Gratitude Letter
Write to someone who helped you and never got told properly. Sending it is optional.
No card · No streaks
Dan — my old shift manager
You covered for me the week my dad was in hospital and never mentioned it afterwards. I don’t think you know what that bought me.
What it is
Not a thank-you card. The part you never said.
You write a letter to a specific person about a specific thing they did, and what it actually meant. Not a thank-you card — a letter that says the part you never said.
In the original research the strongest version involved delivering it in person and reading it aloud, which produced the largest short-term happiness gain of any single exercise tested. Kansha lets you email it, or keep it entirely to yourself.
Keeping it unsent is a legitimate choice. Plenty of the value is in the writing, and some of the people worth writing to cannot be reached.
How to do it
Twenty minutes. Sending is optional.
Pick one person and one thing
Specific beats comprehensive. One moment you can describe, not a summary of everything they have ever done.
Name or relationshipDescribe what they did
In detail, including the parts they may not remember. The detail is what makes it a letter rather than a card.
Say what it changed
This is the part people skip, and the part that matters. Not that it was kind — what it altered.
Decide whether to send it
Kansha can email it, or it can sit in your account unsent. Keeping it unsent is a legitimate choice — plenty of the value is in the writing.
✉ Email it · Keep it here
What you might get from it
- Produces one of the largest short-term wellbeing effects measured for a single exercise
- Tends to strengthen the relationship, when sent
- Works even unsent — the writing does most of the work
What the research says
Strong
Seligman and colleagues tested five happiness interventions in a randomised, placebo-controlled trial. The gratitude visit produced the largest immediate effect of the set.
Where that runs out
The large effect was for the in-person visit, not for writing alone or emailing. It also faded — measurable at one month, largely gone by three. This is a lift, not a change of state.
- Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). American Psychologist.
“The gratitude visit produced large positive changes, though the effect faded over about a month.”
Read the paper →
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