write an essay on gratitude

Gratitude Essay

500 words essay on gratitude.

Gratitude is a beautiful way of enriching our lives. It refers to the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good which we receive in life. It has been proven scientifically that when we express our gratefulness to other people, we feel happier and calmer. Thus, it allows goodness to enter our lives. For instance, when a stranger holds the door for you or greets you, it makes you feel happy. Thus, a gratitude essay will teach us how advantageous gratitude is.

Advantages of Gratitude

Gratitude can have a lot of advantages to our personal as well as social life. First of all, it strengthens our relationship with others. When you have a thankful feeling, it will strengthen the bond with the other party and enhance the trust factor and feeling of respect and love .

Moreover, it also makes us happy. When we express gratitude or receive it, we feel happy either way. As a result, people who have gratitude do not stress out a lot. Similarly, being full of gratitude makes society sensible.

In other words, people become considerate and never leave a chance to say thank you to others. Thus, it helps society to progress in the right direction with the right tools needed for the development of it.

Most importantly, gratitude reduces comparisons and promotes acknowledgement. When we become thankful, we do not compare ourselves to others. Thus, it helps us acknowledge our own achievements and blessings and remain content.

How to Practice Gratitude

There are a lot of ways through which we can practice gratitude. Some of the most effective ones include making a note of every good thing which happens to us every day. Moreover, also note the people behind it.

This will help you to return the favour at an appropriate time. Never forget to return this favour as they deserve it too. Moreover, always make sure to appreciate everything in life ranging from nature to animals .

We are lucky enough to have animals, green plants, fresh air and much more. Thus, never stop acknowledging the importance of these essential things. Moreover, always remember to say thank you to different community helpers.

It can be anyone, whether your gardener or sweeper or even the police officers. Make sure you thank them for their service whenever it is possible for you. Remember that to wake up every day is no less than a blessing itself.

So, make sure to be grateful for a new day and thank the almighty for making you wiser and stronger with each passing day. Most importantly, try to avoid complaining about things when they don’t go your way. You don’t know about the blessing behind it.

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Conclusion of Gratitude Essay

All in all, gratitude is the most essential human expression which proves that humans are sensible and have emotions. Moreover, this emotion does not just limit to humans but also animals. Often, we see then express their gratitude and return the favour. Thus, we must always express our gratitude.

FAQ of Gratitude Essay

Question 1: Why is gratitude important?

Answer 1: Gratitude is strongly and constantly connected with greater happiness. It is what helps people feel more positive emotions, appreciate good experiences, advance their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Question 2: How can gratitude change your life?

Answer 2: Gratitude can change your life as it makes you appreciate what you have rather than what you don’t have. It can change your life because it is the single most powerful source of inspiration that any individual can tap into if they simply stop and pay attention to the simplistic beauty and miracle of life.

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Essay About Being Grateful: 5 Examples Plus Prompts

Looking at life in a more appreciative way is key to success and happiness. Read this guide if you want to write an essay about being grateful.

Keeping a positive outlook on life can be challenging in a world where we constantly hear bad news. However, it is important to stop focusing on the negative and become more grateful for what we have.

Being grateful is a principal practice to follow to live a healthy, productive life. Even when you feel like nothing good has happened, think of the simpler aspects of life, things as commonplace as having a meal, a bed to sleep on, and even waking up to another day. Being grateful can help you focus your energy on something more positive, lightening your load when life gets too heavy.

If you want to write an essay about being grateful, here are some essay examples for inspiration.

For help with your essay, check our round-up of best essay writing apps .

1. 7 Things That I Am Grateful For. What About You? by Steve Spring

2. how gratitude can help you through hard times by robert emmons, 3. feel and express gratitude by dr. hyder zahed, 4. the importance of being grateful by deborah jepsen, 5. choose to be grateful. it will make you happier. by arthur c. brooks, 1. what is gratitude to you, 2. what are you grateful for, 3. why should you be more grateful, 4. is gratitude still “good” even if you don’t mean it, 5. why has gratitude become such a hot topic.

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“I have a lot to be grateful for. If I had been born in another time or place my life might have been very different. I might not have had been blessed with the life I have now. I have an amazing life. It is great to be focused on my goals and trying to improve my life…But, I need to make sure that I am taking some time to be grateful for everything and everyone that I have in my life. If you want to be happy you need to learn to be grateful. What are you grateful for today?”

Spring lists seven things he is grateful for and explains why he is thankful for each. These include his home, food, and, most significantly, the mistakes he has made in the past. He provides excellent insight into why he is grateful for these seemingly basic items and does an excellent job of justifying his points. Ultimately, the takeaway from this article is that while life is not perfect, we always have a lot to be grateful for. Gratitude is a choice.

“Being grateful is a choice, a prevailing attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that flow in and out of our lives. When disaster strikes, gratitude provides a perspective from which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances. Yes, this perspective is hard to achieve—but my research says it is worth the effort.”

This essay reflects on being grateful even when experiencing tough times. It is easy to be grateful when all is well in our lives.

Robert Emmons suggests performing a comparison between good times and bad times. You may then realize that your situation is better than you thought. He also says that rather than thinking about a difficult time or a particular challenge in a negative light, we can think about it in the sense that it has helped us grow, making it something to be grateful for.

Embracing gratitude can be a challenge in itself, but it is ultimately self-serving. Being grateful makes you count your blessings and makes you feel good.

“For, whatever you genuinely feel grateful for, you will have multiply in your life. Think about it, if you gave a gift to another and that person told you, ‘I am so grateful for the gift. I can’t believe how kind you were to give it to me. You have made me so very happy,’ you’d want to give that person another gift. So you could be feeling genuinely appreciated while at the same time bring a little happiness to another.”

Zahed, in his essay, reminds us to be grateful for everything that contributes to our happiness and wellbeing, no matter how small. Similar to Emmons, he also discusses turning sorrow and disaster into something to be grateful for, in a sense. Being grateful is a commitment that we must choose to enhance our lives. It’s all about how you measure your success.

“Gratitude promotes optimism and helps us to develop a more positive outlook. It lets us pause for a moment to reflect on something we have in our life right now instead of always striving for more … the next goal, the new dress, the new toy, the new car, or the house renovation …Gratitude is simply cultivating a genuine appreciation for what we already have.”

From a more scientific perspective, Jepsen discusses the health benefits of gratitude, both psychological and physical. Gratitude makes us more optimistic and helps us reflect on what we have rather than constantly wanting more. She also encourages readers to share their appreciation with others, even through something as simple as a smile.

“Be honest: When was the last time you were grateful for the spots on a trout? More seriously, think of the small, useless things you experience — the smell of fall in the air, the fragment of a song that reminds you of when you were a kid. Give thanks.”

This opinion piece by Arthur C is similar to the other works on this list. Brooks encourages readers to choose gratitude. He says that acting grateful can help you feel grateful and that being grateful can uplift the mood of those around us. Gratitude offers benefits for the individual and the collective. Finally, he says to find gratitude in everything, no matter how small it is.

Essay Prompts About Being Grateful

Essay about being grateful: What is gratitude to you?

Consider how you were introduced to the concept of gratitude as a child. Was it discussed with you, and were you encouraged to express gratitude, or is it something you have come to understand and appreciate in adulthood? How do you personally feel about being grateful? Are there any experiences in which you wish you acted more gratefully? Explore gratitude through your own experience.

As illustrated by Steve Spring, it can be beneficial to list the things you are grateful for and maybe discover a few more you had not considered along the way. Categorize aspects of your life and the parts for which you are grateful. You could then perform a comparison with someone from a different background or country and speculate on how your lists may differ. Finally, consider how quickly a person’s life can change. Should tragedy befall you, would you still be able to find things to be grateful for?

This angle allows you to showcase inspirational examples of the benefits of gratitude. Why is it important to be grateful and maintain a positive outlook on life? And what do people get out of it? The essay examples above offer excellent sources for this prompt. There are measurable benefits.

Some would say it is important to show gratitude even if you don’t mean it sincerely. Others argue that it would be worse to be insincere. What do you think? Does insincerity qualify as gratitude, even if you try to be polite or act kindly to spare someone’s feelings? Or is genuine gratitude something else altogether? If we cannot offer sincere thanks, are we actually being grateful?

In recent times people are talking more about the benefits of gratitude and researching to prove its merits. The popularity of gratitude journaling is vast; you can purchase bespoke gratitude journals to record your thoughts on the topic daily and even take a course to learn how to do it. Investigate where this trend originated and examine how it has been embraced throughout society.

If you’d like to learn more, in this guide our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay .

Essay Curve

Essay on Gratitude – Examples, 10 Lines to 1200 Words

Essay on Gratitude: Gratitude is a powerful emotion that can transform our lives in profound ways. In this essay, we will explore the importance of practicing gratitude on a daily basis and how it can improve our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. From boosting our mood and enhancing our relationships to increasing our resilience and overall happiness, gratitude has the ability to shift our perspective and help us appreciate the abundance in our lives. Join me as we delve into the transformative power of gratitude.

Table of Contents

Gratitude Essay Writing Tips

1. Start by defining gratitude and its importance in daily life. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful and showing appreciation for the good things in life. It is a powerful emotion that can improve mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.

2. Share personal experiences or examples of moments when you felt grateful. This could be a simple act of kindness from a stranger, a supportive friend during a difficult time, or a beautiful sunset that brought you joy. These examples can help illustrate the impact of gratitude in your own life.

3. Discuss the benefits of practicing gratitude regularly. Research has shown that expressing gratitude can lead to increased happiness, improved physical health, stronger relationships, and reduced stress. By focusing on the positive aspects of life, you can cultivate a more optimistic outlook and attract more positivity into your life.

4. Explore different ways to cultivate gratitude in your daily routine. This could include keeping a gratitude journal, writing thank-you notes, practicing mindfulness and meditation, or simply taking a moment to appreciate the small joys in life. By incorporating these practices into your life, you can train your mind to focus on the good and develop a more grateful attitude.

5. Address any challenges or obstacles that may prevent you from feeling grateful. It’s important to acknowledge that life is not always perfect and there will be times when it’s difficult to find things to be thankful for. However, even in the midst of challenges, there are still opportunities to practice gratitude and find moments of joy.

6. Reflect on the impact of gratitude on your relationships with others. Expressing gratitude towards loved ones can strengthen bonds and create a sense of connection and appreciation. By showing gratitude towards others, you can also inspire them to cultivate a more positive and grateful mindset.

7. Conclude your essay by emphasizing the importance of gratitude in leading a fulfilling and meaningful life. Gratitude is a powerful tool that can help you navigate life’s ups and downs with grace and resilience. By practicing gratitude regularly, you can cultivate a more positive and optimistic outlook, leading to greater happiness and well-being.

Essay on Gratitude in 10 Lines – Examples

1. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful and showing appreciation for the good things in life. 2. It helps us focus on the positive aspects of our lives and fosters a sense of contentment and happiness. 3. Practicing gratitude can improve our mental and emotional well-being by reducing stress and anxiety. 4. It strengthens relationships by fostering a sense of connection and mutual appreciation. 5. Gratitude encourages us to see the good in others and acknowledge their contributions to our lives. 6. It can help us overcome challenges and setbacks by shifting our perspective to focus on what we have rather than what we lack. 7. Gratitude promotes a sense of abundance and fulfillment, leading to a more positive outlook on life. 8. It encourages us to pay it forward and spread kindness and generosity to others. 9. Gratitude can improve our physical health by reducing inflammation and boosting our immune system. 10. Overall, cultivating a mindset of gratitude can lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

Sample Essay on Gratitude in 100-180 Words

Gratitude is a powerful emotion that can have a profound impact on our lives. When we practice gratitude, we are acknowledging the good things in our lives and expressing appreciation for them. This simple act can help us shift our focus from what we lack to what we have, leading to increased feelings of happiness and contentment.

Gratitude also has the power to strengthen relationships and build connections with others. When we express gratitude towards someone, we are showing them that we value and appreciate them, which can deepen our bond with them.

In addition, practicing gratitude can improve our mental and emotional well-being. Research has shown that people who regularly practice gratitude experience lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Overall, gratitude is a powerful tool that can help us lead happier, more fulfilling lives. By taking the time to acknowledge and appreciate the good things in our lives, we can cultivate a positive mindset and create a ripple effect of positivity in our relationships and communities.

Short Essay on Gratitude in 200-500 Words

Gratitude is a powerful emotion that can have a profound impact on our lives. It is the act of being thankful and appreciative for the good things in our lives, both big and small. When we practice gratitude, we are able to shift our focus from what we lack to what we have, leading to increased happiness and overall well-being.

One of the key benefits of gratitude is its ability to improve our mental health. When we take the time to acknowledge and appreciate the positive aspects of our lives, we are able to reframe our thoughts and see things from a more positive perspective. This can help to reduce feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression, and improve our overall mental well-being. Research has shown that practicing gratitude can lead to increased levels of happiness, optimism, and life satisfaction.

Gratitude also has a positive impact on our physical health. Studies have found that people who regularly practice gratitude have lower levels of inflammation, improved heart health, and stronger immune systems. This is because gratitude can help to reduce stress and promote relaxation, which in turn can have a positive effect on our physical health. By focusing on the good things in our lives, we are able to cultivate a sense of peace and contentment that can benefit our overall health and well-being.

In addition to its mental and physical health benefits, gratitude can also improve our relationships with others. When we express gratitude towards others, we are able to strengthen our connections and build trust and rapport. Gratitude can help to foster a sense of appreciation and mutual respect, leading to more positive and fulfilling relationships. By showing gratitude towards others, we can create a cycle of positivity and kindness that can have a ripple effect on those around us.

Practicing gratitude is a simple yet powerful way to cultivate a more positive and fulfilling life. There are many ways to incorporate gratitude into our daily routine, such as keeping a gratitude journal, expressing thanks to others, or simply taking a moment to reflect on the good things in our lives. By making gratitude a regular practice, we can experience the many benefits it has to offer and cultivate a greater sense of happiness, well-being, and fulfillment.

Essay on Gratitude in 1000-1500 Words

Gratitude is a powerful emotion that can have a profound impact on our lives. It is the feeling of being thankful and appreciative for the blessings and positive aspects of our lives. When we practice gratitude, we are able to shift our focus from what we lack to what we have, which can lead to greater happiness, fulfillment, and overall well-being.

Gratitude is often overlooked in today’s fast-paced and materialistic society. We are constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we need more in order to be happy and successful. This mindset can lead to feelings of discontent and dissatisfaction, as we are always striving for the next big thing without taking the time to appreciate what we already have.

However, research has shown that practicing gratitude can have a multitude of benefits for our mental, emotional, and physical health. Studies have found that individuals who regularly practice gratitude experience lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. They also have stronger immune systems, better sleep quality, and improved relationships with others.

One of the reasons why gratitude is so powerful is that it helps us to shift our perspective from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance. When we focus on what we are grateful for, we are able to see the positive aspects of our lives more clearly and appreciate the abundance that surrounds us. This can help us to feel more content and satisfied with what we have, rather than constantly striving for more.

Gratitude also has the power to improve our relationships with others. When we express gratitude towards others, whether through a simple thank you or a heartfelt gesture, we are able to strengthen our connections and foster a sense of mutual appreciation. This can lead to greater trust, understanding, and empathy in our relationships, as we are able to recognize and value the contributions of others.

In addition, gratitude can help us to cultivate a more positive outlook on life. When we focus on the things we are grateful for, we are able to see the good in every situation, even in the face of challenges and adversity. This can help us to develop resilience and optimism, as we are able to find silver linings and opportunities for growth in difficult circumstances.

Practicing gratitude can be as simple as keeping a gratitude journal, where we write down three things we are thankful for each day. This can help us to cultivate a habit of gratitude and train our minds to focus on the positive aspects of our lives. We can also express gratitude through acts of kindness, such as volunteering or helping others in need, which can not only benefit those we are helping but also bring us a sense of fulfillment and purpose.

In conclusion, gratitude is a powerful emotion that can have a profound impact on our lives. By practicing gratitude, we are able to shift our focus from what we lack to what we have, leading to greater happiness, fulfillment, and overall well-being. Gratitude can help us to cultivate a mindset of abundance, improve our relationships with others, and develop a more positive outlook on life. It is a simple yet transformative practice that can bring joy and contentment into our lives. So let us take a moment each day to pause, reflect, and express gratitude for the blessings and positive aspects of our lives.

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Gratitude Essay

500+ words essay on be grateful.

During difficult times, it’s easy to feel frustrated or drained by life. Negative feelings and thoughts can creep in, which can make it difficult to see the positive things in life. However, one simple practice of gratitude can help to eliminate these feelings. We take a look at the importance of being grateful through this being grateful essay. Students can also use this essay to practise more essays on similar topics like gratitude, being grateful, being grateful etc. Doing so will improve their writing section and increase their scores in the English exam.

What is Gratitude?

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. The word gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation or thanks. It is defined as “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift is a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty”. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives.

There are different ways of expressing one’s thanks. Gratitude is one such emotion. People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. Some of them apply it to the past by retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements of childhood or past blessings. Some people are grateful for the present as they do not take good fortune for granted. Some people show gratitude for the future as they hope for a better future and maintain an optimistic attitude.

Importance of Gratitude

Gratitude enhances the quality of life and makes existence more worth living. It opens the human heart and carries the urge to give back-to do something good in return, either for the person who helped us or for someone else. It establishes social harmony and creates an environment where everyone is appreciating and providing support to each other. It also improves the quality of personal lives and strengthens the bond with family and friends. Expressing gratitude keeps us happy, healthy and stress-free.

Feeling grateful reminds people of a joyous event, and expressing gratitude to others often strengthens relationships. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. When we are grateful for others, we do not compare ourselves with others based on their financial situation or other factors, we simply appreciate their achievements. Thus, it helps in elevating the feeling of comparison, jealousy and hate. Being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or supreme power.

How to Practise Gratitude

Everyone can benefit from making an effort to practise gratitude in day-to-day life. It can be achieved simply by paying attention to the good things that happen to us. We must appreciate and accept the importance of everything in nature and our surroundings. Also, we should not forget to return the favour at an appropriate time. Whenever possible, we should thank the people around us, who make our lives comfortable, such as washermen, gardeners, security guards, sweepers, delivery men, etc. We should make a habit of thanking God when we wake up in the morning and before sleeping at night.

Gratitude is the best way to return the favour to God, nature, society, friends and relatives for the thousands of good deeds that they do for us.

We hope students must have found this “Essay on Gratitude” useful for their studies. To access more study material and get the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive exams, keep visiting BYJU’S. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently asked Questions on Gratitude Essay

How to show gratitude towards others.

You can show gratitude by thanking people who help you and being courteous and friendly. You can iInvite people over for lunch/dinner to thank them for something they did for you. Always listen intently to what others are saying to show appreciation and care.

Why is showing gratitude so important?

Psychologists show that there is a positive impact on the brain and body of people who show gratitude.

What are the benefits of showing gratitude?

Showing gratitude helps in emotional regulation by reducing stress and burnout. It also increases your mental resilience because you are able to build meaningful relations with others.

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Common Application Essay Option 4—Gratitude

Tips and Strategies for the 2021-22 Common App

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One major change to the Common Application in the 2021-22 admissions cycle is the addition of a new essay prompt. Option #4 now reads, "Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?"

This new prompt replaces the earlier question about solving a problem : "Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma--anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution." Keep in mind that colleges and universities still want to learn about students interested in solving significant problems, and you still have the "Topic of Your Choice" option if you feel your essay would fit well under the former option #4.

According to Common App , the new prompt serves a couple purposes. First, it replaces a prompt that wasn't very popular among college applicants. More importantly, it gives applicants the opportunity to write about something positive at a difficult time in world history. Rather than write about significant problems, challenges, and anxieties, the new prompt #4 invites you to share something heartfelt and uplifting.

The Importance of Gratitude and Kindness

During the college application process, it's easy and tempting to focus entirely on your personal accomplishments: good grades, challenging AP courses, leadership experiences, athletic ability, musical talent, and so on. Even community service can sometimes come across as focused on your self—hours spent to bolster your application credentials.

Gratitude, however, is a largely selfless feeling. It's about your appreciation for someone else. It's recognizing that your growth and success wouldn't be possible without others. When you express gratitude, you aren't saying "look at me!" Rather, you are appreciating those who have helped you become you.

The folks at Common App have expressed that the new prompt allows students to write about something positive. This is true, but the prompt serves a bigger purpose in the admissions selection process. Highly selective schools end up rejecting thousands of well-qualified applicants, and those decisions will often come down to questions of character rather than GPA and SAT scores.

Think of it this way: when a college is choosing between two students who are academically strong and impressive on the extracurricular front, they will choose the student who seems to be the most kind and generous. Admissions officers are building a campus community with their admissions decisions, and they want to create a community filled with students who appreciate others, build each other up, and recognize the contributions of peers, staff, and professors. They want to admit students who will be kind roommates, collaborative lab partners, and supportive team members.

Chris Peterson, an assistant director of admissions at MIT, wrote a blog post in which he identified three essential qualities for getting into one of the world's most selective schools: do well in school, pursue your passion, and be nice. He notes that this last quality "cannot be overstated." MIT is not a Common Application member, but the point applies perfectly to the value of prompt #4. A winning essay doesn't say "me, me, me!" It shows that you are not only an accomplished person, but also someone who knows how to say "thank you."

Breaking Down the Essay Prompt

Before crafting your essay on prompt #4, it's essential to understand everything that the prompt is asking you to do as well as what it is not asking. The prompt is just 28 words long:

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

The prompt has several important elements to consider.

"Reflect"

The very first word in the prompt is one of the most significant. "Reflect" means much more than "write about" or "describe." When you reflect on something, you look inward and reveal self-awareness. You employ critical thinking skills to explain why something is important. Reflection is an act of self-discovery as you examine what you have learned and why it was meaningful.

Here's a quick example:

Unreflective writing: Coach Strauss always taught the team the value of hard work. We practiced hours every day regardless of the weather. The coach's strategy paid off when we won the state championship. The effort we put in wasn't always enjoyable, but the team's success showed that the path to success requires sacrifices.

Reflective writing: I used to resent those miserable and seemingly endless soccer practices in the rain or even snow. Looking back, I now recognize the value of what Coach Strauss was teaching the team. To succeed, we need to work through small obstacles. We need to persevere even when motivation is hard to find. We need to recognize that we always have room for improvement, and we need to support each other as we work towards that goal. I can now see that her lessons were about much more than soccer, and thanks to her I am not just a better athlete, but a better student, peer, sister, and community member.

The first example describes the writer's soccer experience. Nothing in the passage looks inward to analyze the importance of Coach Strauss to the writer's personal awareness and development. The second passage succeeds on this front—it expresses gratitude for Coach Strauss and the way that her lessons helped the writer grow.

"Something" and "Someone"

A nice feature of the Common Application is that all of the essay prompts are designed to give you a lot of latitude in how you respond. The words "something" and "someone" in the new prompt #4 are deliberately vague. You can write about anyone and anything. Possible choices for the person you focus on include

A teacher who helped you realize your potential or see the world in a new way.
A coach who taught you valuable skills.
A family member whose support, love, or guidance helped you become the person you are today.
A peer who was always there for you in challenging times.
A student you mentored or tutored who ended up teaching you something valuable in the process.
A member of your church or community who had a meaningful and positive impact on your life.

The wording of the prompt implies that the "someone" is a living person, so you'll want to avoid writing about an author, God, a pet, or a historical figure (but feel free to use prompt #7 for these topics).

As you think about the "something" that the person did for you, make sure it is meaningful. It needs to be something that has changed you in a positive way.

"Surprising"

When the prompt states that you should write about something that has made you "happy or thankful in a surprising way," don't get too hung up on that word "surprising." This doesn't mean that you need to be shocked or overwhelmed by whatever it is that a person did for you. Don't think of the term "surprising" as something that made you speechless and caused an adrenalin rush. It does not need to be something earth-shattering or even unusual. Rather, the "surprise" can simply be something that expanded your world view, made you think about something you hadn't considered before, or caused you to appreciate something new. Some of the best essays focus on something small or subtle that changed you in a meaningful way.

"Gratitude"

The essay's focus on "gratitude" and thankfulness means that you absolutely must show appreciation for someone other than yourself. One main purpose of this essay, in fact, is to show that you recognize the contributions that others have made to your personal journey. Be generous. Be kind. Show that you value the people who have made you into the person you are.

"Affected" and "Motivated"

Here's the tricky part. Essay #4 is all about recognizing someone else and showing gratitude for the way in which that person has enriched your life. That said, every college application essay needs to be about you. The admissions folks aren't really interested in learning about someone else. They are interested in learning about the student they are considering for admission.

This means you have a careful balancing act to perform with essay option #4. You need to write about the person who contributed to your life in a meaningful and surprising way, but you also need to be introspective and present why that person was so important to you. What did you learn from the person? How did you grow? How did that person change your world view, strengthen your convictions, help you overcome an obstacle, or give you a new sense of direction?

When you answer questions like these, you are writing about yourself. The true goal of this essay is to show that you are a grateful, kind, thoughtful, introspective, and generous person. The focus isn't so much on the person you are writing about, but your ability to cherish that person.

Avoid These Mistakes

You can write about anyone who was important to you, and your gratitude can be for something large or small as long as it affected you in a meaningful way. There are, however, several mistakes you want to avoid when responding to the prompt:

Don't display ego . Prompt #4 is about acknowledging the important contributions others have made to your life, so a boastful or egotistical tone will be entirely out of place. If at its heart your essay says "Coach Strauss helped make me into the award-winning national champion I am today," you've missed the mark.

Do more than describe . Make sure you "reflect" and explore how the person "affected" and "motivated" you. A winning essay needs to be thoughtful and introspective. If you spend the entire essay describing the person who has made you grateful, the admissions folks won't get to know you better and your essay won't have done its job.

Don't be clever with the "someone." Write about a real living human being who has enriched your life in a direct way. Don't write about yourself, God, Abe Lincoln, or Harry Potter. You also don't want to write about a sports idol or musician—while they may have influenced you, they didn't actually do something specifically "for you."

Attend to the Writing

Never forget that your Common Application serves not just to help the admissions folks get to know you, but also to show that you are a capable writer. No matter what your major is, a significant part of your college GPA is going to stem from writing. Successful college students can write clear, engaging, error-free prose. You'll want to pay careful attention to your essay's style , tone, and mechanics. At a highly selective university with more qualified applicants than can be admitted, the difference between an acceptance and rejection can come down to some glaring grammatical errors in the essay.

If you aren't confident in your writing ability, seek help. Have multiple people read your essay. Get feedback from parents and peers, Even more valuable will probably be feedback from your high school counselor and English teacher, for they have more experience with personal essays.

A Final Note for Common Application Option #4

This essay prompt can be approached is so many different ways, but at its heart, the essay needs to accomplish one thing: it needs to show that you are the type of person the college wants to join their campus community. Make sure you come across as someone who is kind, generous, and thoughtful. Show that you care about good writing by crafting an engaging essay that is free of any significant errors. Finally, don't be afraid to let your personality shine. Don't hold back (within reason) if you are a quirky or humorous person. The essay needs to sound like you.

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Gratitude Essay Examples

An essay on gratitude can be an excellent opportunity to reflect on the things in life that we often take for granted. It’s a chance to acknowledge the people, experiences, and things that have made a positive impact on our lives. If you’re struggling to get started, here are some gratitude essay examples and tips to help you craft a perfect essay on gratitude.

One way to approach an essay on gratitude is to reflect on specific instances where you’ve experienced gratitude in your life. For example, you might write about a time when someone went out of their way to help you or when you received unexpected kindness from a stranger. These examples can help you illustrate the power of gratitude in our lives and show how it can change our perspective on the world.

Another approach is to write about the benefits of gratitude. Research has shown that practicing gratitude can improve mental health, boost happiness, and even enhance physical health. You can explore these benefits in your essay and provide examples of how you’ve experienced them in your own life.

If you’re a college student, consider writing a gratitude college essay. In this essay, you can reflect on how college has shaped you and the opportunities it has provided. You might write about a professor who inspired you or a project that challenged you in new ways. By expressing gratitude for your college experience, you’ll be able to showcase your growth and appreciation for the opportunities you’ve had.

Overall, an essay on gratitude can be a powerful tool for personal growth and reflection. By exploring gratitude in your life, you’ll be able to recognize the good things that are often overlooked and find ways to cultivate more gratitude in your daily life. Use the gratitude essay examples and tips above to craft a perfect essay on gratitude and let your gratitude shine through your words.

The Power Of Gratitude In Our Lives

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Best topics on Gratitude

1. The Power Of Gratitude In Our Lives

2. Being Thankful And Expressing Gratitude

3. Gratitude: Knowledge of Giving Thanks in Life

4. Gratitude and the Act of Giving on Valentine’s Day

5. Thank You Day: Remembering the Feeling of Gratitude

6. How Can the Virtue of Gratitude Enchanse Your Career Growth

7. What Practicing Gratitude Taught Me

8. How the Power of Gratitude Can Change Your Life

9. Living with Gratitude: Opening the Door for Self-Improvement

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Essay On Gratitude

Table of Contents

Short Essay On Gratitude

Gratitude is the feeling of appreciation and thankfulness for the good things in one’s life. It is a positive emotion that can have a profound impact on one’s well-being and relationships. Practicing gratitude can lead to greater happiness, improved physical and mental health, and stronger relationships with others.

One of the benefits of gratitude is that it helps to increase happiness. When we focus on the good things in our lives, we are more likely to experience positive emotions such as joy, hope, and contentment. Furthermore, gratitude can also help to decrease negative emotions, such as anger, frustration, and sadness. By regularly expressing gratitude, we can cultivate a more positive outlook on life and increase our overall sense of happiness.

Gratitude is also associated with improved physical and mental health. Studies have shown that individuals who practice gratitude have lower levels of stress, better sleep, and improved immune function. Gratitude has also been linked to lower levels of depression and anxiety, and can help to increase feelings of self-esteem and worth.

In addition to its personal benefits, gratitude can also help to improve relationships with others. When we express gratitude to others, it can increase feelings of connection and strengthen bonds. Furthermore, expressing gratitude can also improve communication, as it allows us to acknowledge the positive qualities and actions of others.

Practicing gratitude is simple and can be done in many different ways. For example, one can keep a gratitude journal, express gratitude to others, or simply take a moment each day to reflect on the good things in one’s life. By making gratitude a part of one’s daily routine, one can cultivate a more positive outlook on life and experience its many benefits.

In conclusion, gratitude is a powerful emotion that can have a profound impact on one’s well-being and relationships. By regularly expressing gratitude, we can increase our happiness, improve our physical and mental health, and strengthen our relationships with others. Gratitude is a simple and effective way to cultivate a more positive outlook on life, and is a practice that is well worth incorporating into one’s daily routine.

Long Essay On Gratitude

Gratitude has been celebrated as an expression of thanks for the blessings we have in our lives. But what does it really mean to be grateful and how can we express our appreciation for what we have in a meaningful way? This essay on gratitude will explore the many ways in which we can show our thanks and give back to those that have helped us along the way.

Introduction

Gratitude is often described as a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation. It is a recognition of the good things that we have in our lives, even when life gets tough. Gratitude has been shown to have many benefits for our wellbeing, including improved mental and physical health, increased happiness and satisfaction with life, and better sleep.

Gratitude can be practiced in many ways, such as keeping a gratitude journal, expressing thanks to others, or simply taking time each day to reflect on the things you are grateful for. Making gratitude a part of your daily life can help you to feel more positive and upbeat, even on tough days.

If you’re not sure how to get started with practicing gratitude, this article will give you some ideas. We’ll explore the science behind why gratitude is so good for us, and share some tips on how you can start incorporating it into your own life.

Benefits of Gratitude

When you are grateful, you are automatically happier. Gratitude is linked with increased levels of energy, optimism, and alertness. People who practice gratitude also tend to take better care of their health, exercise more regularly, and make more time for social activities.

Gratitude has been shown to increase resilience in the face of stress. When faced with adversity, people who are grateful are more likely to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. This positive outlook allows them to cope better with difficult situations.

Gratitude also strengthens relationships. When you express appreciation for someone else, they feel valued and are more likely to reciprocate positive feelings towards you. Grateful people are also more likely to be less judgmental and critical of others.

So if you want to be happier, healthier, and have stronger relationships, start practicing gratitude today!

Ways to Express Gratitude

There are many ways to express gratitude, and the best way is often to simply say “thank you.” However, there are other ways to show your appreciation as well. You can write a thank-you note, send a thank-you card, or even give a gift. Whatever you do, make sure that your actions show how grateful you are.

Examples of Gratitude in Everyday Life

In our daily lives, there are many opportunities to express gratitude. For example, we can say “thank you” when someone holds the door open for us, or “thank you” when someone does something nice for us. We can also express gratitude by writing thank-you notes, sending thank-you cards, or giving gifts.

When we express our gratitude, we not only make the other person feel good, but we also make ourselves feel good. Gratitude is linked with positive emotions such as happiness, love, and admiration. It also helps us to build strong relationships with others.

So next time you have an opportunity to express your gratitude, don’t hesitate! Go ahead and say “thank you” or write a note of thanks. It will make both you and the other person feel good!

Writing an Essay on Gratitude

Gratitude is a virtue that is often overlooked in today’s society. However, it is an important emotion that can have a positive impact on our lives. Writing an essay on gratitude can help us to understand what gratitude means, why it is important, and how we can show gratitude in our own lives.

Gratitude is best defined as a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation. It is a positive emotion that can be directed towards other people, animals, or even inanimate objects. When we feel grateful, we are acknowledging the good things that we have in our lives. We may also express our gratitude by telling someone thank you, or by doing something nice for them.

There are many benefits to feeling and expressing gratitude. Gratitude has been shown to improve mental and physical health, increase resilience in the face of stress, and boost overall well-being. Additionally, gratitude can help us to build strong relationships with others by making us more likable and trustworthy. Finally, grateful people tend to be more giving and altruistic than those who do not feel gratitude.

If you would like to write an essay on gratitude, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, focus on expressing your personal thoughts and experiences with gratitude. What does it mean to you? Why do you think it is important? How have you benefited from feeling grateful? Secondly, try to be specific when describing the things or people you are thankful for. This will help to make your essay more meaningful. Finally, provide examples of how you have expressed your gratitude in the past and consider what tips you may have for others looking to cultivate a grateful attitude.

By writing an essay on gratitude, we can gain a deeper understanding of this powerful emotion and learn how to incorporate it into our everyday lives. As we practice expressing gratitude more often, we will reap the many benefits that come from feeling thankful.

Tips for Writing the Essay

When you sit down to write an essay on gratitude, it is important to keep in mind a few tips that will help you create a strong and effective piece. First, remember to focus on one main idea or theme. Trying to cover too much ground will only make your essay feel scattered and unfocused. Second, be sure to use concrete examples and stories to illustrate your points. Abstract concepts are fine, but they can be difficult for readers to connect with. Third, avoid using overly flowery or dramatic language. Be sincere and honest in your writing, and let your authentic voice shine through. Fourth, edit your work carefully before submitting it. A well-edited essay is more likely to engage and impress readers than one that is full of errors. By following these tips, you can craft an essay on gratitude that is sure to make a positive impact.

In conclusion, gratitude is an incredibly powerful force that can have a profound impact on our lives. It helps us to appreciate all of the blessings we have and to develop a more positive outlook in life. Gratitude encourages us to be kinder, more generous individuals and it can even help reduce stress levels. Taking the time each day to reflect on what we are thankful for can be extremely beneficial and make each day just a little bit brighter.

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Essay on Gratitude (it brings happiness in life)

Essay on Gratitude

Gratitude is an essential virtue, and it makes people happier. Yet what does gratitude mean? What does it look like? In this essay, I will explore the power of gratitude and how you can cultivate it in your life.

1) What is gratitude?

Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful. Gratitude helps with healing past wounds, developing empathy, and keeping a positive outlook on life.

This is because gratitude emphasizes the good in life and fosters an appreciation for what you have. It can also decrease feelings of depression, stress, and anger.

It is a feeling of appreciation, and it can make your life more joyful. It’s about looking for the good in your life rather than focusing on the negative.

2) The benefits of gratitude

When you practice gratitude, you can experience increased self-esteem and resilience. For example, people who are in the habit of expressing gratitude have been shown to have more optimism and can think more optimistically.

Gratitude can improve your physical health because it helps you cope with stress. Studies have shown that gratitude improves your immune system, decreases blood pressure, and boosts happiness levels. You may even be able to live longer just by being grateful!

The positive effects of gratitude can be experienced both psychologically and physiologically. With a grateful mindset, you’ll feel more positive about yourself and life in general. You’ll have increased energy levels, improved sleep, and a stronger immune system.

3) How to practice gratitude in your life

4) gratitude makes you happy.

Gratitude is an action, not a feeling, and there are scientific studies that prove it. Researchers at the University of California recently found that people who report higher levels of gratitude report feeling happier than those who don’t.

The benefits of gratitude don’t end there. Regular practice can lead to better relationships and a more positive outlook on life. In a recent poll of more than 3,000 Americans, happiness expert Adam Grant found that many of the people who said they were the happiest had what you might think are positive traits—for example, they were more helpful and forgiving.

5) Practicing gratitude in your work

I believe that some of the best jobs that people can have are teaching others about gratitude and encouraging others to look for the good in their lives.

6) Ways To Show Gratitude

You don’t need a lot of money, time, or effort to make your life happier and healthier. Here are different easy ways to start practicing gratitude.

7) Conclusion

It’s important to constantly practice gratitude because it’s a skill we all need to develop if we want to truly be happy in our lives.

Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to practice gratitude, and if you have an electronic device with a camera, you can take a picture of a leaf and put it in your journal to count your blessings.

Being Thankful for My Life

Categories: Mental Health

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Published: Mar 5, 2024

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Being Thankful For My Life

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Essay On Gratitude – 10 Lines, Short and Long Essay

Key Points to Remember When Writing An Essay On Gratitude

What is gratitude, 10 lines essay on gratitude, a paragraph on gratitude , short essay on gratitude in english , long essay on gratitude , what will your child learn from gratitude essay , faq’s.

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on writing a gratitude essay in English. This guide is particularly useful for children and beginners learning to express their feelings through written words. By explaining the concept of gratitude and illustrating its importance, these essays on gratitude for kids aim to cultivate the virtue of thankfulness from a young age. Let’s embark on this journey of learning and writing about gratitude.

Before we delve deeper, it’s vital to understand the essential elements that make a compelling and touching ‘be grateful’ essay. Here are some guidelines to consider:

Describe what gratitude means to you.
Narrate personal experiences or anecdotes where you felt or expressed gratitude.
Explain the importance and benefits of gratitude.
Suggest ways to practice gratitude in daily life.
Conclude by re-emphasising the role of gratitude in personal growth and happiness.

What do you mean by gratitude? In essence, gratitude is a heartfelt appreciation or thankfulness for the kindness, benefits, or blessings that one receives. It is a positive emotion that encourages contentment, enhances well-being, and fosters resilience.

A quick introduction to writing an essay on gratitude can be beneficial, particularly for essays for lower elementary classes. Here are ten simple lines on gratitude, which can be a starting point for a longer essay.

10 Lines Essay on Gratitude - Infographic

1. Gratitude is appreciating and acknowledging the good things in life.

2. It helps us focus on the positives rather than the negatives.

3. Gratitude can be expressed towards people, nature, or life.

4. Expressing gratitude can make others happy.

5. Practicing gratitude daily can improve our mental health.

6. It helps us develop empathy and understanding.

7. Gratitude can be shown through words, actions, or thoughts.

8. By being grateful, we become more optimistic.

9. Gratitude makes us less materialistic and more generous.

10. Gratitude is an essential virtue that everyone should learn and practice.

Gratitude is not just an emotion but also a tool for positive change. To delve deeper, let’s look at a short paragraph on gratitude.

“Gratitude is the act of being thankful for the blessings in life. It is about recognising the good in every situation, even during difficult times. When we practice gratitude, we train our minds to focus on positivity and spread love and kindness. Gratitude fosters empathy, improves relationships, and enhances overall well-being. It is an invaluable gift that costs nothing but has immeasurable benefits.”

Understanding gratitude and its importance is crucial for personal growth. Let’s elaborate further in a gratitude essay of 150 words.

“Gratitude is a powerful human emotion. By recognising and appreciating our blessings, we affirm the goodness and positivity around us. Every individual, event, or moment that brings joy, comfort, or inspiration is a reason for gratitude. It’s not just about acknowledging good deeds but also appreciating hardships, as they are opportunities for learning and growth. Being grateful doesn’t mean ignoring problems or challenges. Instead, it’s about focusing on the good, fostering a positive outlook, and believing in the abundance of blessings. The practice of gratitude enriches our lives, enhances our relationships, boosts our mental health, and encourages empathy. It is a simple yet profound practice that has the power to transform lives.”

Now, let’s expand our understanding with a more detailed essay on being grateful in 500 words.

Gratitude, a simple yet powerful act, can significantly reshape our experiences, strengthen our relationships, and improve our overall well-being. It is a positive emotion that is vital to personal growth and happiness. This essay creates a deeper understanding of gratitude, its impacts on various aspects of life, and ways to incorporate it into our lives.

Understanding Gratitude

Gratitude is an acknowledgement of the positive things, people, and experiences that grace our lives. It is a way of expressing appreciation for the simplest to the most profound moments of happiness that life offers. This heartfelt emotion is not limited to acknowledging what we have but also to appreciating the hurdles we overcome, lessons we learn, and resilience we exhibit, adding an optimistic hue to life’s tapestry.

Impact of Gratitude on Relationships

Exhibiting gratitude significantly strengthens bonds in personal and professional relationships. Appreciating others for their efforts or qualities fosters a sense of respect, generosity, and mutual understanding. A simple ‘thank you’ can ignite feelings of love, connection, and loyalty, reducing negativity, misunderstanding, and conflicts. This emotional investment creates stronger, happier, and healthier relationships.

Gratitude and Well-being

Gratitude is deeply intertwined with mental and emotional well-being. It is linked to increased happiness levels and reduces envy, resentment, and frustration. By focusing on the positives, we can cope with stress, anxiety, and depression more effectively, promoting resilience and emotional stability. Moreover, gratitude influences physical health, enhancing sleep quality and boosting the immune system ( 1 ).

Practicing Gratitude

Gratitude is not a natural trait but a practice that can be cultivated over time. Keeping a gratitude journal, writing letters of appreciation, mindfully reflecting on daily positive experiences, and expressing thanks verbally are a few practices that can be incorporated into our routine. These actions enable us to recognise and appreciate the abundance in our lives.

Benefits Of Gratitude

The benefits of practising gratitude are multifaceted and significant. From enhancing emotional health and fostering stronger relationships to boosting self-esteem and resilience, gratitude positively impacts our lives. It also increases mental strength, aiding in overcoming trauma and adversities. With regular practice, gratitude can transform our perspective, encouraging us to find joy and contentment in the simplest things.

Simple Ways To Practise Gratitude

Practising gratitude is surprisingly simple and doesn’t require much time or resources. Begin the day by acknowledging one thing you’re grateful for, making it a daily ritual. Keeping a gratitude jar where you can deposit notes of appreciation also helps cultivate this habit. Gratitude walks, where you appreciate nature and your surroundings, can also infuse positivity into your day. Lastly, expressing gratitude directly to people amplifies the effect, contributing to your happiness and theirs.

An essay on gratitude provides children with an understanding of this essential virtue. They learn to appreciate life’s small joys, value relationships, and foster empathy. It teaches them about positivity, resilience, and kindness, shaping them into better, more compassionate individuals.

1. How can gratitude help to change your life?

Gratitude has the power to transform your life. You can foster positivity and happiness by acknowledging and appreciating the good things. Gratitude also reduces stress, enhances well-being, improves relationships, and encourages personal growth. These Gratitude essays help you gather your thoughts and express thanks in a meaningful manner.

2. How can you show gratitude to others?

Expressing gratitude can be as simple as saying ‘thank you’. These being grateful essays are a good starting point. You can also write appreciation letters, give compliments, return favours, or spend quality time.

Gratitude is an emotion and a way of life. By incorporating gratitude into our daily lives, we can foster positivity, enhance well-being, and cultivate deeper relationships. So, let’s embark on this journey of gratitude and, together, create a happier, more fulfilling world.

References/Resources:

1. Allen, S.; The Science of Gratitude; Greater Good Science Center; https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Gratitude-FINAL.pdf; May 2018

Also Read: Gratitude Quotes for Children

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Essays on Gratitude

<span data-sheets-value="{" data-sheets-userformat="{">We all feel gratitude sometimes, but how does one define it for purpose of a gratitude essay? Most essays on gratitude explain it as follows: if something turned out to be useful or helpful, we recognize and evaluate it with our positive thoughts, words, or actions. However, this description of gratitude often featured in gratitude essays is rather simplified. Our gratitude essay samples below provide a more complex definition – gratitude is a feeling and a state of being thankful for the kindness, care, attention, relations, help, and everything desirable. Note in your essay that a feeling of gratitude is the ability to see and acknowledge the good in people, in their actions, and the world. Gratitude should not always require a specific reason – we can choose to be grateful for waking up in the morning and being able to breathe and live. Take a look at samples of essays below for more insight on gratitude. </span>

I want to express my gratitude for my family's assistance with the research. Additionally, I want to express my gratitude to the professors for their advice and assistance with the thesis writing process. I would also like to thank Juliet and Renee, my tutors, for their patience and commitment in...

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My childhood has little to do with my biological father or mother's affection, having been born and rejected by both parents when I was a toddler, adopted by a local orphanage, and raised along with other absolute orphans. I realized that the world was a cruel place as I got...

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The Novel and Its Themes The novel is mostly based on the real-life work of one Mr. Gay. He has a selection of their incredible poetry that he uses to illustrate the circle and cycle of life. The Core Poems Burial, Wiping, and Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude are the three core poems. The...

How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times

A decade’s worth of research on gratitude has shown me that when life is going well, gratitude allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. But what about when life goes badly? In the midst of the economic maelstrom that has gripped our country, I have often been asked if people can—or even should—feel grateful under such dire circumstances.

This essay is adapted from Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity .

My response is that not only will a grateful attitude help—it is essential . In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in a crisis. It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one “feels” grateful that they have lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit on their retirement portfolio.

But it is vital to make a distinction between feeling grateful and being grateful. We don’t have total control over our emotions. We cannot easily will ourselves to feel grateful, less depressed, or happy. Feelings follow from the way we look at the world, thoughts we have about the way things are, the way things should be, and the distance between these two points.

But being grateful is a choice, a prevailing attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that flow in and out of our lives. When disaster strikes, gratitude provides a perspective from which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances. Yes, this perspective is hard to achieve—but my research says it is worth the effort.

Remember the bad

Trials and suffering can actually refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Our national holiday of gratitude, 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.

The Gratitude Project

What if we didn't take good things for granted? Learn how gratitude can lead to a better life—and a better world—in this new GGSC book.

So crisis can make us more grateful—but research says gratitude also helps us cope with crisis. Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall. There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals. The contrast between suffering and redemption serves as the basis for one of my tips for practicing gratitude: remember the bad.

It works this way: Think of the worst times in your life, your sorrows, your losses, your sadness—and then remember that here you are, able to remember them, that you made it through the worst times of your life, you got through the trauma, you got through the trial, you endured the temptation, you survived the bad relationship, you’re making your way out of the dark. Remember the bad things, then look to see where you are now.

This process of remembering how difficult life used to be and how far we have come sets up an explicit contrast that is fertile ground for gratefulness. Our minds think in terms of counterfactuals—mental comparisons we make between the way things are and how things might have been different. Contrasting the present with negative times in the past can make us feel happier (or at least less unhappy) and enhance our overall sense of well-being. This opens the door to coping gratefully.

Try this little exercise. First, think about one of the unhappiest events you have experienced. How often do you find yourself thinking about this event today? Does the contrast with the present make you feel grateful and pleased? Do you realize your current life situation is not as bad as it could be? Try to realize and appreciate just how much better your life is now. The point is not to ignore or forget the past but to develop a fruitful frame of reference in the present from which to view experiences and events.

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.

Reframing disaster

To say that gratitude is a helpful strategy to handle hurt feelings does not mean that we should try to ignore or deny suffering and pain.

The GGSC's coverage of gratitude is sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation as part of our Expanding Gratitude project.

The field of positive psychology has at times been criticized for failing to acknowledge the value of negative emotions. Barbara Held of Bowdoin College in Maine, for example, contends that positive psychology has been too negative about negativity and too positive about positivity. To deny that life has its share of disappointments, frustrations, losses, hurts, setbacks, and sadness would be unrealistic and untenable. Life is suffering. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change this truth.

So telling people simply to buck up, count their blessings, and remember how much they still have to be grateful for can certainly do much harm. Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.

A growing body of research has examined how grateful recasting works. In a study conducted at Eastern Washington University, participants were randomly assigned to one of three writing groups that would recall and report on an unpleasant open memory—a loss, a betrayal, victimization, or some other personally upsetting experience. The first group wrote for 20 minutes on issues that were irrelevant to their open memory. The second wrote about their experience pertaining to their open memory.

Researchers asked the third group to focus on the positive aspects of a difficult experience—and discover what about it might now make them feel grateful. Results showed that they demonstrated more closure and less unpleasant emotional impact than participants who just wrote about the experience without being prompted to see ways it might be redeemed with gratitude. Participants were never told not to think about the negative aspects of the experience or to deny or ignore the pain. Moreover, participants who found reasons to be grateful demonstrated fewer intrusive memories, such as wondering why it happened, whether it could have been prevented, or if they believed they caused it to happen. Thinking gratefully, this study showed, can help heal troubling memories and in a sense redeem them—a result echoed in many other studies.

Some years ago, I asked people with debilitating physical illnesses to compose a narrative concerning a time when they felt a deep sense of gratitude to someone or for something. I asked them to let themselves re-create that experience in their minds so that they could feel the emotions as if they had transported themselves back in time to the event itself. I also had them reflect on what they felt in that situation and how they expressed those feelings. In the face of progressive diseases, people often find life extremely challenging, painful, and frustrating. I wondered whether it would even be possible for them to find anything to be grateful about. For many of them, life revolved around visits to the pain clinic and pharmacy. I would not have been at all surprised if resentment overshadowed gratefulness.

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As it turned out, most respondents had trouble settling on a specific instance—they simply had so much in their lives that they were grateful for. I was struck by the profound depth of feeling that they conveyed in their essays, and by the apparent life-transforming power of gratitude in many of their lives.

It was evident from reading these narrative accounts that (1) gratitude can be an overwhelmingly intense feeling, (2) gratitude for gifts that others easily overlook most can be the most powerful and frequent form of thankfulness, and (3) gratitude can be chosen in spite of one’s situation or circumstances. I was also struck by the redemptive twist that occurred in nearly half of these narratives: out of something bad (suffering, adversity, affliction) came something good (new life or new opportunities) for which the person felt profoundly grateful.

If you are troubled by an open memory or a past unpleasant experience, you might consider trying to reframe how you think about it using the language of thankfulness. The unpleasant experiences in our lives don’t have to be of the traumatic variety in order for us to gratefully benefit from them. Whether it is a large or small event, here are some additional questions to ask yourself:

What lessons did the experience teach me?
Can I find ways to be thankful for what happened to me now even though I was not at the time it happened?
What ability did the experience draw out of me that surprised me?
How am I now more the person I want to be because of it? Have my negative feelings about the experience limited or prevented my ability to feel gratitude in the time since it occurred?
Has the experience removed a personal obstacle that previously prevented me from feeling grateful?

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.

About the Author

Robert Emmons

University of california, davis.

Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. , is the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology . He is the author of the books Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity and Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier .

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How to Express Gratitude to Others: 19 Examples & Ideas

How did that moment make you and that person feel?

Or maybe you can remember a time someone gave you something, something you didn’t buy or ask for – just a token of their appreciation? It felt pretty good, didn’t it?

This article will look at the ways we can best express our gratitude, the benefits of expressing the gratitude we feel towards others, and how you can practice the act of gratitude whilst learning to appreciate the positive emotions that accompany it.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Gratitude Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients connect to more positive emotions and enjoy the benefits of gratitude.

This Article Contains:

How can we best express gratitude towards others, the benefits of expressing gratitude for life and others, 7 ways to express thanks and gratitude to friends, teachers, and parents, what are gratitude gifts (incl. ideas), what is a gratitude challenge, 7 tips for setting a gratitude challenge, letter of gratitude ideas for thanking parents, more ideas for gratitude emails and posts, 5 gratitude stories, inspiring reflections for gratitude, 5 ideas for expressing everyday gratitude, designing a gratitude bulletin board at work, make a gratitude visit, when is gratitude day (it’s not just thanksgiving), about gratitude month.

A Take Home Message

“We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.”

Mother Teresa

‘Gratitude’ is a multi-layered, complex concept with multiple definitions . It can be regarded at many levels of analysis ranging from momentary affect to long-term dispositions (McCullough, 2004), as a general state of thankfulness and/or appreciation (Sansone & Sansone, 2010), and as the recognition and appreciation of an altruistic gift (Emmons, 2004).

There is a wealth of evidence reflecting on the benefits we derive from expressing gratitude and appreciation; such expressions evoke an array of psychological, social, and physical benefits that promote our psychological, social and physiological health (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010).

“There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness”

Gratitude can have a lasting positive impact if we work towards incorporating it into our daily lives.

The expression of gratitude is a self-promoting exercise, grateful people are found to be more likely to respond with gratitude to a wider range of scenarios and recognize the beneficence on the part of others.

This leads to a positive, self-renewing, feedback loop – the more gratitude we display, the more our subjective wellbeing and resistance to negativity increases, and the more grateful we are likely to be (Emmons & Stern, 2013).

Actions that display gratitude are more valuable than solely feeling gratitude towards others (Lambert, Clark, Durtschi, Fincham, & Graham, 2010). For this very reason, it’s important to recognize the methods by which we can express gratitude effectively and exercise them as and when the situation warrants.

How we choose to express gratitude can depend significantly on the social context – taking a partner to their favorite restaurant to thank them for their support may be a completely suitable practice, but would not be a measured expression of gratitude towards, say, a stranger who held open a door.

Below are just a few ways in which you can express gratitude to others – the list is by no means definitive but is a starting point for finding methods of expressing your thanks.

Random acts of kindness. Random acts of kindness can yield substantial reward in terms of subjective wellbeing (Rowland & Curry, 2019). If you see a stranger struggling under a heavy load of shopping, offer a hand. Donate unwanted clothes to charity. Help someone lost with directions. The list is nigh inexhaustible!
Be respectful. Maintain standards of etiquette in your day-to-day interactions with strangers. Just because you don’t know them, it doesn’t mean you should withhold the common courtesy you expect yourself. Hold the door open, respect their space, and be mindful of how your actions impact them.
Tip your server. Going to the effort to make your experience a positive one, service-industry employees are often unsung heroes. In a fast-paced service environment, stopping a server to read them a gratitude letter isn’t likely to be received well but dropping a tip in the jar (if you can afford to) lets the staff know you’re thankful for their efforts.
Volunteer in your community. Volunteering is not only a great way to connect with others and gain experience, it has also been found to increase subjective wellbeing and pose significant health benefits. Thoits and Hewitt (2001) found volunteer work to have a positive impact on elements of personal wellbeing. Those who undertook volunteering opportunities reported increased levels of happiness, life satisfaction , self-esteem, sense of control over life, physical health and lower levels of depression.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

William Arthur Ward

Expressing gratitude can lead to significant increases in subjective, psychological, spiritual, and physical wellbeing; the benefits of expressing gratitude are many.

Hill, Allemand, and Roberts (2013) postulated that grateful individuals are better able to form social bonds, utilize coping skills to defer stress, maintain positive affect, and are more creative in problem solving. Bartlett, Condon, Cruz, Baumann, and Desteno (2012) suggested gratitude is related to increases in relationship satisfaction, social affiliation, and facilitates socially inclusive behaviors, even when those actions come at a personal cost to oneself.

Social benefits

The expression of gratitude plays a pivotal role in building and maintaining social relationships. Research into the role of gratitude in real, ongoing, relationships looked at naturally occurring gratitude in college sororities during a week of anonymous gift-giving from existing members to new members (Little Sisters).

Little Sisters’ gratitude was found to be a predictor of their feelings of integration within the sorority and indicated gratitude is about more than repaying benefits; it is about building relationships and aiding the integration and cooperation of group members.

Gratitude serves the social function of promoting relationships with others who are responsive to our likes and dislikes, our needs and preferences, helping us get through difficult times and flourish in good times (Algoe, Haidt & Gable, 2008).

Additionally, expressions of gratitude also increase prosocial behavior (behaviors that are intended to benefit others) by enabling individuals to feel social worth and support while simultaneously reducing their feelings of uncertainty about whether they can help effectively (Grant & Gino, 2010).

Experiencing gratitude is one component that contributes to the fostering of positive feelings, contributing to one’s overall sense of wellbeing. Emmons and McCullough (2003) examined the emotional benefits of gratitude and the link to wellbeing. Participant groups kept a daily or weekly journal under three experimental conditions: ‘negative life events’, ‘things I am grateful for’ and ‘neutral life events’.

Across the study conditions, the gratitude sub-sample consistently showed higher self-reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, attentiveness, determination and energy in comparison with the other two study groups.

Additionally, gratitude is connected to our self-esteem – Kong, Ding, and Zhao (2015) revealed a significant path from gratitude to overall life satisfaction through social support and self-esteem among undergraduate students.

Gratitude expression is uniquely important to psychological wellbeing and linked to enhanced positive emotions, resilience, better coping skills, and an improved ability to manage stress, and an increase in happiness (Sansone & Sansone, 2010. Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2009).

Happiness is subjective; the essence of what it means to be happy will almost certainly differ depending on who you ask. What is more absolute is that we all want to be happy regardless of what our own definitions may be.

Peterson, Park, and Seligman (2005) suggested the tendency to pursue happiness via the route of gratitude is a way to live ‘the good life’. This was compounded by Lashani, Shaeiri, Asghari-Moghadam, & Golzari, (2012) who concluded that gratitude can increase positive affectivity, happiness and optimism.

Physical health benefits

Gratitude expression correlates positively with self-reported physical health and, through the mediation of psychological health, increases healthy activities and willingness to seek help for health concerns (Hill, Allemand, & Roberts, 2013).

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When you think about expressing gratitude and thanks, how does it make you feel? Embarrassed? Awkward? You are not alone. For some, expressing gratitude does not come easily, even to those people who mean the most to us. Whether it’s a friend, teacher, or parent, the positive impact a little bit of gratitude can have is immense for both parties.

It is often the simplest of gestures that speak volumes in showing your gratitude. We all have people in our lives who inspire us and generally just make life better by being in it; here we will look at ways to express gratitude to those who should really hear it.

1. Say the words!

Words are powerful and the simplest, most direct, way to express gratitude to the people we may take for granted. Given proximity, a verbal expression of your appreciation in person is effective – if you can’t do it in person, make the phone call and brighten somebody’s day.

2. Write a gratitude letter or note

Spend some time thinking about what you appreciate most about your friends, teacher, or parents and draft a letter by hand, expressing your sentiments. While recognizing your gratitude is important – just writing it down is enough to make you feel warm inside – actually reading the letter out loud is worth so much more.

Maybe jumping in with a full gratitude letter is too big a first step for you to make, that’s OK! Why not try a thank you note in a thoughtfully selected or handmade card? While writing thank you notes is a bit of a lost art; it takes almost no time at all but is a sincere expression of gratitude.

3. Show gratitude through creative expression

We can’t all be talented artists, but it really is the thought and effort put in that counts. Often homemade gifts mean the most, a little bit of creativity goes a long way.

4. Give a gratitude gift

When choosing a gift aimed specifically at expressing gratitude, opt for meaningful over monetary value. Gratitude in itself is a gift but giving a thoughtful, personal gift that can be kept, displayed and treasured is something really special.

5. Express your appreciation face to face with a gratitude visit

While expressing gratitude in person might be a big step for some, the gesture of going out of your way to tell someone how much you appreciate them is enough for everyone to feel the benefits. If you can’t make the visit in person, send a personalized video message.

6. Ask how they are (and listen to their response!)

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed; the simple act of actively listening to your loved ones can be an effective way to show you value them. Put down your phone, remain attentive and let them steer the conversation.

7. Make a gratitude scrapbook

If you are thinking of how to show appreciation for a teacher, try making your own scrapbook or even better, ask your entire class to get involved, each student can add a page of gratitude then put it all together in a book. Make one for your friend or parents and fill it with photographs of special moments over the years.

Friend, teachers and parents are probably the people we’re most grateful for but show least gratitude towards. Expressing gratitude is personal to you – you know the person best, think about what would have the most value to them.

Gift-giving can be viewed as a reciprocal practice, whereby responding with gratitude after receiving some ‘benefit’ is a moral obligation (Watkins, Scheer, Ovnicek, & Kolts, 2006).

However, we shouldn’t think of it as a ‘debt of gratitude’, rather as a meaningful way to cultivate social support, which is beneficial for both individuals and society as a whole.

A gratitude gift might be something of material value but it does not need to be, a thoughtful and personal show of gratitude can be worth its weight in gold.

Here we will look at some ideas for gratitude gifts that will beautifully express just how thankful you are.

A gift that can be kept and treasured will always remind them of the positive emotions they experienced when it was received.

Handmade gifts:

Frame a picture – find a meaningful photograph that evokes positive memories for you and more importantly the person who is the focus of your gratitude.
Gift a packet of seeds, flowers from your garden, or a plant and every time they tend to them they will remember you for this simple act of gratitude – you don’t have to spend a lot of money to show someone how much you appreciate them.
Bring over lunch – preparing meals, especially if you’re stressed and overworked, can be a chore. Don’t you know someone who’d be delighted if you’d surprise them with a tasty lunch?
A journal – a journal can be a beautiful gift, the recipient can either fill it with their own feeling of gratitude and continue the gratitude cycle or as a normal journal for their thoughts and musings. Each time they pick it up they will know that you are grateful to have them in your life.
A little jar full of thanks – fill jar with gratitude notes and that special person can read one a day (or whenever they feel like they need a boost) – imagine starting each day knowing you are appreciated.
A gift of encouragement – maybe the object of your appreciation has started a new hobby or enjoys painting, why not gift them that brush they’ve had their eye on or another related item that they’ll really appreciate.
A playlist of their favorite songs or music that means something to both of you and evokes the very best memories you have together.
52 gratitude cards – this one might take some time and effort, but it really is the gift that keeps giving – even when you aren’t there in person. They can open up a card each week for an entire year!

Gifts to buy:

Gift a book – if that person is an avid reader, buy a copy of their favorite book, you can take this a step further and write a note of appreciation on one of the pages, or tuck your gratitude letter between the pages. (See this list of best gratitude books for ideas!)
Find out their favorite restaurant or place to shop and get them a gift card to indulge.
Give them tickets to see the latest movie , their favorite sports team, or a ballet/opera/musical.
A scented candle with their favorite fragrance, whether it’s a neighbor, a coworker, a friend or loved one who could use a lift, this is a wonderful way to show your gratitude for all this person means to you.
A board game or jigsaw you can complete/play together – knowing that you want to spend time with them is a great way to make someone feel appreciated.

People who cultivate and consciously participate in gratitude are more patient, make better decisions, develop better relationships and generally feel more positive and optimistic about their lives than those who do not (Emmons & Stern, 2013).

If you are thinking about ways you can gain more enjoyment from life, a good starting point to propel you into a grateful way of life is a 21 day gratitude challenge (or longer if you so choose!).

The gratitude challenge helps cultivate gratitude by encouraging us to actively seek out all the things that are good in life and practice the expression of appreciation.

A Meaningful Challenge For You

There are countless versions of the gratitude challenge, meaning there is something to suit everyone – some are more structured, giving you specific exercises to follow each day , others are far less so. While each version is different from the next, they all share the same idea; every day for three weeks, focus on the things or people you are grateful to have in your life, and then express your gratitude for them.

If the idea of practicing gratitude is completely new to you, a more structured challenge can help you to negotiate the initial uncertain stage and prompt you to start really paying attention to the world around you. The gratitude challenge helps cultivate a state of mindfulness and appreciation for the simple things and to recognize the positive aspects of even the most difficult and challenging situations.

Your challenge could include gratitude meditation and yoga, both have been found to promote a tendency towards gratitude as a quality of mindfulness and have been found to produce elevated experiences of love and thankfulness (Shapiro, Schwartz, & Santerre, 2002).

Taking It Further

Why stop at 21 days? Once you have experienced the positive emotions that go hand in hand with the challenge don’t be surprised if you want to continue long after the 3 weeks are up.

The ultimate goal of the gratitude challenge is to make people happier and to gain more enjoyment from life by consciously developing gratitude. Really, there is no right or wrong way to take part in a gratitude challenge, simply begin and discover what comes naturally to you.

We are all guilty of letting the stresses of daily life get in the way of recognizing and expressing gratitude, we often forget to stop and think about the things we are most grateful for. While the journey to gratefulness may not happen overnight, these tips will help focus your attention on setting your own personal gratitude challenge.

The first moments of the day are often when we feel most focused before the tasks of the day take their toll. Try introducing a morning gratitude ritual that allows you to start the day grounded in gratitude. This could be as simple as taking a few moments to focus on the positive, ask yourself, ‘what am I grateful for today?’
Appreciate the small things; it’s not just about the big stuff. Write a list that is unique to you and where you are in your life right now. This can include family, friends, health, your community – even the weather!
Develop your own mindfulness session and practice ‘being in the moment’, focus your attention on the ways that life is good right now rather than thinking too much about the future. The trick is to picture it in your mind and immerse yourself in the feeling of gratitude.
Appreciate the good and the bad – while much of the gratitude challenge is about positive experiences, thinking about difficult situations can really help you to appreciate the good.
Have a daily recap – spend some time writing down the things you are grateful for before going to bed. Writing down all those thoughts is a good way to keep track of the positives in your life and you can look back on them at any time.
Download an app – there are multiple gratitude challenge apps available that help focus your attention, record your appreciation and send friendly reminders to encourage your gratitude development.
Use a gratitude challenge calendar – many of these have daily prompts to help focus your mind on all the things you might not even consider.

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How often do we thank our parents for everything they’ve done for us? It can be easy to take the guidance, support and love of parents for granted. Why not take the time to brainstorm the things you are grateful for and why you value them so much, then put pen to paper.

To help you get started, here are some letter of gratitude ideas for thanking parents.

Remember specifics – recalling a specific memory that fills you with appreciation is much more effective than a general ‘Thank You’. Think of the little things, from teaching you to tie your laces to reading bedtime stories – the fact that you remember these small moments will mean so much.
Include inspirational quotes that reflect your feelings of gratitude.
Think of some prompts to help guide your writing, like ‘I always remember when you…’, ‘I am so thankful for…’ and ‘I am inspired by your…’
Think of the life lessons they’ve taught you – how have these impacted you?
Thanking your parents for their time – did your parents drive you to practice every weekend? Or stand at the sidelines cheering you on? Tell them how much it meant and still means to you.
The way they make you feel, both now and as a child, it may seem obvious but relaying just how special your parents make you feel is something they have likely never heard before.
Finish off by reiterating just how grateful you are.

The important thing is to be sincere and make it personal, only you know what your parents will value hearing the most.

An experiment in gratitude – Participant

In today’s modern world, technology allows us to take our expressions of gratitude to the global stage by way of email or even social media posts. These avenues may be preferred if you aren’t sure when you will see the individual or if you wish to express gratitude to a group, wherein writing individual letters or emails may not be a practical or timely approach.

It’s tempting to ramble on when writing an email, especially when the subject matter may prompt some self-consciousness – we have a tendency to dance around the subject of import. A gratitude email doesn’t need to be long, focus on succinct sincerity and always proofread before hitting ‘send’ as typos can diminish the sentiment behind the gesture.

The sample below is just to give you an example of a short gratitude email – every situation will vary. Remember to be specific and avoid generalized statements, ‘Thanks for all your help putting together the [Client name] project’ , is better than ‘Thanks for all your help’ .

Include how their actions helped you, or in the case of a workplace, how their actions impacted positively on a business deliverable.

Subject: Thank you! Dear Tommy I just wanted to write you a quick email to say thank you very much for all your help putting together last week’s client proposal I really appreciate the hard work you put into getting the graphics just right and the clients seemed equally impressed when we pitched this morning. Keep up the great work and I look forward to working closely with you on future projects. Many thanks, John

You may choose to opt for a social media post if want to express gratitude to a large group. Connecting via social media removes any geographical restrictions while also allowing you to address a wider audience. The private message function found on most social media platforms also provides an avenue to connect directly if you’d rather not post publicly.

If it’s a friend, remember to drop the formality you may feel compelled to include in workplace expressions.

The examples below can be used to get you thinking about how to express gratitude on social media either directly or via a public post.

Direct message: You’re the best! Thanks so much for giving me a lift yesterday; I don’t know what I’d have done without you! Post: So thankful to all my wonderful friends who helped me moving house. I really couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Social media also represents a novel arena in which to record daily gratitude posts. Remember, the expression itself will promote subjective wellbeing; your expressions need not be individual or even group-directed.

An example could be ‘Today I’m grateful for caffeine, bringer of life, and for my parents who looked after the kids last night so I could get a decent night’s sleep!’

You can even include a prompt such as ‘Let me know what you’re grateful for’ to encourage those that see your post to engage with it positively – every time you get a notification of a like or comment you’re revisiting and reinforcing the positivity that expressing gratitude yields.

Related: The 34 Best TED Talks And Videos on The Power of Gratitude

The following links can help you access stories about gratitude… enjoy.

In this story on Forbes.com, Homayun relays how reading John Krilak’s book called ‘A Simple Act of Gratitude’ helped him to cope with his life following the sudden death of his father. The book inspired him to think about the people he should thank, and subsequently, he wrote thank-you notes to these people.
This website gives some background information about gratitude, which is interesting. It also contains links to three stories about gratitude – Aesop’s “ Androcles and the Lion ”, a folktale from Japan called “ The Grateful Crane” and “ King Midas and the Golden Touch”.
This article , appearing in the Reader’s Digest, is an inspiring story about a teacher’s experience of setting her class a task in which they reflected upon what they had to be thankful for.
This is essentially a children’s story, however reading “ An Octopus in Trouble ” is a heart-warming way to capture the power of gratitude in just a few minutes.

In an ideal world the things we are most grateful for would always be at the front of our minds, unfortunately that isn’t always the case. But all is not lost! Sometimes all we need are some gentle reminders to guide our thoughts in the right direction.

If this sounds like you, the following inspiring reflections for gratitude will help focus your attention on your own feelings and encourage you to think about some of the insights others have had on the concept.

Inspiring Reflections On Gratitude:

Think of a time when someone was kind to you, what emotions did you experience? Take 60 seconds to feel your gratitude.
Ask 3 other people what they are grateful for.
Take a walk and use the time to clear your mind, take some deep breaths and think about the things around you that make your feel grateful. What are you grateful for in nature?
What memory are you grateful for? Why are you grateful for that experience?
What challenge in your life are you grateful for?
What small thing that happened today are you grateful for?
Take a moment to consider the people around you, what makes you feel grateful to have them in your life?
Think about why you want to experience and express gratitude, what benefits mean the most to you?
Think about how expressing more gratitude has positively impacted you.

Inspiring quotes on gratitude:

“It is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”

David Steindl-Rast

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”

Robert Brault

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

Melody Beattie

“At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Albert Schweitzer

Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”

Henri Frederic Amiel

The expression of gratitude is an exercise in positive psychology and like all exercises, repetition and practice make perfect. Ingratitude is the “essence of vileness,” wrote the philosopher Immanuel Kant while David Hume opined that ingratitude is:

“the most horrible and unnatural crime that a person is capable of committing.”

By exercising methods of expressing everyday gratitude you not only reap the rewards in terms of promoting a positive mental state while reducing negativity, but also get into the habit of focusing on the positive – in time it can become second nature.

The following are five simple ways that we can embed the expression of gratitude into our daily routines:

Keep a gratitude journal. Amid the humdrum and bustle of modern life, it’s easy to forget the small acts of kindness we receive. By mentally revisiting and recording these events, we reinforce the positive impact and can revisit it to remind ourselves of how much we have to be thankful for and, in turn, find expressing gratitude a more natural response.
Remember to express your gratitude in person. This may seem an obvious one but it’s easy to forget to verbalize or otherwise show your appreciation to friends, colleagues or clients in the day-to-day. Expressions don’t have to be extravagant, simply stopping for a moment to let someone know you are grateful helps foster an environment of gratitude and is another simple way to get into the habit of expressing everyday gratitude.
Be respectful and treat others with the level of courtesy you would like to receive. As children we’re taught to treat those around us how we would like to be treated. This mantra can serve you well in your day to day expressions of gratitude. While we can express gratitude through directly telling someone we are thankful, how we conduct ourselves and our actions provide another avenue for the expression of gratitude.
Remember to smile, be patient, listen and express kindness whenever possible. Next time you’re heading on the coffee run, offer to bring back drinks for your colleagues – this lets them know you value them and chances are next time they’re on the coffee dash they’ll return the favor and you can be on the receiving end of some gratitude.
Try not to complain. We have a tendency to focus on the negative; we’re evolutionarily hardwired to focus on the events which yielded negative outcomes so we can avoid them in future (Seligman, 2012). Every time we complain we’re reinforcing a negative state of mind, making it more difficult to feel and express gratitude. Remember some things are out with your control and focus on something positive instead.

Gratitude is one of the primary elements of positive psychology… and for a very good reason.

Research has shown time and time again that gratitude, or even just saying ‘thank you,’ has several mental and physical benefits (Wong & Brown, 2017).

Specifically, showing gratitude allows individuals to strengthen social ties, experience an increase in self-worth, block toxic emotions (Froh et al. 2010), and be seen as kind and helpful by others (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006). Contrary to popular belief, practicing gratitude does not just entail one simple step of saying thank you.

Practicing genuine gratitude consists of:

1. Noticing the things you are grateful for 2. Thinking about why you are grateful for this and why this happened to you 3. Feeling all the emotions that come with experiencing gratitude 4. Doing something in return to make someone else feel grateful

Notably, experiencing gratitude does not just stem from another person simply doing something nice for you. You can also practice gratitude about your different life circumstances, for example, being grateful for your opportunity to get an education.

The next time you practice gratitude, make sure you are paying attention to each of these four components.

The workplace can be a significant source of negative emotions which in turn can lead to stress, malaise and general dissatisfaction (Ganster & Schaubroeck, 1991). While your work activities may be constrained to the ‘four walls’ of your work environment, your emotional state is unbounded by the physical. You can leave your work at work, but your emotions persist regardless of your spatial placement.

Fostering a positive emotional environment doesn’t have to blow the departmental budget, one simplistic gratitude technique gaining in popularity is to display a gratitude bulletin board in the workplace. To set this up all you need is a physical board, a bit of wall-space and (depending on the type of board) pens, post-it notes or pins.

Getting Started

When setting up your gratitude board, remember to place it somewhere prominent to help achieve maximum visual impact.

Many people struggle expressing gratitude – especially in formal environments such as a place of work where professionalism may inhibit such expressions (Frohman, 2009) – so it’s a good idea to kick-start the process by adding as many gratification notices as you can, being as inclusive as possible, to encourage colleagues to follow suit.

How many times have you found yourself utterly drained and emotionally defeated on the homeward bound commute? Or been in your place of work, feeling under-appreciated and trying to muster the motivation to maintain cordiality and carry out your tasks?

By providing a medium through which to express gratitude, you and your colleagues can take the opportunity to post a note on the board to say what it is that you’re grateful for.

Gratitude Boards 2.0

What can you do if your team isn’t centralized? Perhaps your work takes you on the road for extended periods. Perhaps you are part of a virtual team (VT). Well, modern problems call for modern solutions. While it lacks the visual impact of a physical gratitude board, creating an additional ‘gratitude’ group chat with your colleagues can achieve a very similar outcome.

Work is a huge part of our lives! That’s why it’s as, if-not-more, important to try to promote a positive emotional environment for yourself and those around you. By applying techniques which encourage the expression of gratitude, everyone can feel appreciated and positive, turning the daily grind into the daily grin.

The gratitude visit represents one of the most well researched and validated examples of the positive outcomes that gratitude can have yield for an individual’s wellbeing.

Thrust into the spotlight by one of the founding fathers of positive psychology and former president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Martin Seligman (2012), the gratitude visit combines both introspective reflection and the outward expression of gratitude in an exercise that will increase your happiness and reduce levels of depression in as little as a month.

Furthermore, studies show that for a full month after a gratitude visit, happiness levels tend to go up, while boredom and other negative feelings go down.

In fact, the gratitude visit is more effective than any other exercise in positive psychology (Tomasulo, 2011).

Simply put, the gratitude visit consists of writing and delivering a letter to a person whom you appreciate.

To start, take a moment to reflect on the positive impact others have had on your life. Focus on a time when perhaps you weren’t able to thank the individual properly or until now had let the good deed go unrecognized.

Your next task involves writing a letter of gratitude to the individual emphasizing how you recognize the positive impact that their actions had on you, how it helped you and how you still recall what they did.

Not to be remiss, give the individual a call and check if and when they would be available for a face-to-face visit. While an out-of-the-blue contact may raise questions, try not to get into specifics about why you would like to visit, the gratitude visit has the greatest oomph when it comes as a surprise to the recipient.

Next, the visit! While you may feel self-conscious, the positive psychological outcome for both yourself and the individual to whom you’re expressing gratitude will outweigh any temporary feelings of embarrassment.

Take your time and personally read the letter you’ve written – giving them the physical letter is a nice touch as it allows them to revisit the moment as an when they wish.

Findings by Seligman (2012) indicated that the positive outcomes of a gratitude visit are myriad and include; increasing our sense of wellbeing, enhancing our relationship with the gratitude recipient, helping us alter the way we think about past events – with a focus on the positive rather than negative, prompting an immediate sense of wellbeing and encouraging us to think about the future in a more positive manner.

Of course there are occasions when expressing gratitude is more of a focus than others, Christmas and Thanksgiving for example, are times of the of year that resonate with an abundance of messages relaying gratitude. Family, friends, and even complete strangers convey their appreciation towards one another, and while this collective expression of gratitude is heartwarming, why should it be confined to just a few times a year?

With this in mind let’s explore Gratitude Day, a day to encourage the celebration of gratitude for all things great and small, in a whole host of ways.

World Gratitude Day was first conceived in 1965; it was later adopted by the United Nations Meditation Group and has been celebrated by a growing number of people on the 21st September every year since.

How To Take Part

How you choose to celebrate World Gratitude Day is entirely up to you, and that’s part of the beauty. Simply taking some time to positively reflect on the people and things we are grateful for can impact us in a multitude of ways, most importantly by improving our wellbeing and making us happier people.

Whether you choose to take a moment to think about the blessings you are grateful for, or verbally express your gratitude to others, immersing yourself in the practice of gratitude helps you be aware of the positives in your life and encourages regular practice (Allen, 2018).

Living a grateful life takes time and practice, but with commitment and participating in days such as this, you can cultivate the attitude of gratitude into your daily life.

Put it in your diary! World Gratitude Day – Saturday 21st September, 2019.

17 Exercises To Nurture Gratitude & Appreciation

Empower others with more hope, satisfaction, and fulfilling relationships with these 17 Gratitude & Appreciation Exercises [PDF] that harness the powerful benefits of gratitude.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

After your taste of expressing gratitude on Gratitude Day, you may find Gratitude Month helps cement your gratitude practices. Running through the month of November, Gratitude Month is an exercise that encourages the daily practice of gratitude, encouraging the reciprocal cycle of appreciation.

Focusing on gratitude is a great way to spend a month and creates a habit of positive thinking – a means to help navigate the stresses and chaos of daily life.

During Gratitude Month, people are encouraged to journal their gratitude, participate in charity work, and give back to their community. At first you might struggle to think of what you are truly grateful for but that’s why it’s so important – through practice the act of gratitude becomes easier.

The important thing is to keep your mind focused on your feelings of gratitude, practice expressing your gratitude and in time you will develop a tendency towards a grateful life.

A Take-Home Message

Based on the advice we are given as children when learning to cross the road, Steindl-Rast (2013) offers practical advice for living gratefully, moment by moment.

STOP: We rush through life and miss opportunities because we don’t stop to recognize and act on them.
LOOK: We must use all our senses to enjoy the richness that life has given to us.
GO: We should do whatever life offers to us in that present moment. Sometimes that might be difficult, but we should go with it and do our best to enjoy every moment.

The positive impacts of expressing gratitude are long-lasting, grateful people and those who receive gratitude are likely to experience greater psychological, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.

If we fail to appreciate the things we take for granted and continue the search for more ‘stuff’ that might make us happy in the future, will that search ever really end?

I hope you’ve enjoyed discovering more about how best to express gratitude and the benefits of doing so! Let us know in the comments how you express gratitude to the people in your life.

For further reading:

The Neuroscience of Gratitude and How It Affects Anxiety & Grief
The Gratitude Tree for Kids

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Gratitude Exercises for free .

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Allen, S. (2018, May). The science of gratitude. Retrieved from https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Gratitude-FINAL.pdf
Bartlett, M. Y., Condon, P., Cruz, J., Baumann, J., & Desteno, D. (2012). Gratitude: Prompting behaviours that build relationships. Cognition and Emotion, 26 (1), 2-13.
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Essay on Gratitude

#1 Essay on Gratitude Towards Parents

#2 essay on gratitude towards teachers, #3 essay on gratitude towards friends, #4 essay on gratitude towards god, #5 essay on gratitude towards school, #6 essay on gratitude day.

Gratitude is one of the most underestimated ways anyone can use to enrich their lives. It is the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good that we receive in life.

Scientists have proven that when we express our gratefulness towards other people, we tend to feel happier, calmer and as a result, it opens up more channels for goodness to enter into our lives.

Imagine going through a day where strangers smile at you, greet you, and people hold the door open for you, and more importantly, you feel that this world is full of kindness and people are willing to help you without expecting any return. How would that make your day?

The best part about being grateful and to live a good life, you can do not have to wait for people to do good to you, instead, be the first one to act and express your thankfulness to them, especially your parents.

Why Do You Need To Show Gratitude Towards Parents

Robert Emmons, one of the world’s leading scientist and expert on the subject of gratitude reveals that feeling grateful have many benefits for your body, mind, and relationships, especially towards your parents.

You have to understand that your parents are the closest people you have when you were young and they are the ones that you spent the most time with. Well, this may not be true for everyone, but it is true for the majority of the people out there.

Kindness and success start from home. Another important point to remember is that you will someday become a parent too. And thus, how you treat your parents will somehow leave an impact on your relationship between you and your children.

If you are grateful for your parents and always be thankful for the good that they have brought into your life, you will feel the same when you become a parent.

What Are The Best Ways To Express Your Gratitude Towards Parents

There are plenty of ways how you can express your gratitude and thankfulness toward your parents. One of the easiest and most effective ways is to just say “Thank you”.

When your parents cook a meal for you, when they help you solve a problem, when they do something for you, when they guide you, when they buy you a new shoe, when they give you money to live, do not forget to say thank you.

Another good way to express your gratitude towards your parents is to spend more time with them and accompany them. You do not have to wait until when their hair turns gray or when they are 80 years old only to spend your time with them. Remember how your parents spend their time and life nurturing you, feeding you and making sure that you grow up becoming who you are today? Do the same and take good care of your parents, this is one of the best ways to express your thankfulness to them.

Some people express their gratitude through composing a song, some write thank you letters, some show it through hugs and kisses, and some bring their parents for vacation. What about you?

Regardless of what you do to show your gratefulness towards your parents, the key is to make sure that you do it before time runs out.

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sbnonline.com/article/why-it-is-so-important-to-express-gratitude-in-your-business/
greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good
philstar.com/sunday-life/506384/what-best-way-show-gratitude-your-parents

As you might already know, expressing your gratitude towards people is something that will not only enrich your life but also enrich the lives of the one you express your thanks to.

Studies have shown that expressing your gratefulness toward someone has many benefits including raising your self-esteem, making you happier, and also giving you a sense of fulfillment in life.

And when it comes to showing your appreciation, one of the most important figures you should be thankful for will be your teachers. Most people who practice writing gratitude lists often miss out their teachers in the list because they only interact with their teachers in school. And after they get into the working world, materials and people around them are their main focus.

Do you know that teachers are the people who you spend the most time with besides your parents and friends? More importantly, a teacher’s mission is to educate you and make sure that you learn what you are supposed to learn in school. Their mission also often intertwined with life and inspirational lessons to motivate you to succeed in life.

Take Les Brown, the motivational speaker as an example. In his motivational speech, he often quoted the person who inspired and changed his life, his teacher, Leroy Washington. Brown was born poor and was labeled as “educable mentally retarded”. Despite the fact that Brown was a slow learner, his teacher never abandoned him, instead, he inspired him by telling young Brown, “Never let someone’s opinion of you become your reality”.

As you can see, your teachers play an important role in shaping who you are today. You are where you are right now because of the influence of your teachers. Regardless of whether your teachers have positively impacted your life, you should feel grateful for them at all times.

There are plenty of ways how you can express your gratefulness toward your teachers, including:

1. Write a thank you essay to your teacher. Show your appreciation through words and this is not a test, hence, write with an open heart and sincerity.

2. Buy a best-selling book for your teacher. Somehow, teachers should love to read and always pursue for improvement, be it in career or at life, right?

3. Show your appreciation by doing homework and follow the advice from your teachers. This is one of the easiest ways to show your gratitude towards your teacher. Just do your best and excel in school.

4. Say a simple “Thank you”, after every class. This small and simple act will profoundly change your teacher’s life.

5. Remember your teacher’s birthday and buy him or her a gift as a token of appreciation. And your teacher will remember you for the rest of his or her life.

The above are just some of the ideas on how you can show your thankfulness towards your teacher. It is not the idea that matter, the key is that you do something that your teacher will remember and receive your appreciation. Even if it is as tiny as a simple “thank you”, your teacher will feel it.

As students, many teachers and educators will pass through your life without remembrance. Therefore, starting from now on, do something and to express your gratitude to the people have guided you in life.

There is an old saying, “A friend in need is a friend indeed”, and friends hold a special place in our heart as they are the ones who will always be by our side whenever we need them. We simply cannot live in this world all by ourselves without friends.

Thus, it is important to express our appreciation toward our friends, especially those who have helped us when we needed them. There are many types of friends, some you will want to keep no matter the situation, some you will want to leave or spend less time with, and some are good for social and sharing.

Writing an appreciation essay or letter to express your gratitude toward your friend is not something new. In fact, it has been around for ages and a lot of people are using this method to show their gratitude and build better and more intimate relationship with the people they spend their time with. You do not really have to follow any format when writing the essay to your friends. They are your best friends, they know you and they will accept whatever you good you are trying to tell them.

However, no matter how informal you are, you have to be sincere in writing it. You will lose the point of the gratitude letter if you sound fake and are not serious. All you need to do is to express how you feel about them. Tell your friends how much thankful you are and how much they meant to you in your life.

Besides that, to make your gratitude letter more powerful, you can include a small gift with it. It can be a keychain, a pen, a book, or even just a mint, your friend will appreciate your effort even more. You do not have to wait for the right and perfect moment to do this. If you seriously are grateful for your friends right now, take out a piece of paper, and write down your thoughts and thank them.

There are many blessings that come from being grateful for the good things we enjoy in life. And everyone has their own religion in their hearts. Deep within you, you believe in something, a higher power, a God, or something that has the power to create the world. Simply put, God wants us to learn to be grateful and thankful for all the gifts He has created for us.

This is not only about being spiritual, in fact, science has shown that people who are grateful for their Gods tend to be healthier and happier. You have probably heard the saying, “Count your blessings”, and do you know that when you literally count your blessings, you will increase your emotional and mental health? When people are not grateful, they tend to complain and blame everything and everyone. This is a negative act that will destroy your life. When you think something negative in your mind, you will feel stress, anxious, frustrated, and also angry. This will directly affect your health.

Therefore, learn to be grateful for everything in your life, especially God, the higher power that created you and everything else in the world. When you show your appreciation, you will access a calmer state, you will feel more peaceful and this makes you feel good about yourself, and your life.

One very simple act of showing your gratitude toward God through praying. Depending on what religion you believe in, everyone prays differently. The method how you pray does not really matter, the key is that you are sincere in showing your gratefulness. Furthermore, you can practice writing a gratitude list. Just write down whatever things that you want to be grateful for. It can be your cat, your dog, your house, your wife, your children, your boss, the air you are breathing, the computer you have, or whatever you can think of. Feel the appreciate and express the gratefulness deep within you.

School is one of the most important places in our lives because it is where almost everyone spends the most of their time there. It is a place that is meant to nurture us, guide us, and equip us with the necessary knowledge to prepare for the world. Everyone has their own unique memories about their school, some were meaningful and nostalgic, some were funny, and some were embarrassed.

Whatever thoughts and memories you have about your school, it does not really matter now as you have gone through it and the past will remain history forever. You simply cannot change that, but there is one thing that you can do that will impact your future life, and it is to show your gratitude toward your school and your teachers.

Schools are great places where young people get together and learn not just academically, but also about friendship, teamwork, leadership, life, and also love. On average, a normal person about 12 to 20 years in a classroom and this is where we learn to interact with others and this is also where our characters and attitudes started to grow.

So how can you show your appreciation toward your school and be grateful for what you have gone through? Well, you can start with two parts. First, you can show your gratitude toward your school by helping your school. You can make a donation when you have extra money or you can spend time into helping your school such as cleaning or repainting the building.

Next, you can also show your gratitude by writing appreciation letters to your teachers. You set a good example of being a grateful person by expressing your thoughts and let the new young generation to follow. There are plenty of ways how you can contribute to your schools and teachers. When you have the sincerity, the ideas will automatically come to you.

What is a Gratitude Day? It is a day to show appreciation for all things, big and small. Gratitude Day was first celebrated in 1965, and it was officially adopted by the United Nations Meditation Group and recognized as a day where people from around the world and from all walks of life show their gratefulness on whatever things in life.

Studies have shown that people who are grateful for the things they have and the life they are living right now are happier, calmer, and able to perform and achieve more. According to the Law of Attraction, the more you appreciate what you have, the Universe will give you more of it. For example, if you appreciate and are grateful for the money you have, you will have more of it.

So how can you celebrate this day and make it meaningful and interesting? First, you can take a moment to appreciate your family tree. Pay attention to your family members, notice how they have supported you in the past, and then express your gratefulness to them. Tell your family how much you love them. Buy a gift for them if you want to.

Next, be thankful for your community. From the server at your local restaurant, the policemen, the nurse, to the baker down the street in your neighborhood, say thank you to them. Give and show your gratitude to them. And do not forget about your friends too. Your friends are an important part of your life because you have gone through the thick and thin with them.

Besides that, thank yourself for being who you are right now and for whatever you have had in your life. When you appreciate yourself, you will have more confidence and thus, able to accomplish more. When you show your gratitude toward the things you have in life, you will appreciate them and in return, you will live an abundant life.

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Essay on Gratitude For Parents

Students are often asked to write an essay on Gratitude For Parents in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Gratitude For Parents

Understanding gratitude.

Gratitude is saying “thank you” for the good things in your life. It is a feeling of being thankful. We should have gratitude for many people in our life. But, our parents deserve it the most. They do so much for us.

Parents Love

Parents love their children more than anything. They work hard to give us a good life. They make sure we are safe, healthy, and happy. They teach us important things. They help us when we are in trouble. For all these things, we should be grateful.

Showing Gratitude

Showing gratitude to our parents is easy. We can say “thank you” often. We can help them with their work. We can listen to their advice. We can respect them. By doing these things, we show our gratitude.

Benefits of Gratitude

Gratitude is not just good for our parents. It is good for us too. It makes us feel happy. It helps us see the good things in our life. It reminds us of how much we are loved. So, let’s be grateful to our parents every day.

250 Words Essay on Gratitude For Parents

Introduction.

Gratitude means to be thankful. It is about recognizing the good things in life and appreciating them. When we talk about gratitude for parents, it means to be thankful for all that our parents do for us. They work hard to provide us with a safe and comfortable life. They guide us, protect us, and love us unconditionally.

Showing Gratitude to Parents

There are many ways to show gratitude to our parents. Small gestures can mean a lot. We can say thank you to them for the little things they do. We can help them with their work. We can listen to them and respect their advice. We can also show our gratitude by doing well in our studies and activities, as this makes them happy and proud.

The Importance of Gratitude

Feeling and expressing gratitude for our parents is very important. It makes them feel loved and appreciated. It also helps us to understand the value of their efforts. Gratitude helps us to build a strong bond with our parents. It also makes us better people, as it teaches us to be thankful and respectful.

Our parents do so much for us. They deserve our love, respect, and gratitude. Let’s always remember to say thank you to them, for everything they do. Let’s show them that we appreciate their love and care. Let’s make them feel special, every day. After all, our parents are our biggest blessing.

500 Words Essay on Gratitude For Parents

Gratitude for parents is a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation towards our parents. They are the ones who bring us into this world and take care of us with immense love and kindness. They guide us, teach us, and shape us into the individuals we become. This essay will explore the importance of expressing gratitude towards our parents.

Role of Parents

Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation for the kindness and benefits we have received. When we express gratitude, we acknowledge the efforts and sacrifices made by others for our benefit. Expressing gratitude towards our parents is important because it acknowledges the love, care, and effort they put into raising us. It shows them that we value and appreciate everything they do for us. It also helps us develop a positive attitude and a sense of contentment in life.

Ways to Express Gratitude

There are many ways to show gratitude towards our parents. We can express our gratitude through words, by telling them how much we appreciate their love and care. We can also show it through actions, by helping them with household chores, spending quality time with them, or doing something special for them. We can also express gratitude by being obedient, respectful, and considerate towards them. By doing so, we not only show our appreciation, but also make them feel loved and valued.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

The Power of Gratitude: Enhancing Wellbeing at Work

Jaimie Hutchison, MA, LPC | November 1, 2023

In November, we often reflect on being thankful. As the holiday season approaches, our thoughts often turn to gratitude and the things we’re thankful for in our personal lives. However, the practice of gratitude extends beyond our homes and can play a profound role in the workplace, enhancing overall wellbeing and fostering a more positive and productive environment. So, as we approach this season of gratitude, let’s explore the importance of cultivating gratitude at work and the benefits it brings to individuals and organizations alike.

In positive work environments where support and appreciation are readily available, expressing gratitude is relatively straightforward. However, it’s important to acknowledge that in some workplaces, gratitude might be more challenging to embrace. In situations where employees don’t feel supported or valued, expressing gratitude can feel like a daunting task. It’s important to recognize that each employee’s experience is unique, and what works for them in terms of expressing gratitude may vary.

In the fast-paced world of today, where deadlines and demands often take center stage, it’s easy to overlook the simple yet profound practice of gratitude where it is authentic and warranted. However, embracing gratitude in the workplace can have a significant impact on overall wellbeing. Cultivating an attitude of appreciation can lead to happier employees, increased job satisfaction, and a more positive work environment.

The Link Between Gratitude and Wellbeing

Gratitude is more than just saying “thank you.” It’s a mindset that involves recognizing and appreciating the good things in our lives, including the positive aspects of our work, our coworkers, and others we interact with. When we express gratitude, we shift our focus away from the stresses and challenges, directing our attention toward the aspects of our job that bring us joy and fulfillment.

Research has shown that practicing gratitude at work can lead to a range of benefits:

Improved Mental Health: Individuals who express gratitude tend to experience lower levels of stress and anxiety. In a workplace where gratitude is encouraged, employees are more likely to feel supported and valued, reducing feelings of stress and promoting better mental health.
Enhanced Job Satisfaction: Expressing and receiving gratitude can boost job satisfaction. When employees feel acknowledged for their contributions, they are more motivated and engaged, leading to greater overall contentment in their roles.
Stronger Relationships: Gratitude fosters positive relationships among coworkers and between employees and their leaders. A culture of appreciation can create a more cohesive and harmonious work environment.
Increased Productivity: Employees who feel appreciated are often more productive. When individuals know that their efforts are recognized and valued, they are more likely to go the extra mile in their work.

It’s important to recognize that each employee’s experience is unique, and what works for them in terms of expressing gratitude may vary.

Practical Ways to Foster Gratitude at Work

Express Appreciation: Take the time to thank your colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. A simple “thank you” note or verbal acknowledgment can go a long way in making others feel valued.
Create a Gratitude Journal: Consider keeping a gratitude journal where you write down things that you’re thankful for in the workplace. This practice can help you maintain a positive outlook.
Recognize Achievements: Celebrate milestones and accomplishments, both big and small. Recognizing and rewarding hard work can boost morale and motivation.
Encourage Peer Recognition: Promote a culture of peer-to-peer recognition where employees acknowledge and appreciate each other’s contributions. This can strengthen team dynamics and build a sense of community.
Lead by Example: Leaders should set the tone by practicing and promoting gratitude. When managers express appreciation for their teams, it sends a powerful message throughout the organization.

In conclusion, gratitude is a powerful tool for enhancing wellbeing at work. By fostering a culture of appreciation, organizations can create a more positive, productive, and harmonious workplace. Embracing gratitude isn’t just good for employees; it’s also good for business, as happier and more content workers are likely to be more engaged and productive. So, let’s take a moment to reflect on the positive aspects of our work lives and express our gratitude for the opportunities and relationships that make our workplaces truly special.

I would like to thank Alaina, Ebony, Rachel, Erica, and Kate for being the kindest teammates I could ask for. I see them go out of their way to support each other and to encourage each other. It makes coming into work a joy every day.

For more information about Wellbeing at Work, please visit our Well-being at Work Guide . If you would like, you can schedule a consultation around wellbeing at work .

The Gratitude Letter: Note Your Thanks

Write down the small things that make you happy and grateful. do it daily..

Updated August 21, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

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When people write a gratitude letter to someone they cherish, this action is known to boost their happiness.
Making daily journal entries about the good things in life has been shown to reduce depression and burnout.
A quick-to-do happiness practice is proposed to appreciate the small things and gain positivity in your life.

People are not always sincere when uttering the two words, thank you . It is a simple reflex to text Ty or say much appreciated when you desire to be polite in social circles. This happened the other day as I was sitting in line at a coffee shop drive-through, a wait that turned out to take over half an hour. When I finally made my way to the cashier window, even the server seemed less than enthusiastic with the barrage of early morning customers and the relentless exchange between cash and a bag of donut holes. I can tell you that mockery was not my intention when I curtly whispered “Thanks.” After all, both the retail worker and I got the short end of the stick and we both had good reasons to be irritated with the process involved in this so-called quick-serve restaurant. Without much thought, I hurried a less-than-sincere gesture of acknowledgment, causing me to push forward and produce a chain reaction of automobiles creeping along the long queue.

Luckily, there are other times I am deliberate and thoughtful in noting my thanks when it is wholly due. I find myself saying thank you, and genuinely meaning it. For example, I remember one day getting the front carriage of my convertible stuck on a cement curb in a parking lot. It was late in the evening, I was alone, and I reluctantly called a lovely couple I know for much-needed help to scrape the front end of the car out of this mess. They traveled some distance to my rescue without hesitation, and, naturally, I expressed sincere thanks – several times, to be exact. I was warm towards my comrades who made a big difference in how I felt and what I did next.

The Gratitude Letter

Therapists like me have helped clients restore calm and peace in life by way of noting one's appreciation for special people and loved ones. Writing a gratitude letter to someone who has made a positive impact on your life is a powerful way to stay mindful (Seligman, 2011). The actions and attitude of the person you have thought about do not have to be extraordinary. That special person could have had a positive effect on you in more than one way. Because this person left you feeling good, it is therapeutic to bring this feeling to your consciousness. The actual process of writing a letter of thanks helps you take the perspective of another, it allows you to show care and love, and it pushes you to be courageous for showcasing your private thoughts. Believe it or not, beneficial effects occur even when you go through the effort of crafting the letter but never actually sending it to the recipient.

Daily Journal Entries

A daily journaling exercise is another way to help you achieve a positive frame of mind. The mindfulness strategy I share with clients involves putting one’s immediate reflections about what makes them happy onto paper. It is similar to The Three Good Things exercise from positive psychology, which I will explain first as a reference point. Then I will show how the Happiness Practice slightly differs. Try one or both strategies for yourself.

The Three Good Things Activity . In this exercise, you are being asked to find the good in your life. Find good things even when there is adversity or when nothing obvious or materialistic is benefitting you. The procedure is simple and as follows:

Jot down on paper three things that went well in your life today.
Say a little about how you helped to make good things happen to you today.
Try to do this exercise at nighttime before bed. Thinking about positive events will help relax you and contribute to better sleep.

The positive outcomes of this strategy are supported by empirical research. When clients with depression practiced The Three Good Things activity each day for two consecutive weeks, they ended up reporting fewer depressive symptoms, lower burnout scores, and higher levels of happiness (Sexton & Adair, 2019).

The Happiness Practice . This is my favorite journaling activity, also intended to elicit positive feelings in clients. In the Happiness Practice, you are asked to find a quiet, personal space and then use a pen and paper to record three items that made you happy or grateful. (For details, read Chapter 9 of my book Alone Time. Embracing Solitude for Health and Well-Being .) Instructions are as follows:

Jot down on paper three things that made you feel happy or grateful today.
For each item, give a brief explanation (point form is fine) for why it made you happy or grateful.
Each day choose a different time of day to record your items. For example, today, you might note your thanks mid-morning, whereas tomorrow you might try the exercise right after dinner. Next time you might want to make the task more challenging by noting three things that made you happy when you first wake up and start a fresh pot of coffee.

In this exercise, you are being asked to note your thanks without trying to figure out how you personally contributed to those positive outcomes. Another big difference between this exercise and The Three Good Things activity is that I encourage you to choose a different time each day to note your thanks, not just at nighttime. You might be thinking it is impossible to come up with three positive items first thing in the morning, but this is what you should strive for. I challenge my clients and you to stay mindful of all that is good in your life right now – in the moment.

Practice Makes Better

Are these strategies simple to do for everyone? Not always. It is harder to record good things if you are feeling sad, unhopeful, or interpreting events largely in a negative way. Clients with chronic depression or Major Depressive Disorder have difficulty coming up with just one single item for my daily Happiness Practice . Imagine how taxing it is for depressed clients to find good things in their lives when they are constantly looking at the world through grey-colored glasses. Depressed people are simply being honest when they say that nothing in their lives is making them feel grateful.

But this is even more reason why practice is needed. Over time, one starts to notice the smaller things in day-to-day life that give meaning. By staying in the moment in a non-judgmental way — and taking this approach day after day — it should be easier to observe simple things and think less about material goods. With practice, we have a better chance of coming up with things we often neglect and customarily take advantage of but that we really ought to be aware of.

Here are three of my own items for today. Then, it's your turn to try the Happiness Practice. Keep it up daily so that you too will gain a (more) positive outlook on life.

Three Things That Made Me Happy Today

I had dinner with a friend, Ramaswamy. He was happy to share what he’s been up to, which made me feel special.
My son asked for help on his college application; mom is proud (not to mention relieved!) that he worked on an important goal.
I was lucky to have taken a breath of air just now. My breathing was effortless and deep; made me grateful that I am healthy.

Geldart, S. (2024). Alone Time. Embracing solitude for health and well-being . Summer Hill, Australia: Rockpool Publishing.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press.

Sexton, J. B., Adair, K. (2019). Forty-five good things: A prospective pilot study of the Three Good Things well-being intervention in the USA for HCW emotional exhaustion, depression, work-life balance and happiness. BMJ Open , 9 (3), e022695.

Sybil Geldart, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario, Canada), with research interests broadly based in human development and health psychology.

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Gratitude Essay in English for Students
500 Words Essay On Gratitude. Gratitude is a beautiful way of enriching our lives. It refers to the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good which we receive in life. It has been proven scientifically that when we express our gratefulness to other people, we feel happier and calmer.
Essays About Gratitude: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts
5. Values and Gratitude. Exercising gratitude trains us to establish positive values such as enthusiasm and optimism. Use this prompt to identify and discuss the values one can gain from learning about gratitude. Discuss the values you developed while practicing gratitude to make your essay relatable.
Essay About Being Grateful: 5 Examples Plus Prompts
Embracing gratitude can be a challenge in itself, but it is ultimately self-serving. Being grateful makes you count your blessings and makes you feel good. 3. Feel And Express Gratitude by Dr. Hyder Zahed. "For, whatever you genuinely feel grateful for, you will have multiply in your life. Think about it, if you gave a gift to another and ...
Essay on Gratitude
Gratitude Essay Writing Tips. 1. Start by defining gratitude and its importance in daily life. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful and showing appreciation for the good things in life. It is a powerful emotion that can improve mental health, relationships, and overall well-being. 2. Share personal experiences or examples of moments when ...
Gratitude Essay
Students can also use this essay to practise more essays on similar topics like gratitude, being grateful, being grateful etc. Doing so will improve their writing section and increase their scores in the English exam. What is Gratitude? The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness.
Essence of Gratitude: The Power of Appreciation
The essence of gratitude is both timeless and ever-relevant, reminding us that amidst life's challenges and complexities, the act of appreciating the present moment and expressing thankfulness holds the key to unlocking a life of greater meaning, fulfillment, and connection. This essay was reviewed by. Dr. Oliver Johnson.
Common Application Essay Option 4 on Gratitude
Common Application Essay Option 4—Gratitude. Tips and Strategies for the 2021-22 Common App. One major change to the Common Application in the 2021-22 admissions cycle is the addition of a new essay prompt. Option #4 now reads, "Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way.
Gratitude Essays: Samples & Topics
Overall, an essay on gratitude can be a powerful tool for personal growth and reflection. By exploring gratitude in your life, you'll be able to recognize the good things that are often overlooked and find ways to cultivate more gratitude in your daily life. Use the gratitude essay examples and tips above to craft a perfect essay on gratitude ...
Essay On Gratitude (Short & Long)
Writing an essay on gratitude can help us to understand what gratitude means, why it is important, and how we can show gratitude in our own lives. Gratitude is best defined as a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation. It is a positive emotion that can be directed towards other people, animals, or even inanimate objects. When we feel grateful ...
Essay on Gratitude
Students are often asked to write an essay on Gratitude in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. ... 500 Words Essay on Gratitude The Power of Gratitude. Gratitude is a powerful emotion that can significantly shape our lives. It's not just ...
Gratitude Definition
Robert Emmons, perhaps the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude, argues that gratitude has two key components, which he describes in a Greater Good essay, "Why Gratitude Is Good." "First," he writes, "it's an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we've received."
Gratitude Essay Examples
What Makes a Good Gratitude Essay Topics. When it comes to writing an essay about gratitude, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good gratitude essay topic should be thought-provoking, engaging, and unique. It should inspire the writer to delve into their personal experiences and perspective on gratitude, while also sparking interest in the ...
Essay on Gratitude (it brings happiness in life)
Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful. Gratitude helps with healing past wounds, developing empathy, and keeping a positive outlook on life. This is because gratitude emphasizes the good in life and fosters an appreciation for what you have. It can also decrease feelings of depression, stress, and anger.
Be Grateful Essay
100 Words Essay On Gratitude. In today's uncertain times, being grateful for one's surroundings is imperative. In the pursuit to move ahead in life, we often forget to express gratitude. This leads to a degree of dissatisfaction in one's life. Being grateful can mean different things to different people; for some, it may involve ...
Why Gratitude Is Good
2. Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret—emotions that can destroy our happiness.There's even recent evidence, including a 2008 study by psychologist Alex Wood in the Journal of Research in Personality, showing that gratitude can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression.. This makes sense: You cannot feel envious and grateful at the ...
Being Thankful For My Life: [Essay Example], 806 words
I am grateful for the love of family and friends, the beauty of nature, and the gift of life itself. In a world filled with uncertainty and chaos, I choose to focus on the positives, express gratitude for all that I have, and live each day with a thankful heart. Being thankful for my life is not just a choice, but a way of being that brings joy ...
Essay on Gratitude for all Class in 100 to 500 Words in English
Gratitude Essay 10 Lines (100 - 150 Words) 1) When people help us, the return thankful feeling for them is called gratitude. 2) "Gratus" is the root origin of the word gratitude which means thankful. 3) Gratitude helps in maintaining a good relationship. 4) Accepting and giving gratitude both make people happy.
Essay On Gratitude
Here are ten simple lines on gratitude, which can be a starting point for a longer essay. 1. Gratitude is appreciating and acknowledging the good things in life. 2. It helps us focus on the positives rather than the negatives. 3. Gratitude can be expressed towards people, nature, or life. 4.
Free Essays on Gratitude, Examples, Topics, Outlines
Our gratitude essay samples below provide a more complex definition - gratitude is a feeling and a state of being thankful for the kindness, care, attention, relations, help, and everything desirable. Note in your essay that a feeling of gratitude is the ability to see and acknowledge the good in people, in their actions, and the world.
How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times
In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times. Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in a crisis.
How to Express Gratitude to Others: 19 Examples & Ideas
1. Say the words! Words are powerful and the simplest, most direct, way to express gratitude to the people we may take for granted. Given proximity, a verbal expression of your appreciation in person is effective - if you can't do it in person, make the phone call and brighten somebody's day. 2.
Essay on Gratitude
List of Essays on Gratitude for Students and Teachers. #1 Essay on Gratitude Towards Parents Gratitude is one of the most underestimated ways anyone can use to enrich their lives. It is the feeling and attitude of appreciation and thankfulness for the good that we receive in life. Scientists have proven that when we express our gratefulness towards other people, we tend to
Essay on Gratitude For Parents
Understanding Gratitude. Gratitude means to be thankful. It is about recognizing the good things in life and appreciating them. When we talk about gratitude for parents, it means to be thankful for all that our parents do for us. They work hard to provide us with a safe and comfortable life. They guide us, protect us, and love us unconditionally.
The Power of Gratitude: Enhancing Wellbeing at Work
Express Appreciation: Take the time to thank your colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. A simple "thank you" note or verbal acknowledgment can go a long way in making others feel valued. Create a Gratitude Journal: Consider keeping a gratitude journal where you write down things that you're thankful for in the workplace.
The Gratitude Letter: Note Your Thanks
Writing a gratitude letter to someone who has made a positive impact on your life is a powerful way to stay mindful (Seligman, 2011). The actions and attitude of the person you have thought about ...

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Common Application Essay Option 4—Gratitude

The Importance of Gratitude and Kindness

Breaking Down the Essay Prompt

"Reflect"

"Something" and "Someone"

"Surprising"

"Gratitude"

"Affected" and "Motivated"

Avoid These Mistakes

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