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If you were asked the question, what are the most special moments from work you had this past year, would you be able to answer that question? Or does your work just sort of blur together? When we are truly present with our work we have the chance to make a moment that we’ll be able to remember and appreciate for a long time.
I call making these moments “grateful heart moments.” This concept started to form inside me when two things kept happening. The first is when multiple people, including strangers, kept telling me to cherish the moments that I have with my children as time goes so fast. The other is when I would receive many emails that tell you to cherish life as it’s short or some variation like that. So I thought, how can I really do this? How can I really stop to cherish the moments in my life I want to remember forever? That’s when I came up with the concept of “grateful heart moments.”
Here’s how it works. When I’m in the middle of experiencing a moment I want to embed in my consciousness and memory, I stop and take a deep breath to breathe in the moment. I focus on capturing all the details I can – who I’m with; where I’m at; and what I’m seeing, hearing, feeling, and smelling. Then I put my hands on my heart and give thanks for this moment. I might say (silently to myself), “Thank you for this moment. Thank you for the gift of experiencing something so beautiful that I’ll remember forever.” It literally only takes a moment to capture the moment, and the best thing is that it really works! Times when I’ve wanted to experience that moment again, I’ve been able to go back to that moment in my mind and it feels as if I am there now.
Here are two recent grateful heart moments I had at work. When I doing my first teleseminar Living IT: How to Create and Live an Inspired Life, before and after I teaching one of the sessions, I would really experience the joy of doing what I had dreamed about doing for so long using my grateful heart moment approach. The other example is when I was doing my larger work in society. I was on a walk with my three boys, a beautiful sunny day at the park. We were helping my six year old was collect caps for school and picking up garbage at the same time. He said, “We are doing good for school, for the earth for the park and for us as we are getting exercise. Reuse, renew, recycle.” I then said, “You’re right, Gavin, we are. This is like the fourth habit (I’m teaching him Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People) win/win. A win for the school, a win for the earth, a win for the park and a win for us.” This teaching moment was one I will never forget.
Debbie Ford in her book, The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It shares a similar concept called “claim this moment.” “When we are committed to claiming the moment, we look upon, create and invent our ordinary experience as something extraordinary. We become a magnet for the unique and special. The lens through which we view life shifts, and we become seekers of the divine in every moment. To see with new eyes, to become aware of the blessings we hold, to create new intimate moments each day – these constitute a spiritual quest. This is the art of making the ordinary moments of your life extraordinary.”
What are your grateful heart moments? How can you claim this moment today at work?
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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.
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