Vachon Imagined

I noticed one year that I wasn’t thanking people for what they were doing.

Not because I wasn’t grateful. I was. I just wasn’t saying it.

This was particularly true as a leader in an organization built, in many ways, upon negativity, people doing other people dirty, watching your back, looking for what went wrong, and learning quickly that trust could sometimes feel like a liability.

That exists in plenty of workplaces, but I would submit that until you’ve worked in law enforcement, it can be difficult to fully understand just how dark an environment like that can become.

And we laugh.

A lot.

Sometimes the laughter is irreverent, inappropriate, and arguably deserving of criticism. But it is also one of the ways people survive difficult things. When your job routinely puts you around crisis, death, violence, conflict, and human suffering, sometimes you need to laugh at something that would make someone outside of that world stare at you like you need Jesus.

So somewhere along the way, I realized something.

I had become really good at noticing what people were doing wrong and not nearly as good at telling them what they were doing right.

So I decided to start thanking people.

Not for anything enormous.

Just little things.

“Hey, I really enjoyed the way you presented that information.”

“I thought your take on that was really well received.”

“Thank you for handling that.”

“You did a great job with that.”

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing requiring a parade.

And people looked at me like I had lost my damn mind.

Some got uncomfortable. Some grew cold. Some seemed to hold their breath like I had just announced that Popeyes was no longer frying chicken.

I mean, the reactions were remarkable.

“Hey, that was a really thoughtful email.”

Are you okay?

“I really appreciated you handling that situation.”

What did I do?

“You did a great job on that presentation.”

Who sent you?

“Thank you for catching that.”

Is this going in my file?

“I really liked your approach to that problem.”

Wait. Is there a second part to this conversation?

“You handled that difficult person really well.”

Are you being sarcastic?

“I appreciate you coming in early.”

Am I in trouble?

“That was a great idea.”

Okay… what do you want?

At one point, giving someone a compliment felt less like professional development and more like initiating a hostage negotiation.

And honestly, I understood it.

We are accustomed to criticism.

We know how to defend ourselves against it.

We know how to give it too, until you realize that’s just about all you give.

We know how to survive in an environment where the first question is often:

“Okay, who fucked something up?”

The brain isn’t necessarily interested in making you happy. It’s interested in keeping you alive.

It’s basically that coworker who walks into the room and immediately asks who screwed something up, even when everything is fine.

The brain scans.

For problems.

For rejection.

For danger.

For conflict.

For uncertainty.

For the thing that might go wrong.

And if those things aren’t immediately apparent, sometimes our brains will go looking for them anyway.

You could receive seventeen compliments and one criticism, and your brain will be sitting in bed at 2:00 a.m. replaying the criticism like it’s conducting a congressional investigation.

“Okay, but what did she mean by ‘interesting’?”

This negativity bias isn’t necessarily a flaw. It’s part of how we’re wired. The brain evolved to notice threats because noticing the lion mattered considerably more than noticing the beautiful sunset.

The problem is that most of us aren’t being chased by lions anymore.

We’re being chased by emails.

Deadlines.

Performance reviews.

Other people’s opinions.

Traffic.

Politics.

And the possibility that someone used a period instead of an exclamation point in a text message.

Our brains don’t always know the difference.

They scan anyway.

And we gravitate toward what is familiar, even when what is familiar isn’t actually happening anymore.

This is one reason practices like meditation and purposeful gratitude can help. They don’t magically eliminate threats or turn you into a peaceful woodland creature who has transcended email.

They simply slow the automatic reaction enough to create some space between what happens and how we respond.

And please don’t quit your day job and start meditating in the woods because I said that.

Threats are real.

Problems are real.

Some jobs genuinely require you to stay alert.

But practicing gratitude taught me something I had forgotten:

Not everything is life or death.

Sometimes I’m just in the shower washing my hair.

I’m not running from a lion.

Sometimes I’m doing dishes.

Nobody is chasing me.

Sometimes someone does something well, and I can simply tell them I noticed.

That’s incredibly basic, but in environments where everything is rush, compete, be first, don’t sleep, don’t trust, watch your back, basic gratitude can become surprisingly radical.

Because gratitude asks us to notice something other than the threat.

It asks us to notice the person who helped.

The person who showed up.

The person who did something well.

The small thing that went right.

The moment that wasn’t a crisis.

And gratitude isn’t pretending everything is wonderful when it isn’t.

It’s not ignoring injustice, dysfunction, danger, or the things that genuinely need to be fixed.

It’s simply refusing to let what’s wrong become the only thing you can see.

That’s important because misery can become familiar, too.

If all you ever practice is looking for what’s wrong, you can become extraordinarily good at finding it.

You can walk into a room full of people who love you and notice the one person who didn’t say hello.

You can have a successful day and focus on the one thing that went badly.

You can receive genuine appreciation and immediately explain it away.

You can live in a perfectly ordinary moment and convince yourself something terrible is about to happen.

The brain says, “Excellent. We found a problem. Now we can relax.”

Except we don’t relax.

We find another problem.

And another.

And another.

So I’ve started practicing something different.

Not toxic positivity.

Not pretending everything is okay.

Not walking around saying, “Good vibes only,” while Rome burns behind me.

Just noticing.

Hey, that went well.

I appreciate you.

That was funny.

I’m glad you’re here.

I handled that better than I used to.

This moment is actually okay.

And I’ve discovered something else.

It’s kind of nice to be around someone who notices what’s right.

It’s kind of nice to be that person, too.

I don’t know if humans or whatever comes after us are going to completely outsmart a brain designed to keep us alive.

Maybe we’re always going to notice the negative first.

But we can practice looking again.

Because gratitude isn’t the denial of reality.

It’s the willingness to see all of reality.

The bad stuff.

The good stuff.

The terrifying stuff.

The ridiculous stuff.

The person who screwed something up.

And the person who quietly did something really well.

Sometimes we’re running from a lion.

And sometimes we’re just washing our hair.

Learning the difference is probably worth practicing.

And honestly?

It’s also kind of nice to be around just in my own mind, in my own thoughts, and in my own company.