In 2024, UC Berkeley studies showed that gratitude is a key component of our happiness. People who are grateful about the events in their life and even experiences from the past can help us transform our fears into courage, our anger into forgiveness, our isolation into belonging, and the pain of others into healing. However, this may not be our default mode, and most of us need to work intentionally to increase our feelings of gratefulness and have it become a way of life. Gratitude, says author Becca Anderson, is not positive thinking, it’s inner work. Raised on a modest West Virginia farm where her father greeted every stranger as “neighbor,” Anderson learned simple contentment early, later surviving on apples, potatoes, and Lipton tea while building a new life in San Francisco. A turning point came when she discovered children lacquering products in a factory she was set to visit for her import-export job. She quit on the spot and, on a friend’s advice, found her true calling in book publishing. In this dialogue Anderson shares her morning intention-setting ritual, the “gratitude adjustment” she uses to counter negative auto-pilot thinking, and affirmations written as “I am” rather than “I want.” She describes small random acts of kindness, from her “Take What You Need” flyers to a chance gift of cookies that changed a stranger’s day, along with journaling, vision boards, and the practice of deep listening, including letters from a friend on Ukraine’s front line who thanked her simply for hearing him.
