By This is a light-hearted gratitude challenge that I hope you’ll enjoy. One of the key takeaways I’ve figured out as I have challenged my ‘gratitudiness’ over the last 3 years is that you MUST be grateful for and recognize all the gifts in your life, small or large. And so today’s challenge is specifically asking you to be grateful for the pen.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
There are a few ways to take this challenge on. I initially was going to write about my gratitude for hotel pens specifically. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve packed up my laptop and headed to a client, but have forgotten a pen (or can’t find it in the numerous pockets of my backpack). Because of this I have quite an extensive collection of pens from my years as a corporate traveller. I’m grateful to the hotels for supplying the pens. I can look at several pens and be transported to a place and time in my life. I swear I haven’t stayed at a Loews since I worked on an account in Nashville, over a decade ago! Hotel Derek was where I stayed a few times to help a Houston client’s implementation get turned around. We worked so well together that I continued to partner with them for years.
A secondary way to look at this challenge is being grateful for what the pen allows you to do. If you’re typing into a key board, you pretty much are taking dictation for a meeting. What a client needs is someone who understands them, not someone who can take type (not knocking that skillset – perhaps that will be a gratitude challenge later on). Using a pen allows you to listen to what the client/person is saying and translate it into what you understand they are saying – whether that is deliverables and action items or the actual meaning behind what is being said. I’m grateful that a pen can be used to translate! It also can be used as a tool to pause and reset a meeting if it is going a direction you weren’t ready to go. “Hold on a sec, my pen just ran out of ink! Does anyone have a pen I can borrow? Perhaps now is a good time for a break…Now where were we on the agenda” (sneaky, huh!?)
The third way to tackle this challenge is to review the quote in its entirety…what I believe the author was conveying is that a leader can accomplish more with words than with physical battles (that are costly in so many ways!). In addition, more can be accomplished with statutes/laws than verbal assaults. If you need prove of that, read up on Alexander Hamilton (even more fun – go see the musical Hamilton). He was a prolific writer!
And I would be remiss if I weren’t grateful for the pencil (close enough to the pen that I have to include this) that is in my choir folder. As the preacher preaches his sermon each Sunday, I will scribble down words or phrases that mean something to me. When I have time, I update an evernote notebook with those notes and re-enforce my relationship with God.
I’m grateful for the pen. It isn’t sexy but it gets its many jobs done!