I didn't join a gym until I was 50 years old. That's a good few years ago now. There I was; a fat geezer, sitting opposite a young, tanned, toned blonde. I'm old enough to be her Dad. She is a personal trainer.

I'd had two goes at a lumbar laminectory, a double rupture of my left Achilles's Tendon, was three stone over weight, took pills for blood pressure, had reflux and couldn't sleep. A practice nurse suggested I might join a gym. So I did.

Amy, the blonde, was filling in a form. Age, date of birth, address, known medical conditions (she needed more space on the form) and
'what were my personal goals'.

Mmmm.... Good question. At the time, getting to be 55 years old didn't seem too ambitious. Then she asked me about my objectives. I told her I wanted to be an Astronaut.

I was just back from a trip to the Florida NASA centre where I had had lunch with Astronaut; Jean-Loup Jacques Marie Chretien . He flew on two Franco-Soviet space missions and a NASA Space Shuttle mission. Chrétien was the first Frenchman and the first western European in space. To achieve this he had learned both English and Russian. What a diamond geezer...

I have always been interested in space exploration; I came across a letter from Neil Armstrong. A thank-you letter written in 1994, to a group of engineers, who, 25 years previously, had designed and developed the Extravehicular Mobility Unit; the space suit, that had kept him safe on the moon.   

Thank you; two of the most impactful, effective and emotive words in the English language. Praise, admiration and thank you. Why don't we say it? Embarrassed? Forget about it?

We don't ask to be thanked; if we did we would reveal our insecurities. Confess to others where we need to be praised... and we all do.

How often do you say thank you? I mean properly 'thank you'. Thank you, in a handwritten note. Not an email. A card; I just wanted to say a personal thank you for the work you did on the project. It was a success and thank you. Out there somewhere, there is a back that needs patting - go and find it.

How powerful is a thank you? Harvard researchers set up an experiment; an email, asking 50% of participants for more help in an ongoing project. The other half, in the email, included the words 'thank you so much for taking part in the project, I'm really grateful'. Sixty six percent helped with the second letter, 32% help with the first. Saying thank you is polite but it also works.

We hear so much about complaints in the NHS. The total number of all reported, written complaints in 2013-14 exceeded 175,000 the equivalent of more than 3,300 written complaints a week... about 480 a day.

How many 'thank-yous' did the NHS get last week? Dunno. No one counts them. We don't celebrate success. The NHS just wallows in failure, looks for failure, regulates to find failure and does nothing about the good stuff.

Let's start the week by changing that.

At the Academy of Fabulous NHS Stuff we now have the 'wall of fabulous thank yous'.

I know in your surgery, your practice, your office, your ward, your hospital and hospice, you will have 'thank yous' from patients, relatives and carers, who have written, spontaneously to say how grateful they are that you cared, helped and looked after them and their families.

Let's share them. Take a picture of them, the notice board you have them pinned on and send them to us at the Academy and we'll post them on the Thank you Wall.

It's easy; click here, register and upload your picture.  We'll do the rest.

When we get fed up, hacked off and wonder why we come to work we can all look at the 'thank you' wall and cheer ourselves up!  Please do it - share some good stuff for a change!

Do it, easily, here. Share the thank you's for a change.

Oh, and as you will have guessed; I never became an astronaut but I did lose three stone... thank you Amy. 

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Academy of Fabulous Stuff;

Have you looked at the fabulous stuff?

New 'shares' every day.

Make a note; be a sharer this week. 

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