The Gratitude Gap: Gratitude Exercises to Say What You Feel
Think about the last time someone did something that genuinely moved you. Maybe a friend showed up when you needed them most. Maybe a colleague quietly covered for you during a hard week. Maybe your partner made you coffee exactly the way you like it — again — without being asked.
You felt that warm, fuzzy feeling, didn’t you? Gratitude.
And then what happened?
If you’re like most people, you felt it deeply — and said almost nothing. Maybe a quick “thanks!” Maybe nothing at all. The moment passed. Daily life moved on. And that feeling, as real and true as it was, stayed quietly locked inside.
This is the gratitude gap.
What Is the Gratitude Gap?
The gratitude gap is the space between what we feel and what we actually say.
It’s not that we aren’t grateful. Most of us feel grateful more often than we let on — for the people in our lives, for small moments, for being seen and supported.
Practicing gratitude and acknowledging the positive aspects of our lives is something we’re all capable of. The problem is expression.
In a 2018 study published in Psychological Science, researchers Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that people dramatically underestimate the impact of a simple expression of gratitude. The givers worried their words would seem awkward or unnecessary. The receivers? They were genuinely moved, far more than the givers expected.
We feel grateful. We assume the other person knows. We stay silent. They never find out.
That’s the gap. And closing it is one of the most powerful practices we can bring into our daily lives.
Why Does the Gratitude Gap Exist?
Understanding why we don’t express gratitude is the first step toward closing the gap. Here are the most common reasons:
It feels vulnerable. Saying, “I’m really grateful for you,” is an act of exposure. It requires admitting that someone matters to us: deeply, genuinely. And that kind of openness can feel terrifying, even with people we love.
We assume they already know. Surely they can tell? Surely the fact that we show up, that we stayed, that we call — that must say it all! Sure, sometimes. But often, the people we’re most grateful for are the ones who most need to hear it out loud.
We can’t find the right words. Gratitude is enormous. “Thank you” feels too small. So we say nothing, waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect words that never quite arrive.
We reach for “lucky” instead. Here’s something worth noticing: how often do we say, “I’m so lucky to have you” instead of “I’m so grateful for you”?
Lucky feels safer. Lighter. Less exposed. Lucky lets us say the true thing — you matter to me, my life is better because of you — without having to say it quite so directly.
Lucky is how we say ‘grateful’ when ‘grateful’ feels too big.
Why Closing the Gap Matters
Unexpressed gratitude doesn’t just leave the recipient in the dark. It affects us too.
Research shows that expressing gratitude — actually saying it out loud or writing it down for someone — improves the well-being of both the giver and the receiver.
And yet, a national survey by the John Templeton Foundation found that while 90% of us consider ourselves grateful, fewer than 15% express gratitude regularly to friends or colleagues.
That’s a lot of gratitude quietly going nowhere. But it doesn’t have to stay that way!
There’s something that happens when gratitude moves from the inside to the outside. It deepens. It becomes more real. It strengthens the relationship it’s directed toward. It creates hope — both for the person receiving it and the person giving it.
Gratitude, it turns out, doesn’t divide when you give it away. It multiplies. The more gratitude we express, the more there is — for both our recipient and us. A daily gratitude practice that includes expressing appreciation to others consistently shows up in the research as one of the most reliable drivers of happiness and overall life satisfaction.
This is the abundance of gratitude. And it’s available to anyone willing to close the gap.
Gratitude Exercises to Close the Gap
These aren’t your standard gratitude journal prompts. Those have their place — and we’ll get to them — but a gratitude journal is inward-facing. The gratitude gap is about expression. About the space between another person and us.
These exercises are about closing that space.
1. The Gratitude Letter (That You Actually Send)
A gratitude intervention that consistently shows up in positive psychology research as one of the most powerful tools we have is the gratitude letter. Write to someone you’re thankful for, in detail, describing specifically what they did and how it affected your life. Acknowledge the positive events and positive experiences they made possible. Be specific. Be real.
Most people write the letter and never send it. This time, send it.
It doesn’t have to be long. Writing thank you notes doesn’t require perfect words, just genuine ones. An email works. A handwritten note works better. The act of sending it — of letting someone actually receive your gratitude — is where the magic happens.
When done in person, this exercise — a gratitude visit — has been shown to create meaningful improvements in well-being that can last for weeks. In one landmark study by psychologist Martin Seligman, it produced the largest positive effect on happiness of all five interventions tested.
Try it: Think of one person you’ve never properly thanked. Write them a letter: specific, genuine, from the heart. Then send it. Today, if possible. (And if you can deliver it in person — even better!)
2. The Specificity Practice
Generic gratitude lands softly. Specific gratitude lands hard.
“You’re such a good friend” is nice to hear. “I still think about that day two years ago when you drove an hour just to sit with me. You didn’t even say anything, you just showed up. That meant everything to me.” That’s something that stops someone in their tracks.
Specificity says: I was paying attention. I remember. You mattered enough to notice.
Individual differences in how people express appreciation matter less than most of us think. What matters is that we do it at all, and that we make it specific enough to feel real.
Try it: When you feel thankful for someone, don’t stop at ‘thank you.’ Be completely honest. Add one specific detail or memory about what they did, share exactly why it mattered to you, and watch what happens to their face.
3. The Lucky Reframe
Remember how we reach for “lucky” when grateful feels too big?
Use that. Start there. And then take one step further.
Next time you catch yourself thinking I’m so lucky to have this person — say it out loud. And then add the real thing underneath it.
“I’m so lucky to know you. And honestly? I don’t say it enough — I’m genuinely grateful for you.”
The lucky gets us in the door. The gratitude closes the gap. This is expressing appreciation in its most natural form, and it’s available to all of us every single day.
Try it: Think of one person you consider yourself ‘lucky’ to know. This week, tell that person directly—out loud—why you feel lucky and what you specifically appreciate about them.
4. The Daily Gratitude Practice — Outward Edition
Most people are familiar with keeping a gratitude journal, writing down blessings, positive aspects of the day, and things that went well. This is a powerful practice, and the research strongly supports it as a way to build a more positive outlook and improve mental health over time.
But here’s an upgrade: each day, pick one thing from your gratitude journal, then tell it directly to someone, out loud.
Not “I’m grateful for my morning coffee” but “I’m grateful for you making my morning coffee every single day. I don’t say it enough. Thank you.”
This transforms a private daily gratitude practice into an expressed one, and that’s where everything changes.
Try it: For one week, pick one item from your daily gratitude journal and directly share your appreciation with the person involved. Notice how both of you feel after the exchange.
5. The Ordinary Moment Notice
We tend to save gratitude for big positive events like birthdays, milestones, crises survived together. But most of what makes a relationship meaningful happens in the ordinary moments. The Tuesday morning texts. The person who always remembers how you take your coffee. The colleague who asks how you’re really doing.
These moments pass unacknowledged hundreds of times a year. And the people behind them often have no idea how much they matter. Acknowledging these small, consistent acts of love is one of the simplest ways to create more gratitude — and more connection — in our daily lives.
Try it: For one week, each day, pause and notice one ordinary moment that you’re grateful for. Immediately express your gratitude to the person involved by saying something specific about it right then. For example, “Hey, I just want you to know I really appreciate that you always do this.” Simple. Immediate. Real.
6. The Gratitude Walk
A gratitude walk is exactly what it sounds like: a walk taken with the specific intention of noticing and acknowledging the positive aspects of our surroundings and our lives. It’s a mindfulness practice that helps us focus on the blessings we often pass by without noticing.
Take it further: Invite someone to join your gratitude walk. As you walk, point out positive things and express your appreciation directly—to them or for shared experiences. Make sure to verbalize what you notice together.
A gratitude walk with someone you love has a way of closing gratitude gaps that might have been open for years.
Try it: Invite someone meaningful to you for a walk this week. No agenda. Just notice, acknowledge, and share what you’re grateful for, including them.
7. The Gratitude Jar
A gratitude jar is a simple but surprisingly powerful practice: keep a jar somewhere visible, and whenever something good happens — a positive event, a moment of connection, an act of kindness received — write it on a slip of paper and drop it in.
Over time, the jar fills up. On hard days, you can pull out a slip and remember. At the end of the year, you can read them all and be genuinely astonished by how much goodness you’d forgotten.
But here’s the gratitude gap version: create TWO jars. One for moments. One for people. And make it a practice to deliver the people slips — to actually tell the person what you wrote, when the jar is full, or when the moment feels right.
Try it: Start a gratitude jar for people this week. When it feels full enough, pick one slip about a person and tell them what’s on it.
8. The Physical Reminder
Sometimes the gratitude gap persists not because we don’t want to express it, but because we forget. Daily life is loud. Good intentions get swallowed by schedules.
A physical object — something we can see and touch — can serve as a daily prompt. Something that asks, “Who are you grateful for today? Have you told them?”
This might be a note on a mirror. A stone in your pocket. A small, meaningful object on your desk. Anything that catches the eye and pulls attention back to the people we love and the gratitude we carry for them.
Making gratitude visible in our physical space is one of the simplest ways to make it more present in our daily lives and more expressed in our relationships.
Try it: Choose one physical object to be your gratitude reminder this week. Every time you see it, ask, “Is there someone I’m grateful for who doesn’t know it yet?” Then reach out — a text, a call, a note. Just tell them.
9. The Ripple Practice
Here’s the beautiful thing about expressed gratitude: it spreads.
Research shows that gratitude tends to inspire generosity in return. And most of us know this feeling intuitively. Being appreciated makes us want to appreciate. So it seems likely that when someone feels genuinely appreciated, they become more likely to express appreciation themselves. To someone else. Who then passes it on.
We close one gap, and somewhere down the line, more gaps close because of it. More gratitude creates more gratitude. The ripple goes further than we can see.
Try it: Express gratitude to one person today — genuinely, specifically, out loud. Then let go of it. Trust the ripple.
Making Gratitude a Habit
Building a grateful life isn’t about grand gestures or perfect words. It’s about small, consistent acts of acknowledgment — a daily gratitude practice that includes both the inward work (journaling, noticing, reflecting) and the outward expression (saying it, sending it, showing it).
The research on individual differences in gratitude tells us something hopeful: gratitude isn’t a fixed personality trait. It’s a skill. A practice. Something we can all get better at — regardless of where we’re starting from — simply by doing it more.
And the decision-making is actually simple: pick one exercise. One person. One moment. Start there.
Hope grows from small acts of expressed gratitude. So does connection. So does happiness. So does the world we all want to live in.
A Note on Courage
Closing the gratitude gap takes something. Not bravery exactly, but a willingness to be seen. To say: You matter to me. I notice you. I’m glad you’re in my life.
That’s a vulnerable thing to say. Even to people we love. Especially to people we love.
But here’s what the research — and honestly, lived experience — tells us: the fear of expressing gratitude is almost always bigger than the reality of it. People don’t find it awkward. They find it moving. They find it memorable. They carry it with them.
The gap feels bigger from the inside than it actually is.
And on the other side of it? Two people, both a little fuller than they were before.
Start Small. Start Today.
You don’t have to close every gap at once. Pick one person. One exercise. One moment.
The gratitude you feel for the people in your life is real and true and worth saying out loud. They deserve to know. And so do you. Because saying it will change something in you, too.
The more you give gratitude, the more there is.
Gratitude does that.
Want to keep closing the gap? Explore more ways to cultivate gratitude and strengthen your relationships at the a little dose of happy blog.