What you say thank you for says a lot about you. We don’t mean the perfunctory ones that are often tossed around throughout our day. We mean the ones that cause you to pause and more deeply express your gratitude. Think about it for a minute. What elicits your biggest thank yous? While you're thinking, we’ll tell you a story:
One Thanksgiving many years ago a friend of ours was over for the meal. Months earlier he had mentioned that he loved snow peas. So, on that night we made them. When we brought the dish to the table, he started to cry. The fact that we had remembered his love of snow peas and specially prepared them for him filled him with gratitude. And he thanked us over and over again.
Whereas you or I might have missed the gesture of the snow peas, he was brought to tears over it. It spoke to something in his past. It spoke to an area of his history where he felt a lack and a loss. We can learn a lot about ourselves by what makes us cry in gratitude. It can help us see where we might need to attend to ourselves and others more thoroughly, or perhaps it can show us what really, really matters to us.
To the big thank yous!