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Today’s episode welcomes a truly unique guest, Joel Zuckerman
, whose career and insights shine a light on a powerful yet often overlooked life strategy—gratitude. Joel is a celebrated author, former award-winning golf and travel writer, and passionate advocate for what he calls “fierce gratitude.” He has penned over 280 personal letters of thanks, authored multiple books, including Grateful and Gratitude Tiger, and now travels the country sharing the transformative impact of proactive, expressive gratitude.
In this thoughtful and educational conversation, Joel joins host Dave Wolcott to unpack the “secret weapon” of gratitude. Far from a mere feel-good practice, Joel reveals how mindful gratitude can rewire your brain, improve your mental and physical health, deepen relationships, and become a source of daily fulfillment, no matter your net worth. Drawing on both personal stories and scientific research, Joel breaks down practical methods you can use to integrate gratitude into your everyday life, from writing heartfelt thank-you letters to simple evening practices. He also discusses why the art of letter writing holds such emotional power in today’s digital world and shares actionable steps for starting your gratitude journey right now.
In This Episode
- Joel’s journey from golf writer to gratitude expert and letter-writing advocate
- The neuroscience of gratitude and how expressing thanks changes your brain and body
- Practical gratitude practices, including writing letters and evening reflections
- The lost art of letter writing and its powerful impact in a fast-paced, digital world
The reason I write letters and put them in the mail is that, Dave, there is something almost ceremonial, almost formal about receiving a letter in the mail. It shows that I, the letter writer, have made the extra effort to show my gratitude to you beyond a text, a GIF, beyond an emoji, and an email.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy Podcast, where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and wanting to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now, your host, Dave Wolkop, serial entrepreneur and author of the best-selling book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode on Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s often overlooked, but absolutely vital to living a fulfilled and abundant life. Gratitude. Our guest, Joel Zuckerman, is not only a celebrated author and former award-winning golf and travel writer, but he’s also the creator of a powerful movement rooted in what he calls fierce gratitude. Joel has written over 280 Personal Letters of gratitude, authored multiple books, including Grateful and Gratitude Tiger, and now speaks to audiences across the country on the transformational power of proactive, expressive gratitude. In this episode, Joel unpacks how a simple thank-you letter can rewire your brain, improve your health, deepen your relationships, and even help you sleep better at night. We explore the science of dopamine hits from writing heartfelt letters, why letter writing is a lost art that holds profound emotional power, how gratitude can elevate your mental state no matter your net worth, and tactical ways to start your gratitude practice today, this conversation is a powerful reminder that true wealth isn’t just in the bank, it’s in the heart.
If you find value in this episode, I encourage you to subscribe to the show, leave a quick review, and share it with someone you appreciate. Now let’s dive into today’s episode. Joel, welcome to the show.
I appreciate it. I’m grateful that you invited me on.
Yeah, Joel, really grateful to have you on the show, and I know the audience is really going to enjoy this as you unpack what I believe is a secret weapon, and people just don’t realize it. The whole world is suffering from a lack of gratitude and appreciation in all aspects of the world. And you can kind of see it right with the chaos, the dichotomy that we have, whether it’s, political or just internal infighting, just different relationships, things like that. And, really excited to have you on today and help the guests uncover this topic called grade, which is just so important, but yet we’re not taught gratitude, and what is the right type of gratitude practice? How do we apply it? So why did you kick things off with, telling us a little bit about yourself and like, how gratitude and writing your book and all of this became your kind of number one focus and impact?
I appreciate that we’ll spare the audience my youth and education. Suffice it to say, Dave, that I was a prolific and reasonably successful golf and travel writer for many years. I wrote eight books about golf, won a couple of major national awards, and wrote for a hundred magazines. I was in the golf business from 1998 to about 2018 or 19, and it was very fulfilling and a lot of fun. And in 2013, I picked up a book, a famous self-help book that many self-help leaders have heard of. Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff, short chapters, two-page, three-page chapter how to live a more meaningful life. One of the chapters was Write a Heartfelt Letter.
So in 2013, I was a busy writer. Magazine work, Internet work, books were coming out, planning books, promoting books, writing books. And I said, “I can write a heartfelt letter.” And I decided to write a letter to a mentor of mine, a friend in the golf industry. When I sat down to write the letter, it never occurred to me that I would write another letter. It was just an intellectual exercise. I got his address and put the letter in the mail. I used the word processor on the computer.
And I was taken aback when I put the letter in the mail that I felt this sense of warmth and accomplishment and connection, that I was letting someone know someone important to me, that I was grateful for their presence in my life. I wasn’t expecting that. I just figured I would do this because I could write features, I could write, do interviews, I could write travelogues, I could write course reviews, spa reviews. I could write and write a heartfelt letter in my mind. I immediately changed the name of the chapter to Write a Letter of Gratitude. I looked at the book again years later, and I was surprised to see the chapter was called Write a Heartfelt Letter. I thought it was Write a letter of Gratitude. Anyway, put the letter in the mail.
And I was overcome with this feeling of accomplishment. So I wrote another letter and then another, and then another. Then I wrote my sister. Then I wrote my brother, and after a year it was 25 letters. After two years it was 50. Then it was 100. And about five or six years later, when I wrote my 150th letter of gratitude to someone who had helped me, someone who had provided kindness, a service had been in memory. I decided to write a book called Grateful, and I decided to write 30 more letters to get to 180 letters.
It took me another year or two. And right in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote a book called Grateful, which was my first 180 letters. And part of me thought I was done with this letter writing, but then someone else came out of the woodwork that I felt grateful to, and I wrote another and another. And now I’m up to 280 letters of gratitude. Two years ago, someone advised me that you should write a book, at your understanding of deep, what I call proactive, expressive gratitude. And that’s when I decided to write Gratitude Tiger, which is my new book, which is for public consumption and thus far doing very well at this point. Unanimous 5-star reviews on Amazon. 5-star gratifying.
I’m grateful I wrote it. I’m grateful people seem to like it. Proactive gratitude has really taken over my professional life.
Yeah. Wow, what a great story. That and you are practicing what you’re preaching for sure. I mean, let’s talk about a little bit of, what’s happening in the brain and, with your, basically the physiology. Right, and the chemistry in your body when you’re writing that heater. What is happening?
Great question. Three hits of dopamine will flood your system when you write a letter of gratitude. The first is when you identify who you’re going to write to. The second is when you are reviewing the completed letter. The third is when you put it in the mail or put it on the bureau or put it in the backpack. Of my 280 letters, I would say 270 of them, 265 have been mailed. 10 or 15 have been handed to someone. But I use the United States Postal Service.
And the reason that I write the letters, and let me reemphasize, I type the letters, that I use the computer to type the letters, a, to spare the recipient my objectionable handwriting. But more importantly, it allows me to have this voluminous archive of letters. I know who I’ve written to, when, and what I’ve said. And that has allowed me to turn this into a cottage industry that gives me this. I don’t want to say I’m an expert; I would say I have an organic understanding of a deep, proactive gratitude. And gratitude can help you in many ways. My jam is writing letters, but expressing gratitude to people who have helped you have a host of wellness benefits, including, but not limited to, lower blood pressure, better sleep patterns, more equanimity, and more emotional balance. And the list goes on and on. So if I’m going to share one message with your listeners, it’s this: Writing letters of gratitude is an incredible hobby to undertake. It’s very enriching. But just thinking about gratitude in general and being more proactively grateful, or my tagline is fiercely grateful, ties in with the Gratitude Tiger.
Being fiercely grateful, expressively grateful, and proactively grateful. Whether you’re comfortable writing letters or not will help your life.
Yeah. Wow. It’s powerful. Let’s talk about it. I have so many questions for you. So, let’s talk about gratitude practice in general. Right. So I’ve heard many ways of practicing gratitude.
And I suspect that, there is probably no one right way. And, you can do different things. I guess some things that have been meaningful for me and my journey is one of the things that I do as soon as I wake up in the morning is I think about gratitude, for different people in my life, different things that are happening as soon as I wake up. So as soon as I’m still kind of coming into consciousness, I don’t, I block out any of those neg thoughts that, really your primal mind might go to. Like being tired or snoozing, things like that. Or I don’t want to get in the cold plunge. But, the gratitude when you, when you wake up, I think, has been helpful.
And then I also start, when I do my journaling every day, I always start the first sentence with gratitude. And I focus on a piece of gratitude before I go into it. So that’s been good. And then the last thing I’ll say i, when my bed is low, this is what I think about. I think about gratitude and the ways that I can kind of do it in there.
Good for you. So let me add on.
Yeah, please.
When you first said, “Oh, when I wake up in the morning, I start thinking about gratitude.” My philosophy is the opposite. Let me build up to this. In other words, my best gratitude practice, which is not a letter, is that evening. But let me preface by saying many of your listeners, many people around the world have heard of journaling you have a notebook, a diary. You write down thoughts of gratitude. You date the entry. So when you look back at the notebook a week or a month later, you’ll see something that you would have forgotten.
It would have slipped your mind. But when you dated the entry, oh, Janie came home with an A in math, and you might have forgotten about that, but you looked at your journal entry from six weeks earlier, and it’ll give you a little shot of dopamine. I don’t do a journal. Another practice is called the gratitude jar. It’s similar, but instead of a journal, you have a piggy bank, and you put in index cards with thoughts of gratitude. Then you spill them out every month to read and recount what you were grateful for. Because I write letters, I don’t feel the need for a journal or a journal. But here is something to think about and you touched on it.
But I’ll expand on it, and I highly suggest your readers, I’m sorry, your listeners, give this a shot. I call it counting your blessings. When I get into bed at night and I’m settling in, I recall everything I can that happened that day, from morning till night, and I feel a touch of gratitude for it. You do it chronologically, and nothing is too small. I’ll give you an example. A little stream of consciousness. Okay? This is what you say to yourself. And by the way, what is the result? This will help you find sleep more easily.
This will have the $10 word is somnambulant. This will have a somnambulant effect on your nervous system as you recall things that happened that day. Here’s a typical stream of consciousness. When I get into bed, I’m grateful I had a green smoothie for breakfast. I was craving bacon and eggs. I’m grateful. When I went to the hardware store, I saw Bill. I haven’t seen him in months.
I’m grateful when I pulled into the gas station mid-morning, a car magically moved out of my way so I could get to get to the gas pump. I’m grateful my Zoom call only lasted 20 minutes. I had allocated 45 minutes on and on and on. And as you practice this you will find that the list goes from five or 10 to maybe 15, 20, even 30 things that you were grateful for that happened that day. And by the time you get to the end of the list, I’m not going to say you’re zonking out, but you have found a relaxed state when you think of everything that happened that day that you feel Just a touch of grace or just a touch of gratitude. And I do that every night wherever I am in the world. I recall things that happened that day that made me grateful.
That is something everyone can do, and it will have an immediate effect on your nervous system and help you calm and relax before sleep.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. You’re reactivating the neural pathways, right, that are going on in your mind. And I think people often forget that, the human brain has 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day, and 80% of those are focused on that, like sensing danger, right? That, that we were put on this earth to really kind of sense danger. So if your brain is always going there, then you live. And all of us know people like that, right? You meet people, and they’re the opposite of gratitude. Their. Their entire lingo is focused on everything that went wrong in the day.
I tried to pull into the gas station, and some jerk was in my way, and I couldn’t get there. That made me 10 minutes late for my meeting. Then I went to this meeting. It was the most miserable meeting. I met this person. You know, that’s all they talk about, right? Is all of the things that were wrong for them in the day. But I think that, as you said, right, you can change the neuroplasticity.
Right. Of your mind by reprogramming it to be in this positive state, and always looking for the positive things. Right. This is coming out. And that’s why I think this is so powerful is because, whether you’re. Whether your bank account is a thousand dollars or a hundred million dollars, right? Is this what’s going on? Truly drive this fulfillment, despite anything, in spite can, actually happen.
Well, I’d be surprised if this hasn’t come up on your podcast. In the past, we’ve all heard this expression. Some of the happiest people in the world have nothing. And some of the most miserable SOBs are filthy rich. Is it nice to have money? Is it nice to be solvent? Is it nice to be financially viable? Yes. Is that going to solve your issues, your emotional, mental, and psychological issues? No. Think about. And this is.
It’s not a cliche. It’s true. You go to Africa and you go to a village, and people live in mud huts with dirt floors, and there’s a little school room, and they might have one electric light bulb hanging from a wire. And people, particularly kids, are happy, singing, fulfilled, and contented. Now, opposite side. Think of some of the people in the world who are filthy rich, right? And you don’t have to be filthy rich. You don’t have to have 100 million. You could just be very comfortable with everything you need from a.
From a superficial standpoint, for every product and every vacation you need. And they have a deep, gnawing sense of unhappiness. So while money is a nice tool and it’s nice to be able to get what you want without thinking, can I afford it? That’s lovely. It doesn’t have the emotional fulfillment that you can develop by learning to, as you say, reprogram your brain to think more deeply about proactive gratitude.
So, Joel, what is the process that you go through in terms of crafting your letter? Right, because I’m sure a lot of listeners out there are just kind of thinking, right? They’re probably noodling on, okay, who might I write a letter to? Right? So maybe that’s. Maybe that’s the first topic that we should kind of uncover. Right? You know where do we begin with this? Is this the right family? How do you kind of select, right? Who would be the right person? And then as we go into that, let’s just talk about the process, because you’re a writer, right? And I’ve authored a book as well. And I mean, it took me years to write, to write the book, right?
And thinking about how you’re going to say something that is truly heartfelt and meaningful and selecting the right person, maybe that’s where a lot of us get stopped. Right? Because it’s just, putting pen to paper. You know, there’s a lot there, and you want it to be meaningful. So how do you start?
Gratitude has the power to elevate your mental state, no matter what your net worth.
Okay. It’s a big ask, but I’ve got a big answer. All right. There are two things to bear There are. First of all, there’s a chapter in the new book. My new book is Gratitude Tiger, a chapter called 10 Concepts to Jumpstart Letters of Gratitude. And I will tell you a couple of those concepts for those who just don’t feel they have the bandwidth and creativity. They don’t have what they consider to be the verbiage, the vocabulary, the openness to write the letter.
One of the chapters is called 10 Concepts to Jumpstart Letters. I’ll tell you one or two of them in a moment. But before I go there, Dave, here’s something as important. There’s another chapter in the book called Seven Paragraphs, Seven Sentences, Seven Words. What does that mean? I’m a professional writer, and I use that in quotes, air quotes. And I’m very effusive and very gregarious and I’m just not afraid to show my feelings. My letters tend to be seven paragraphs long. They are streams of consciousness where I will express my gratitude to you and then go off on a tangent.
Remember that road trip we took when we were 23 and we got stuck on this? I’ll just go off and tell an anecdote or a story. So I fill an entire typewritten page with my letters. But you can do the same thing with the same impact with seven sentences or even seven words. Let me give you an example of the latter. Because seven sentences are obvious. Emily Post, the etiquette expert, says a very nice thank you note is three or four sentences long. So seven sentences is more than enough. But you want to hear some seven-word phrases that will even impact the recipient in the work environment.
You could say you are the best hire that we’ve made. That’s it. You are the cog in the machine. That’s it. This department would not run without you. You send that to an employee, you don’t have to handwrite it. It’s nicer. The interoffice memo, email on a post-it note, however, you want to post it. That employee is going to feel so valued, so seen from a personal standpoint. Seven words. You are the finest daughter I could imagine. You mean the world to me now and always. What a great choice I made with you. Endless. You can do it in 10 seconds, and you will have a profound impact on the recipient.
So the chapter has seven paragraphs, seven sentences, seven words, and details. The fact that you don’t have to be Shakespeare, you don’t have to be John Grisham or John Steinbeck to write a letter of gratitude. You can be extremely powerful in a very abbreviated form. So that’s point one. Now, you asked me, how do I start a letter? So some people want to do more than that. They want to bite off more than they can handle quickly. A quick sentence. Okay, so let me give you a couple of concepts.
The chapter is called 10 Concepts to Jumpstart Letters. The first thing you can do, Dave, is reference the surprise of the letter. Okay, that’s a great opening gambit. Dear Dave, this letter may come as a shock for a couple of reasons. One, we haven’t spoken in what, 10 years? Secondly, you probably thought I wasn’t capable of much more than a grocery list. Okay, so referencing the surprise of the letter is a great way to start a letter. Let me give you another concept. Tie the letter to a holiday, Dear Bill, Thanksgiving is around the corner, and if there is ever a time for me to express thanks for our long friendship, now is the time Dear Sandy, it’s December, Christmas is around the corner, and in this season of good cheer and good tidings, I want to share with you my feelings of gratitude towards you. Or Bill, summer is coming, and I think back to our youthful summers at the shore and some of the funny, crazy hijinks that you and I got involved in. You can always tie a letter not just to a holiday or a season. Even better, tie it to a birthday, an anniversary, or a wedding day, and you are going to have a profound impact on the recipient. So the first tip is to reference the surprise. The second tip is if it’s appropriate in the time of year, reference a holiday or even better, an anniversary, a wedding day, etc. I’ll give you a third and final one, the third out of the 10 that is in this chapter. You can start a letter of gratitude by referencing something specific and then going into a general sense of gratitude.
Let me give you an example. This letter is in the book. So in my new book, Dave Gratitude Tiger, there’s a chapter called 12 Sample Letters. I have one letter from each year that I’ve written, 2013 through 2024, and I went through my archive and picked sample letters from each year that show different aspects of how to write letters of gratitude. So I think the letter I wrote in 2016 or 2017, I’m thanking a friend of mine for concert tickets. It goes something like Dear Susan, Elaine, and I had a great time in Charleston with you at the Old Crow Medicine Show concert at the College of Charleston. Old Crow happens to be one of my favorite bands. But this is not just a thank-you letter.
This is a letter of gratitude. And despite your benevolence and generosity last weekend, I am grateful to you for a number of reasons over the years. So to encapsulate what I’m saying, you start off thanking someone for a dinner, a gift, an introduction, and then a segue. Picture a funnel. It’s skinny on top and then gets wider at the bottom. You start thanks for that. Loved having dinner at your house. What a delicious meal.
But I want to thank you above and beyond dinner and discuss our long, fruitful friendship over the last 25 years. That’s another technique you can use, writing letters of gratitude. So to recap, you can reference the surprise of the letter. You can tie the letter to a holiday, an anniversary, a birthday, or a wedding day. And you can start with something specific and then segue into a general sense of gratitude. Those are three of the 10 techniques that I employ writing letters.
Yeah, great pointers. Do you think, in general, the art of letter writing has been lost?
Absolutely. So my main gig, we haven’t discussed this. I’m a professional speaker, and my topic is gratitude. Most people write a book and then go speak about it. Spoke about gratitude, and then the advisor said, “You should write a book so people, meeting planners, and HR departments know who you are.” It’s a 160-page business card. Okay. I have a gig next week here in my hometown.
Luckily, don’t have to get on a plane at a fancy hotel that will go nameless. I’m speaking to 100 junior executives at the hotel. They’re in the physical plant, housekeeping, F&B, Reservations, HR. And I’ve been told by the upper management that hired me, these guys are not going to be letter writers. They don’t even like to speak on the telephone. These millennials and Gen Zers. They don’t want to speak on the telephone. They don’t want to send emails.
They only want to text. So I am going to change my normal stump speech, my keynote address, which is the seven pillars of expressive gratitude, and talk to them specifically about gratitude in the workplace and how, by the way, it might save your job someday if you can be gracious not only to you-workers but to the guests. Maybe they’ll come back next year if the economy starts to falter. But to answer your original question, is the art of letter writing dead? It’s not dead—certainly on life support, which is why my preferred audience is 40 to 90 years old. Why? Because they have written thank you notes. They have received thank you notes. They know thank you in cursive.
I have been told that my audience next week, many of them were never taught how to write in cursive. They grew up with smartphones, with tablets, and consequently are a little more disengaged than you and I might be with other individuals. So that is a long diatribe. I apologize. Is the art of letter writing on life support? It is. But the reason I write letters and put them in the mail is because, Dave, there is something almost ceremonial, almost formal about receiving a letter in the mail. It shows that I, the letter writer, have made the extra effort to show my gratitude to you beyond a text, beyond a GIF, beyond an emoji, and an email. But yes, this is a lesson I’m pushing a boulder uphill trying to get people to write letters, but it is so fulfilling.
I can’t help but bring the message to the audiences that have engaged me to come speak to them.
Yeah. The reason I asked that question is because, I mean, I know growing up, we were instructed, we were guided to write thank you notes, right? And that’s what I’m talking about. A birthday, a holiday, things like that. So what have we done? We have done that with our kids, and we have told them, and anytime you receive a gift, we do holidays and, all of those different things. And recently, I mean, it’s just. It’s so moving to receive a letter from your grown child. You know, when they write you a heartfelt letter, it just warms you to the soul. Right.
And it’s fantastic. But I wanted to point that out there for those in the audience out there that are raising their kids, that this is fantastic. I mean, not only an amazing exercise for yourself to start working on, but I think you could start teaching the kids how to do this, right? And breaking that cycle from, yeah, our kids are the same thing. Right. It’s like all they know is how to text. You know, they didn’t learn cursive like you said, which kind of blows my mind, but trying to teach the kids this because the kids are going to feel that same dopamine effect by writing to other people and increase their emotional IQ, right? As they grow.
You’re 100% correct. And let me share an anecdote with you. A friend of mine was telling me last week that a highly accomplished woman owns her own business and is set to attend Harvard Business School. She’s divorced from her husband. She had three step-children. The grandmother, apparently her ex-husband’s mother, would give large gifts to her grandchildren for their birthdays and holidays. I think she was referencing like $500, $1,000, not like a birthday card with a $5 bill in it. Real gifts.
These were not her kids. They were her step-kids. She could not get them to have the kids. She couldn’t get the kids to call their grandmother and thank them. She blames her ex-husband, who said, “Don’t worry about it. She gives these gifts because she loves you. She’s got the dough. You don’t have to call and thank her.”
And it drove my friend nuts that these stepchildren of hers were growing up with this sense of entitlement that they get a big check, 500 or 1,000, and they cackle up the phone for five minutes or even two minutes. Grandma, I got that money. What a nice gift. Boy, I had my eye on this sports equipment. I had this eye on a new pair of skis. This is whatever it is. That blew my mind that she wasn’t able to get her step-kids to call the grandmother, and she said her husband, soon to be her ex-husband, undermined her efforts. So those are children who are not going to grow up if they can’t call.
They’re not going to write to anyone. But you know and I know, and many in your audience know, and if they don’t know, we’re going to try and convince them that when you share your gratitude, when you are expressively, proactively, fiercely grateful, you benefit the person who receives the note. The letter, whether it’s seven words, seven sentences, or seven paragraphs, is flattered, taken aback, and feels seen and valued. But the reason you did it was for yourself. That’s the gist of my message and of my new book, Gratitude Tiger.
When you share your gratitude, you benefit the person who receives it, but the reason you do it is for yourself.
Joe, I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about how you came up with Tiger. So I know you break that down inside the book. Why don’t you go through the acronym and explain how you came up with that?
Thank you. I did a podcast yesterday, and we were signing off, and I said, “Wait, one more thing. I’ve got to tell your audience what Tiger means, right?” I was in the golf business for 25 years. There’s a chapter in the new book talking about. No, it’s nothing to do with Tiger Woods. Tiger is an acronym. It means tapping into gratitude engenders rewards. Tapping into gratitude engenders rewards.
It’s another way of saying it’s better to give than to receive. When you give gratitude liberally, regularly, and often, you will be rewarded. My jam is writing letters of gratitude. I don’t love it. I adore it. I cannot see a circumstance where I would stop doing it. But for those who aren’t writers, who don’t have the bandwidth, the time, the energy, the network of people, you can show gratitude. You can tap into gratitude by always nodding hello, or making an innocuous compliment to someone standing next to you.
Let someone in line in front of you all day. It’s up to all of us, Dave, in these divisive, difficult, dark times. I mean, let’s face it, we are in a very rocky period. All of us can be a little ray of light. Nobody has to turn into Mother Teresa. Nobody has to turn into Nelson Mandela. Just be pleasant, just be nice. Show a little grace, a little gratitude.
You don’t have to write letters. I love to write letters. As we discussed earlier, the dopamine effect is real when you ID the recipient, when you reread the letter, and when you put it in the mail. But if you can’t write letters, won’t write letters. Something is stopping you. For whatever reason, you don’t like to be emotionally exposed. You don’t want to wear your heart on your sleeve and express gratitude to someone. There are plenty of people like that.
You can at least be a nice, grateful, generous person.
Yeah, no, that’s fantastic. And I was just reflecting as well, and going through that whole process, how spot on that is because I wrote a letter to my son last week, and I did get dopamine when I wrote the letter. And I can remember very specifically going to the mailbox and putting it in, dropping it in there. And I even bragged about it to my wife that that was one of my top three wins for the day. It’s another thing we always do when we get together, i.e., talk about gratitude or wins that we’ve had in the day. And that was one, literally one of the top things I did in the day, and I dropped it off in the mail. So I, I, I think what you’re saying is absolutely spot on. And I think, what I’d like to do is challenge the audience out there to think about, this week, who that first letter is that you’re going to write and write.
Write a letter this weekend. Right? Like, absolutely. Just get going—put it into action and do it!
Like the Nike commercial said, that seen a thousand times. Just do it. And let me add this, Dave. The last chapter in my new book, Gratitude Tiger, is called Finishing This Text with a word about texts. I’ve written 280 letters, but since I wrote that first letter in November of 2013, I’ve probably sent 10,000 texts. Okay? You don’t have the time, emotional, mental, or creative bandwidth. You don’t have a stamp handy. You don’t want to trudge to the mailbox.
Letter writing is a, I don’t want to call it a chore, but it takes a little effort. But you can text someone that you’ve been out of touch with just to say hello. There are two benefits, and I detail these in the last chapter. In the book, benefit number one is that you are reaching out to someone out in the ether, someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in a month, a year, or maybe several years. You’re a little ray of light. You’re reaching out. The second thing is you’re forcing them to think about you for a second before they get back to their busy lives or back to watching daytime TV, whatever it is they’re doing. You send a text, not to a friend that you saw the other day, although that’s great, too, right, just to check-in.
But say you send a text to someone, a former colleague, a former work buddy, old neighbor. How are you doing, Jan? It’s been a while. I just wanted to say hello. Jan is now forced to think about you, unless your name is in her contacts, and she writes back, Who is this? In which case, you identify yourself. But other than that. I’m kidding. You are forcing someone to think about you just for a moment.
And that is a super positive thing also. So texting is a great alternative to writing a letter of gratitude.
Yeah. But the letter’s the real deal, though, too, right?
That’s the real deal for sure.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I really can’t thank you enough for coming on the show today and sharing your wisdom and insights here, Joel. I think this is something that we all need and we can practice more of. And ultimately, kind of just like you talked about, it’s really. You’re going to make someone’s day, maybe their month, but it’s really going to benefit you as well.
That’s the number one benefit. So the keynote address that I do in one of the main chapters in the new book is called the Seven Pillars of Expressive Gratitude. Pillar number one, writing letters of gratitude, makes you, the letter writer, feel good. Pillar number two makes the recipient feel good. But that’s why pillar number one is number one and pillar number two is number two. So, really, I said this at the beginning of our conversation, Dave, and I’ll close my remarks by reiterating it. When you write a letter of gratitude, you feel good.
I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m not some altruist. I write these letters because it’s addictive to me. It makes me feel good. And the person who receives the letter experiences what I call collateral joy. They’re taken aback. They’re happy, they’re flattered. But I didn’t write it for them.
I wrote it for myself. That’s the message of gratitude, Tiger.
Yeah, love it. Joel. If people would like to download a copy of the book or they want to connect with you and follow you, what is the best place?
The website is the same as the book. GratitudeTiger.com if you want personally inscribed copies of the book, which makes for a great Keepsake, Venmo is @gratitudetiger. The book is $25 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and any reputable book outlet, and what I do. The book is great and I’m proud of it. But I like to bring this message to corporate groups, wellness retreats, nonprofits, associations, and anyone who’s interested in hearing the Full Monty, the seven pillars of expressive gratitude. Go to gratitudetiger.com, my website. You can see video clips of me speaking, and you can reach out to me there.
Awesome. Thanks so much, Joel. Appreciate it.
I’m grateful to you, Dave. Thanks for having me.
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