Image from sxc.hu user Ambrozjo

After arriving at my mom’s house on Thanksgiving, my seventeen-year-old daughter hands me an envelope. Perplexed, I opened it to find a  incredible and moving handwritten note of thanks from her. Let’s just say it was enough to bring tears. She wrote one for my mom, my siblings, close friends and — the most amazing of all — her two little brothers.

She said she is about to graduate and leave home. She felt she needed to do it.

I write notes to my clients every year … by hand. Yes, it cramps, but it’s worth it. (I even keep a journal, but I guess that’s not enough to keep the handwriting muscles warm.) You can get more ideas from 33 Ways to Reward Your Customers. These have a lot of retailer-related suggestions. However, every business can pick up something from this list.

It isn’t necessary to wait until the holidays to thank your clients. I do that, but I try to send the notes and gifts earlier. (Sent last week.) I’ve sent them pecan pralines (Texas food), books and Boy Scout Popcorn (delicious treat that also helps the organization).

You could also buy stamped postcards and write a thank you anytime you find the opportunity. They’re small and light, so you can carry them with you ready to write on.

How do you thank people?

Weekly Links

Brain food …

• The 90 Top Secrets of Bestselling Authors. Wonderful roundup of quotes.
• Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People. Not just for sales people. I love reading about influence. Need to finish reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Affiliate)
• Writer’s Block: The 12-Step Cure. This is a good list of tips — not all the usual stuff. Comparing yourself to other writers is a big problem. Remember, writers are all on different paths of writing careers in terms of expertise, experience, length, medium.
• You’re Not As Busy As You Think. I’m fortunate I learned this lesson early in my career. People get sucked in phone conversations. They also “looked busy” so they could stay at work later and look good for the bosses.

Fun …

• The 56 best/worst similes. I love this one: “Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.”
• Interactive Color Wheel. Awesome despite not including Snoopy in the whites and Woodstock in the yellows. At least, Franklin is there to represent Peanuts.
• The Infinite Loop of Procrastination. Off to check emails and tweet.
• 12 Unique Stewardess Uniforms. Think uniforms are bland today? Try these.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

The winner of Ted Demopoulos: Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears) from Write Funny: 3 Timeless Rules of Comedy That Every Writer Should Learn entry as selected by Random.org… {eDrum roll}… comment #1!

Congratulations, Mathew Patterson!

This entry’s prize comes from marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin. He contributed his $800 DVD set. You have until June 13 to contribute a valuable 30+ word comment.

I’ve seen Joanna Young’s writing over time, but it wasn’t until Poewar’s March Madness that I became a regular at her Confident Writing blog. Since then, she has inspired me to think deeper about describing things and ideas. Her powerful writing post alone shows how we can have so many answers to one question.

How To Add Colour To A Grey Day

Although Scotland isn’t the cold, dark, rainy place a lot of people think it is, we do get a lot of dull, grey days. (Dreich is often the word for it: cool, damp, grey, drizzly rain.)

I was going through one of those grey days last week, filling my head with grey self talk: what a grey day it is, what a miserable day, there’s nothing to see but grey. Till I decided to stop myself: to go out for a walk and – camera in hand – look for the very opposite. Go hunting for the colours of the day.

I was delighted with the results: 10 glorious colours found in city gardens, along the tow path by the urban canal, hiding under park benches.

But it wasn’t just the pictures and the colours that I took away with me. What mattered more was what I learned. That you can change not just the way you feel about a day but the way you experience it. You can change your experience by:

• Making a conscious decision to look for things: like colours, or signs of life, or positive events
• Flexing your creativity muscles: by writing, taking pictures, painting, blogging
• Looking in unexpected places: the nooks and crannies of your everyday surroundings might just contain hidden gems
• Changing your mental filters: you need filters to stop your brain getting overloaded with information, but sometimes you can set them too tight and miss the good stuff
• Sharing what you find: a message I wrote on Twitter about finding colour on a grey day drew people to my photos; maybe helped some people to think differently about their world, or their day; and led to Meryl inviting me here to share these words with you.

Thinking about ways to add colour to a grey day seemed like a suitable gift to bring to Meryl’s party. It’s a frame of mind that can help us to enjoy not just one day, but the whole of a year.

Are there any other ways to find colour that you’d add to this list? What else can we do to add colour to the greyest of days?

Joanna Young is a writing coach from Edinburgh, Scotland who blogs at Confident Writing. You can also find her on Twitter (@joannayoung) and flickr (Joanna Young)

• AllTop resources for many categories including gaming, oddities, design, ego, and much more. Guy Kawasaki and crew are behind it and its inspiration comes from Popurls.
• Color illusions that play tricks on your eyes. This explains how one works. Boing Boing points to more from R. Beau Lotto.
• Job search widgets, gadgets, and tools. Note: Not safe for work… unless you don’t mind them knowing you’re hunting for a new job.
• StrangeUSA: Everything strange including haunted buildings, places, urban legends, cemeteries, weird places, cool places, and ghost towns.
• $5000 Prize Giveaway involves a graphic design group writing project lots of cool prizes. The folks responsible for this site and CssCollection donated three gold subscriptions good for one year at GetAbstract.com worth $299 each.