Join Me for GP53: Gratitude Project 53
It’s the end of 2023 and I’m looking back on my year.
In April of 2023, I coached my last collegiate beach volleyball match. After seven years coaching, creating, collaborating and investing in athletes, coaches and parents of athletes, I hung up my visor and raccoon face tan. The landing was smooth and moving on was the right decision for the time.
I embraced a much needed season of rest from June to December - hiking in the mountains, hanging at the beach, visiting family and friends - all while still trying to build a coaching/keynote/writing business. I worked with a design group who helped design and build this beautiful website you are looking at and helped me navigate a brand change.
That landing was abrupt.
In 20 years I’d gone from corporate work to graduate student to therapist intern, to stay at home mom to freelance writer to coach to homeschool mom to me questioning “who even am I anymore?” I’m not ONE thing. I don’t have ONE message. I don’t feel like a brand.
And, I still don’t.
That’s when the Fall rolled in and things became clearer. In December of 2023, I started thinking about how many wonderful seasons of life I’d had. Instead of feeling confused and ashamed that I hadn’t pursued one path since my 20’s, I became so grateful of how many different things I’d been able to study, experience, work through, learn about.
I thought about the people. I realized because of my unique path and because I hadn’t stuck to just one thing, I now had so many different kinds of people in my life who had influenced my journey up to this point.
So, I took to the spiral notebook, comedian Leanne Morgan takes to the bed, but I find more solace in pen to paper, it calms all the things.
That’s when Project 53 was born.
A personal fact that only some people know (although the information is widely available on the internet), is that during my senior season playing volleyball at The University of Georgia, I broke an NCAA record for kills in a match. 53 kills in a five set match vs. Kentucky. A record I still hold at Georgia (and the SEC). I even still hold some records in the NCAA, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. Somehow the number 53 only seemed natural as the number of people I would thank, share a word of gratitude or a meal with or send a note to. One person per week and 53rd person would be to thank myself for sticking with this project and being intentional.
On December 27, 2023 I made the list.
And, I made my first phone call to person #1. Easily my favorite boss - though I’ve worked for some great people over the years. This was someone who gave me a chance, mentored me, taught me the business of commercial real estate and challenged me to always be better. I connected with him in the first week of 2024 and we had a great conversation about everything. It was a chance to catch up, a chance to thank him for being a great boss, employer and the person who shaped my standard of excellence after sports. In fact, he hired me solely on the fact that I had played a collegiate sport.
He told me “I knew you didn’t have a lot of experience in the business, but I knew because you had played a sport that I could train you.”
We went on to talk about how his very specific way to send marketing packages informed me on how to do things with excellence, an eye for detail and how it needed to be redone if it wasn’t absolutely perfect. He reminded me that in the early days before the internet, he would hand me a newspaper clipping and tell me to “find the buyer.”
While other agents were using search-engine like software, I was cold-calling and dialing every phone number I could find that would link me to another number which would link me to someone else who had the number I actually needed to be calling. It became a game I played with myself to find people who didn’t want to be found. I remember the time I called a commercial buyer and his wife answered the phone, I had somehow called their home phone! (Yes, there were still landlines in the early 2000’s). We chatted for about five minutes and she asked me about my day and what I was calling about, then finally put her hand over the receiver on the other end and called to her husband in the other room:
“Robert. It’s for you. A lovely young lady calling from __________ (the agent I worked for).” I spoke with him and scheduled a time for him to connect with my boss directly. I had done it! I found the buyer from an old newspaper clipping tucked away in an old manila file folder, found in a bankers box.
To this day, when I need to, I can cold-call anyone and get six layers deep in any organization starting with the receptionist.
Anything worth doing, Is worth doing well.
As we closed our conversation, my former boss said to me “you can do anything you want. I know that when you put your mind to it you can do whatever it is you want.” I think a lot about how that job shaped me, informed the way I work and the way I show up even to this day. I didn’t always love it and it was very tedious some days, but I’m so grateful I was trained in excellence at such a young age in the corporate space. Those lessons will never leave me. Everyone respected my boss, and I knew exactly why.
At the end of the call, he shared with me a quote his dad shared with him. It was these six words “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.”
Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.
I called the last person on my list on December 27, 2024.
Join me in 2025 for Gratitude Project 53.
It’s your turn to live out gratitude. If you have been wanting a way to create a habit around a gratitude practice, I highly recommend this very rewarding project. It’s beyond keeping a gratitude journal (which I do), it packs more of a relational punch than being thankful for an object or a sunrise (which I am), and it challenges us to reach out and connect with people from today, yesterday or even people you haven’t connected with in years. My list had people from high school, college, playing years, coaching years, working years, the mommy years, and people from this year too. It had neighbors, coaches, family members, teammates, sorority sisters, roommates, mentors, coworkers, new friends, long time friends and I’ll just keep it rolling into this year too.
The beautiful thing is how many helpful, encouraging, supportive people you find when you start looking. Focus on who has been for you, instead of those who were stumbling blocks and then, by way of virtue, you’ll find more and more. What you look for will multiply. And what a gift it is.
I’m Interested in hearing more about Gratitude Project 53: click on this link and use “Gratitude Project 53” in the email heading and I’ll send you a few worksheets and a quick survey to get you started.
