Gratitude and Appreciation — why you don't wait, and how to train it

A multi-day celebration of Richie's career, organized by his former students. The save-the-date went out two years earlier.

Over about 3.5 hours, 26 former trainees, postdocs and collaborators each gave a 7-minute talk on how the lab had shaped their work.

He burst into tears. He described feeling gratitude and a kind of "quiet pride."

People traveled from China, Europe and Mexico. Roshi Joan Halifax, whom Richie has known for about 40 years, attended. Angela Duckworth sent a video.

"We should name it, and it's love."

Gratitude like this often gets said only after someone has died, at a memorial. This group didn't wait. They said it while Richie was there to hear it.

Coming out of the event, he spontaneously thanked Richie's assistant, Jenny. Gratitude ripples outward: feeling it makes you more likely to pass it on.

The importance of intention. The event was years in the making. If we want these moments, we have to make time and space for them on purpose.

1. Flourishing is contagious.
2. Flourishing is a skill that can be cultivated.
3. It's easier than you think.

No. Benefits show up with modest training. You don't need 45 minutes a day for years.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (UC Riverside) studies brief positive-psychology interventions. Her work shows gratitude can be trained, and that training it improves broader well-being.

Others included reading slogans and saying thanks more often. The one that stood out was writing a gratitude letter to a specific person, and actually writing it. It was especially powerful on measures of well-being and positive emotion.

Start where it's easy: a grandparent, a child, a pet. Someone it's natural to feel grateful for.

Widen the circle, from loved ones to neutral people (99.9% of humanity) and then to difficult people.

No. You can stand up to injustice with love and wisdom, as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and MLK did. Hatred and irritation put us into a threat response.

Recognition and savoring, done with intention. Noticing the small flickers amplifies them. You feel it in the body (the "warm fuzzies").

Countless people made and shipped the microphone in front of him. Hence: "If you're not in a constant state of gratitude, you're not paying attention."

A stranger driving a car stopped for him. Richie gave a thank-you wave, and the driver waved back. Everyday gratitude and respect like this keep the world from falling apart, and being aware of it is good for us.

Probably not long. That's Richie's conjecture. It likely blends into other positive emotions and mood.

It activates during gratitude. It's rich in dopamine, involved in wanting and liking, and part of the brain's reward network.

Some studies show it activated. The insula holds a viscerotopic map of the body and is a key site of mind–brain–body interaction.

Interoception is the perception of internal bodily cues. People differ in this ability, much as they do in visual imagery. It can be partly trained, and people who are less aware of their bodies may connect with gratitude through other signals.

Both people. Expressing gratitude also boosts the expresser's well-being. It's a win-win.

Cort suggests intentional practice may also engage the central executive network, as seen in compassion research by Helen Weng (Richie's former grad student). It's a hypothesis, not an established finding. Richie notes the literature on gratitude and prefrontal executive function isn't robust.

Gratitude toward strangers or irritating people, which is harder. He practices it with people in his roughly 100-person organization (the nonprofit Healthy Minds Innovations and the Center for Healthy Minds) when they do something beneficial, even if they irritate him.

He looks at his calendar and appreciates the people he'll see that day.

He writes one-sentence thank-you emails, which take under two minutes, and thanks trainees for their work. His feedback aims to be "rigorous without being mean", which motivates people rather than demoralizing them.

Appreciate mundane things: brushing your teeth, getting out of bed. The profundity is that it's everywhere.

He and his wife pick a topic, then take turns naming three things they're grateful for, instead of venting about work. He also sends unprompted, out-of-the-blue appreciation texts. The lesson: create a micro-ritual.