Today is Playworks National Gratitude Day. This is the second year we will all set aside some time together to express our gratitude. The work we are doing this year to reach more than 425,000 kids would not be possible without the support of thousands of people. Below read Playworks CEO and Founder Jill Vialet’s email to the Playworks staff.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 is Playworks National Gratitude Day. The idea is really to cultivate gratitude as a core value at Playworks – thanking the folks who make our work possible but who might not regularly get a thanks — or might not even see themselves as helping us – for example, the UPS delivery person, the person who makes your coffee in the morning, the copy machine repair human… And it's good to include the usual suspects – local board members, school staff, the person who unlocks the gym for us, the person at the Cal Endowment who helps us secure meeting space…
It's not intended as an internal thing – thanking co-workers (I'm hoping you do that on a more regular basis), though the idea is that we, as an organization, overwhelmingly benefit from saying thank you because the research is pretty categorical that practicing gratitude is one of the best things you can do to assure happiness!
And for those of you who are interested in the nerdier academic side of gratitude, here's a quick video of Robert Emmons, the Gratitude guru.
Finally, just a reminder that this is intended to be fun – and a collective effort to be concretely in touch with how insanely lucky we are to do this work, and to have the support of such an amazing larger community. The idea is to engage in Gratitude Day together, but it's not supposed to stress you out. I also feel compelled to point out that a good number of Playworks humans called me after last year's Gratitude Day to admit that they had been feeling a little oppressed by the idea, but when they actually sat down to do it, they were amazed by how positive the experience was – shocked by people's reactions to being thanked, and moved by the number of others who heard about the effort and wanted to be a part. So, just like we ask the kids, stay open to the possibility – and play hard with gratitude day.
Many thanks! Jill
Thank you blog readers! With your help, more kids get the opportunity for play.
