Call that friend, for that cup of coffee, or even better, wine...

There is a particular danger in spending too much time around personal development.

One begins to develop opinions about gratitude journals, resilience frameworks, breathing exercises, leadership retreats, meditative interventions, emotional intelligence diagnostics, purpose workshops, reflective journaling, and seminars where everyone is invited to “share one word” about how they are arriving in the room. The correct answer is rarely “hungry,” although it often should be.

Over the years, through executive coaching, mentoring, leadership development, and my own long-standing curiosity about human improvement, I have attended more workshops, webinars, seminars, conferences, circles, modules, and sessions than good taste would normally permit. Some were excellent. Some were useful. Some were sincere and slightly tragic. Some involved enough abstraction to make one miss a quarterly budget review.

I try not to judge. Non-judgement is, after all, one of the sacred ornaments of the coaching profession. Still, I have occasionally had to admire the human capacity to make a simple truth wear a conference badge.

One of those simple truths arrived during a session on positive psychology and resilience. The presenter, Emily Larson, spoke about the connection between resilience and gratitude. The point was neither dramatic nor especially exotic. People who regularly express genuine gratitude tend to strengthen their relationships, regulate their emotional life more effectively, and notice more of what sustains them.

There is research behind this. There is also common sense behind it, which has become less fashionable, perhaps because it does not require a proprietary model.

Most serious traditions have known some version of the same idea. Gratitude interrupts appetite. It slows the machinery of grievance. It reminds us that we are not self-created, self-sustaining, or self-rescuing creatures. Our lives are built from visible labour and invisible gifts. Parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, mentors, rivals, and occasional adversaries all leave material behind. Some give us affection. Some give us instruction. Some give us useful irritation, which is often underpriced.

At the end of the session, as these sessions often require, we were asked what we would do differently. This is the moment when one is expected to make a small public commitment, large enough to sound meaningful and small enough not to ruin one’s life.

Naturally, I overdid it.

I announced that I had around 360 Facebook friends, and that I would write to one of them every day for a year, expressing my gratitude. One person per day. A full annual cycle of appreciation. A disciplined pilgrimage through the social network.

Very noble.

Very moving.

Very unlikely.

Emily, with the calm enthusiasm of someone not responsible for executing my plan, suggested that I could also reflect on the project in my blog.

For a few minutes, it seemed brilliant.

Then I returned to my senses.

Writing one authentic gratitude note per day to 360 people is not a small gesture. It is a second job with emotional stationery. Also, the more I thought about it, the more artificial it felt. Gratitude does not always improve when administered by calendar. A sincere note written under the pressure of a daily production schedule can begin to sound like a performance review from the heart.

Still, the idea had energy. So I converted it into something more manageable and, inevitably, more ridiculous: an Instagram project.

I called it #Project3G. The three Gs stood for three words or feelings of gratitude attached to each person. I would choose a photo, add the friend’s Instagram handle, include three short hashtags describing what I appreciated in them, and post one image at a time. There was a template. There was a sequence number. There was an emoji in the corner, occasionally carrying an inside joke of limited public value.

In other words, I took a human impulse and immediately turned it into a branded format.

This is how modern life catches us.

The intention was real. The format was already suspicious.

Before beginning, I had the usual concerns. In what order should people appear? Would old friends feel overlooked if newer acquaintances came first? Would private people feel exposed? Would someone misunderstand the gesture entirely? Would they think I was unwell, sentimental, lonely, manipulative, or worse, starting a lifestyle brand?

These were not unreasonable concerns. Gratitude, once placed online, changes shape. It becomes visible to people who were not part of the relationship. It gains an audience. The recipient may appreciate it, but the platform also receives it. The algorithm watches. Other people compare. The gesture, however sincere, enters the theatre.

That was my first lesson.

Social media does not destroy authenticity. That would be too easy. It changes its weather. A private feeling, once made public, must survive interpretation, performance, timing, visibility, and the strange suspicion that every expression now has a secondary market.

I began anyway.

The first announcement received thirteen likes. Not exactly a global awakening. My daughter’s appearance in one post improved the numbers, owing largely to the mysterious efficiency of tween networks. A snowboarding video, which involved more personal risk than any gratitude post, performed better still. This offered a clear data point: people are more interested in a middle-aged man potentially falling on snow than in his reflections on friendship.

Fair enough. Markets have spoken on worse matters.

The responses varied. Some friends were touched. Some were confused. Some said nothing online but mentioned it privately later. A few fellow coaches responded most enthusiastically, which was predictable. Coaches are professionally trained to detect gratitude in the atmosphere and return it with interest.

What became clear was that people receive appreciation in different ways. One person may love a public acknowledgement. Another may find it embarrassing. One may prefer a message. Another may value a phone call. One may keep a handwritten card for years. Another may reply to a heartfelt paragraph with a thumbs-up emoji and still mean it deeply, or at least not maliciously.

We should be careful not to impose our preferred language of gratitude on others.

The project stopped at post seventeen.

I could dress this up as a research conclusion, but the truth is simpler. It began to feel like work. The structure that had helped me begin was starting to interfere with the feeling that had justified it. I was spending too much time selecting images, arranging text, thinking about order, anticipating interpretation, and managing the social surface of what should have been a direct human gesture.

The project had become a small example of the very problem it was trying to solve.

This is not a criticism of Instagram alone. Nor is it a confession of failure, although failure is often a useful editor. The experiment taught me something I might not have learned by merely thinking about gratitude in the abstract.

Some human acts resist formatting.

They can be supported by tools, but they are weakened when the tool becomes the centre. Gratitude is one of them. Friendship is another. Attention, apology, grief, forgiveness, admiration, and love all become thinner when they are too quickly converted into content.

The modern world encourages us to document our virtues. It asks us to show that we are reflective, kind, grateful, disciplined, emotionally intelligent, socially aware, and continuously evolving. Some of this is harmless. Some of it may even be useful. Yet there is a quiet danger in becoming more skilled at displaying the signs of humanity than practising its obligations.

A thank-you post can be lovely. It can also become a substitute for the call one never makes.

A like can be friendly. It can also become a coin placed in the machine of minimum effort.

A message can mean something to somebody. It can also allow us to avoid hearing the other person’s voice.

Over time, we may begin to confuse contact with connection. They are related. They are not identical.

Contact is easy now. We can reach almost anyone, almost instantly, through several channels, with words, images, reactions, forwarded jokes, voice notes, calendar links, and carefully chosen punctuation. Connection remains stubbornly old-fashioned. It requires attention. It requires time. It may require leaving the house. It may require sitting across from someone long enough for the prepared sentences to run out.

That is when the real conversation often begins.

There is something irreplaceable about the unhurried meeting. Coffee is good. Wine may be better, depending on the friend, the hour, and the moral condition of the week. The point is not the beverage. The point is presence without broadcast.

No metrics. No template. No audience. No sequence number in the corner.

Just the other person, with all the inconvenient texture that platforms flatten: the pauses, the face, the unfinished story, the half-sentence, the old joke, the small sadness, the moment when one realizes that a friend has changed, or perhaps has not changed enough, which is also useful information.

This is where gratitude becomes less decorative.

To thank someone properly is not merely to praise them. It is to acknowledge that they have entered one’s life in a way that mattered. They may have made a difficult period bearable. They may have offered advice at the right moment. They may have seen something in us before we could see it ourselves. They may have laughed with us when seriousness had become unbearable. They may have stayed.

Staying is underrated.

In professional life, we speak often about networks. The word is efficient and faintly bloodless. Networks are useful. They help careers move, information travel, and opportunities appear. But a network is not the same as a circle of human beings who remember you before your latest version. A network knows your profile. A friend knows the earlier drafts.

That distinction becomes significant with age.

As life accumulates, the need for witness becomes stronger. Not applause. Not visibility. Witness. Someone who can say, “Yes, I remember when you were trying to become that person,” or “You have said this before,” or “You are avoiding the obvious,” or “Come over, we are opening something decent.”

These are not small things.

A serious life cannot be built only from achievement. It also requires continuity. Friendship gives continuity to the self. It keeps us from becoming whatever the current room rewards. It reminds us that we existed before the latest role, the latest project, the latest reinvention, the latest carefully lit professional photograph.

This is why the old project, with all its Canva enthusiasm and modest engagement, still feels worth remembering.

It began as a gratitude experiment. It ended as a reminder that the better gesture was simpler.

Call the friend.

Send the message if you must. Leave the voice note if geography conspires against you. Write the card if you still possess the patience and the pen. But whenever possible, meet. Sit down. Ask the second question. Listen to the answer. Let the conversation wander without needing to become useful.

There is enough abstraction in the world.

There are enough frameworks, platforms, metrics, signals, and polished surfaces. There are enough ways to appear connected while remaining untouched. The antidote is not dramatic. It is almost embarrassingly ordinary.

Call that friend.

Go for coffee.

Or, better still, wine.

Of course, I had concerns:

1. How to select people and in what order? I wanted diversity—not just old friends but also newer acquaintances.

2. How to handle privacy? For private accounts, I opted for “safe” pictures like scenic views, avoiding portraits or family photos.

3. How would people react? Would they think I was unhinged? Or worse, assume I had a crush on them? I resolved these fears by focusing solely on authenticity. When your feelings are genuine, you’re at peace with the consequences.

So, I began posting one #Project3G a day. My initial announcement garnered 13 likes—not exactly viral, considering my 200 followers. Undeterred, I pressed on. Featuring my daughter in a subsequent post gave me a modest bump in engagement, thanks to her tween network. But even my most daring GoPro snowboarding video only reached 37 likes. Observation #1: People don’t care much about emotional interactions involving third parties.

Some friends were confused, others intrigued. A few asked me in person about the project, and after I explained, they expressed appreciation. Observation #2: Authenticity must be clearly communicated, as social media often muddles intentions.

Interestingly, fellow coaches engaged the most, often reciprocating with their own gratitude. Observation #3: People have different wavelengths for receiving and reciprocating gratitude. There’s no one-size-fits-all method. From heartfelt cards to emoji-filled WhatsApp messages, gratitude takes many forms.

I stopped at post #17. Why? Partly because I felt I’d gathered enough data to draw meaningful conclusions for this post, and partly because the project was becoming a chore, clouding my original feelings. I might revive it someday—perhaps on a different platform like Tumblr.

For now, my takeaway is this: Show gratitude. Not on social media. Not via email. Messaging is borderline acceptable. A phone call is better. Even better, meet for a cup of coffee. Make it a habit. Push yourself to connect with the people around you—genuinely, authentically, and in person.

#personaldevelopment #gratitude #authenticity