The Happy and Prosperous Blog

I’ve written before in this blog about Gratitude. When I was commenting on the Science of Getting Rich, I wrote about the author’s convictions regarding being grateful for what we have and what we will have. More recently, I wrote about the Virtuous Spiral in which I suggested that the more grateful we are for what we have, the more we will have to be grateful for.Today I want to talk about the related idea of Appreciation. I looked up definitions for the word and the one I liked best was ‘To recognize the quality, significance, or magnitude of’.

Recognise

The way I think about this is that gratitude is something I do internally and appreciation is something I do externally - like outward gratitude !

I am grateful for a lot of things and mostly I keep that to myself. Sometimes, I take the next step and say to someone that I appreciate something they have done or that I appreciate something about them. This last one is the most challenging one for me but I am getting better at it. Going back to the definition, it’s about saying that I recognise the significance of something they have done or a quality that they have, be it patience, calmness, insight, whatever.

How do you feel if someone thanks you for something you have done ? What if someone gives you a compliment ? What if your boss says thank you for something you did at work. My guess is you would feel good - it would lift your spirits.

In any team - whether at work or at home - giving appreciation, I think, is essential to keep up motivation and support. Let’s do more of it - try it with you partner, your friends, the children. Take care though to keep it genuine - empty praise can have the opposite effect.

Onwards and Upwards

Maybe this is the Law of Attraction again. If you give appreciation to someone, then they are likely to do more of whatever it was you appreciated ! It is positive reinforcement. What goes around, comes around. Don’t wait for someone else to start the process - start it yourself, start now. Start small if you like and thank someone for something they have done. Then work up to appreciating something about someone - a quality they possess. Let me know what happens.

Thanks for reading.

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