This morning on my drive to work I was thinking about how, when you try to do things with the intention of it being noticed by others, you are more likely to give up.  For example, eating healthy or working out a lot.  I will say that ACCOUNTABILITY is awesome, but if you post a photo of every one of your healthy meals, you may end up being only as motivated, or feel “rewarded” based on how many “likes” or comments you get.  And while I am an avid user of Strava, if I were to use it with the sore purpose of showing others “HEY LOOK I WORKED OUT!!!” then as soon as I started feeling like no one was noticing or giving me “kudos,” I might not feel as incentivized to work out or go the extra miles.

However, if you set goals and work hard for YOURSELF and not for others, then you are more likely to stick with it and gain satisfaction from the “slow and steady” progress.  And, inevitably, people will start to notice.

Anyway, so all of this stemmed from my realization that I felt like my manager at work wasn’t noticing anything good I was doing, and maybe he only saw my mistakes and self-doubt lately, since those are the only things I really share during our one-on-one meetings.

Then, I got to work with an email saying I had received an award for Execution and was being recognized through our company website.  Along with it came a note of encouragement from my manager, listing specific things he had noticed I was doing well!  It wasn’t about the “recognition points” – that note really inspired me and made me feel SO much better!

So, seeing how this little note affected me this morning, what this makes me think is – what if I focused on encouraging others?  Imagine how motivated and inspired people can be just from voicing your acknowledgement of their hard work or extra efforts!  My goal today is to “pay it forward” to someone else today – maybe not at work, but send someone a little note (or text or phone call) about something I’ve noticed that they’ve done well.

I know this is an unorganized note, I’m still at work, but wanted to share this thought with everyone!  Go tell someone they are doing a great job!