As accounting professionals, our lives generally are governed by numbers, whether it is our clients’ financials or our own. And we also are ruled by other numbers, such as how many errands have to be run by the end of the day, how much time we’ve spent working on our clients’ files, or deadlines that involve a date and a time.
At home, we also are figuring out how many dozen eggs to pick up at Costco, or how much meat to buy and freeze if it is on sale. What about how many pounds we would like to lose by the summer? How much can we afford to spend on our vacation? Or, how many points our team is out of first place. We’re always counting and measuring our lives by numbers.
As someone who started out life as a mathematician, I can tell you that numbers speak to me. Scratch that. They yell at me.
With all these numbers swirling around our heads, especially these days, it is easy to forget to count some of the most important things in our lives—our blessings. That’s right; I’m talking about stopping to smell the roses and practice gratitude.
Research has shown that practicing gratitude can, among other things:
- Boost the immune system
- Improve our sleep
- Reduce stress
- Reduce our blood pressure
- Improve our overall physical health
- Improve our overall mental health
- Improve our self-esteem
- Lower the risk of depression
- Facilitate recovery from depression
- Increase the frequency of exercise
- Improve relationships and create new ones
- Increase optimism
- Reduce materialism
- Make people like us
- Help us find meaning in our work
- Make us more effective managers
- Promote selflessness
- Reduce aggression
And on a personal note, I have found that when I practice gratitude by either writing down or just mentally listing all the positive elements in my life, I become an absolute magnet for more good things. It is as if I flipped a switch and good things started (actually, continued) happening. Think of it like a twist on “The Secret.”
Sometimes, when I’m having trouble falling asleep, I clear my head to focus on how fortunate I am. I list five to 10 gifts I have been given in life. Some of them are big ones, such as my husband and our kids. Others are lifestyle based, such as how lucky I am to have a commute of about 15 feet to get to my desk, or how I love watching film noir on Turner Classic Movies.
Then there is the fact I recently became a Peloton member. I’m not only having fun and getting stronger, but my lower back and knee pain are dissipating. Some of these gifts are downright shallow, such as how I love to tell Alexa to turn off the light or I have found a new fun app.
Gratitude does not mean you have to be religious; it just means pausing to see how fortunate we are, whether it is due to good fortune or extremely hard work.
With all these numbers swirling around our heads, especially these days, it is easy to forget to count some of the most important things in our lives—our blessings. That’s right; I’m talking about stopping to smell the roses and practice gratitude.
I have roughly 20 journals from conferences and other giveaways. I’m now using the first of my stash to record my gifts. Sometimes it helps to write them down without ever reviewing what I wrote. Other times, it does my heart good to read about some blessings I noted in the past and had since forgotten.
How many branded journals and notebooks have you snagged as swag at conferences? Start using them to list and count your blessings. And if you do not have any, the dollar store is a good place to pick some up.
Esther Friedberg Karp is an internationally-renowned trainer, writer and speaker from Toronto, where she runs her QuickBooks consulting practice, EFK CompuBooks Inc. Consistently in Insightful Accountant's Top 100 ProAdvisors, she has been named to the Top 10 twice.
A ProAdvisor in three countries, she has traveled the world with Intuit, spoken at QuickBooks Connect in San Jose and Toronto, among other places, and has written countless articles for Intuit Global.
Esther has been named one of the “Top 50 Women in Accounting,” a “Top 10 Influencer” in the Canadian Bookkeeping World, and is a repeat nominee for the “RBC Canadian Women’s Entrepreneur Awards.” She counts among her clients many international companies, as well as accounting professionals seeking her out on behalf of their own clients for her expertise in multi-currency and various countries’ editions of QuickBooks Desktop and Online.
She can be reached at esther@e-compubooks.com or 416-410-0750.
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