Details, rituals, and gratitude

How keeping a blog while living in France crystallized my approach to gratitude: noticing the details, treating recognition as a ritual, and making someone else's day good when mine isn't

One of Les Grands Boulevards in Versailles

When our family prepared to move to France in 2013 for my job, we were very aware of what an incredible opportunity was unfolding before us. We knew that living outside our native culture and traveling extensively would shape all of us in ways that we couldn’t yet anticipate. My husband and I also wondered in advance how much our boys, who were just 3 and 6 years old at the time, would remember of the experience after we returned to the U.S. With that question in mind, I decided to start a blog, partially to keep family and friends apprised of our adventures, but mostly to write down stories and moments so that the kids could look back on them one day. What I didn’t expect was that noticing the little details around me, writing them down, and publishing them a couple of times per week didn’t just document the experience, but actually fueled my gratitude by drawing my attention to what was happening around me, and making that reflection a habit.

Even though the time in France was amazing, it was also really challenging: my job was hard, being a two-career family abroad with two little kids was hard, dealing with the logistics of life in a foreign language was hard, having the kids have vacation for two weeks after every six weeks of school (?!) was hard. Forcing myself to slow down and process what was happening, and to share our adventures, mishaps, the beauty around us, and our little milestones gave me perspective and energy. Eventually, I started proactively looking around for beautiful, poignant, or funny moments that I wouldn’t want to forget, and those little vignettes amidst the longer updates provide some of the richest memories that I am so grateful to have written down today.

The learnings from that period feed my approach to gratitude in work and in life to this day.

Notice the little details of everyday life. It is easy to get caught up on the hamster wheel of life, and in keeping all of the to-do list items on track. When we lived abroad, we had the opportunity to experience a lot of things for the first time, living outside of our normal culture. There were many moments that seemed strange, different, exciting, beautiful, or amazing.

Feb 2014: [My husband] ordered an external computer monitor for the home office, and we could see from the Amazon website that it had been delivered and was being held for pickup, though we hadn't received a package slip in the mail like we usually do. I looked up the address, plugged into the GPS and headed out... I went into the post office with my printout with the tracking information, and attempted to explain to the woman behind the counter in French that I was trying to pick up my package but didn't have a slip. She looked at the paper and told me that the pickup wasn't actually here, it was there. She gestured across the street, changed to English, and said, "at the pub." Right...I always get my packages delivered to the local pub, sure. So, I walked across the street, handed the bartender the tracking information, and sure enough, he handed me my monitor. 

Even in the course of regular days of life and work, this practice can be helpful: notice what strikes your interest, what makes you curious, or what feels good. Notice it, and write it down. You don’t need a blog or a journal for this exercise: in a work context, create a document or a folder in your email, and start jotting notes down about those interesting things when they happen, and what resonated about them. These details can also enhance your communication with colleagues. We know that recognition is most powerful when it is specific, and having those little notes about why a presentation resonated, or why the work was so well-received, or what other colleagues thought about an accomplishment makes the recognition feel personal and special to the person you are recognizing.

Make recognition and gratitude a ritual: I think that one of the most impactful parts of keeping that blog for me was that I made the reflection part of my weekly focus. During that period, my ritual was writing a blog entry or two per week, but looking around for the little details around me for inspiration for entries became a daily habit.

December 2014: As for my day, we celebrated a big milestone at work today. When you work in France, you might find that there is a chateau in the park across the street ("just a little chateau," as one of my colleagues pointed out), and you can hold your celebration there! A few of my colleagues have a band, and they opened up the festivities for the first 30 minutes while everyone trickled in. I gave out a bunch of awards, and then we did a wine tasting with four kinds of French cheeses. Then someone (not me) realized that all of the sound equipment + a laptop + wifi = karaoke, so that happened. It was actually a really fun afternoon, and it was nice to have a more lighthearted atmosphere to interact with the team.

At work, being intentional about recognizing good work can also be turned into part of a team’s weekly rhythm. At my weekly leadership meeting, I made the first standing agenda topic “recognition.” We had a silly saying that started off the section (“who needs a little love?”), and we’d talk about team accomplishments, who crushed it in a presentation, who made a great innovation, or who needed a little encouragement during a tough slog. Then, we’d spend a few minutes deciding who was the most appropriate to deliver the recognition and what the best method was. This would range from one of the leaders giving me a few bullet points that I could put in my own voice to send to the employee with his/her managers on cc:, to arming another member of the leadership team in a different function with details so he/should could say “hey, I heard about the impact you had by doing x,” to setting up a virtual coffee with someone. The ritual made sure that we always put this important practice at top of mind, even in the busy times. It also made sure we took some time to reflect on what was going well, before diving into all of the problems to be solved.

When you’re having a bad day, make someone else’s day good. When I am feeling particularly frustrated or discouraged, I try to use this energy to send some good feedback or a little recognition to someone who has done something that I admire.

Lifting someone else up feels good, both to the recipient and to the sender. As an example, I can’t tell you how much it meant to me on our first Thanksgiving in France (just a regular Thursday workday for everyone else) when I received multiple emails and texts from colleagues wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. Or when I gave an update in French to a big team:

March 2015: On Thursday, I gave an update (2 slides) in front of 50 or 60 people at our business’ quarterly Town Hall meeting, in French. I felt very nervous (truth be told, I was worried I might throw up), but the room gave me a round of applause when I was done, and one of my colleagues told me, “on a tout compris” (we understood everything!). It was a nice moment.

In my professional life, I keep a stack of thank you cards on my desk for this purpose, but a well-worded recognition email/slack or even a quick “thinking of you” text works well too, particularly in a geographically-distributed team.

Truth be told, I sometimes let these habits slide when life gets overwhelming, but I always end up getting back to them. And let me tell you, I am grateful to my past self who wrote down all of those details about our time in France because it’s not just the kids who don’t remember all of these stories and details after ten years have passed!

Feb 2014: Though the day to day transition/settling in can be difficult, there are moments when I am in awe of how amazing it is to be here. This morning, I dropped the boys off [for school] in Rocquencourt and then headed to my office in Buc. When I come from that direction, I drive down Boulevard du Roi and then up the hill and around the side of the Chateau de Versailles. Today, as I drove over the old cobblestones, I rounded the corner by the golden gates and the statue of Louis XIV, and was overwhelmed by the history that surrounded me, and what a gift this adventure is for all of us. It is a huge challenge, personally and professionally both, but I am very happy to have the opportunity.