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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.

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A Choice in every Interaction

By Barbara A. Glanz

“Every person can make a difference, and every person should try.” -John F. Kennedy

I have been deeply touched by Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, based on his experiences in several concentration camps during World War II. What he found in the camps was that even under the most horrible of conditions, each man or woman had a choice in their reactions. Even though the external conditions were the same, some people reacted as saints, giving their last piece of bread to a dying person, and others as swine, ripping the bread out of the dying person’s mouth because they were too weak to fight back.

He says:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”