The Gratitude Edition

I am having one of those weeks. A pile of small challenges amidst the regular load and pace of professional and family life. Nothing major. A dropped and destroyed cell phone. Bad traffic. An overload of kid’s homework projects. Small things really.

So, on this day before American Thanksgiving Day, I woke up being mindful of everything I have to be grateful for. I am grateful to have your attention. I am grateful for the privilege of advising you and thousands of others by doing things I love to do - coaching, consulting, writing and speaking. And I am grateful for the role my clients let me play in making significant changes in their careers.

• What are you grateful for in your professional life?
• What is going well?
• Do you get paid to use your natural talents and abilities?
• Do you get to work with great people?
• What kind of impact are you making?
• Do you get paid to work in a field that you find deeply interesting and engaging?
• Are you learning and developing?
• If your job isn’t going as well as you’d like, can you reframe it as an opportunity to learn something about yourself - where you fit best, for example - and be grateful for that opportunity?
• If you are in the midst of job search and feeling down about your progress, can you be grateful for the opportunity to develop your work search skills, or to meet new people, or to have the opportunity to search for and find a job that really fits?
• Recognize your ability to rise to and take on the challenges in at work.

It is important to give thanks, but there is more to it. The *skill of gratitude* is a key element in your happiness. And what I have seen countless times over the years, is that career success often comes from an ability to appreciate the good and the bad, to learn from it, and then to lever those experiences to make changes and play a bigger game. When you can derive meaning from your experiences, then you can do something about them. This is a much more empowering position to adopt than the opposite.

I invite you to use the comments feature here to share your own stories. What are you grateful for? And if you are faced with a challenging situation in your professional life and are having trouble being grateful, tell us that. I and other readers would love to hear from you.

And as a way of showing my gratitude, I am offer all mailing list subscribers 10% of any service purchases between today and midnight, Tuesday, November 27th. If are not subscribed as of right now and want to take advantage of this offer, please use the sign-up box at the top of this page, and we will send you the discount code.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you celebrating this weekend. Safe travels.