5 good reasons…
Find 5 good reasons … to be happy, to smile, to be positive, but above all, to share. 5 every day, let’s try it for 5 days and see what happens.
On March 16th we had just began our first day of lockdown, starting to work remotely, starting to isolate from colleagues and loved ones. And with all the uncertainties I came up with a weird idea; I would send an invitation for an experiment to the team via email. I would ask them one simple thing: Find 5 good reasons to be happy, to smile, to be positive, but above all, to share.
Before pressing the SEND button I hesitated a lot. I was not sure if the idea would resonate, if it would be seen as cheesy or awkward. We were teammates, we should be talking about work, about what to plan for the forthcoming weeks, about how to help our customers with the postponing of their events, about how to find solutions for them to keep engaging with their teams and customers … work, work and yes, work.
Work, yes, is what got us together at first, but with time, that liquid thing called time, we are more than just work colleagues, we are a group, we are a team, and of course, we are individuals. With our dreams, our needs, our struggles, our highs and lows, our passions, our commitments, our things to work further on, our routines, our goals, our families. With all this personal load and the vertigo of the days to come, I thought it would be important to connect with ourselves in the new reality we were all embracing and share the outcomes with the team. Finally, I closed my eyes with a mix of excitement and fear and pressed the SEND button. “Ok, done, let’s see what happens” I said to myself with uneasiness.
And what happened is… more than 300 good reasons to be happy, to smile, to be positive, shared by the team! The engagement was immediate. We all started to take some time every day, for 5 days, to stop our busy day, to pause, and to give our day a good long look to find those 5 silver linings that made up our day. It looked simple, but it was not. Some days were brighter and the 5 reasons came straightforward, and some others we all had to dig deep to find something to share. And we did it, we found our way to +300 good reasons! What a great team to be part of!
The 5 reasons challenge took 10 days, 5 more than intended. We were so into it that 5 days were not enough. Every day we were waiting for the new “5 good reasons” email in our inbox as the starting signal to share and connect, to feel we cared and to feel that someone’s got our back. We were thrilled to write our own 5 reasons and to read the reasons from the rest of the team. It felt like being invited to someone’s home. Having a privileged sneak peak to their souls, discovering what triggered their smiles and happiness.
And now, more than 3 months after that 16th of March, we have worked relentlessly hard. We have engaged ourselves with a multitude of conversations with our customers. We have launched our new virtual meeting site to help them engage with their remote teams and clients. We have joined many webinars, online meetings, workshops to keep improving our industry knowledge. We have successfully negotiated rescheduling postponed events. And we have used this unprecedented time to learn about ourselves and our teammates. Revisiting now the more than 300 good reasons we shared is giving us the opportunity to time travel. It is seeing ourselves in a past that is not that faraway but it feels extremely distant. Because we were different. We were different from the us that we are now. We have changed, grown and reframed ourselves. Reading them again brings a smile back and shines light on our more inner learnings. We will treasure forever this time capsule we built together.
What would be your 5 good reasons to smile, to be happy today? Here are mine…
