Sending Out 365 Thank Yous

The other day I was wandering around Vroman’s, the venerable old Pasadena bookstore on Colorado, when my eyes landed on a book: 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life, a memoir by John Kralik.

The book’s sky-blue cover showed a bright red mailbox stuck into a lawn of bright green grass, the kind of scene I’d expect to find in a suburban Kansas town. The book looked a little self-helpy, and yet, I could not help but pick it up. “Profoundly honest and uplifting,” read one blurb on the jacket. I found a window seat at Zeli’s Café and cracked the memoir open.

To my surprise, the true story is set in Pasadena. The book follows a Pasadena lawyer, John Kralik, who at 53 believed he had lost almost everything in his life. Kralik was 40 pounds overweight and his two marriages had ended in painful divorces. His law firm was about to go under—clients had stiffed him for about $170,000. Having handed over his house to his second ex-wife, he now slept on an inflatable bed in a small, dingy apartment.

He had grown distant from his two grown sons and desperately feared losing the deep connection he shared with his young daughter. Around Christmas, his girlfriend broke up with him. His biggest life dreams had slipped away and didn’t know if he would ever rise again. In fact, he sometimes wondered what would happen if he were hit by a car—whether he could finally take a break from the toil and worry while in the hospital.

Then on New Year’s Day, while taking a walk in the San Gabriel hills, Kralik heard a voice call out to him. Inspired by the simple and beautiful thank you note that his ex-girlfriend had sent him for his Christmas gift, the voice told him to send his gratitude and love out into the world by writing a thank you note everyday—365 thank yous that next year.

So Kralik handwrote notes to his children, his ex-wives, college friends, doctors, neighbors, his favorite Starbucks barrista—even his enemies. He wrote thank yous to anyone who had done him a good turn or taught him a life lesson, no matter how small.

When he sent off each letter, he found that he was able to release the hurt, resentment and fear he had felt for so many years, negative emotions that left him physically shrunken.

Kralik writes in his book that he noticed almost immediately how his life began to shift—his business turned around, his old friendships returned to him, he opened himself up to new relationships. He even decided to run a charity marathon and ended up shedding pounds.

Probably most significantly, the lawyer began to feel grateful for his life, the love he felt for his children, and the idealistic principles with which he practiced his work. By sending his gratitude out into the world, he received love in return and realized how many people had truly cared for him and protected him throughout his life. He eventually turned his year-long odyssey into a book that earned him a solid advance, climbed the bestseller lists and inspired people all over the world to take stock of their own lives and reconnect with feeling grateful.

I bought the book and zipped through its 228 pages over a couple of afternoons at . I loved it for its sincerity and humaneness. I thought about how fascinating it would be to send out 365 thank yous of my own. To whom would I write? Of course, I’d jot out notes to all the usual suspects—my husband, my eight-year old, my mom, my younger brother. But beyond that, who would make the list? The boyfriend I almost married but who broke up with me instead, releasing me to spend the next decade of my life traveling the globe? The female boss who was such a nightmare that I quit my job and ended up selling a book I had written? How about the family of my alternative school teacher, the one who taught me a different way to view the world (I once looked her up and discovered she had died in 1985.) They would all make the list, of that I was sure.

With my own gratitude journey in mind, I then reached out to the author and asked him for what he thought were the five essential things people would need to do before they embarked on a year-long thank you note blitz of their own?

Here’s what John Kralik wrote me in response:

 Guides for a Journey of 365 Thank Yous

Writing 365 Thank Yous requires a bit of focus and attention, but even assuming that each note takes 15 minutes, a generous estimate, the entire investment of time is less than 100 hours over the course of a year. This time could be carved out by cutting a few minutes from time normally spent watching television or checking Facebook. I wrote a whole book about what happened as a result of these 100 hours. As the book shows, this small investment of time paid immeasurable dividends. Here are five guides posts for the journey.

 1. A Grateful Heart

Of course, at the beginning of my journey, in January 2008, I did not have a grateful heart. So many things were going wrong that I felt I had nothing for which to be grateful. Starting with thank you notes for the Christmas presents I had received, and, note by note, I became open to the good things around me. And when I was grateful for these blessings, they seemed to multiply.

 2. No rules

This week I received an email from reader who was inspired to start her journey of 365 Thank Yous on January 1, when she saw the book. Now it’s March. Although she is grateful for what has happened, she feels she is running out of opportunities to write about. First, as I said to her, do not feel enslaved to mathematical perfection of the exercise. If you feel you are at the point of writing notes that are insincere or perfunctory, take a break. If you don’t write a note every day, don’t panic. If you have written enough to awaken your perception of those things for which you should be grateful, the blessings will come, and you will find that it is only good manners to write in response to them. Relax. It took me 15 months.

Also, don’t impose a rule that you can’t write to the same person more than once. I had many repetitive situations because I was running a business, and my notes provoked action that required another note. For example, when I thanked other lawyers for referring good cases, they referred more good cases. Each one required a thank you note. I did other things, like running a marathon for charity that increased the number of notes I wrote. Every person’s life is different. The things for which you are to be grateful will come to your attention in time if you are looking.

If you do write repeat notes to your spouse or romantic partner, make each one special by finding a special card or enclosing them with flowers or a ticket to a spa day. She/he has done something nice for you. Now it’s your turn.

3. Recalling Turning Points

It was around March, however, that I too had already thanked the obvious people in my day-to-day life. So I began to look beyond my immediate circumstances for persons to whom I needed to write a thank-you note. For example, I began to look back, and to write notes to the friends who rescued me from self-destructive behavior in my youth, to the doctor whose operation saved me from a life of pain, to the doctor who told me to stop drinking.

This was an especially satisfying part of the journey for me, and I hope it can give you a broader view of life. Inevitably life has its periodic rough times. By going back and thanking these people, I connected with better times and renewed the friendships forged then. This enabled me to take a longer, more balance view of the difficulties I experienced in the near term.

4. Noticing Good Service

People often seem surprised that I thanked the Starbucks person who remembered my name and drink and cheerfully greeted me each morning. This week I was in a Starbucks, and the woman in front of me was talking on her cell phone constantly while she placed her order. When the Starbucks person trying to get her dismissive order tried to clarify, the customer said, “Excuse Me?” in a way that implied that the service person had been rude to interrupt her cell phone conversation. This happened at several points in the transaction, as the customer did not make clear whether she wanted to buy coffee or grind some beans. Finally the customer walked out without a single courteous word, still in the midst of her cell phone conference. As this incident shows, service jobs can be tough because of today’s demanding customer. When we truly do get good service as a result of someone who makes the effort to rise above dispiriting conditions that are becoming more prevalent, we ought to value it. Throughout my day I encounter people I have acknowledged in this way, and it makes it fun to walk around.

 5. The Basics: Pen and Paper

I recommend handwriting the notes, in pen. Write neatly enough that someone else can read it. Perhaps because it is becoming somewhat of a lost art, handwritten notes feel special, and real, as if the person who wrote it is there with you. When something is typed by a machine, people can always question whether it comes from you or from the machine.

Most of my notes were written on very simple off-white note cards, which had only my name printed on the cover. This had two helpful effects. First, the one part of my handwriting that is never easily readable is my signature. With my name printed on the cover, people knew the note was not from a madman. Second, because it was not a pre-printed thank-you note, the words “thank you” had to actually be written by me, over and over, and the person could be sure it was my gratitude being expressed, not that of the greeting card company. I felt the words I was writing, and it helped to change my point of view.

As to how to write a thank-you note itself, you can find my ten tips for writing a good thank you note here.

Buoyed by John’s answer, I popped my head into several Eagle Rock shops in search of artful thank you cards (I figure, why not shop local as a way of saying thank you to the great independent retailers in this town.

At , I found tiny 1-inch-by-2-inch blank cards ($2.50 each) by Keep In Touch Greetings that would delight a child.

carries hand-cut cards ($2.50) designed by Silver Lake mom Susan Wright.

My favorites were at , whimsical cards hand-drawn, photographed (from $2.50 to $10) or printed by her handpicked stable of artists—so gorgeous they’re resemble jewel-like presents.

Samara Caughey at , Eagle Rock’s new art exploration space, said that families could book a two-hour studio time ($20 each) and handcraft their own thank you cards, using vintage postcards, paints and collage materials (included in the studio fee).

I’ve been duly inspired—I have decided to embark on my own year of appreciation by sending out my own 365 thank you cards, the first one on my birthday next week. I’ll let you know about this grand experiment in gratefulness.