“I found these in the front yard.” My son, grass stained, and sweaty from mowing the lawn, dangled a heavy set of keys, and dropped them into my hand. Among myriad car and house keys was half of a small plastic bar code card, its other half probably chewed away by the blades of our lawn mower. I recognized the logo on the other side as that of my local yoga studio.

Checking into class that evening, I handed the keys to the studio manager, and told him the story. On my way out of class, he stopped me, and said, “Hey, we found the owner of the keys, and he left you this.”

He slid a small envelope across the counter addressed to me.

The relieved owner, who’d been separated from his keys for three weeks, thanked us, and mentioned a time he’d found someone else’s keys on the high school field, and tracked down the owner. He hoped someone would experience the same ‘thrill of victory’ in finding his keys, and pay the kindness forward.

The thrill of victory. In our business, we often think about it in terms of what we get, and not what we give. Book the gig. Win over a client. Receive an award. Amazing accomplishments, but not necessarily daily occurrences. A typical day may not present ‘the thrill of victory.’

It could.

Show some client love and appreciation with a small gift, or email of gratitude. Encourage an emerging or struggling colleague. Refer another voice actor for a job you’re neither available, nor appropriate. The client will view you as connected and smart, and you’ll get that warm, toasty feeling of lifting up another voice actor. Which may be reciprocated in the future. Win-win-win.

Have a resource you can share? Studio hack, fabulous editor, amazing coach: share it. All that talk of a rising tide? It’s a thing.

Offer your voice to a cause or organization that does good. These days we can use all the positivity we can get.

The richness of our day is not defined solely by our bookings. The thrill of victory can be found in a variety of big and small moments in our day. Are you feeling it?