The Gratitude Diaries
Janice Kaplan · 2015
The Gratitude Diaries (2015) is a book by Janice Kaplan on Gratitude & positivity. Journalist Janice Kaplan spends a full year practicing gratitude on purpose, month by month, checked against the science she gathered running a national survey, to test whether a deliberate thank-you habit can genuinely change a life.
A journalist runs a year-long, science-checked experiment proving gratitude is a trainable habit that quietly rewires how you experience your own life.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Gratitude Diaries pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Kaplan's national gratitude survey (run with the John Templeton Foundation while she edited Parade) exposed a 'gratitude gap': people rate gratitude as vital yet rarely express it, and are least likely to feel it at work and toward the people closest to them.
- Gratitude is a skill you practice, not a mood you wait for. Drawing on Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kaplan treats the roughly 40% of happiness under intentional control as her working space and chooses her attitude deliberately.
The other 5 — and the full 10-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 8 chapters
The whole summary runs about 10 minutes, read or listened to.
- A New Year's Resolution to Be Grateful
- January: The Husband I Stopped Noticing
- The Science: Why Gratitude Actually Works
- Money, Stuff, and the Comparison Trap
- Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World
- Your Body: Grateful for What Works
- Gratitude at Work
- December: Making Gratitude Last
Finish The Gratitude Diaries tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 10 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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