Entitlement turns every gift into an overdue payment.

Expectation does something strange to generosity. Once you assume something is owed, it stops being a gift and turns into an invoice, and the person providing it goes from generous to merely on time. Nothing changes about what you receive; what changes is that you lose the feeling that came with it, and they lose the pleasure of giving.

Find one thing in your life you have started treating as automatic. A lift, a meal, somebody covering for you. Ask what would happen if it stopped, and what it costs the person doing it. Then thank them for it once, as though it were the first time.