little things mean a lot

Day 64

“Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people – your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way.”

– Barbara Bush

I’ve had my LinkedIn account since it first came out about 13 years ago. I was probably one of the first people to create a profile because a friend knew the people who started it, and asked a bunch of us to sign up while it was still in it’s infancy. I don’t spend much time on LinkedIn, but I have connections to people I’ve worked with throughout my career on the site that I don’t have contact with on any other social media, so it’s an important service to me.

I decided to update my profile yesterday. I added ‘Founder at Kurilane’ as a placeholder, and intended to go back and fill in some more details later. Before I got a chance to add more information, I received about a dozen “congratulations” messages in response to my small update. I know that they’re automated messages, but I’m so appreciative that people clicked the button to send the message.

As I was catching up on my LinkedIn, I found some unread messages from former colleagues that were 5 years old! I wrote back, apologized for the five year delay in responding to their emails, and noticed that I was feeling a real sense of nostalgia and gratitude for all the people I’ve had the honor to work with and get to know over the years. It got me thinking about how much of our lives we spend at work, and how important it is to not only be passionate about what we do for a living, but we must also enjoy our work environment.

When I was 7 years old, I had a t-shirt that had a picture of a little boy and girl standing in a red heart facing each other, with a caption that read “little things mean a lot“. I didn’t know what the caption really meant but it was my favorite shirt. I loved it so much that I held on to it long after I outgrew it. The image popped into my head today as I was reading through those emails.

My inner 7-year-old might not have fully understood the meaning behind the caption on her favorite shirt, but this grown-up gets it. It’s a message about gratitude – it’s about appreciating the details in your life, being grateful for all the blessings you have, acknowledging the people who enrich your day, and about taking the time to cherish every step along the way to your destination.

We’re all in a hurry to get to wherever we’re going on a daily basis and in life, but we must remember that how we travel through our journey, what we believe, how we think, what we focus on, and how we react shapes the path that leads our way.

Although being passionate about your work is vital to living a life of abundance and prosperity, creating a work environment that allows you to thrive in is just as important. Sometimes, that’s not so easy to do with stressful deadlines, personality conflicts, and a whole bag of other stuff to contend with.

Here are a few tips on how to keep a positive attitude at work, even if you don’t love what you’re doing right now, and are hoping to make a career change. I talked more about how to get started on making a change here.  These small acts will go a long way to ensure that you’re sending out the right vibes to manifest your dream job.

Be Grateful

If you love your work and especially if you don’t love your work, find little things in your day to be grateful for. By being truly thankful for the small things, the Universe will give you more things to be grateful for.

Expect The Best

Whether you’re the boss or the low-man on the totem pole, we all have opinions about our colleagues, and what we expect from them. Be mindful of the beliefs you have formed about your co-workers and if they’re less than stellar, change your opinion. Believe they will perform the way you’d like them to, you’ll be surprised at what a difference it will make.

Choose A Better Reaction

When things don’t go your way, instead of reacting based on your underlying beliefs, take a moment to really think about why you are reacting the way you are. Is it really a reaction to an outside situation, or is it a conditioned response based on your beliefs? Chances are, if you take a moment to think about it, you’ll find that you can choose to see the situation in a different light.

We spend a majority of our adult lives working so we can acquire “the big things” – the house, the career, the spouse, the lifestyle, and that’s what we’re socialized to think is important, and it is – I’m the first in line to want my mansion and my billion dollar bank account, but at the end of the day, when you look back on the things that matter, you might find it to be a different list, with the people that you’ve shared your life with, including family, friends and co-workers at the top.

Of course, the big things bring joy, but the ones that make your heart skip a beat or bring a tear to your eye are usually the little things that you experience along the way. Whether it’s a long lost email from an old colleague, an acknowledgment of a milestone along the way, appreciating the great people you work with, buying an extra sandwich for your co-worker who’s too busy to get lunch, or performing a random act of kindness for a stranger, those are the moments that define our success…those are the moments that make our journey so glorious.

Embrace Your Journey.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!