It hasn’t been an easy year, and I won’t be sad to say goodbye to 2024. I look at 2025 as a complete reset and a time to focus on positivity, hope, and community.
Meanwhile, having just experienced the American holiday of Thanksgiving, I am struck by my gratitude for everything that happened (and even the things that didn’t happen) this year.
What helped me get to this place? A simple check-in, where I ask myself: “With what eyes do I judge this situation?
I won’t go into all the options here. You will probably understand what I mean when I say that we all have child eyes, adult eyes, cynical eyes, ego eyes, etc.
I have gotten into the habit of asking myself what lens colors my judgment in any situation. Next, I try my gratitude lens.
Understanding the mission of gratitude
Returning home recently on a cross-country flight, I had an unusual experience. As my travel companions and I waited for the flight to take off, we listened to the usual dings, dongs and announcements.
Then the pilot came down the aisle and introduced himself to everyone. Every person.
When speaking to the business travel veteran sitting in seat 3C, he joked about commuting 2,500 miles a day. When he spoke to the nervous woman sitting in seat 10A, he reassured her that today’s flight would go smoothly and without incident. When he arrived at the family with the crying toddler, he offered him baby talk, comforting words and a candy.
When the captain passed my seat on the way back to the cockpit, I asked him if he did this every flight.
He said: “You know, people either hate our company or they love it because of a lot of things that I have no control over. My team and I play such a small role that it would be easy to do less. No one would notice. But we do what we do anyway. I’m happiest if my crew, my passengers and I all have a great experience. Having gratitude for all of this makes the work better.
His look made me think of my grandfather, who asked me, “What experience have you created for someone today?” This question was his way of teaching me that when you create a positive experience for another person, you also experience that positivity.
This captain and his crew were a living testimony to this idea.
All the usual trappings of the flying experience were still there: the usual invitation to apply for the partner’s credit card, the standard branded content from both the automated systems (the preflight instruction video) and real humans.
But looking through the lens of gratitude, the pilot and crew created the best possible experience for others, thereby creating a better experience for themselves.
‘We’re getting there (it’s a privilege)
This lesson also applies to marketers. In a year like the one we’ve all been through, a lot of things feel like a series of “we have to do’s.” We need to complete the second phase of the marketing plan. We need to create another element of thought leadership. We need to get our act together to measure our impact.
But what if you shifted that lens to “we’re getting there” instead? “I have to write my column for the CMI this week” becomes “I can write this column every week”.
That’s how I feel.
It can sometimes feel like the experiences your content or marketing creates are just a drop in the bucket of the overall customer experience. No matter what you do, your business will likely get some great ratings and some not-so-great ones.
People may hate some of your campaigns. People might like some of your other campaigns. Regardless, there is always room for improvement. Your work is never “done.”
You always have a choice. You can do your job by the book, resigning yourself to the idea that any experience you create has a tiny effect.
Or you can commit to creating remarkable experiences, one after another, and feel grateful for succeeding in doing so.
I promise there is a difference.
The prism of gratitude
Gratitude is an extraordinary lens at work in our personal relationships. If you look at conflict and the community you create through the lens of gracious gratitude, then you get:
Create the next great business strategy or brand Code your next project Visit friends at dinner Discuss politics at dinner
Even the latter becomes a privilege.
In its own way, gratitude represents evolutionary change and – yes – hope. You may or may not like the direction or source. You may feel discouraged and dismayed by the anger this may cause. But you can always be grateful that it causes us to think or act differently.
I am deeply grateful to my family, friends, colleagues, clients and everyone I have the opportunity to interact with every day.
But I’m also grateful for everyone I don’t know, don’t like, and may never realize the impact (good or bad) they’ve had on me.
I remember this quote from Albert Schweitzer: “I always think that we all live, spiritually, by what others have given us during the significant hours of our lives. »
What remarkable experience will you create tomorrow?
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
