An Attitude of Gratitude Can Change Your Life

COS COB, Conn. – Can gratitude change your life? A new Chicken Soup for the Soul collection shows readers how to incorporate thankfulness into their everyday lives, making gratitude a daily habit. Why? According to Amy Newmark, editor-in-chief and author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, “In our twenty-nine-year history of publishing personal, revealing stories we’ve come to understand that gratitude is essential to happiness and emotional wellbeing. I don’t think you can be truly happy without incorporating gratitude into your life.”

Gratitude helps people focus on what they have instead of what they feel is missing. With an attitude of gratitude, every day comes bearing gifts. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Attitude of Gratitude (August 16, 2022, 978-1-611590937, $14.95) contains 101 stories from contributors who relate how counting their blessings and being thankful have improved their lives, and also share how they did it.

The interesting thing about practicing gratitude is that people don’t have to be born with that tendency; they can learn how to be thankful. It only takes a little practice to make it a daily habit and enjoy all the emotional benefits of gratitude. This collection shows readers how to do it themselves, by introducing them to people who have learned to focus on thankfulness and found deeper joy and happiness as a result. They used various methods.

Sarah Budka Ammerman, for example, wrote down the good things that happened to her throughout the year and threw the slips of paper in a Mason jar. Each New Year’s Day she sits down and reads all the notes she wrote during the previous year. Dana Drosdick started a gratitude practice after her grandmother died by writing down ten things that had given her joy each day. This new habit helped her find joy in her life again. And Jane McBride realized that instead of praying to God every day and asking for things, she should instead thank God for the good things already in her life. That changed her focus from what she wanted to the abundance she already had.

An attitude of gratitude also helped contributors to find the silver linings, even in adversity. Jill Keller’s family lost everything when their house flooded, but they discovered how happy they could be with less stuff and more family time. Linda Breeden found her life was much improved after she lost her job; she found a new less demanding one, with a better work/life balance. Those silver linings happen again and again in this new book, and will prompt readers to say “I wonder what my silver lining will be” when they face their own challenges.

Another theme in the book is the joy of giving. Being charitable or performing random acts of kindness make the benefactors feel great and help them count the blessings in their own lives. Cj Cole, for example, forgot her own financial problems when she stepped up and paid for the groceries of the elderly woman in front of her at the grocery store. And Francesca Peppiatt was able to find purpose and peace through donating her husband’s organs after he died.

ABOUT CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL

Chicken Soup for the Soul publishes the famous Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. With well over 100 million books sold to date in the U.S. and Canada, more than 250 titles, and translations into more than 40 languages, the phrase “chicken soup for the soul” is known worldwide and is regularly referenced in pop culture. Today, 29 years after it first began sharing happiness, inspiration and hope through its books, this socially conscious company continues to publish a new title a month. It has also evolved beyond the bookstore, with a podcast, education programs, dog and cat food, licensed products, and video, television and movies through its subsidiary, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

###

For a review copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Attitude of Gratitude or an interview with Amy Newmark: