77. A Simple Way to Serve Others By Expressing Gratitude

Everyone needs to feel at times like they matter or that what they do matters. Expressing gratitude to those around us for the ways they have helped us and inspired us can be a beautiful way of helping others feel seen and loved…but it can also be a simple and profound way to serve. 

Listen to this episode to hear my thoughts on how you can craft a sincere ‘thank you’ that can truly make a difference in someone else’s life.

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Transcript

Melissa: Everyone needs to feel at times like they matter or that what they do matters. Expressing gratitude to those around us for the ways they have helped us and inspired us can be a beautiful way of helping others feel seen and loved.

But it can also be a simple and profound way to serve. Listen to this episode to hear my thoughts on how you can craft a sincere thank you that can truly make a difference in someone else's life.

Welcome to the Do Something More podcast, a service oriented show where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more. I'm your host Melissa Draper. Thank you so much for being here.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast.

And this episode is dropping the week before we have Thanksgiving here in the United States.

So I wanted to do it all about expressing gratitude and specifically how we can express gratitude to others and that can be a beautiful way to serve. I want to teach you how to do that so it can be impactful for the person that you're wanting to express gratitude to.

But before we get into that, I just want to give you a friendly reminder that if you want to show some gratitude to the podcast, I would love it if you could do one of three things.

Either subscribe or follow the podcasts on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen.

Number two way is to leave a review. I really love to see those, especially five star reviews. Those are the ones we're looking for.

And number three is to share an episode with a friend.

Share one of the episodes you've listened to that maybe someone came to mind that you thought would really appreciate what was being shared. Share that episode with them. So that's it.

Those three ways can be a great way to serve the podcast and help it be seen by more people who are looking for this kind of uplifting content.

So now I would love to just take a few minutes to talk with you about expressing gratitude and especially expressing gratitude to those around us. But first I really just want to emphasize that service and gratitude go hand in hand.

And I think they go in hand in hand in very natural ways. So when you actively serve others, when you're trying to help other people and you want to make a difference, I think it naturally leads to feelings of appreciation and gratitude.

It kind of just brings on those good feelings either with just interacting with other people and serving them, or by being able to share things that with others that maybe we have more of in our life.

And so if you're seeking and wanting to feel more gratitude in your life, service is a great Way to go about doing that. And then on the flip side, if you're wanting to serve others more, expressing gratitude is a great way to get you in that feeling.

Because on the flip side, the act of showing gratitude and expressing gratitude and just really realizing those things we're thankful for often can motivate us to be more giving and to want to serve others.

When you have that feeling of abundance mindset in your life, when you realize all that you have, it just really naturally brings those feelings of wanting to share that with other people, either with your time or your resources or whatever it might be.

And so it can create this beautiful cycle, service and gratitude. So if you want more of one or the other in your life, just do one or the other more, do more service.

If you're wanting to feel more gratitude, if you're wanting to do more service, start by expressing some gratitude for the things that you have. And both of those really can feed into a beautiful cycle of giving and serving and really appreciating all that we have.

So they really do go hand in hand.

But this time of year, especially, many of us are wanting to express gratitude. Many of us are doing that with some of the traditions and things that we have with the Thanksgiving season.

And I see that in my own family. I see that with friends or others. At my child's school right now, they have a thankful tree, and the kids can write things on little leaves and add it to the tree and things that they're thankful for.

I love seeing little practices like that. I've done the little turkeys with my kids when they were younger, right where they write what they're thankful for on the turkey feathers and put it on the turkey.

There's another game that I've played with my family. We do it with colored candy. So I get like Skittles or M&Ms. And I will assign different categories to each color.

So maybe green is school and yellow is church and red is family. And so we close our eyes and draw one of the candies from a bowl. And whatever color you get, you express something that you're thankful for in that category.

So if you get a green one and that's assigned to family, you say something about our family you're thankful for. If you get a yellow one that's assigned to school, you say something about school that you're thankful for.

And it's a great way to just get our kids thinking about all the many different areas of their life that they have things to be thankful for. And it's just A fun game to play.

So those are some things that I've seen this time of year. But of course, expressing gratitude, having a regular practice of sharing gratitude can be something that is beneficial all year long.

There are so many benefits to expressing gratitude. You can google the benefits of expressing gratitude and I promise you will see so many articles and studies that have been done that have shown of how expressing gratitude not only brings good things like lifting your mood or reducing stress, but it can also help with your mental health.

It's even been proven to do things like lower your blood pressure. So there are so many benefits to expressing gratitude. But I especially love that we focus on it this time of year and along with the many other things that you may be doing this Thanksgiving season, I wanted to share an idea here today of one way that you can express gratitude and also perform a beautiful act of service.

And so what is this one way? It's not rocket science.

It is of course telling someone thank you. Expressing gratitude to an individual for what they have done for you in some way, how they've helped you or encouraged you.

Now this is something that I hope is not new to anyone listening. I think many of us have experience expressing gratitude and telling the people in our lives thank you for different things.

But today I wanted to teach you a way to do it so that it can truly leave an impact. It can truly be meaningful for the person that you are expressing gratitude to.

And I really want you to have the opportunity for your thank you to make a difference.

I know I have received many thank yous myself that have truly made a difference for me and I've had the beautiful opportunity to deliver some of those as well.

So what are the parameters that I'm going to suggest? Well, here they are ways to make your thankful be truly impactful and make it a beautiful act of service.

The first is to be specific.

Be specific in the ways that that person has made a difference for you. Don't just tell them they're awesome and amazing, as cool as that is for all of us to be told we're awesome and amazing, be specific in the way that they have served you.

Number two is to use an example so you're specific. Then you use an example that illustrates that.

And we all love to hear stories and no one will admit it, but we all love to hear stories about ourselves. And to have someone else show us through their eyes how they've seen us in a good way and help them can be so powerful and so uplifting.

And I've experienced that again for myself on both sides, the power of using an example when you're telling someone thank you and the note again with a thank you for what they've done.

And then my third parameter is to put it on a card.

So yes, I have sent many a thank you through texts or even Facebook messages and things like that, and they still matter, they make a difference. But you really want to take it up a notch with your thank you, write it on a physical card, put it in an envelope and give it to that person or mail it to that person, whatever works.

And that can really add some impact.

And I know for me, I am a words of affirmation person, so this might not be what everyone does, but I have saved every nice note or every thank you that I have gotten that way in a card.

I've saved all of them. I put them in my journal or I put them in other little places. They mean a lot to me. So it means a lot when you put it on that physical card.

So those are my three parameters. Be specific, use an example, put it on a card. So I'm going to give you an example of this with a thank you that I would like to send to someone in my own life.

So as I pondered on this, I have again sent many a thank you. But for me, as I thought about telling someone a thank you in this way specifically for this podcast, I started thinking about all the people way in my past when I was younger because I don't know about you, but the older I've gotten, the more I have realized the good impact people in my life left on me and the good things they did that I just did not fully see or appreciate, of course, while I was living it.

But now, this many years down the road, I see and appreciate it so much. So today, the person I want to give a thank you to and I don't know how to reach her, I might have to go and do some homework now and see if I can reach her to give this thank you in the ways that I'm explaining to you.

But if I could, if I knew where she lived, this is the way I would do it. So it would be for my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Capis. She is one of the best teachers I had and it wasn't until years later that I realized how so impactful she was for me.

Now I could say that on a card and that would still mean something, right? I could say she was one of the best teachers I ever had. She was so impactful for me.

Thank you for all she did. And I could send that to her and it would matter and make a difference. But now I'm going to do it in this way that I'm teaching you to do.

A thank you. To be truly impactful.

So here we go. And you don't have to be wordy with these thank yous. I'm kind of wordy, but you don't have to be as wordy as I am to make a difference.

Here it is. Mrs. Cappas, I wanted to thank you for being my sixth grade teacher. And now, number one, be specific.

You gave me confidence to shine in the ways that were okay for me. You taught me that my desire to want to do well in school and to work hard were good and they could be celebrated.

You not only did that for me, but I watched as you taught all of us in sixth grade to cheer on each other as well for what each of our strengths were.

Now, number two, I'm going to leave an example with what I just said.

I remember specifically the time that I won the school's spelling bee. I came back to class, and you had everyone there ready to cheer me on.

Everyone cheered as I opened the door. I felt so important, so special.

Everyone in our class was celebrating that moment with me, and I felt seen and loved and special. This wasn't an unusual thing in your classroom. I watched over and over as we all had opportunities to cheer and celebrate different members of our class for what their strengths were and what they were good at.

So there you go. I was specific and I used an example. I finished with the final. Thank you. Thank you for being my sixth grade teacher. That confidence you instilled with me carried me through the rest of my schooling years and taught me also how to recognize and cheer other people on as well.

You truly were one of the best teachers I had, and I will forever be grateful that I was a member of your sixth grade class.

Sincerely, or. Love, Melissa. And then I might put my maiden name because that's how she knew me. And then finally, that would all be written on a card, put in an envelope, and mailed.

But of course, I will give a little caveat here. If there's someone that's really come to mind that you want to thank and you have no idea what their address is, and you're not going to do it unless you can send that Facebook message or whatever it might be, then go ahead, do that.

It's better to have it done than to not do it at all. But if you can put it on a card, do a Little research, find their address, send it on.

So that was my example.

Be specific, use examples and put it on a card.

And I truly want to give my belief that when we do a thank you this way, it can be impactful. It can really make a difference. It can be a beautiful way to serve someone who has served us and helped us.

Everyone wants to feel like they matter, like what they do makes a difference and that their actions and the life they're living matters. That's a natural human desire. Every one of us feel that way at one time or another.

We want to know that we matter. And you can really be what someone needs in that way. You can help them feel seen, feel loved, feel like who they are.

And even the way they do things is good by thanking them and using examples and being specific for what they have done for you.

So that is my challenge to you this Thanksgiving season. A way if you want to celebrate. Expressing gratitude, express gratitude to one individual in your life that has helped you in some way.

It can be past or present, it can be profound, like the example I shared, or it can be simple.

Can you imagine if there's someone that you've noticed, maybe at the grocery store every week, someone who's a cashier or someone who bags your groceries? Could you imagine if you did this kind of thank you for someone like that?

Just someone simple that maybe you don't even know their name, but you are specific with the way they have served you. You use an example of a time they really helped you.

Even if it's as simple as helping you put your groceries in your car and you put it all on a card and give it to them.

That could be so impactful for someone in your life, someone simple in your life that is maybe even just an acquaintance.

And it really can make a difference. We are all going around doing these small things each day and it can matter. So this is a beautiful way to serve, to do a thank you.

But again, be specific, use an example and put it on a card. I'm repeating that over and over again so that it comes to mind to you when you want to express this gratitude and say thank you to someone.

And of course, you don't have to stop at one. You could do multiple people. But I encourage you to do at least one person this Thanksgiving season.

Really think of someone that you would like to do this practice of thanking in this sincere way.

And I would love to hear about your experiences with it. If anyone decides to take me up on this challenge, you can message me on my social media channels. We're on Instagram @DoSomethingMore podcast or by searching for the Do Something More podcast on Facebook or I also leave links to both of those in the show notes and so I would love to hear if you have an experience doing this and especially if it's a beautiful experience.

It can be really healing to sit and express gratitude to someone and it can be so healing to hear that gratitude expressed to you and it's just beautiful. It creates so many good feelings and again, this good cycle of serving and giving and feeling that abundance mindset.

So that's my challenge to you this Thanksgiving week and the week going into Thanksgiving.

Use expressing gratitude as a way to serve and do it through a sincere thank you by being specific, using an example and putting it on a card.

Thank you so much for being here on this episode of the Do Something More podcast.

And as always this week, I hope you can find a way to do something more to help lift, inspire or make a difference.