BONUS EPISODE: SAY THANK YOU TO LIFE!

Episode Summary:

It can be hard to truly express how grateful you are for someone and the impact that they have had on your life. For our guest today, she set out on a gratitude journey that she labeled The Thank-You Project. Nancy Davis Kho set out on a year and a half appreciation trip composing letters thanking family, friends, things, and even places that she was grateful for. Reframing our attitude on midlife and being grateful for having new years and experience can set your brain up for happiness. In this episode, we discuss how you can express your gratitude and appreciation for the loved ones and things in your life as well as how it can impact your life for the better.

Nancy Davis Kho

Our guest today is Nancy Davis Kho, a freelance writer and author of the book The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Nancy’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, US Magazine, The Rumpus, and The Toast. Nancy Davis Kho has been an inaugural champion of Oakland’s Literary Death Match and has been recognized as the Voice of the Year in the Humor Category by BlogHer. Nancy Davis Kho has a blog called Midlife Mixtape and is the host of a show called Midlife Mixtape Podcast.

THE THANK-YOU PROJECT

Who helped you become the person you are today?

Nancy Davis Kho was approaching her 50^th birthday and milestone in her life and chose to commemorate this milestone by writing one thank-you letter each week of that year to acknowledge and thank those in her life for their impact.
The book sets out to give practical advice on how you can organize your own gratitude letter project and uses Nancy’s personal experiences to suggest who may be of importance to include in your own journey!
Science says that even thinking about all the positive things that people have done for you already does the heavy lifting of rewiring your brain to look more easily for things to be grateful for. This is called positive recall bias.
Nancy backs up her project with emerging research on the science behind happiness and gratitude when showing appreciation for the people in your life. Past or present people can make a positive and lasting effect on your happiness.

See – Say – Savor

See – Taking the time to think of a person. Spend time reflecting and discovering all the ways that that person has helped and shaped you into who you are today.
Say – Write a letter that is powerful and gives someone a physical artifact of a letter that they can then reread. Put into writing what they mean to you. It doesn’t even have to necessary be a letter format! There are many other approaches that you can choose to show your gratitude and appreciation for that special someone.
Savor – If you are going to write letters, Nancy Davis Kho believes it is necessary to keep a copy for yourself. You will be able to go back and reread those letters and Nancy shares you will be surprised how long those letters can make you feel good.
Some Interesting questions to Nancy and her responses:

1. What do you believe makes The Thank-You Project a timely book, in your own life and in the world/the country in general?

It so happened that the year I wrote my letters was 2016, during the last presidential election cycle. While the news and social media seemed to roil with divisiveness and hate every day, the little pocket of time I spent each week actively practicing gratitude by writing a thank-you letter quickly became a calming reset button. It reminded me of all the underlying human connections that keep us upright and functioning, valuable in an era when so many people feel isolated by the technology that surrounds and sometimes entraps us. It means so much to put down your phone for a little while and acknowledge one another in a deliberate way. I’m hopeful that readers who start their own Thank-You Projects will find the process as healing and helpful as I did back in 2016.

2. What are some notable reactions you’ve gotten to your letters of gratitude?

I talk in the introduction about my dad, who immediately framed his letter and hung it over his desk, and that was pretty cute. I received some lovely texts and phone calls and in-person hugs and, in a few cases, even a thank-you letter in reply.

But I made a deal with myself at the outset that my job was to write the letters, not to judge how recipients reacted after they read them. My recipients never asked for a thank-you letter, after all. So in the (very few) cases when the reaction felt a bit more muted – I’m a big extrovert, so to me, anything less than fireworks can feel muted – I reminded myself that I only controlled the sending side of the equation.

And in researching and writing the book, it made sense when I heard from Dr. Christine Carter of the Greater Good Science Center that the positive neurological benefits of gratitude letters accrue to writing them, not necessarily in sending them. Independent of any reactions I got, it was gratifying and worthwhile to have proof in my own writing of all the ways I’ve been helped as I’ve made my way through the world.

3. What was it like at the beginning of this project, when you were just starting out with writing the letters?

I started out writing to my family members with whom I’m closest. I had a lot to thank them for, and I knew they would be pleased to get the letters. It worked well to organize the project that

way, because it helped me get into the rhythm of what should belong in these letters when the stakes were relatively low.

By the time I got to some of the harder or more unusual recipients on my list – like exes and cities I’d lived in and authors who died in the 19^thcentury – I was a pro at the task of writing these letters, and knew exactly the type of sentiments I wanted to include in each.