When author, editor, and producer Janice Kaplan found her old journals that she had kept since girlhood and began to read them, what she discovered astonished her: instead of happy memories from childhood, she encountered “page after grumbling page of self-centered despair.” Reading them, Kaplan realized that her journals were not a reflection of who she was or the life she had lived, but instead, were a negatively skewed view of her former self because she’d only written in them when she was angry, frustrated, or sad. Dreading the idea of someone else reading these pages, she gathered them all into a trash bag and sent them off “to molder in a dump somewhere.”

It was a scene I recognized well. I can still picture the torn pages of my journals as I tossed them into a dumpster in Stillwater, Oklahoma after discovering that my journals were not a true reflection of who I was or the life I had lived. They had served their purpose of allowing me to vent, but I wasn’t—and didn’t want to be—the complaining, self-possessed person who screamed from every page. So, like Kaplan, I tossed them, and like Kaplan, once I had sent them off to the dump, I second-guessed myself and thought that perhaps I should have considered burning them instead.

Embarking upon a year-long exploration of keeping, instead, a gratitude diary, Kaplan vowed to reframe whatever happened to her from the perspective of gratitude. She shares her experiment in The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life.

“Reframing from the perspective of gratitude? How does that work?” you may be thinking. Well, I was influenced by the book, so I’ll give an example from something that happened just yesterday. It was sprinkling—more like misting, really—as I dashed into the grocery store to pick up a few items that I could throw together before my book club met at my house. Ten minutes later, I exited the store to discover that it was now a downpour, and I had left my umbrella in the car. My first thought was, “Oh, crap, now I’m going to get soaked,” but I quickly caught myself and instead said aloud to the bell ringer, “Hey, I’m going to get to test the new waterproofing on my boots!”

In The Gratitude Diaries, Janice Kaplan walks the reader through her year of discoveries as she intentionally looks at the bright side in everything. She finds for herself what research proves: feeling and expressing gratitude makes us happier, improves our relationships, and even improves our health.

A journalist at heart, Kaplan follows her curiosity and uses her connections to speak to renowned psychologists, CEOs, and celebrities about the benefits of practicing gratitude. When she writes of her conversations with Barack Obama, Clint Eastwood, Dr. Martin Seligman, and Henry Timms (the founder of #GivingTuesday), she isn’t name-dropping. She’s sharing, with humility and humor, the insights that she has been able to glean from people with whom most of us would never have the opportunity to speak.

Through her research, Kaplan discovers several useful gratitude practices, which I’ll be writing about next time. But one practice in her book stands out: the Gratitude Diet. Inspired by Cornell professor Dr. Brian Wansink’s findings that people who are happy eat 77% more healthfully, she created an approach to eating that she called The Amazing Gratitude Diet. It consists of four simple rules:

• Take a minute to appreciate any meal before I start.
• Sit down to eat—no matter what.
• Fill up on gratitude rather than food.
• Eat only food that makes me feel grateful (in quantities that make me feel good).

I love this idea! Appreciating the food I am about to consume and sitting down to enjoy it sets me up to look at food as something special, rather than something I mindlessly grab and bolt down. And eating only food that makes me feel grateful means appreciating my body and giving it what it needs rather than what is quick and easy. When I eat only that which makes me feel grateful, I choose more nutritious foods, eat more slowly, and savor each bite.

The only thing I’d quibble with is the word “diet,” which is such a loaded word for most people. While “diet” has a neutral definition—the kinds of foods a person or community habitually eats—it has come to be synonymous with guilt and shame, and it’s hard to feel any gratitude for that. But since “Food Paradigm” is cumbersome and “Eating Plan” sounds silly, I guess I’ll let the use of the word “diet” go. The point is, when we take time to appreciate the food in front of us, we feel better, and we make dietary choices that lead to better health.

We live in self-absorbed times, as evidenced by the Oxford Dictionary’s choice of Word of the Year 2013: selfie. That same year, “unselfie” went viral on #GivingTuesday—the message being to turn the metaphorical and literal camera outward and care for others. People posted pictures on social media about the causes they wanted to support or needs they wanted to address—the unselfie was gratitude in action. We call that compassion.

I invite you, Dear Reader, to pick up a copy of The Gratitude Diaries, read it, and be inspired to look at your life from a perspective of gratitude. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you’ll likely be seeing family and friends next week; what would happen if you invited all of them into a place of gratitude? What would happen if you brought gratitude journals for everyone and invited them to begin their own practice? If you all did that, what would it feel like next year when you gather? I have a sneaking suspicion that not one of you would feel the need to burn those journals!

Until next time,