Hello and welcome to the Gratitude Breakfast Club,
A quick morning meetup to help you jump start or maintain your gratitude practice.
We'll make it quick because we know you have things to do on this beautiful day.
Hello,
Beautiful ones.
When we do live Gratitude Breakfast Club meetups,
I share optional action steps that participants can take into their day.
These Appreciation Accelerators,
As I call them,
Are designed to keep gratitude and appreciation top of mind throughout the day,
And often take our gratitude practice off the journal page and into the walk we walk.
There are documented benefits to this.
Laurie Santos,
Ph.
D.
,
Is a professor of psychology at Yale University who teaches the incredibly popular course,
Psychology and the Good Life.
That course was transformed into the most popular online course in Yale history.
And there's an online version for teens titled The Science of Well-Being for Teens that's offered through Coursera.
In this class for teens,
Which I took because I was the parent of a teen at the time,
Dr.
Santos shares how pro-social behavior,
That is,
Interacting with others or doing something nice for others,
Has a bigger impact on our well-being and happiness than things we typically think of as self-care,
Such as spending money on or doing something nice for ourselves.
She cites a study by Elizabeth Dunn and other researchers in which subjects are given different amounts of money,
$5 or $20,
And then the subjects are told that they either have to spend that money on themselves or they have to spend it on someone else.
No matter the amount of money they were given,
The study participants who were made to spend that money on others reported feeling happier.
Dr.
Santos also cites a study conducted by Martin Seligman and colleagues in which the researchers had participants do a gratitude visit.
They wrote a letter of gratitude to someone in their life who had either helped them or been especially kind,
And if they'd never properly thanked that person,
They were to visit that person and read their letter to them.
Although study participants predicted that it would feel awkward and uncomfortable,
Researchers found a couple of significant things.
One,
The recipient of the gratitude letter really appreciated having the letter read to them.
And two,
The people who wrote the letter and read it to their recipient felt happier too.
They actually felt happier than people who just wrote their gratitudes down,
And that happiness boost lasted one to three months.
Thinking about gratitude works.
Writing about gratitude works better.
And acting on gratitude?
That works better yet.
So today,
I encourage you to think about someone you appreciate.
Write a letter to that person expressing your appreciation and,
If possible,
Do your own gratitude visit.
While you're there,
Just ask the recipient to remain silent and open while you read their letter to them.
With love,
Appreciation,
And gratitude,
This is Karen.
