The Art of Gratitude
Gratitude Got Me a Free Meal — How Your Hard Work Pays Off
The art of consequential luck
In my past gratitude articles, I’ve talked about how gratitude creates serendipity and how gratitude creates room in your life to let in luck.
Now for the last article on this, I want to touch on how it creates luck as a consequence of your actions.
It’s no secret; I am a sucker for coffee.
If it’s not apparent by my daily order at a nearby crepe cafe, it’s apparent by the stains on my teeth no amount of charcoal toothpaste can cure.
I’ve got a few go-to spots throughout the town I live in, but the biggest one is a shop in the same building as the local college’s merch store and workspace for the student entrepreneurs.
And they always know what I’m looking to order:
An exclusive cold brew they brew with hops and a turkey, bacon, avocado crepe.
Some days, the baristas would see me in the window and by the time I walked through the door, my meal would be waiting for me.
This had gone on nearly every morning for the better part of two years.
But there’s a funny thing about being an adult you never truly get prepped for:
Developing spending habits in the middle of economic inflation.
I still remember the day gas prices seemed to almost double in price and suddenly, the country was slingshot into panic mode.
How the hell am I going to afford any of this?!
And that included my go-to breakfast.
That’s when, as a young adult, you get hit with the cold-hard truth of “sometimes making it at home is the smarter and better decision”.
But the transition was tough for me.
Not because my spending habits are more like spending addictions, but because being the introvert that I am, the coffee shop was my social time.
Before work, I looked forward to seeing all the smiling staff and regulars who I would spare a couple of minutes to have quick conversations with.
Like the regular who’s an accomplished author and poet.
Or the barista who speaks Swedish and loves independent films.
Or the barista who moonlights as a photographer.
I started realizing that making those financial decisions diminished my time with other people immensely.
And it started to take a toll.
Hence, gratitude exercises.
If I couldn’t spend time with people who cheer me up, then maybe it’s time I take initiative for that too.
So, as part of my new morning routine, I would spend ten minutes writing as many things as I was grateful for within those 600 seconds.
And it helped quite a bit.
Even if I never got to go as much as I could, there were still things I could look forward to.
And were free.
Free’s a big plus nowadays.
Time had passed and eventually, I had enough spare money put aside to go back to the coffee shop.
As soon as I walked in, the baristas announced my name like the warmest welcome I could get.
The crepe chef came up as I was ordering and asked if I wanted my usual.
Sadly, I’m just gonna do the coffee today. That’s all I got for my budget.
She was bummed, but completely empathized.
Most of the baristas were still students, so if anybody understood it was going to be them.
I ordered my cold brew and sat in the back of the shop near the merch store where I would spend as much time as I had before work journaling.
And I was about to put in some music (Evanescence’s new album at the time) when I heard the crepe chef’s voice again.
Oops, I tripped.
And she gently placed in front of me one of the fattest turkey bacon avocado crepes I had ever seen.
She even drenched it with extra creme fraiche and pesto sauce.
Wait, what??
She turned back to me with a grin as she was walking into the kitchen.
Don’t worry about it. You’ve paid a year’s worth of my salary with how much you come in!
I love this story as an example of gratitude for a few reasons which I wanted to leave you all with:
- It shows if you put in the work, the results will come. Especially in ways you don’t expect.
- Gratitude is somehow contagious. If you think about it, the crepe chef made the meal for me as a way of being grateful of me doing business with the shop.
- It was the first time in weeks I didn’t go to work on an empty stomach. So there’s that.
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