Acknowledgements

Because this is the week of Thanksgiving and all, I thought we could talk about gratitude.

I start every morning with it. I think of at least five things I’m grateful for and I write them down in a journal as soon as I wake up. What I love most about this practice is that it’s helped me notice the little things that I might otherwise overlook, like having time to sip a hot cup of pumpkin coffee or a passing comment of encouragement from a member of our team. This ritual of identifying at least five things a day to be grateful for has helped me see that there are so many reasons to give thanks. And it’s also helped my mindset: I always end my journaling feeling happier and more positive than I did before I started.

The more I’ve learned about gratitude and the power it can have on one’s mindset, the more I’ve tried to incorporate it on our team.

At Student Maid, we start our meetings with high-fives. It’s a chance for us to highlight and give thanks to one another and to stop and celebrate our wins, big and small. Adding this practice to our meetings has helped our team realize that even on hard days and in challenging seasons, there is still so much to be grateful for in each passing day.

We talk about what we’re grateful for often, but there’s one gratitude exercise we do that takes the cake. It’s called “Acknowledgements.” The idea is that you write a letter to someone you care about and you tell them how much they mean to you.

When I first learned about this exercise, I asked our leadership team to write acknowledgements to each other during a retreat. I wanted us to have the time and space to be intentional about what we wrote, so I included acknowledgement-writing time in our agenda. By the last day, we each had a letter from each of our teammates, and we ended our time together by reading them. It felt like the perfect send-off. I loved my letters so much that I kept them, and I still read them to this day.

Ever since that retreat, we’ve tried to do the acknowledgements exercise in some shape or form every year. One time, we did them verbally over dinner. During years when we don’t get away together, like this one, we still write each other letters and have someone on the team compile them so that we can open them all at the same time. We’ve also written acknowledgements to our students and our Ambassadors. 

My favorite acknowledgement memory comes from a retreat we had three years ago. Our leadership team went away to a resort near Gainesville for several days, and we invited our parents to join us for one special evening. While our parents knew of each other, they hadn’t really spent time together, even though their children had been working together for years and years by this point. We thought it would be so special to bring everyone together. 

As usual, we wrote each other acknowledgements so that we could read them at the end of the retreat. This time, however, there was a second set of letters: Not only did each leadership team member write an acknowledgement to each person on the leadership team—they also wrote a letter to each person’s parents. We wrote about the ways we had seen their child grow, how thankful we are to work alongside them, their best qualities, and how grateful we are to the people who raised them.

We collected the letters and asked the hotel staff to put them in each room so that when our parents checked in, the letters would be the first thing they’d see. We had a cocktail hour after everyone arrived, and I remember that it was so funny—all of our parents came down to the lobby and it was so obvious they had been crying! Our letters brought them to tears. After that, we were inspired to write letters to the parents of our students too.

Think about it: Do you really acknowledge the people in your life? The people who mean so much to you? The people who raised those people? Have you told them the impact they’ve had on your life? Have you let them know just how special they are? How grateful you are that in this one life you get to live, you get to have them in it? Do you take a moment to pause and think about all there is to be grateful for each day? Do you call someone out of the blue just to say thank you?

I believe these are the questions that matter most, especially in this season.

Our team wants to help you give thanks. We’ve put together this guide to show you how we do Acknowledgements. We hope it inspires you to take our practice and make it your own.

Hugs through the screen,

Kristen

PS: Have you heard of my LIVE show every Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET? Think of it as real talk. I share the challenges I’m navigating as a leader and I also take questions from you! You can register here: https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT. It’s the same link each week. Hope to see you there!

2017 leadership retreat with our parents!