Thank People You’re Grateful For

One of the ways gratitude does us good is by helping us to build our relationships with other people, which makes them and us happier. Science shows that gratitude increases how willing we are to help and forgive others, which helps us all get along.

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Gratitude also helps us feel valued which is a basic human need. We all have it. But sometimes we don’t realise that we’ve had a positive impact on someone else, so it feels good to know. What’s more this has a knock-on effect. If we know that others have valued what we’ve done, we are more likely to do it again, so other people benefit.

But it isn’t always that easy. Day-to-day most of us usually remember to say thank you to people who do little things we are grateful for, yet we often don’t this for the people who have had the biggest impact on our lives. Sometimes we only think about doing this when it’s too late and they’re no longer around to hear. This is a wasted happiness opportunity.

Scientific research has shown that actually thanking the people we’re most grateful to, and explaining why we’re grateful to them, is one of the most powerful ways of enhancing our happiness. In tests, people who wrote a letter of gratitude to just one person and shared it with them, experienced a big immediate increase in positive feelings and were happier and less depressed for up to one month after doing it. So why not give it a go?