The THANK YOU Effect

Words are powerful. The Bible says it, tradition says it and even research proves it because it has the power to cause people to smile or cry. We say a lot of things to people, some of which scar them for life and come back saying it was just for laughs or it wasn’t meant literally. But sometimes we forget that it’s out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Growing up, Mummy taught me never to forget my ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘I am sorry’. I always got spanked for receiving gifts without saying thank you or reprimanded for not saying please anytime I wanted something from anyone at all. I used to cry and pretend to be angry at her for the punishments I thought were outrageous but I was little and knew nothing about what she was grooming me for up ahead. I learnt later on in life that these simple words were the very foundations my life was going to be built on.

‘Thank you’ is my favourite. Saying it with a genuine smile spread across your lips and stretching every muscle to put across your message of appreciation says a lot and means a whole lot more to the other party. Most at times, we all do things for people expecting, in most cases, to be appreciated. Its either we want to be hugged, smiled at, nodded at, given a gift and the simplest of all, to get a thank you.

One may sit back and ask why there is the need to say thank you. I don’t have a million reasons but just two; two, enough to make you give yourself a million more reasons to say it.

Thank you is  a two worded phrase with just eight letters but it’s more than enough to start your day on a good note or put Fifty Ghana cedis in your pocket with absolutely no hustle. We underestimate the power of thank you and disregard its effect all because some of us are ignorant of the changes it can make in our lives.

My mum came back home from work sometime ago with a story to share. She sat in a public transport which stopped at a junction to alight a passenger who had a lot of loads. Like the rest of the passengers, my mother could have decided to sit and mind her own business but she took it upon herself to help this very young man offload his belongings. After everything, he just turned his back and walked away. Everyone in the car complained about how impolite and disrespectful he was.

This shows how much Thank you is regarded in the society we find ourselves in. It comes with respect and a lot of supplementary goodies behind it like favor and the likes. If this young man decided to go for a job interview anywhere and was met by any of the passengers who he sat in the same car with, he would have lost this opportunity just because he failed to say thank you.

To the other party, to be said thank you to is the only way to be appreciated. Some of us think thank yous are only said to people with respectable jobs that benefit us directly. But have sat down to think of how much joy will fill the heart of that cleaner who cleans our washrooms or empties our bins or that security man who opens the gate for us anytime we say thank you with a smile packed with genuineness? Thank yous make us feel appreciated and loved. It tells us that our little efforts are being acknowledged. It brings to us some sense of happiness, happiness that can only be gotten from the little things we do from the deepest parts of our hearts.

Why would you want to deny someone of this amazing unexplainable feeling of happiness when it brings nothing to you? I’m pretty sure you’d love it to be appreciated. You’d love to hear a thank you in your ear from someone you did something little for. So go ahead, spread the love, say THANK YOU. It takes nothing from you but brings back a lot in return.