Thank You Notes Changed My Life

This charming book, A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life, is a perfect read for the week of Thanksgiving. In his mid-50s, John Kralik is feeling low. His legal firm is failing, he’s broke, twice divorced, living in a grungy apartment, estranged from his sons, overweight, plagued by annoying health problems, and his girlfriend has dumped him. But one day he receives a thank-you note. It’s an epiphany for Mr. Kralik. He realizes how few times in his life he’s ever thanked anyone and how little a role gratitude has played in his life. Armed with that knowledge, and a huge stack of stationery, he begins to write thank-you notes. He writes personal messages of gratitude to almost anyone you could imagine: from his sons, colleagues and old friends, to his ex-wife, the building superintendent and the guy who serves him at Starbucks.

Mr. Kralik finds that the act of expressing thanks changes not only him, but his circumstances as well. He doesn’t exactly call it karma, but the goodwill he engenders seems to reverse the trajectory of his life. He  He explores how the act of writing thank-yous is to him what meditation or yoga might be to another person. His relationships blossom and he delights in the company of others, especially his young daughter. In the end, Mr. Kralik realizes: “With the help of my three hundred thank-you notes, I had examined the life I had viewed as perfectly awful and found that it was a lot better than I had been willing to acknowledge.” And that’s a great lesson for all of us to learn. Happy Thanksgiving!