Day 7

This morning I had my annual eye doctor check-up. I love going to see Dr. Canfield, she is the most cheerful doctor I've met, she has been my doctor for about 12 years and every time I visit her she is always so joyful and friendly. No matter how busy she is she never shows it; she takes extra time for small talk and walks you through everything, even your results when you "pass with flying colours". The Optomap photo is neat, she shows you all the healthy parts of your eyes and makes you really appreciate how precious your eyes are and how necessary it is to take good care of them. Just her positive attitude alone makes me feel like I won the lottery for having such healthy eyes ;) It is funny when you are exposed to such positive people, especially first thing in the morning, they can make your day that much brighter.  

As an aside, I have had glasses for 12 years, but every year my vision either stays the same or improves. I always remember my physics professor telling the class one day that glasses are like crutches. When you wear them your eyes don’t have to work as hard and they become weaker - so many times people who wear glasses have to get stronger prescriptions each year. This is not the case for all eyes I am sure, but it worked for me. I wear my glasses about 1% of the time  - if I am in the nose bleed section at a sporting event and want to see the details of the players' faces, or if I am driving on a dark rainy night in an unfamiliar city, I wear them to make the signage just a little bit sharper. A girl I know who also was in his class was considered “legally blind” without glasses and she wore thick glasses for many years. One day she just got tired of her glasses and stopped wearing them. She said it was tough at first but her eyes got better and better and now she doesn't even need them at all and has great vision. Miraculous recovery!

Today was our first ever Big Wig Lunch Time (BLT) through the Chamber of Commerce - Business Under 40. It was a very successful event and we sold out. Kevin Murphy came to speak to us today and although he claims he is not a “Big Wig” (very modest) he was happy to share with us his story. He was fascinating, I had no idea this prominent business man started so young, and had his fair share of challenges along the way. A few things he said that resonated with me was you have to know how to fail in order to succeed, and you have to learn to crawl and walk before you can run. He also said his people are his number one asset and he does everything he can to attract the right people to his establishments. He practices gratitude with his staff, when someone does a good job he makes sure he goes out of his way to thank them for their efforts and ensures they feel like a valuable member of his team. He shared tons of great tips and stories but since this is a gratitude journal I wanted to share with you his mention of how important gratitude is for his business operations. It was nice to see how grateful he is of his success, all the people that work for his many businesses and how much he cherishes work life balance.

I found this video fitting for today when talking about gratitude in the service industry. My friend shared it with me a few weeks ago, it was very inspiring. The sound is a bit choppy so you may want to turn the volume down a bit.