Lean Quote: Christmas Spirit Every Day

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month." — Harlan Miller

Although the Christmas-preparations can put us under stress, it still seems that during the few weeks before and around Christmas we are more caring and loving. We are much more of a family person all of a sudden, we think about world peace, we have more compassion, patience with others and start overflowing with altruism.
  
We take more time for reflection, which leads us to think more of others who are less fortunate than us, and we give a little to charities. We go and buy presents for family and friends and therewith again we naturally spend more thoughts on others. All this gives us the feeling to do something good for other people. This in return makes us feel better, again. 

We do not need jars of Christmas spirit to open every month throughout the year as Harlan Miller wished. Just try the following to keep up the Christmas spirit all year through:

1) Smile at people as often as you can and most people will smile back. 
2) Every day, do something small for somebody else. 
3) Show gratitude. Thinking, saying and writing gratitude helps us to be in the present moment and to focus on all the positive things in our lives, to concentrate on everything we have and our strengths.

Merry Christmas to all A Lean Journey Fans! I hope everyone takes the time to spend quality time with your family and enjoy all the things you have to be thankful for. Lean thinking is a gift to us individually and to organizations empowering and inspiring improvement all around us. This holiday season I want to take the opportunity to thank all those who share the passion for continuous improvement and share in the learning on this blog.