Thank you Brian Pelletier for your very insightful comment. Much appreciated! To my my appreciation tombstones are my designs, my tools and my texts — so I guess, I am pretty covered in that respect:) But I have lots of friends who suffer because of the lack of such tangible self-appreciation tokens. Some of them try to find replacements — they decide to develop a tangible hobby like carpentry or ceramics. It is a way to see the outcome of their efforts. Others just feel something is missing in their lives and have no idea what to do with it.

But I imagine that if you manage to pull this amazing project thought that you thought never possible, change the culture, make a dent it would be sooooo worthwhile to create a physical manifestation of that success. I imagine how powerful it could be to touch it the next time you are trying to reach almost beyond your abilities.

Should it be something standardized like the Wall Street tombstones — I am not convinced… Perhaps it could be something you yourself figure out. To me it would be to award myself with a unique experience. With something that will have a strong positive association with this particular event. The problem with self-awarding might be that we never feel adequately worthwhile the price (or too often feel so:). Perhaps it could be a ritual within a team — once in 1/2 a year or a year you award each other such tangible tokens of appreciation.

And if I were to put something on my tombstone, I would love to have it written there: She inspired true positive change and made people happier. And in the process of it all she made herself happy too :)

What would your tombstone say?