March 6, 2019 by Philip Lewenstein

On the Importance of Gratitude…Thanks a Thousand

Last summer and fall, two famous Minnesota athletes, Lindsay Whalen and Joe Mauer, caught my attention after their retirement announcements when they publicly thanked everyone who helped make their success possible. Next, Alan Page, retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice and National Football League great, issued a statement expressing gratitude when receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony.

Unfortunately, many professional athletes are perceived as egotistical and greedy, focusing on their multiyear, multimillion dollar contracts. Fortunately, three of my favorite Minnesota athletes—Whalen, Mauer, and Page—defy negative perceptions by illustrating the importance of gratitude. They are truly role models for all of us.

During the holidays, I came across many articles and books about gratitude, which caused me to reflect upon and further explore the concept. Gratitude has become trendy. I learned that gratitude takes little effort and has powerful benefits linked to happiness. However, we can take gratitude for granted, so we should practice it regularly. Gratitude is important in all aspects of our lives. Yet gratitude has limits; it is not a panacea.

Gratitude is the quality of being thankful: a readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. Gratitude has been defined as an affirmation of good things in the world such as the gifts and benefits we’ve received. We recognize the sources of this goodness are outside ourselves. We acknowledge that other people—or a higher power—gave us many gifts, big or small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives.

Further, gratitude is a relationship-strengthening emotion because it requires us to see how we have been supported and affirmed by other people. The experience of gratitude has been historically a focus of world religions.

I feel good when somebody thanks me. For example, last year on Father’s Day, I received a beautiful thank-you card from my wife, thanking me “for being such a good father.” Gratitude is valued when it is genuine and heartfelt, not half-hearted.

On the other hand, it is disappointing, or hurtful, when gratitude is lacking. For example, take a family with five siblings. One sibling, at much emotional and professional cost, devotes a decade of her life to caring for her aging parents until their deaths. The other four siblings express little or no gratitude.

As a child, I learned the importance of writing thank-you notes. As parents, my wife and I always insisted that our children write thank-you cards. In an article on the late President George H.W. Bush, Time magazine reported that “he wrote thank-you notes by the dozen, as if he were winning over the country one card at a time.” As a communications director, I wrote hundreds of thank-you notes and letters to legislators for supporting our higher-education agenda.

In recent years, gratitude has been a trendy concept, as described by Star Tribune reporter Jeff Strickler (“Thanks for everything,” November 15, 2018). Citing wellness experts, Strickler points out that gratitude is a constructive activity, but it would be even better if done every day, not only on Thanksgiving.

“Curating an appreciation for the things in our lives can benefit everything from personal relationships to physical health to mental acuity,” Strickler says. “Cultivating ‘an attitude of gratitude’ has become a buzz phrase on social media, but proponents of the practice argue that its online fame is coming long after health professionals started noticing the benefits,” Strickler says.

Health experts, according to Strickler, give two reasons for the popularity of gratitude: it’s easy and it works.

“People are looking for simple things they can do to improve their health and well-being,” Mary Jo Kreitzer, founder and director of the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, told Strickler. “It’s such a simple process. There’s no cost. It’s accessible; anyone can do it. It just takes a few minutes. And research has shown that it really does make a difference.”

Most people don’t need to be reminded to be thankful for something monumental, Strickler notes. “It’s the little, everyday things that brighten our lives but are taken for granted and rarely acknowledged—if we’re even cognizant of them—that are the focus of most gratitude programs,” he said.

The Bakken Center offers four steps on how to practice gratitude: (1) Every night, think back over your day and remember three good things that happened—things that went well, that you enjoyed or were grateful for, (2) write them down, (3) consider each item on the list and write down why you feel good about it, and (4) after a week, review what you’ve written and look for themes and common occurrences.

As I started exploring gratitude, I received a concise, delightful book on the topic: Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey by A. J. Jacobs (TED Books, Simon and Schuster, 2018). To restore his sanity in troubling times, Jacobs pledged to thank every person who had a role in making his morning cup of coffee possible.

“I wanted to show how life-changing gratitude can be,” Jacobs says. “So I thanked the barista, the lid designer, the South American farmer, the trucker who hauled the coffee, the folks who paved the road for the trucker, and the people who painted the stripes on the highways so the truck didn’t veer into traffic. It turned out to be a surprisingly huge number of people

“My gratitude quest has taken me across time zones and up and down the social ladder. It made me feel delight, wonder, guilt, and a whole bunch of caffeine jitters. It taught me the secrets to practicing gratitude, and how it can transform anyone’s perspective.”

Perhaps no Minnesota athlete exemplifies the act of gratitude than Gopher women’s basketball coach Lindsay Whalen, who retired last summer after a stellar 15-year career in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Whalen won four WNBA titles with the Minnesota Lynx, two Olympic gold medals, and two world championships for the United States.

After announcing her retirement this summer, Whalen wrote a special article for the Star Tribune (“Shout-outs demand a curtain call: No. 13 salutes the many who guided her career forward and upward,” August 19, 2018). Her list of 13 thank-you comments started with her two WNBA coaches—Mike Thibault of the Connecticut Sun and Cheryl Reeve of the Lynx and ended with the fans at Williams Arena and Target Center. Special thanks went to former teammates Sylvia Fowles, Seimone Augustus, Maya Moore, Rebekkah Brunson, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, and Janel McCarville. Her thank-you list also included her four younger siblings, her parents, and husband.

Whalen’s salute to so many who contributed to her success brought tears to fans that have closely followed her career. Her gratitude is not fleeting. Last fall, Whalen was honored when the renovated Hutchinson High School gym was named for her. Whalen thanked her parents for moving the family to Hutchinson.

Another Minnesota sports hero who retired this fall is Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins. In his 15- year career, Mauer won three batting titles (the most of any catcher), five silver slugger awards, three gold gloves, and one MVP award.

While driving, I listened to Mauer’s emotional press conference in which he confirmed his retirement. During his opening remarks, Mauer thanked his family, friends, reporters, and current and former Twins players and employees from clubhouse attendants to managers. He thanked everyone he forgot to thank, saying he would catch up with them. 

On Sunday, November 11, Mauer published  a full-page thank-you letter (Dear Twins Territory) explaining his retirement and thanking the Minnesota Twins and fans “for making my career as special and memorable as it was. Because of you, I can leave the game I love with a full and grateful heart.”

Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Page said that, “Whatever I have accomplished has been due in no small measure to those known and unknown, on whose shoulders I have been allowed to stand. That includes those who came to this country in the belly of slave ships, some of whom were my ancestors and others whose labor was used to make the bricks used to construct the original White House.

“It includes my parents and family members who loved me, nourished me and taught me about empathy, compassion, the difference between right and wrong, and that the truth matters.”

Page acknowledged civil rights leaders who “fought injustice and sacrificed their futures to make mine possible and whose courage inspires me.” He thanked people from his football life including Jim Marshall, Carl Eller, Gary Larson, Paul Dixon, Jim Finks, Ed Garvey, and the Minnesota Vikings organization, which has supported the Page Education Foundation from its beginning.

“It includes more than 7,000 Page Scholars whose service is creating hope and changing the future and who are my heroes, as well as the children of the Justice Page Middle School, who give me support for the future,” Page said. “ More important, it includes Diane Sims Page, the love of my life and life partner, a woman whose quest for racial, gender, and social justice knew no bounds and who encouraged, lifted, and allowed me to become more than I might otherwise have been.”

Page said that, “Mere words are inadequate to express the debt of gratitude I owe this group of people.”

Gratitude is good for business. Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams, links the value of gratitude to a management lesson by Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford in 1623 when he convened a meeting of colonists to oversee a collective expression of gratitude, or thanksgiving (“Gratitude Is Good for Business,” The Wall Street Journal, November 24-25, 2018).

“Deep down, however, beneath the trappings of food, family, and often-forgettable football games, Thanksgiving is really a management story,” Walker says. “It’s a case study in how extraordinary leaders build happy, productive teams.

“If you’ve yet to decide whether happy employees make a difference at work, you’ve either missed, or ignored a growing mountain of research,” Walker says. “Happy workers not only score higher for engagement, productivity, loyalty, creativity, they take fewer sick days and are more likely to help their colleagues.”

According to one study, Walker adds, companies with top-rated work environments consistently outperform the rest in revenue growth and stock price, sometimes by a factor of two to one.

Walker points out the Bradford and Presidents Washington and Lincoln, three leaders whose actions led to the Thanksgiving holiday being established, all presided over dark, challenging times and, at the first sign of deliverance, sought to heal divisions, lift morale, and build resolve by fostering a spirit of thankfulness.

“If emotions could be bottled and sold, gratitude might be a controlled substance,” Walker says. “Research shows that people who express thankfulness can experience a happiness high that  lasts for up to a month.”

An experiment conducted by Robert Emmons and Michael McCollough found that subjects who made a daily list of things they were grateful for showed higher levels of optimism and enthusiasm, exercised more regularly, and made greater progress on goals, Walker says. Emmons, a UC Davis psychology professor, is considered the father of gratitude research.

Walker also notes a 2012 survey commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation that found a majority of people believe gratitude pays dividends at work. Of those surveyed, 71 percent said they would feel better about themselves if their boss expressed more gratitude for their efforts, while 81 percent said they would work harder. At the same time, Walker says, people were less likely to express gratitude at work than any other place, and only 39 percent were grateful for their jobs.

Many leaders who set out to build grateful cultures often start by thanking their employees, Walker says. Other bosses drive happiness by talking about the company’s larger purpose, or mission.

“While these tactics can help, Bradford’s Thanksgiving model suggests that building happy teams isn’t just a top-down job,” Walker says. “Friendliness and gratitude need to flow in many directions at once: from leaders to followers, followers to leaders, colleagues to colleagues, and even employees to customers.”

Minneapolis businessman, author, and Star Tribune columnist Harvey Mackay says gratitude should be expressed daily: it should be a continuous attitude.  He says that he sends thank-you notes and cards and consistently acknowledges and appreciates people. In a November 2014 Star Tribune column, Mackay says that developing an attitude of gratitude takes so little effort, yet many of us need a refresher course in how to be thankful for what we have. The trick is to not take for granted things that are good, he says.

As an instructor of professional communications, I was pleased that the curriculum included a section on writing goodwill messages, including those expressing thanks. These messages should focus on the five Ss. Goodwill messages should be selfless, specific, sincere, spontaneous (fresh and enthusiastic), and short (Business Communication: Process & Product, 8^th Edition by Mary Ellen Guffey and Dana Loewy, 2015).

Written notes that show appreciation and express thanks are significant to their receivers, Guffey and Loewy say. “When someone has done you a favor or when an action merits praise, you need to extend thanks or show appreciation,” they say. “Letters of appreciation may be written to customers for their orders, to hosts for their hospitality, to individuals for kindness performed, to employees for a job well done, and especially to customers who complain. After all, whether in social media posts, by e-mail, or on paper, complaints are actually providing you with ‘free consulting reports from the field.’ Complainers who feel that their complaints were heard often become the greatest promoters of an organization.”

Cultivating gratitude is an important aspect of training one’s brain for happiness, according to content in the Star Tribune sponsored by the Mayo Clinic (“Train Your Brain for Happiness,” December 30, 2018). The article advocates the 5-3-2 plan to cultivate gratitude and compassion by switching the brain to a focused mode. Five refers to five people. Start each day with gratitude: the moment you wake up focus on five people for whom you’re grateful and ‘see’ them in your mind and silently thank them. The three refers to three minutes of finding novelty where love is, and two refers to two seconds of seeing others differently.

Leadership coach Liz Reyer says that with many discouraging things occurring, she encourages the role of gratitude (For a Healthy New Year, Let Gratitude Be Your Guide,” December 24, 2018, Star Tribune).

“Look out your window and notice something beautiful,” she says. “Find a small thing that makes you laugh. Or connect with someone who makes you feel good. Then, consciously acknowledge gratitude that these things exist in your life. Make a practice of this…We are all graced by the many things that others have done for us.”

Reyer says to “carry forward your responsibility, extend your gratitude practice to others. Simple kindness and appreciation make an immense difference for someone who is having a rough day.”

However, gratitude may not solve all challenges. Mitch Horowitz of the Washington Post says that America has a “gratitude problem.” Dozens of popular books and articles urge us to embrace the “power of gratitude,” he says; yet many will naturally feel excluded from the increasingly prevalent gratitude equation in which a mind-set of thankfulness is supposed to multiply one’s blessings (“Self-help Tomes on Gratitude Can’t Quite Get to the Heart of the Problem,” December 23, 2018, St. Paul Pioneer Press).

People who lost everything in wildfires, relatives of victims in mass shootings, and those suffering from physical or emotional disorders can understandably feel locked out of the reported benefits of compound gratefulness, Horowitz says.

“Feeling the peer pressure to ‘be grateful’ can even create kind of negative loop,” he says. “When we can’t summon the expected feeling of gratefulness or buoyancy that popular culture demands, we often experience a deepened sense of failure. It’s not that the urge toward grateful- ness is wrong. Rather it’s that the popularly expressed approach needs to consider the vast numbers of people who have unjustly or chronically suffered.”

Horowitz critiques several books on gratitude: The Gratitude Diaries (by Janice Kaplan, Penguin), A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life (by John Kralik, Hachette), Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks ( by Diana Butler, HarperOne), Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy (by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Moody Publishers), and The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun ( by Gretchen Rubin, Harper).

“Where the gratitude movement falters, as with the positivity movement in general, is that its leading voices purposefully and somewhat cheaply  recoil from the ethical and intellectual heavy hitting of addressing the lives of people in deep or implacably distress,” Horowitz concludes. “An authentic philosophical principle must be universal in its application and reach. Hence, the gratitude movement must acknowledge that there’s no way to spin profound personal loss. Life may never be whole again.

“For those of us to whom life does not present staggering burdens: Shame on us if we fail to express gratitude. To consider societies that are riven by civil war, brutal despotism, and environmental disasters, and to not express gratitude is to enter a narcissistic bubble of self-concern and petty complaint.”

In my first blog, I expressed gratitude for the diverse array of opportunities for postsecondary education available to my children. Of course, I am grateful for my parents, now deceased, my immediate family, relatives, and friends. I am grateful for our freedoms and opportunities, and much more.

I am thankful to Lindsay Whalen, Joe Mauer, and Alan Page for modeling gratitude and inspiring me to explore and to reflect on this important emotion.

I don’t plan to initiate a gratitude journey like A.J. Jacobs to thank every person involved in producing my morning cup of coffee. Nor do I plan to start a gratitude journal or practice the steps suggested for being grateful.

However, I plan to make gratitude a continuous quality like kindness and respect; I plan to express gratitude daily.

Thanks for reading. Thanks a thousand.