I am glad you wrote that

just stopping by to say thanks for including me as an author on the commit. That's nice of you!

The answer is gratitude as we look back and faith as we look forward.

A major limitation of gratitude apps & journals is once you write in them, they are out of sight and mind for the rest of the day. One of our goals at 3x5 Life is to create an analog product that you interact with all day. When you pull out your card to view your tasks, you cannot help but to see your gratitude list on the opposite side.

gratitude

An alternative kind of note-taking was encouraged in the late Middle Agesamong members of new lay spiritual movements, such as the Brethren of theCommon Life (fl. 1380s–1500s). Their rapiaria combined personal notes andspiritual reflections with readings copied from devotional texts.

The practices in this book were created to cultivate gratitude and the joy, kindness and well-being that gratitude brings. My wish for you is that your life is happier and better as you learn to practice living gratefully.

he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong

I am happy to warm Mrs. Croft's soup in the evenings," I suggested. "It is no trouble."

The Student Guide to North America,"

Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have

Rodolfo: Literally, I spoke to a person who said, “Man, if I do bad things here they're going to want to keep me here.” What type of mentality is that? That they rather commit crimes while in detention so they can stay in the United States but not even that, they are going to be locked up.Rodolfo: So, that reality, that part where their mind has set on, “Okay well, I'd rather be in jail here then go back to my home country. Because I'm going to be, at least, with my family here, so they can go visit me and stuff like that.” That's very.., that's horrible. So yeah, that. That would be awesome if somebody is in detention, if somebody is detained, they can get visits from their family. Just people who are detained, you know?Sergio: Just wanting to hug your mom—Rodolfo: Yeah. Because a visit does all the difference, man. You know what I mean? Seeing that little help, it's like a beacon of hope, you know? Okay, well, one day or hopefully or just keeping that alive.Sergio: I think that's all the questions I have right now, I might come up with more later to ask you again. But right now, do you have anything on your mind that you want to share or talk about?Rodolfo: Man, it's been awhile since I spoke about any of this, but I feel I've let everything... or for now because I have a lot, a lot more. But for now, I feel like it was good. It's like a little therapy session as well, man. Honestly, to be quite frank with you, that's what I was looking for, man. Because I don't really have any friends like that, and I don't know anybody out here like that and it's just great to finally speak and be heard.Rodolfo: I know it's your job and I know it's your school and everything but man, I feel like you really were listening to me and thank you. Thank you man, really.

That definition file is priceless :) thank you.

I learned a valuable lesson that the haters have all the energy in the world to share their outrage but the people you really want to reach respect you, your time, and what you’re doing and they are often too busy to take the time to express gratitude.

this tempest in my mind delicate (adj.) 6 sensitive, tender, not robust KL III.iv.13  Doth from my senses take all feeling else KL III.iv.14  Save what beats there.

Emmons proposes a series of questions to help people recover from difficult experiences, which I’ve adapted for the workplace: What lessons did the experience teach us? Can we find ways to be thankful for what happened to us now, even though we were not at the time it happened? What ability did the experience draw out of us that surprised us? Are there ways we have become a better workplace because of it? Has the experience removed an obstacle that previously prevented us from feeling grateful?

Research points to the notion that gratitude might have positive effects on transforming conflicts, which can benefit the organization and working relationships. How do you do that? It starts with the one charged with mediating the conflict: For example, a supervisor with two bickering employees might open a meeting by expressing sincere appreciation of both parties. Throughout the process, that person should never miss an opportunity to say “thank you.” The research says this attitude of gratitude will have a positive feedback effect, even if results aren’t obvious right away.

Giving creates gratitude, but giving can also be a good way to express gratitude, especially if the person in question is shy. You can say “thanks” by taking on scut work, lending a parking space, or giving a day off. These kinds of non-monetary gifts can lead to more trust in working relationships, if it’s reciprocal, sincere, and altruistically motivated.

How do you convey authenticity? Details are decisive. When you are specific about the benefits of a person, action, or thing, it increases your own appreciation—and it tells a person that you are paying attention, rather than just going through the motions.

The key is to create times and spaces that foster the voluntary, spontaneous expression of gratitude. It’s also the case that studies consistently show that there is such a thing as too much gratitude—it seems trying to be grateful everyday induces gratitude fatigue.

Employees need to hear “thank you” from the boss first. That’s because expressing gratitude can make some people feel unsafe, particularly in a workplace with a history of ingratitude.

The benefits of gratitude go beyond a sense of self-worth, self-efficacy, and trust between employees. When Greater Good Science Center Science Director Emiliana Simon-Thomas analyzed data from our interactive gratitude journal Thnx4.org, she found the greater the number of gratitude experiences people had on a given day, the better they felt. People who kept at it for at least two weeks showed significantly increased happiness, greater satisfaction with life, and higher resilience to stress; this group even reported fewer headaches and illnesses.

Gratitude is a non-monetary way to support those non-monetary motivations. “Thank you” doesn’t cost a dime, and it has measurably beneficial effects. In a series of four experiments, psychologists Adam Grant and Francesca Gino found that “thank you” from a supervisor gave people a strong sense of both self-worth and self-efficacy. The Grant and Gino study also reveals that the expression of gratitude has a spillover effect: Individuals become more trusting with each other, and more likely to help each other out.

Americans actively suppress gratitude on the job, even to the point of robbing themselves of happiness. Why? It may be because in theory, no one gives away anything at work; every exchange is fundamentally economic. You don’t deliver that memo to your boss at three o’clock sharp out of the goodness of your heart, but because that is what you’re being paid to do. Your “thanks” is a paycheck. Fail to do what you’re “asked,” and you may not see another one. Tellingly, only those who earned $150,000 or more were likely to express any gratitude for their jobs, according to the Templeton survey. This hints at one of the factors that undermines gratitude at work: power and pay imbalances. In a study published in January 2012, M. Ena Inesi and colleagues found that people with power tended to believe others thanked them mainly to kiss their butts, not out of authentic feeling—and as a result of this cynicism, supervisors are themselves less likely to express gratitude.

Why should anyone thank you for just doing your job? And why should you ever thank your coworkers for doing what they’re paid to do? These are common questions in American workplaces, often posed rhetorically—and sometimes with hostility.

Trying to surprise your partner with something she didn’t even know she wanted might feel more special to you, but to maximize gratitude, it is best to give gifts that reflects your partner’s wishes.

Expectations are the bane of gratitude. When people expect an act of kindness, they are less grateful for it. To maximize gratitude, try doing something unexpected.

gratitude motivates us and it helps us to make gestures that bind us more closelywith our romantic partner, and actually with other social partners in our lives.

gratitude does more than just make kids feel good; it also improves their mood, mental health, and life satisfaction, and it can jumpstart more purposeful engagement in life at a critical moment in their development, when their identity is taking shape.

Experiences that heighten meaningful connections with others—like noticing how another person has helped you, acknowledging the effort it took, and savoring how you benefitted from it—engage biological systems for trust and affection, alongside circuits for pleasure and reward. This provides a synergistic and enduring boost to the positive experience. Saying ‘thank you’ to a person, your brain registers that something good has happened and that you are more richly enmeshed in a meaningful social community.

Loyola University psychologist Fred Bryant finds that savoring positive experiences makes them stickier in your brain, and increases their benefits to your psyche—and the key, he argues, is expressing gratitude for the experience. That’s one of the ways appreciation and gratitude go hand in hand.

Don’t overdo it. Evidence suggests writing occasionally (1-3 times per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling. That might be because we adapt to positive events and can soon become numb to them—that’s why it helps to savor surprises.

The results showed that the gratitude group reported feeling more closure and less unpleasant emotions than participants who didn’t write about their experience from a grateful perspective. The grateful writers weren’t told to deny or ignore the negative aspects of their memory. Yet they seemed more resilient in the face of those troubles.

Grateful people give credit to others, but not at the expense of acknowledging their own responsibility for their success. They take credit, too. It’s not either/or—either I did this all myself or somebody else did it for me. Instead, they recognize their own feats and abilities while also feeling gratitude toward the people—parents, teachers—who helped them along the way.

If I am grateful for something you provided to me, I have to take care of that thing—I might even have to reciprocate at some appropriate time in the future. That type of indebtedness or obligation can be perceived very negatively—it can cause people real discomfort. The data bear this out: When people are grateful, they aren’t necessarily free of negative emotions—we don’t find that they necessarily have less anxiety or less tension or less unhappiness. Practicing gratitude magnifies positive feelings more than it reduces negative feelings. If it was just positive thinking, or just a form of denial, you’d experience no negative thoughts or feelings when you’re keeping a gratitude journal, for instance. But, in fact, people do.

1. Gratitude leads to complacency I’ve often heard the claim that if you’re grateful, you’re not going to be motivated to challenge the status quo or improve your lot in life. You’ll just be satisfied, complacent, lazy and lethargic, perhaps passively resigned to an injustice or bad situation. You’ll give up trying to change something. In fact, studies suggest that the opposite is true: Gratitude not only doesn’t lead to complacency, it drives a sense of purpose and a desire to do more.

research by my colleagues, has linked gratitude to a host of psychological, physical, and social benefits: stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, more feelings of joy, and a greater sense of social connection, among many others.

The humble person says, “How can I not be filled with overflowing gratitude for all the good in my life that I’ve done nothing to merit?” The realization that all is gift is freeing, and freedom is the very foundation upon which gratitude is based. True gifts are freely given, and require no response.

Thinking about oneself is natural; humility is unnatural. Perhaps this is why gratitude is counterintuitive. It goes against our natural inclinations. We want to take credit for the good that we encounter. This self-serving bias is the adult derivative of childhood egocentricity.

The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed. Humility ushers in a grateful response to life. Humility is a key to gratitude because living humbly is the truest approach to life. Humble people are grounded in the truth that they need others. We all do. We are not self-sufficient

According to Mark T. Mitchell, professor of political science at Patrick Henry College in Virginia: Gratitude is born of humility, for it acknowledges the giftedness of the creation and the benevolence of the Creator. This recognition gives birth to acts marked by attention and responsibility. Ingratitude, on the other hand, is marked by hubris, which denies the gift, and this always leads to inattention, irresponsibility, and abuse.

psychiatrists estimate that only one percent of the general population meets the clinical criteria for narcissistic disorders. However, narcissistic characteristics are found in all individuals in varying degrees. Early childhood is marked by egocentrism, the inability to take another’s perspective. This preoccupation with one’s own internal world is a normal stage of human development. Over time, most of us evolve out of this restricted perceptual lens. However those who continue to see the world primarily from the inside out slide down the slope from ordinary egocentrism to entitled narcissism.

modern times have regressed gratitude into a mere feeling instead of retaining its historic value: as a virtue that leads to action. Just as great philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca conclude in their writings, gratitude is an action of returning a favor and is not just a sentiment. By the same token, ingratitude is the failure to both acknowledge receiving a favor and refusing to return or repay the favor. Just as gratitude is the queen of the virtues, ingratitude is the king of the vices.

The lack of gratitude is contagious, and is passed from one generation to the next. Conversely, the act of gratitude is also viral and has been found to greatly and positively influence not just relationships but one’s own emotional status.

Tom Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, known for his finding that spending money on experiences brings more happiness than spending money on material things, also studies gratitude. In his gratitude research, Gilovich looked at whether people feel more grateful for purchased experiences than purchased things (spoiler alert: yes). 

when the people cultivate really extreme individualistic attitude ornarcissistic attitude and real clear focus on self they feel less gratitude. We knowfrom scientific literature that when we think about materialistic pursuits and we sort ofare interested in consumerism if you will we show declines in gratitude and then I thinkthat for those of you who are kind of leading busy life or are parenting kids who feel alittle over scheduled but what we are learning is that just that over scheduling and beingtoo busy is a very clear barrier to experiencing gratitude because gratitude requires a littlebit of time for reflection on the things that have been given to you.

Rather, a lack of gratitude may be connected to why that division of labor is so unequal to begin with.

It is not uncommon for romantic partners, particularly if they are co-habitating or raising children, to feel like the other person doesn't contribute as much to maintaining the home as they themselves do. It's a result of our cognitive tendency to call to mind our own actions and behaviors more readily than we can think of or remember other people's actions and behaviors. Gratitude, the article below suggests, can counteract this relationship challenge. 

Those in the gratitude condition showed avery strong preference for working with a partner, whereas those who were in the controlcondition actually preferred to work alone. So, one of the things we see about the socialbenefits of gratitude is that it enhances our desire to affiliate with others. Gratitudealso enhances our communal orientation toward others

Remember, your goal is not to relive the experience but rather to get a new perspective on it. Simply rehearsing an upsetting event makes us feel worse about it. That is why catharsis has rarely been effective. Emotional venting without accompanying insight does not produce change. No amount of writing about the event will help unless you are able to take a fresh, redemptive perspective on it. This is an advantage that grateful people have—and it is a skill that anyone can learn.

There’s another way to foster gratitude: confront your own mortality. In a recent study, researchers asked participants to imagine a scenario where they are trapped in a burning high rise, overcome by smoke, and killed. This resulted in a substantial increase in gratitude levels, as researchers discovered when they compared this group to two control conditions who were not compelled to imagine their own deaths. In these ways, remembering the bad can help us to appreciate the good. As the German theologian and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.” We know that gratitude enhances happiness, but why? Gratitude maximizes happiness in multiple ways, and one reason is that it helps us reframe memories of unpleasant events in a way that decreases their unpleasant emotional impact. This implies that grateful coping entails looking for positive consequences of negative events. For example, grateful coping might involve seeing how a stressful event has shaped who we are today and has prompted us to reevaluate what is really important in life.

Thanksgiving, was born and grew out of hard times. The first Thanksgiving took place after nearly half the pilgrims died from a rough winter and year. It became a national holiday in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was moved to its current date in the 1930s following the Depression. Why? Well, when times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you begin to see that everything you have, everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take it for granted.

Mother Theresa talked about how grateful she was to the people she was helping, the sick and dying in the slums of Calcutta, because they enabled her to grow and deepen her spirituality. That’s a very different way of thinking about gratitude—gratitude for what we can give as opposed to what we receive. But that can be a very powerful way, I think, of cultivating a sense of gratitude.

With gratitude comes the realization that we get more than we deserve. I’ll never forget the comment by a man at a talk I gave on gratitude. “It’s a good thing we don’t get what we deserve,” he said. “I’m grateful because I get far more than I deserve.” This goes against a message we get a lot in our contemporary culture: that we deserve the good fortune that comes our way, that we’re entitled to it. If you deserve everything, if you’re entitled to everything, it makes it a lot harder to be grateful for anything.

Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret—emotions that can destroy our happiness.

In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things—movies, computer screens, sports—but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.

people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits: Psychological Higher levels of positive emotions More alert, alive, and awake More joy and pleasure More optimism and happiness Physical Stronger immune systems Less bothered by aches and pains Lower blood pressure Exercise more and take better care of their health Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking Social More helpful, generous, and compassionate More forgiving More outgoing Feel less lonely and isolated.

The next thing that Phil saysin the sort of positivity bias, the notion that gratitude amplifies the good, is thatgratitude counteracts adaptation and habituation.

First, gratitude enhances the frequency andthe magnitude of enjoyment that people have around present pleasant positive emotionalexperiences.

Ask Yourself Three Questions. Utilize the meditation technique known as Naikan, which involves reflecting on three questions: “What have I received from __?”, “What have I given to __?”, and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”

It is gratitude that enables us to receive and it is gratitude that motivates us to return the goodness that we have been given. In short, it is gratitude that enables us to be fully human.

Life becomes complete when we are able to give to others what we ourselves received in the past.

A second reason supporting the power of gratitude is that gratitude increases one’s sense of personal worth. When we experience gratitude, we understand that another person wishes us well, and in turn, we feel loved and cared for. If someone has incurred a personal cost by helping me out, then how can I not conclude that I have value in that person’s eye?

So why is gratitude good? For two main reasons, I think. First, gratitude strengthens social ties. It cultivates an individual’s sense of interconnectedness.

Compared to people who didn’t receive the favor, including some who were put in a good mood by watching a funny video clip, the people who received the favor and felt grateful toward the confederate were more likely to go through the trouble of filling out the survey. This suggests the unique effects of gratitude in motivating helping behavior, more so than the general effects of simply being in a positive mood.

Indeed, contemporary social science research reminds us that if we overlook gratitude, it will be at our own emotional and psychological peril. After years of ignoring gratitude—perhaps because it appears, on the surface, to be a very obvious emotion, lacking in interesting complications—researchers have found that gratitude contributes powerfully to human health, happiness, and social connection.

One fascinating study in the 1980s found that American men were less likely to regard gratitude positively than were German men, and they viewed it as less constructive and useful than their German counterparts did. Gratitude presupposes so many judgments about debt and dependency that it is easy to see why supposedly self-reliant Americans would feel queasy about even discussing it.

In some cases, people have reported that gratitude led to transformative life changes. And even more importantly, the family, friends, partners, and others who surround them consistently report that people who practice gratitude seem measurably happier and are more pleasant to be around. I’ve concluded that gratitude is one of the few attitudes that can measurably change people's lives.

How many family members, friends, strangers, and all those who have come before us have made our daily lives easier and our existence freer, more comfortable, and even possible? It is mind boggling to consider.

there are ones who are less grateful whohave a different orientation toward life. For variousreasons they’re going to focus more on what life is denying, what life is..um...what they’relosing out on. Looking at life with a lens ofscarcity vs. a lens of abundance.

It’svery hard, by the way, to find people who are veryungrateful. In fact, if you look throughout thehistory of ideas, you see in-gratitude being excoriated as a vice, you know, it’s oneof the worse things people can say about you that you’rean ungrateful person. In some cases it really representssociopathy, or anti-social behavior because reciprocity is such a universal norm, thatwhen people do good things for us we do good thingsin return. We don’t return harm for good andso it’s unusual to find an ungrateful person,

. The grateful person atthis other extreme end of this continuum of gratefulness, is one who accepts all of lifegood and bad. Everything that happens they see it asa gift or potential gift. That’s with a grateful person.Now, it’s quite a bit different than journaling all the nice things happening to you, butyou have to start somewhere.

there’s a difference between that short term feeling and saying that someoneis a grateful person, that they habitually lookat life from a grateful focus or through gratitude glasses. That’s very different, I think.So, we could align levels of gratitude on acontinuum from the habit of saying thank you, to a moredeeper, abiding sense of thankfulness for life asa fundamental life orientation. That’s a different level of a degree of gratitude.

It leadsto kind of more prosocial leadership behavior and, in fact, more charitable giving.

the more grateful you are, the tendency is foryou to feel less anxious, less depressed. Bob Emmons really put it nicely, which isthe more you move to this grateful mindset, it'salmost physically impossible to be anxious or depressed.

Adam Smith, the great economist, when he was thinking about what makes forcivil, kind, cooperative societies, said that gratitude is really the glue that ties peopletogether. If you move forward a couple of centuries we encounter Trivers, the greatevolutionary thinker who was making the case that altruism and sharing and generosity ofthe reciprocal kind that takes place between two individuals is really driven by feelingsof gratitude, of having a sense that other people are giving to you

by beginning with the definition from Bob Emmons' really nicebook called Thanks from 2007. Gratitude, Emmons writes, is the feeling of reverence for thingsthat are given, and I think there's a real emphasis here on "given," which is the thingsthat we're grateful for are really beyond our own agency, beyond our own volition.

teaching college students to “count their blessings” and cultivate gratitude caused them to exercise more, be more optimistic, and feel better about their lives overall.

Giving evokes gratitude. Whether you’re on the giving or receiving end of a gift, that gift can elicit feelings of gratitude—it can be a way of expressing gratitude or instilling gratitude in the recipient. And research has found that gratitude is integral to happiness, health, and social bonds.

Whereas many people express their appreciation to others by shining a spotlight on the benefit they received—the gift, favor, or the kind deed itself—we discovered that, by contrast, the best “thank-yous” simply use the benefit as a spring- board toward shining a spotlight on the good qualities of the other person, their benefactor.

The Harvard Business Review has been writing about the benefits of cultures of gratitude in the workplace.