Gratitude Letter
When my kids were little and acting out, I used to tell them they’d won the cosmiclottery in life andthey should be gratefulevery day for all they have instead ofthinking about what they don’t have. This usually shutthem up at least as far asthe car ride home from Target without the latest video game they thought theycouldn’t live without
At the time they were too young to fully understand the concept of karma but I am certain they understood what it means to be grateful. After all I taught them both to sign “thank you” before they could even speak.
For me, I’ve always maintained that I must have been a slug in a past life to have been given the opportunities and to live life the way I do at this time in this place with “my” people. For all this I’m very grateful – generally But I don’t sit down and think about who and what I’m specifically grateful for every day.
Well I should because according to the time of the cult of happiness that we live in, an attitude of gratitude will make me a happier person and with the world we live in don’t we all need to just “Be Happy?” Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology in his seminal study had a group of people write and deliver a gratitude letter to someone who they had not properly shown their appreciation to in the past. The writing and delivery of the letter hugely increased the happiness quotient not only of the letter’s recipient but the letter-writer as well. His work has spawned a whole school of psychology and his acolytes include Adam Grant at University of Pennsylvania and Shawn Achor at Harvard who have turned the research into corporate engagement tools – let’s make all our employees happy (apparently being employed is not enough).
Achor specifically studied miserable Ivy League students to see what makes some of them happier than others, and his main conclusion? Gratitude. There’s even a hugely popular TED talk David Steindl-Rast a monk about why gratitude is the key to happiness, but I bet for him he’s just grateful he doesn’t have to buy clothes.
Of course once I realized that I’d been seeking happiness in all the wrong places, like self-awareness, I am having my own existential V-8 moment. In fact, I am totally not grateful that I spent lots of money on therapists who took me down the road less traveled when I had to do was be grateful every day.
The key ingredient to achieving happiness from gratitude is actually expressing it in any way possible. You can do this in a letter that you share with the person or a journal that you keep to yourself or you can just think it. And it doesn’t even have to be big things like sunsets, babies and your loved ones, although that’s good too. It can just be for silly things like Starbucks, platform shoes, and bubble gum.
I don’t have to watch a monk on the internet to understand how gratitude can fuel a life perspective because I live with the most grateful man on the planet. I know that some of his gratitude perspective is borne of his Mom’s 18 year battle with cancer. Her attitude was remarkable and it was all about her gratitude for having one more day with her family. And it definitely rubbed off on him. And it’s one of the things I love most about him. He actually says things like “I give thanks for you.” Seriously. It’s embarrassing. And it’s wonderful too.
But then again, expects us to say thank you for anything and everything. Now I’m a big believer in thank you notes as readers of this column know, and I do believe and know that being nice and kind and gracious to the people you love the most is important in all relationships.
