30 thank you in 30 days… Just do it!
For the last 7 months, I have been absorbing everything I can about burnout and work-related exhaustion syndromes. I read books. I parsed hundreds of pages of articles online. I watched videos, TED conferences, anything I could get my hands on. I even did 2 Coursera classes on the subject of well-being and resilience.
Why did I invest all this time to read and watch all this stuff?
The answer is simple: Everyday I notice that people around me are exhausted. We Canadians in the workplace struggle. We are tired. We don’t sleep well. We have no time for anything else than work and home chores. We mourn the loss of our free time. We daydream about freedom and we talk about living a slower, simpler life. The reality is… we are emotionally drained. Today, some have faked an illness to stay home. Today, some of us have lost the meaning their work and they went mindlessly around all day, doing repetitive tasks they don’t care about while keeping an eye on the clock that will say when it’s finally time to go home.
You know what? I get it, life is hard and even sometimes, it really sucks. And me? I just wanted to help, to give back a llittle. I didn’t have the tools. So I took it upon myself to learn.
Last month, I reached a point where I decided that I had read enough. More reading does not lead to more knowing or more wisdom… It’s just more information that really…doesn’t change anything. The problem in our society is not the lack of knowledge, it is the lack of concrete action. Most of us know what to do to be healthier and live happier lives, we just don’t do it. The ultimate manifestation of procrastination is over thinking and over analyzing.
You know what? Last month, I just had a kind of ỊEureka! moment. It came to me as a flash
Just do it! Stop thinking, stop overplanning, Just do it!
November 11, 2019, I started to Just do it and I gave myself my first resilience building challenge: every day for 30 days, I would say the simplest and yet most powerful 2 word combination in the English language: Thank you!
December 12, 2019, one month later, i can say that the impact on my life was… unexpectedly awesome! It started like an existential ripple. What could a few more words spoken added every day do to my life? Simple, it overflowed with positive feelings. I had moments of awe as I gradually discovered what an authentic “Thank you” meant to people, what it did to them. The emotional resonance I got from expressing a bit more gratitude every day still gives me goosebumps and chills.
Gratitude is one of the powerful emotions that I am convinced can heal our lives and our workplaces.
Today, my friends, I challenge you to “just do it!” and #Say30ThankYousIn30Days
Please share.
Thank you!
Original post Facebook, December 2019
Martin Pham Dinh 