AN IDEA TO PROMOTE GRATITUDE
I recently got this lovely email from Carolyn Joslin from the Human Resources Department of the Southwest Florida Water Management District. I had spoken to her organization in 2006, and she currently receives my email newsletter. (You can subscribe to the newsletter at www.barbaraglanz.com) She shared with me a wonderful way that they are using one of my ideas all year around to promote appreciation, gratitude, and caring:
I wanted to let you know that a short while back, one of your newsletters mentioned an idea you had used with your family at Thanksgiving – a manzanita branch ‘tree’ for each family member to add tags stating what they were thankful for. I thought it would be a good idea to use at work to help everyone focus on positive things during the holidays, especially since we had recently learned there would be no raises this year. My husband helped me choose a young oak tree (we live in the country and have many!). We cut the top out of the tree and stripped the leaves, then placed it in a recycled flowerpot filled with mortar mix. I added some colored glass stones to the top of the mortar mix, painted the flower pot, and we were good to go! Instead of using tags and yarn, I searched online and found a maple leaf outline that I printed on paper in various fall leaf colors.
With help from our admin staff, the finished ‘Human Resources Department Tree of Thanks’ was displayed prominently in the Human Resources Department along with a fall basket holding the paper ‘leaves’, a hole punch, glitter glue sticks, pens, and various colored ribbons. Our staff and department guests enjoyed taking a ‘craft break’ every now and then to create leaves to hang on the tree. As the days went by, our tree grew more and more ‘leaves’ and was beautiful! In fact, a few ‘acorns’ and additional leaf shapes even appeared. The tree reminded us of our many blessings and helped us focus on the good things in our lives. The finale was our department’s Thanksgiving luncheon where the leaves were removed from the tree and placed in a basket. The basket was passed around the table and each staff member chose a leaf to read aloud until each leaf was read. It was very inspiring and brought us closer together as a group.
Everyone enjoyed the tree so much that we decided to keep it going for Christmas! We changed the name to ‘Christmas Wishes and Traditions’, printed ornaments copied from a coloring book onto brightly colored paper, and decorated them with glitter glue. At our holiday luncheon, we again passed the basket and read aloud our wishes, childhood memories, and cherished traditions.
We are now on our Valentine’s tree with our theme of ‘Who do we love and Why do we love them’? Of course, it has hearts in various shades of pink and red. Who knows where we’ll go from here?
We wanted to let you know how your idea blossomed and gave us so much pleasure. In fact, one of our visiting trainers liked our tree so much that she used it on her Christmas tree at home. She used folded foil gift tags and asked each of her guests to add a tag to her tree. She also told clients about the idea and two offices in Houston now have a Gratitude Tree that they plan to keep up year round! Thanks for your inspiration.
It is exciting to me to see how a positive idea can spread in such a short time. With all the issues in our world today, we need to focus on our blessings and not let all the external concerns dampen our spirits. I hope you might adopt this idea of a “Thanksgiving Tree” in your own home or organization as it will bring you special joy just like it did to Carolyn’s company.
Blessings,
Barbara
For more information about Barbara, or to sign up for Barbara’s newsletter, visit www.barbaraglanz.com.
