The Power of Gratitude – $10 Buys More than You Think

This week, many of you will be taking time to reflect upon and give thanks for the abundance of love, health, family and friends with which you’ve been blessed this year, and reaffirming your gratitude for the food and family surrounding you. In that spirit of abundance and gratitude, we surprised over 500 of our world-class customers at the recent 5th annual Conversations that Win Conference by tucking $10 under each one of their chairs at my opening keynote address. I then challenged them to “pay it forward” in whatever way they wished over the two-day event.

Pay it Forward – $10 Challenge from Corporate Visions Inc on Vimeo.

As expected, when you start the gratitude chain, $10 can have more impact than you would ever think. My inbox exploded with notes from customers on their stories of gratitude from the $10 Challenge. Here are just a couple of the many heart-warming stories that our customers shared:

Note left for the hard-working venue staff to find.

“I matched the $10 with $10 of my own. I found a homeless person outside a 7-11 in Vallejo, CA. He asked me for 25 cents. I told him I had a deal for him. I said that I would give him $20, but only on one condition…he needed to search out someone who was also needy, and that he needed to give that person $5. He said he would. We shook hands to seal the deal.

I reasoned that of the many blessings that are denied this guy, one of them, no doubt, is to have the feeling of helping out someone who has less than he does. I don’t know if the feeling of philanthropy was as satisfying to him as it was for me, but it matters not. I felt happy for the chance to help out.”

The most interesting concept of gratitude is that it is counter-intuitive; the one who benefits most is the giver. It’s most impactful to the giver when you feel as though you have nothing to give. You will be amazed of the abundance that is attracted into your life through gratitude. The $10 challenge has become an important tradition among Corporate Visions employees over the years, as it is core to our foundational principles of Serving our Employees, Customers & Communities. Our employees have been pretty creative over the years… slipping money into books at the library for young readers to discover…dropping love notes for fellow over-stressed travelers in airports…anonymously picking up the restaurant tab for families…taking a waitress struggling to make ends meet on an impromptu shopping trip for her children. Many have involved their children in these random acts of kindness as a way to teach them the power of gratitude and the real beauty of humanity.

So this week, I challenge you: take $10 (or more) out of your wallet, and find an opportunity to give it away. I promise you’ll find plenty of chances. And I promise that the smallest acts can be some of the most impactful.

It is with a grateful heart and many blessings that I wish each of you a Happy Thanksgiving.

– Joe Terry, CEO

To read more stories of how employees and customers of Corporate Visions are making an impact in their community, check out the Power Foundation website.

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