What's your attitude toward gratitude?

As I headed to the Hermit Club last Friday for a luncheon presentation hosted by the Cleveland Executives Association, I was somewhat apprehensive about the subject: gratitude.

 

Gratitude!

 

Oh, my beaming smiley face. I figured they'd probably serve apple pie and fill the glasses half FULL. There would be rulers at our places to measure each other's ear-to-ear grin.

 

That's why I was, uhm, grateful when presenter Lisa Ryan, author of The Upside of Down Times, Thank You Notes Workbook and With Excellence, proved not to be the sugary optimist I feared.

 

Okay, she did begin by having us share with our table mates what had made us thankful that day. But she soon turned serious as she spoke of the stroke that left her father unable to say much more than "Thank you."

 

He expressed that gratitude so sincerely, she recalled, he quickly became the rehab staff's favorite patient. He had progressed to the point that he was going home this very day AND he was sitting in the back of the room.

 

Suddenly, gratitude seemed less blue sky-ish and more down-to-earth. Lisa went on to expand on how thanking others can be in one's own self-interest. For example, the server who expresses gratitude to customers receives tips that average 17 percent higher.

 

To be honest, my lifelong preference for melancholy -- I'm not Irish for nothing -- will make it hard for me to follow Lisa's prescription: to begin each day by noting five reasons to be thankful. But as I pondered her message I thought of how my tendency to dwell on a negative thought leads to more negative thoughts that only deepen my mood. So I resolved to counter each negative with a positive:

• When my MP3 suddenly stopped working I told myself how much safer I'd be riding my bicycle in traffic.
• When that bike had its third flat tire in the same week, I thought of how good I was getting at fixing it.
•  And when I got caught in a storm without an umbrella I thought of how the rain was probably good for my thinning hair.

 Lisa, I must admit, I'm grateful.