Good morning and Happy Friday! A million years ago (OK only 30, but it feels like a million), a business acquaintance suggested that, rather than saying "how lucky I am", to say, instead, "how grateful I am".

I've practiced that for nearly 30 years and I think it's made a difference in my perspective. The energy goes out to other person when one expresses gratitude when, from my perspective, expressing 'luck' points the energy back at yourself. I will grant you that it probably seems like a slight bit of semantics but I think the shift is actually significant.

This morning I stumbled across this article about expressing gratitude and one of the two contributors is my new friend, Brigitte Zeitlin, MPH, RD, CDN. I brought Brigitte in to my work to engage our staff in a conversation about nutrition as part of last week's "Staff Appreciation Week". What's especially thrilling for me is that not only was there an incredible turnout, but that the conversation has continued into this week (and Brigitte is delightful!) Check out her website here.

So, a public thanks to Brigitte, I am grateful that you shared your energy and knowledge with us!

On this subject  - since the beginning of the year, my partner Matthew and I have been aiming to write down one good thing that happened that day and/or one thing we're grateful for and depositing it in a vase just before bed. I got this idea from a NY Times article at the end of 2022 and, my apologies, I cannot now find the source so I don't know who to credit... but while I can't say that I actually do it every night, I do contribute to the collection on a fairly regular basis. The thought is that at the end of the calendar year, we'll pull all the papers out and have a record of all the highlights. I highly recommend this. It's a way to end the day on a positive note rather than ruminating on whatever 'bad' things happened that day.

On a related note, the fabulous Andrew Sewell ICF ACC has created a newsletter for us overthinkers - check out his website and get on his list. (More on a recent conversation I had with Andrew in a future post)

Finally, I am grateful to live near New York's Riverside Park - as someone who grew up with a pine tree forest and the Wisconsin River in his backyard, I love being so close to nature in the city that never sleeps. This is a photo I took the other day while on a walk on W. 120th Street. Enjoy! :)

Andrew's note - hi all, I have to admit that I'm only on board with the caption about 60 maybe 70%. Here's the story - I wanted to do something Groundhog day related because it seemed that it was more 'in the ether' than usual. Maybe this is just afterglow after a perceived newfound 'freedom' which people refer to as 'post pandemic', which, when I hear it, I just chuckle. Oh Mary we're still in it, the media just moved on to classified documents (apparently I am the only one on Earth that doesn't have classified documents - but I DID take some sheet music out of the bandroom at Mosinee High School like 40 years ago - some of it may have found its way in to the bench of our living room upright piano - but I think when the music director came to a party once and spied sheet music that so obviously was from his class, he took most of it home with him. But I digress.)

Anyway, I wanted to do a groundhog thing and the only thing that came to mind was a riff on Christina's World. I struggled with getting her to look like she was coming out of a hole and then I had to place the shadow (and it was being awfully fussy). By the time I finished I was a little harrassed and decided that it didn't look right and to maybe do something with it again in the future. Then, Feb 2 whizzed by and I was busy with a work party so I didn't think too much about it. Today, Feb 3 when I was rooting around in my MEMO files, I re-opened what I'd worked on and it gave me a laugh - once I had a little distance from it, I could see that it really 'read'. 

The caption wasn't really coming to me so I wrote "whatever" feeling that the image was more or less strong enough to carry it. I'm not sure that I was right but although I am a perfectionist (well, more or less, lately) I decided to let it go and post. Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk. :)