Today is day 2 of the the 20-day happiness challenge for Fedability! Each day, you’ll have one activity to perform that should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Today’s activity is to give a thank you card to someone on your team.

If you read last week’s blog post that introduced the 20-day Happiness Challenge you know that I identified 5 different activities. These 5 specific activities are chosen because of the impact they will have for you. And a positive impact on the person that’s receiving the benefits of your action. To make it easier to do the challenge, we’ve created a 20-day calendar for this challenge. You get the calendar for FREE if you sign up for the FedFan newsletter.

Rather than the usual blog post, I wanted to talk to you a bit more personally about this challenge. Take a listen:

In summary, the research finds that demonstrating gratitude increases your sense of optimism. Gratitude also causes your memories of the person and event to be more positive and strengthens your relationships. I’ve also written before about how important thank you notes can be for your career. That’s a whole lot of good reasons to be grateful!

Since today is day 2 of the challenge, you’ll start in the top left corner of the calendar that has a number two in it. The activity for day 2 is to give a thank you note to someone on your team. It’s up to you how you want to define team. It could be a coworker who is an equal to you. Or, if you’re a supervisor it could be someone who reports to you.

More important than how you define team is the act of actually writing the thank you note. I’m going to insist that this is more than just writing an email to say thank you. We send and receive emails all day long. As a result, they don’t hold as much meaning to you or to the person receiving it. Taking the time to write something by hand will make you more aware of what you’re doing. It will then create a stronger mental link between the activity and your feelings of gratitude. The person receiving the thank you note will now have a physical reminder of you and whatever they did for you.

A word to the wise on thank you notes:

  1. Write a draft or two before using the card.
  2. Be specific about what you are appreciating the other person for.
  3. Don’t let this take a lot of time to craft. Remember this is supposed to take less than 10 minutes to complete. So, 2-3 sentences are sufficient.

If you don’t have a thank you card, don’t let the physical card get in the way. If you must, go ahead and write the email for today. Then, go order some cards for next week. To make it even easier…here’s a link to some thank you cards*.

Now, the hardest part of keeping on track with a challenge is the accountability and support to keep on going. I hope you’ll follow along with me and the other Fed Fans that are participating. I also hope that you’ll share your successes with us either on twitter #happieratwork or on the Fedability facebook page. You can find me on twitter @danaesims_iopsy. Or, you can leave a comment in the space below.

I look forward to hearing how your second day challenge goes!

Ready to go on to Day 3 of the Happiness Challenge? Let’s get happier by bragging (about someone else).

Did you miss Day 1 of the Happiness Challenge? That’s ok! You can still read about giving positive feedback can make you happier.

*The link above is an affiliate link. Fedability may receive a commission if you decide to purchase the product.