Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: gratitude

  • Karl Shares Six Words… #52


    Reluctant gratitude unexpectedly breaths new life.

     

    Karl Edwards

  • Clippings from Don: Gratitude Work-Out

    “Drop and give me 50 push-ups and 25 thank-you’s!”

    If you’re looking for a new exercise routine, try gratitude.

    Melinda Beck offers a wonderful peek at research demonstrating the health benefits of expressing appreciation and gratitude in the Wall Street Journal. (Click here for the full article.)

    From her article, “Philosophers as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans cited gratitude as an indispensable human virtue, but social scientists are just beginning to study how it develops and the effects it can have.”

    She even suggests seven ideas for incorporating thanks into your lifestyle if regular gratitude feels like a stretch.

    In our culture we experience much moral reasoning as a negative, coercive force to be resisted. To hear that we “should” be grateful or we “ought to” count our blessings like the imposition of someone else’s values upon our own instead of the wise experience of those who have gone before.

    So we ignore the ancients whenever their advice annoys us. Until, that is, science corroborates their “knowledge.”

    And so it is now with gratitude. Thankfully (pun unavoidably appropriate) science demonstrates specific and concrete health benefits to being thankful.

    Read the full article. Begin your gratitude work-out today.

    Voracious reader friend Don Silver always has an eye out for what interests me. Clippings from Don is a column where I pass on some of these articles, stories and resources to you.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #5: Practicing Gratitude

    thought-leadersThe pressures of work and leadership are many. The tough economy merely compounds and complicates these concerns.

    I believe the leader is responsible for maintaining perspective in the midst of all these pressures. Keeping things in perspective for him or herself, and keeping things in perspective for the team.

    While a variety of means are available to the leader, Benefiel reminds us in this week’s chapter of the importance of gratitude as a perspective provider.

    The beauty and power of this insight lies in its integrity. Gratitude is good for the soul, good for bringing valuable perspective to a situation, and good for building of trust and collaboration into relationships. Gratitude is correcting, restorative, renewing, and generative.

    Of all the gifts a leader can bring to the team, gratitude belongs at the core. No other leadership function can endure without it. Not focus, not direction, not vision, not organization, not team building, not accountability, not confrontation, not planning, not communication… you get the idea.

    Being a workplace culture builder myself, I’m partial to Benefiel’s (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Working Gratitude

    loving_mondayThat we have jobs is not to be taken for granted in this economy. Many of our friends, neighbors and family members do not.

    There is one sense where gratitude is an appropriate response to good fortune. Whether you direct your gratitude to the personal God of your faith tradition or somewhere else, we understand deep within that thanks are fitting… even necessary.

    In another sense we have come to experience that giving thanks is good for us. Gratitude helps us keep much that is difficult about our jobs or annoying about our co-workers in perspective. We find that feelings of overwhelm, discouragement and resentment are tempered when revisited from the point of view of the gift recipient.

    To live in a time where many people do not have work can heighten our sense of personal gratitude.

    We say, “Thank you,” not out of moral obligation, but out of careful stewardship of the human spirit… our own spirit… which cannot operate without refreshment.

    Functioning as a gift recipient is an entirely different frame of reference than functioning as an overlooked employee, a taken for granted team member, or a faceless cog in the machinery.

    Gratitude is good for the soul and invigorating to the spirit.

    For what might you give thanks as you begin this week?!

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Loving Freedom

    loving_mondayMany of us Americans are off of work today.

    The 4th of July falling on Sunday results in most workplaces granting a holiday on Monday.

    It seems fitting to acknowledge that our conversations about work, careers, and the choices that meaningful and rewarding experiences of each entail, are only possible in a free society.

    Freedom and security create the opportunity we have of hard-working, fun-loving teams of energetic, engaged and dedicated individuals designing workplace cultures that bring them alive during the day, provide for their families during the week and transform the world over time.

    Even when the worst of work life in America is experienced, there are means for getting help dealing with a bad boss, a stale career,  exploitative practices, and/or criminal excesses.

    And so we celebrate Independence Day with the conscious intention of both treasuring and seizing the opportunities our freedom has bought for us.

    Loving Monday is loving freedom. It’s great to have a day off of work, and it will be great to get back to work.

    Happy Birthday, America!