Gratitude Matters

It's always nice to be validated. For years and years, we've stressed the importance and pleasure of the act of sending thank you letters in the mail. Now, a study published in the the journal Psychological Science supports that idea with scientific evidence that people underestimate the power of the thank you. Reader's Digest reports that:

"The senders of the thank-you letters consistently underestimated how positive the recipients felt about receiving the letters and how surprised they were by the content. The senders also overestimated how awkward the recipients felt; and they underestimated how warm, and especially how competent, the recipients perceived them to be. Age and gender made no difference to the pattern of findings."

So, hey folks, thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing. Thank you for enjoying this wonderful world of letter writing with me and Kathy. Thanks for every kind word, every comment, every like, just thanks for everything. Now I challenge you to take all those good feelings and share them with someone else. Spread the gratitude. It is a scientifically-proven "powerful act of civility." 

Comments

[Cynthia]

Such a nice reminder that thank you letters are important even if they are not acknowledged. My family sends thank you notes to each other!

[Victoria]

Thank you for this great post (as well as the many others). I truly value the thank you notes I have received, and usually keep a couple handy to re-read when I'm having a tough day, to remind me that the struggle is worth it. Any way we can share our feelings and compassion with others is needed in this world.

[karen weiss]

Hooray for thank you notes! I am a pediatric nurse practitioner, and every once in a while, I get a thank you note from a patient or a parent. I can not even begin to tell you how much those notes mean to me. I too save them and pull them out when I'm having a tough day. Thank you to all the thank you note writers in the world!!

[Daryl]

My gosh, thank you for saving a couple lives over here. With all the crazy changes happening in the last decade my L.W.A. pen pal of several years and I made it through together and we're often thanking each other. She sent me a special card for that via Thanksgiving and it remains on my door to always remind me of how important we are to each other. Caring works!