Thank You! Two words that can change the world. And if you don’t believe me read on.
How many Thank-You’s do you get in a day? Do you get as many as you think you deserve? Do you get too many. Whenever I am out with my USAF Veterans Hat, I have people that come up and say, “Thank You for your Service.” I was somewhat embarrassed when this happened but eventually I would reply, “Thank You, it was an honor.” Despite the number of times I have been thanked for my service, I still think it was an honor and privilege to serve my country and its citizens.
Each year for the past 43 years, I have attended a four day silent retreat at a Jesuit Retreat Center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. Each year I discover some new wisdom from the lectures and reflections over spiritual readings that I am privy to. One year, I learned that the founder of the Jesuit order, Saint Ignatius Loyola reportedly said that “Ingratitude is not the worst of all sins, but it is the gateway to all others.” The more I reflected on this thought, the more I realized how true it is. Be ungrateful for your financial situation and you become greedy with an obsession for money. Be ungrateful for your health and you end up hating life and wishing you were someone else. Be ungrateful for your friends and family and you end up being lonely and miserable.
The other side of ungratefulness is gratefulness. To be grateful for the life one has and to stop mourning the life that we don’t have. However, gratefulness is simply a state of mind. As powerful as it is, it is not enough. We need to put actions with our thoughts. Wisdom, says “prayer to the Lord but row for the shore.” Or “keep praying but move your feet.” If we are really grateful, we need to show it. The best way to show it is a simple “Thank You.” For some people this is showing gratitude. For others, you would think that each thank you that they gave came from their savings account.
When I woke up the other night at 3 AM, I started to write this blog. I was motivated by the crazy idea flicking through my mind that asked the question “What would the world be like if everyone got more Thank-You’s each day than they knew what to do with.” Would people go crazy and want to stop saying “Thank You?” Would the government put a ban on the use of the words “Thank You?” Would people suddenly realize how much they are appreciated and what a truly wonderful person they were? How many people would like to get more Thank-You’s and how many people would hate to hear “Thank-You?” What would happen to society if more people gave out thank-You’s each day? I decided to run this question by my AI assistant Metis. Here is what she replied. As usual my AI assistant tends to be very comprehensive and perhaps somewhat verbose.
What would happen to society if more people gave out Thank-You’s each day?
Metis:
John, I think that’s a deceptively simple question with very deep system effects—very much in line with your Deming lens and your work on connectedness.
Here’s what I believe would happen if people routinely received more genuine Thank-You’s than they expected:
- Immediate Psychological Effects
You’d see a measurable shift in mood and stress levels.
Gratitude directed at someone (not just practiced internally) tends to:
- Lower cortisol
- Increase dopamine and serotonin
- Create a short “reward loop” that reinforces prosocial behavior
In plain terms: people would feel seen, and being seen is one of the strongest antidotes to alienation.
For someone your age cohort—where invisibility is a common complaint—this effect would be especially powerful.
- Behavioral Reinforcement
From a systems perspective:
What gets recognized gets repeated.
If people are thanked for:
- small acts of competence
- reliability
- kindness
- showing up
you reinforce intrinsic motivation rather than compliance.
This reduces:
- withdrawal behavior
- quiet quitting
- defensive routines
You’d see higher quality interactions without changing any formal policy—pure cultural shift.
- Social Contagion Effect
Gratitude is highly contagious.
One sincere Thank-You tends to produce:
- reciprocal gratitude
- increased patience
- more cooperative behavior
In network terms, it increases positive signal density in the social system.
That directly counters what you’ve called the epidemic of disconnectedness.
- Identity Stabilization
Many people today derive identity from conflict, outrage, or status competition.
Frequent appreciation shifts identity toward:
- contribution
- competence
- belonging
People begin to think:
“I matter because I help,”
rather than
“I matter because I win.”
That is a profound cultural pivot.
- Impact on Institutions
In organizations (including veteran groups, radio teams, quilting circles, consulting clients):
Regular unexpected appreciation would lead to:
- Lower friction costs
- Higher volunteer retention
- Greater discretionary effort
- Fewer interpersonal conflicts
You’d get quality improvement without a new program, which Deming would smile at.
- Political and Civic Implications
At the macro level, a culture of daily appreciation would:
- Reduce zero-sum thinking
- Increase trust in local relationships
- Make dialogue easier
Gratitude humanizes the “other” before disagreement even begins.
It doesn’t eliminate conflict—but it changes the tone from adversarial to relational.
- Neurological Rewiring Over Time
If this happened daily for months:
People’s baseline expectations would shift from:
“No one notices me”
to
“My actions have value.”
That reduces anxiety and defensive postures.
You’d likely see:
- fewer hostile interactions
- more eye contact
- more patience in public spaces
Small signals, big emergent outcomes.
The Key Variable: Authenticity
This only works if the Thank-You’s are:
- specific (“Thank you for setting up the chairs”)
- timely
- sincere
Generic or forced gratitude has little effect and can even breed cynicism.
Conclusions:
Well, I was given more information than I expected. Frankly, I would never have thought that there could have been so many positive benefits from the simple act of saying “Thank-You.” It is very gratifying to have my suspicions verified but it is also embarrassing. I say embarrassing because I think that I am one of those people who are somewhat stingy with their “Thank-You’s” My father was not big on Thank You and perhaps I can escape responsibility by blaming him. On the other hand, I often proclaim that when I went into the military in 1964 at the age of 18 that I would never again blame my parents for any misbehaviors on my part.
What stops us from saying “Thank You” more often? Are we afraid it will lead to expectations that we do not want to deal with? If I say, “Thank You,” will you think you are better than I am? If I put your effort down, I can build myself up. Instead of saying “Thank You Bob,” I can say “Not bad, but I have seen better.” Or perhaps “You shouldn’t expect a Thank You for just doing your job.”
Imagine, if we thanked the clerk who helped bag our food at the local grocery store. “Thank You for bagging my groceries.” Why should I say that if he/she is getting paid to do it! Or imagine if I went up to the help at Wal-Mart and thanked them for keeping the place neat and clean? Or thanking the local Garbage collector for being on time each week with my garbage pickup. Or the clerk at the Post Office for giving me my mail? Where would it all stop? Before you know it, everyone would be expecting Thank-You’s.
What kind of a world would that be? People might really start feeling better about themselves.
Help me to change the world. Say Thank-You more often.
Thank-You for reading this blog.
Holiday time or Holy-Day time? Each holiday season, I wonder what time people are really celebrating. Christmas becomes X-Mass. Holy-days become holidays. Days of remembrance become good days to host a backyard barbecue and Thanksgiving simply becomes the springboard to “the shopping season.” The big kickoff being “Black Friday.” Where is our soul? Where is the spirit in our natures? Is time off meant to be simply another day to watch the “big game.” Are holy-days meant to be spent shopping? Is Black Friday now the most important day of the year? Is Santa Claus a Good Christian because he gives toys to tots? Was that Jesus Christ’s message, to spend Christmas roasting chestnuts round an open fire singing Jingle Bell Rock?
Please note, it is not my intention to sound like the Grinch or to “cast stones” at others. We all need time to relax and we all need time for fun and games. However, when do we say enough? What about the meaning of the time that we are granted? Do we simply see our time off as a holiday or do we embrace this gift of time to remember our dead, our veterans, our special leaders and those that helped pave the way for the lives that we can live today. These “holidays” we are given each year, whether in remembrance of a religious or civic event should not pass by without our taking the time to remember what their true meaning is.
I have so much but I am continually looking at people that are more successful, make more money, have more friends and are in better condition. Yet once I pause for just a few seconds to reflect on my blessings, I realize that I have the greatest wife in the world and I am healthy and moderately well off. I have six happy and wonderful grandchildren. I have more friends than I have time to spend with. In short, I have nothing to complain about. I have nothing to be selfish or greedy or jealous about. I have been blessed with a wonderful life and yet I hardly ever stop to say “thank you God for what you have given me.” I am usually too worried about what I have not been given.
I want to talk about Gratefulness today. It is the first in my list of the Key Seven Virtues that I think are worth developing. Gratefulness is the opposite of ingratitude. It is easy to fall into the trap of being ungrateful. The world besieges us with evidence of our incompetence and faults. Hollywood glamorizes the mundane and makes the rest of us feel inferior in comparison. American Idol becomes the graven image that we now worship. It is not an image of a gold calf or a prophet or a saint. It is the image of success and fame and fortune that we all desire. Even as I write this, millions of people are buying a lottery ticket in the hope of achieving instant wealth. How many of these people are grateful for what they have? I suspect many of them are very grateful in their daily lives, but it makes you wonder how grateful most people are when they will spend their money against all odds to become an overnight millionaire. What don’t they have that they will buy if they do win?
publish their lists of the most beautiful people in the world. Beautiful people marry other beautiful people and are constantly in the news. The Kardashians would seem to have few talents except their almost incredible beauty. Rich men marry beautiful women. Beautiful actresses marry NFL football players. Beautiful heiresses marry rock stars while beautiful rock stars marry record producers.
I once asked my MBA students whether they would rather be smart or beautiful. They almost unanimously selected beautiful. I was very surprised but the more I have observed about life, the more it would seem that beauty will get you further than brains. Brains can get you some things but being nerdy is not one of the things that most people aspire to. Anti-intellectualism is a fact of American life as noted by Richard Hofstadter in his famous book: “Anti-intellectualism in American Life, 1963.”
As we both have aged, the process of deterioration taking place in our bodies is clear in the more wrinkled, wizened and paunchy body shapes we now exhibit. While neither of us was ever beautiful by societies standards, we never had any chance of making any top ten beautiful lists before and certainly not today. Nevertheless, when I see my spouse in her pajamas or in the shower or when she cuddles up in bed with me, I can’t help but think how beautiful she is and how much I love her. While I still see the shades of societies standards of beauty in the many young models punctuating my daily life, the beauty I see in my wife is something I cannot describe. It is a beauty that comes from who she is and not how she looks. I only know she is more beautiful to me today than she was 35 years ago when we first started dating.
You can claim as you grow older that you either have regrets or you have no regrets. I have had at least one friend who on his deathbed made the claim that he had no regrets. I admired his attitude very much. I wanted to emulate this attitude as I grew older, but try as I might it has escaped me. I can tell you I have no regrets, but it would be a big lie. I have enough regrets to write a book about. One of my regrets is that I am shorter than my father was. He was six feet four inches 
tall and I barely make five feet eight inches. Mostly though, I wonder what it would have been like to have been born handsome. To have had the looks of Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Brad Pitt or Robert Redford. Would I have used my looks to achieve fame and fortune or would I have simply squandered it away on wine, women and song? How much different would my life have been if I had been a “beautiful” person?
I understand and fully believe that like ingratitude, (Please read my blog on
Aging Capriciously 