to be compounded.

• Gratitude comes from impact, not time: Some memories of events and people from the past live far larger than the actual time they occupy on an agnostic timeline. Especially early in my career, short periods of time left indelible marks, resulting in encounters that weigh far greater for me than those who shared that space with me. In telling these stories, I had more than a few folks who were shocked and touched by the fact that something they may have seen as a passing encounter could have such an impact that it was being reflected on decades later. It made my sharing of the memories even more rewarding knowing the person never knew the positive impact and influence they drove.

• Gratitude breeds gratitude: Frequently, folks would respond to my stories with their memories of my impact on them during that time. Similar to the above, my memory was of a one directional interaction, with me receiving the weight of the benefit. Learning that the relationship was more symbiotic than I had known, and that I had a positive impact in reverse was an incredibly gratifying experience that I would not have experienced without the initial act of gratitude.

• Gratitude transcends people: When I started writing each week, the focus was on the people. But throughout the year, I was amazed at how much positive mental energy came from reflecting on some of the great times and relationships in my life. While nostalgia often brings some sadness for the loss of time gone by, there is also a sense of joyful comfort in the memories of those special people and events. Before I hit submit on a post, I would feel tremendous gratitude, not just for the people, but also for the opportunity to have had those moments in my life.?

• Gratitude elevates others: My posts and gratitude were directed at events that are, for the most part, from history. I never thought about the impact my project would have today. I received some incredible messages in response to my stories, where people not only shared my past impact on them, but also what impact my words of gratitude had on them today. One example, from a previous manager, who wrote “Your words brought a smile to my face and boosted my energy and faith. Your words are perhaps more powerful than you realize”. This sort of validation of my efforts to memorialize these stories was something I never predicted, but brought me a tremendous sense of pride and accomplishment.

• Gratitude exceeds expectations: My main objective each week was to share my gratitude for the people I learned from. A surprising byproduct was the number of times I heard from people deep within my network, or even beyond. These interactions came with new reflections of how my stories refreshed lessons from their early careers, reminded them of early influences, or even helped them re-frame the way they thought about experiences. In turn, these conversations always taught me more and gave me fresh ideas about how to approach situations or frame my own thinking.

• Gratitude fuels connections & new ideas: I never expected how invested some people would get in my posts. Beyond my regular readers and commenters, I had people who would reach out to me directly with feedback and ideas. I became so appreciative of these engagements, as the diversity of input helped my creativity and led to iteration in how I approached the project. It also fed some ideas for future content and projects.

Genesis:

Over the course of the year, I received dozens of questions about the project, my motivations, and my inspirations. Instead of a plain retelling of how it all started, I’ll provide the story through responses to the frequently asked questions I got along the way.

1) How did you start focusing on being more grateful?

Years ago, my wife started a tradition with my daughter, beginning Friday dinners with a discussion of what we are grateful for. While I participated every week, at one dinner after the 2020 COVID lock-downs, I really started to think about it. At the time, not only was I isolated from friends and family (like everyone else), but I was also feeling particularly unsettled about my career trajectory. I had been finding myself, all too often, sad and even angry. That night, I reflected on how lucky I really was... I had a job that allowed me to stay home, I had my wife and daughter close by, my friends and family were, for the most part, safe and healthy, and I was living in an age when we had the technology to stay connected remotely. Thinking that way seemed to reduce the negative emotions, and this led me back to other lessons I had forgotten about the benefits of gratitude.

2) What inspired you? Had you seen this before?

I’d been exposed to some amazing research on the benefits of gratitude, but hadn’t given it much time. When I decided to be more intentional about being grateful, I went back to these sources. Two of my favorites are Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth .

I actually got the chance to meet Adam Grant, in 2015, when he spoke to my team at a Management Summit. During the talk he walked us through research he did as part of his book Give & Take that showed some of the benefits of expressing gratitude.

Similarly, Angela Duckworth talks about gratitude a lot, especially on the No Stupid Questions podcast that she started with Stephen Dubner . She regularly explains how gratitude has the power to displace negative emotions.

Inspired by them, and others, I started playing with a number of gratitude efforts as a way to combat the sadness and angst I was feeling. However, while alerting me to the things I should be grateful for, it seemed pointless without the actual act of sharing that gratitude with those who enabled it.

This brought me to my final inspiration, Mark Hamill, who has built a habit of randomly posting “shout outs” to folks on social media. So I got to thinking… What if I took Mark Hamill’s public shout out approach, but applied it to my career?

3) How do you decide what to write each week?

When I first came up with the idea, I created chronologically sorted groups of people who I would like to thank from my Linkedin connections, along with quick notes about what I would cover for each. At first, I didn’t have an exit strategy. I just planned to write until I ran out of things to say. I also didn’t realize that there was a 3k character limit to posts, which made me rethink some of the groupings. Around the end of the second month I realized I could stretch out the stories for a full year, allowing me to bookend the project with my 14th & 15th Googleversary

4) How do you remember all those details?

I tend to be an insanely nostalgic person, and I keep everything (some of you know about my calendar). This definitely helped the initial structure. On the few occasions where there were gaps in my recollection, I would reach out to folks to make sure I was accurate. But overall, these were important enough events in my life that they left a mark… and in those situations, you tend to remember the details.

5) What do you find most rewarding?

So much of this was rewarding. From the re-connection with folks, to the engagement with my readers. But the most rewarding thing was completely solitary. Each week, the few moments after I hit submit, before anyone else had read the post, I would read the final version one more time. I would have a tremendous sense of pride at being able to close out one more week, and I would have the warm feeling of nostalgia, reflecting on that time and moment in my history, with people I care deeply about. During that short window, I would reflect on the gratitude I felt, and let the stress and angst of the week slip away.?

6) Will you post again? What’s next?

I have other project ideas, and other passions I want to spend some time on. If you haven’t figured it out already, I am an incredibly reflective person, and that will drive whatever I do next.

I recently started my second half of my first century on this planet. That is a milestone that has me thinking about how I want to leave this place better than I found it. Not sure exactly what that looks like yet… but it will definitely have an influence.?

Wrapping Up:

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” - Willie Nelson

To close, I will just again express gratitude to all of you who followed along in my journey. I wrote these for myself, but the response was more than I could have imagined. I hope the stories of those who inspired and guided me, have provided you with ideas and reflections, and maybe the inspiration to pay the gratitude forward to those who have helped you along the way. If it has, then that is just one more reward from this whole thing that I can look back on with pride.

With gratitude, Alex.