I remember a year when I set out to thank one person every week for having made a positive contribution to my life. Writing those thank you cards and handing out small gifts of gratitude and recognition generated the best feelings ever, and it left me feeling giddy and excited and looking forward to the next surprise I was going to make. Before embarking on the project, I had written a list of all the people that I was going to say thank you to and why I wanted to thank them. I loved it.

At first, it felt weird and a bit embarrassing to approach the people in my life with such openness and honesty, and to hand out small presents and handwritten cards. It felt even weirder to contact people I hadn’t been in touch with for a more extended period, like former teachers, for example. However, the more I practised, the better it felt. When I sent out those little tokens of gratitude, people responded with surprise, genuine happiness and gratitude in return.

I sent letters to my former teachers, thanking them for fostering my love for learning. I said thank you that they had just been genuinely nice and dedicated individuals, contributing to my start in life, helping me to make sense of the world, expand my knowledge and perspective and for fanning my flames of curiosity.

I thanked my friends for all the adventures we had embarked on together. I also started to consciously thank the people that we so often take for granted: I bought chocolates for the person making my photocopies at school, I wrote a thank you card to my doctor for really listening and taking my issues seriously – I said thank you as often as I could.

I felt that we do take the people in our lives for granted because we think that what they are doing is part of their job description. People in service are supposed to be friendly and attentive and caring. Still, the truth is: as much as we love our jobs, on some level, we also desire recognition, appreciation, and acknowledgement for our daily efforts. Those signs of gratitude don’t need to be massive; they just need to be.

What distinguishes us, humans, from machines are our emotions, our enthusiasm and our willingness to give our all and no job description includes those intrinsic motivations. It’s those levels of daily investment, very individual levels of contribution, like a genuine smile, that either challenge or uplift the moods and energy levels of the people surrounding us.

We also take our friends’ and our family members’ love and care for granted, but they choose us every single day anew. They don’t need to stay in our lives and spend time with us, because they are related to us by blood or by a shared past or memories, or because of some form of supposed loyalty. It takes mutual work, investment, emotion, and genuine interest to allow people to stay in our lives based on love and gratitude.