Thanksgiving

In doing business of course, there's a bonus for being thankful to your customers.  They'll be less likely to think about going somewhere else.

 

But a more spontaneous general attitude of gratefulness is a mark of decency. When children aren't appropriately thankful, they ought to find themselves up in their rooms thinking about it. True thankfulness, whether it's to your host, your parents or your Creator is like wearing shoes, eating with a fork and other good manners - it civilizes you.

Even more importantly than its effect on others, being thankful gives you a heart attitude that will keep you from a prideful death-spiral that ultimately seeks to be beholden to nothing and no one.  To the contrary, a heart of real thankfulness is one that evokes generosity, as it did with Edward Winslow in his description of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, "...and although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

In tough economic times, you'll see more businesses opting for the default behavior (Walgreen's), which makes the few in the second category (Lands End), stand out all the more.  Taking your customers for granted (defining your competition differently than your customers do) will only put you in line for a government bailout.

Thankful

Are you thankful today? Of course you are. "If you've got three or more TV's in your house, you're richer than 95.4% of the world; if you've got two refrigerators, you're richer than... etc."

Are you humble today? (Be careful - as soon as you take any pride in it, you're not humble anymore!) I think these two are hard to separate. It's hard to be proud and thankful.

It seems to me there are three areas where we are most often thankful. There are probably more but to keep it simple let's say we're thankful for things, people and ideas.

We have a lot of great stuff that improves the quality of our daily lives, no question about it. And of course a lot of that is recent technology that makes us more fortunate than those before us. Beyond that, we know we should be thankful for our relationships. Pop stars are thankful for their fans, authors are thankful for people who buy their books, athletes are thankful for season ticket holders and bloggers are just happy for people's attention.

At another level, we are thankful for the bigger things -- the goodness in the world. Freedom, for example. The freedom to do what we should (and not necessarily what we want to) do is a true cause for thanks. Things like mercy and kindness, hope and forgiveness. To me, these are the things we need to be more thankful for. And only when we are humble enough to realize we don't deserve them can we be truly thankful for them. And that true thankfulness motivates us to give them to others.

In just a few lines I hope this is an encouragement to you. A friend of mine, Josh, expresses it better talking about his own genuine thankfulness in spite of circumstances in his iTunes download here.

On Giving Thanks

At the risk of recommending something that those who are inclined to appreciate already know about (because it's been out for awhile now)... I was picking some music out for Thanksgiving and came across Chip Davis' Holiday Musik from 1996. If you like this one, there's a #2 album also, but this one is the best, imho. In an era of specific, splintered, niche collections on your iPod, this is one everyone should have. Pop it in your playlist and see if it helps you to think of things you're thankful for.

And to start things off, find someone who is a veteran today and thank them for their part in our continuing freedoms in the most free nation on this earth. Lots of great people, our veterans. People who know how much something costs always appreciate it more.