Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Noticing what you have been given changes your relation to almost everything else. It is difficult to be generous while feeling shortchanged, difficult to be patient while feeling owed, and much of what looks like meanness in people is really a settled sense that they never had their share. That is why gratitude sits underneath the other qualities rather than beside them.

This is not a demand to be thankful for hard circumstances. Keep it concrete: name three specific things from the last week and who was responsible for them. Where there is a person attached, tell them. Gratitude that stays inside your own head does about half the work.