The world’s need for more gratitude could be easily solved if one simple thing occurred. If people became “blurters” of gratitude, people who talked out of turn or interrupted another conversation because they couldn’t help but say “thank you” right then, the world would be a better place.
Turns out, nobody finds it to be that rude when you interrupt them to tell them how awesome, important, funny or special they are to you. They won’t be put off by your blurting of their value; they’ll be drawn into relationships. You won’t be sticking your foot in your mouth, but rather putting words in their heart that they will carry for the rest of their lives.
So many of us are as grateful as the Thanks A Billion Project could ever hope you’d be. The problem is that you forget that gratitude before you have an opportunity to say it, and then life’s craziness hijacks the moment and it's gone.
Black belts in gratitude are messy, impulsive, awkward sharers of gratitude. They’re like three-year-olds who cannot help but say what they think, even if it involves someone’s hair being the wrong color or their house smelling like a wet dog. When they remember that they're grateful for someone that thought becomes a hot potato they can’t ignore until it lands on someone else’s plate to be enjoyed.
Three Techniques to Help You Be a Better Blurter of Gratitude
Blurting gratitude is about taking a moment you’ve been mindful of and sharing it with someone else. It’s about taking the smile on our face and transferring it to theirs. For me, there are three go-to techniques of blurting my gratitude that I think everyone should embrace.
First, learning to interrupt someone with “Sorry to interrupt, but before I forget, I need to tell you how thankful I am for you” will change your gratitude game. It’s such a fun way to blurt and hijack a moment, because it doesn’t matter what you say next. The work is already done. You’ve told them that you're thankful for them and the rest is just details. It’s the gratitude version of “you had me at hello.”
Second, saving a “thank you” text into the clipboard section of your phone makes it super easy for you to just fill in the blank when you think of someone. Something easy like “I know this is a random text, but I just wanted you to know that I’m thankful for you because ______________________.” You just save that into your notepad on your phone and cut and paste when you think of someone that makes you smile.
Lastly, having stacks of thank you cards (and stamps!) stashed at work, home and in my car. For $10 at your local office supply store, you can get 50-100 thank you cards, throw a rubber band around a few stacks and have them ready to go for the moments where gratitude hits you. I literally will write thank you notes the moment after I finish a meeting when my reflection of that meeting leads me to be thankful for someone.
That’s it. A commitment to not waiting to thank and some easy tools to help those thank you’s slip out of your mouth before they slip your mind is all it takes to become a blurter.