gratitude letter

My favorite assignment I give all year is asking my students to write a letter of gratitude to someone and then read it to them.  Any assignment that I give my students I do myself.  So, it became clear to me that I needed to get on a plane to read my letter of gratitude to my father. 

Dear Dad, 

I am truly thankful for all the support you have given me throughout my life.  When I was younger you let me try things even though you knew they were not going to work.  You realized that there were times that I just needed to learn on my own and could (or would) not take the advice of a more experienced person.  You never said I told you so when I failed but were there to support me and make sure that I learned from my mistakes 

You taught me that winning was a good thing but loving the journey was the more important thing.  How to make the boredom of practice fun by making it somewhat competitive.  I was able to take that with me even in the pizza business when we had contests who could fold boxes the fastest or could we answer every phone call in one ring.  It still makes me smile to picture people sprinting to the phones to get them in one ring. 

You made me realize that money was not the important driver of the world, but people were.  In business my two driving practices were to take care of our people and customers better than anyone else in the world.  I think what allowed me to focus this way was that I was never driven to make a lot of money.  Family and friends were what was important to you and rubbed off on me. 

Thank you most importantly for your unconditional love 

With deep appreciation and gratitude. 

Please do not miss the opportunity to tell your friends and family members how much they mean to you.  Just make the call, send the card or a text.  Do not worry if it is worded perfect the receiver will most definitely appreciate the thought. 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. 

Guest blog from Angela Duckworth

• Playbooks
  • Creativity
  • Curiosity
  • Gratitude
  • Grit
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Honesty
  • Intellectual Humility
  • Proactivity
  • Purpose
  • Kindness
  • Self-Control
  • Social Intelligence
• Thoughts of the Week
• About Us
  • What is Character?
  • Research Network
  • Educator Summit
  • Team

View All

The Soul of Empathy

Getting, not taking, perspective

October 20, 2019 | Gratitude, Social Intelligence

After I buckle my seatbelt and open a book, waiting for the captain to announce our departure, a flight attendant walks down the aisle and, to my surprise, plops down into the open seat next to me.

“I’m flying home,” she explains. “Sometimes my route doesn’t take me back, so the airline flies me on the next available flight.”

A few minutes later, our actual flight attendant approaches and asks if we’d like anything to drink. When he returns with my order, I say, absently, “Thank you.”

But when my seatmate’s order comes, she looks the flight attendant in the eye, smiles, and says, “Thank you so much.”

Maybe they know each other, I think. But as the flight progresses, it becomes obvious that they are no more acquainted than she and I.

And yet, after each interaction, my seatmate locks eyes again, smiles, and says: “Thank you so much.”

When I get off the plane, I think about the difference between her gratitude and mine. I was polite. She was empathic. The difference, I think, was that she
really knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that “thank you”—and I didn’t.

This four-minute empathy video created by the Cleveland Clinic begins with this question from Henry David Thoreau: Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? And it ends: If you could stand in someone else’s shoes, hear what they hear, see what they see, feel what they feel, would you treat them differently?

We can all agree, it’s important to increase interpersonal understanding.

Conventional wisdom says that we should try to see things from the other person’s perspective, imagining what it would be like to, say, walk a mile in another person’s shoes. Social intelligence matters.

However, recent research shows that mentally switching roles doesn’t work nearly as well as we might think. There’s little point to my guessing what it might feel like to be a flight attendant. Instead of imagining how other people are feeling, says psychologist Nick Epley, simply ask them directly. It’s less about perspective taking, more about perspective getting.

Don’t assume that you can easily switch perspectives with another person.

Do ask people how they see things and show them, by listening intently, that you really want to know.

Should we spend money on high school sports and extracurricular activities?  That was the discussion (which turned heated) I was having with one of my friends.  His main argument was why waste the money on these extracurricular activities when most students do not even pursue them in college. 

While I agree with my friend that most students would not become college athletes, I still think the main reason for extracurricular activities is the transferable skills you can learn 

My first argument was that in most sports and activities students learn that repetition is important in requiring success.  That they need to practice getting better and that while they are practicing, they are benefitting from the feedback provided by their coach.  That repetition and feedback is a key to learning.  

Secondly, you learn how to deal with failure.  In baseball for example the best hitters fail 6 out of ten times.  Most athletes go through a period in which they are forced to learn from their mistakes in order to improve as a player. These activities teach you that it is okay to fail and how to bounce back up. 

Thirdly, these extracurricular activities often allow students who struggle in school to shine.  Giving students a place in the school house in which they feel good about themselves.  These activities are often the seeds in which their passion grows. 

So, we do not have high school sports or extracurricular activities to win championships.  Instead these activities are put in place so our students will learn transferable skills that they can use in school and throughout their life.  As coaches and teachers we must make sure that the emphasis is not only on winning but on development of life skills. 

Guest blog on how you learn values from a part time job

Money was the only motive.  It was the one thing I intended to gain from enduring 6-hour shifts on summer nights at my local Olive Garden™️. At that point, I thought I had my life pretty figured out: good grades, great friends, a clean reputation as an approachable and modest guy who could roll with the crowd, activities that I pursued passionately, and an ability to focus in high pressure situations.  I just needed some spending money.

And then I actually started bussing tables and realized that my outlook was like a soggy breadstick—not technically wrong, but falling so short of the profound reality of the warm, velvety firmness of a fresh breadstick.  I got a lot more than money from my job.  I know, it doesn't sound that enlightening to work at the fine-dining establishment of, well, Olive Garden, but I'll express to you what the boss-man told me: "This ain't no teeny-bopper summer job scooping ice cream!  This is the real deal, baby: Olive Garden, we're an $8 billion company!"  And I must confess, being on the very professional OG Busser Team 3 changed how I viewed high-stakes performance and my own successes.

I thought I knew what humility was.  I didn't.  Humility isn't being really good at something and not talking about it.  Humility isn't being modest or feeling uncomfortable when someone touts your accomplishments for you.  Humility isn't reminding yourself that you are only one person, one regular guy.  What truly humbled me was walking in to my job and finding myself to be the least skilled, the least efficient, the least valuable.  That was foreign to me.  I am often a strong performer in a class, or one of the better musicians in a band; even with sports, I might not have been among the best on every team I’ve played on, but I certainly was not the worst.  Admittedly, I was a rookie busser, but that didn't change the simple truth: I was the worst.  Adapting to that meant completely changing my mindset.  In the beginning, I had to concede that I was the one who needed help and was weakest—and then transform myself from the weak link into a dependable teammate.

I thought I knew what it meant to be so focused, so driven, so desperate to succeed with every fiber of your being... and then clutching it out as if by fate.  I've poured out all the verbal virtuosity I could muster onto an 8.5x11-inch paper in one night; I've radiated laserbeams of concentration with my fingers flying across the keys of my saxophone and my brain 100% locked in; I've summoned every iota of energy on the field or the track in championships. But going to work made me realize that I still knew nothing about delivering under high pressure.  The achievements that are important to me are important - but not as important as the check that the single-mother bartender, Lenaya, is depending on to feed her kids, nor as important as the tip that the waiter at Table 106, James, urgently needs to pay his rent on time, nor the bonus that the 57-year-old busser, Antonios, is so ardently toiling for to pay his daughter's legal expenses for immigration.  The stakes are higher than any championship.  I'd volunteered at soup kitchens and witnessed struggling people right before my eyes, but external views alone don't truly allow single motherhood, rent deadlines, and other real issues to be more than abstract concepts. 

I came to the understanding that the survival of the teammates to my left and right was partially dependent on me, and that made those problems not necessarily more real, but more personal.  Their worries became things that weighed ever so slightly upon me, too, and that's how I gained some empathy, not just sympathy.  The desire to gain my coworkers' respect and trust motivated me more than a biweekly check. I never would've felt that kind of motivation if I "rolled with the crowd" and scooped ice cream with a gaggle of other teenagers.  Olive Garden gave me more than just a paycheck; it added new depth to my values.