Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair in Social Work. She is also a management visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business. Brown has spent the last two decades researching courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. He is the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Atlas of the Heart, The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead, the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership.

Brené Brown has held a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and fellow traveler for over a decade. She is a social scientist as well as a kitchen-table friend who will always tell you the truth, make you laugh, and, on occasion, cry with you. And it all started with The Gifts of Imperfection, which has sold over two million copies in thirty-five different languages around the world.

The ten guideposts to wholehearted living transform this book from words on a page to effective daily practices. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families, but they also walk us through the unrealistic and self-defeating expectations that stand in our way.

Author: Brené Brown
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Imperfection-Anniversary-Features-brand-new/dp/0593133587
Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 30135 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #5,810 in Books
#28 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions
#183 in Personal Transformation Self-Help
#202 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)

John Kralik was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended college and law school at the University of Michigan. He was a partner in the law firms Hughes Hubbard & Reed, Miller Tokuyama Kralik & Sur, and Kralik & Jacobs for 30 years. He was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court as a judge in 2009.

One recent December, at the age of 53, John Kralik's life was at a terrible, frightening low: his small law firm was failing; he was going through a painful second divorce; he had grown distant from his two older children and was afraid he would lose contact with his young daughter; he was living in a tiny apartment where he froze in the winter and baked in the summer; he was 40 pounds overweight; his girlfriend had just broken up with him; and overall,

Then, on New Year's Day, during a desperate walk in the hills, John was struck by the realization that if he could find a way to be grateful for what he did have, his life might become at least tolerable.

Inspired by a beautiful, simple note his ex-girlfriend had sent to thank him for his Christmas gift, John imagined that writing thank-you notes would help him feel grateful. To keep himself going, he set a goal of writing 365 thank-you notes in the coming year, come what may.

He began to handwrite thank you notes for gifts or kindnesses he'd received from loved ones and coworkers, past business associates and current foes, college friends and doctors and store clerks and handymen and neighbors, and anyone, really, absolutely anyone, who'd done him a good turn, however large or small. Almost immediately after sending his first notes, John began to reap significant and unexpected benefits, ranging from financial gain to true friendship, weight loss to inner peace. The economy collapsed while John was writing his notes, and the bank across the street from his office failed, but thank-you note by thank-you note, John's life began to turn around.

365 Thank Yous is a unique memoir in that its heartfelt, immediately accessible message—and benefits—come to readers through the straightforward storytelling of an ordinary man. Kralik demonstrates how to live a miraculously good life in a believable and doable way. Reading 365 Thank Yous will change your life.

Author: John Kralik

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/365-Thank-Yous-Gratitude-Changed/dp/1401324053

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 651 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #249,336 in Books

#2,431 in Happiness Self-Help
#5,118 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)
#5,146 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

Robert Emmons, PhD, is a psychology professor and the director of the Emmons Lab at the University of California, Davis. He is the world's foremost scientific authority on gratitude, as well as the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books, including Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Emotional Prosperity (Jossey Bass, 2013) and thank you! In addition to hundreds of articles, he has written How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality (Guilford Press, 2003), The Psychology of Gratitude (OUP USA, 2004), and Words of Gratitude for Mind, Body, and Soul (with Joanna Hill, Templeton Foundation Press, 2002).

Gratitude is a simple, scientifically proven way to boost happiness and bring more joy, love, peace, and optimism into our lives. We can improve our health and wellbeing, improve our relationships, encourage healthy sleep, and heighten feelings of connectedness by engaging in simple practices such as keeping a daily gratitude journal, writing letters of thanks, and meditating on the good we have received.

The practice of gratitude, which is simple and open to all, will benefit all aspects of your life and create a positive ripple effect. Among the best books on gratitude, The Little Book of Gratitude discusses the benefits of gratitude and teaches simple techniques for cultivating gratitude every day. It also comes with an 8-week gratitude plan.

Author: Dr. Robert A. Emmons PhD

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Gratitude-happiness-wellbeing/dp/1856753654

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 462 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #42,007 in Books

#282 in Meditation (Books)

#536 in Happiness Self-Help

#1,012 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 and attended Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon met the patients he would write about in his book Awakenings.

No other writer has captured the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During his final months, he wrote a series of essays in which he explored his feelings about finishing a life and coming to terms with his own death.

"It is every human being's fate," Sacks writes, "to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, and to die his own death." These four essays, taken together, form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and gratitude for the gift of life in Gratitude.

"No other clinician or writer was like Oliver Sacks." He was drawn to nursing homes, institutions for the elderly and disabled, and the company of the unusual and 'abnormal.' He desired to observe humanity in its various manifestations in his own, almost anachronistic manner—face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And he showed us what he saw through his writing."

Being Mortal author Atul Gawande

Author: Oliver Sacks

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B016GRO8BC/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 1172 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #133,486 in Kindle Store

#18 in 90-Minute Education & Reference Short Reads

#42 in 90-Minute Biography & Memoir Short Reads

#77 in Essays (Kindle Store)

Angeles Arrien is a cultural anthropologist, author, and teacher. Her master's degree was from the University of California, Berkeley, and her doctorate was from the California Institute for Integral Studies. Dr. Arrien's teachings span anthropology, psychology, and comparative religion, with a focus on universal beliefs shared by all humans. She lectures and leads workshops on cultural anthropology and transpersonal psychology at colleges, corporations, and personal growth centers around the world.

What would happen if you focused solely on gratitude for a full year? Angeles Arrien invites you to find out with Living in Gratitude. She presents a 12-month plan for making gratitude your foundation for daily living, combining the latest social science teachings with stories, prayers, and practices from cultures and traditions all over the world.

Beginning with "Beginning Anew" and "The Power of Equanimity," and progressing to "Letting Be and Letting Go," "The Mystic Heart," and other topics, readers will immerse themselves in "the parent of all virtues," exploring:

• How to overcome ingrained feelings of envy, comparison, and narcissism
• Blessings, learnings, mercies, and protections—the four portals to the grateful heart, and how to cultivate these critical entryways in our work, relationships, health, finances, and personal growth.
• Exercises in journaling and reflection, perennial and indigenous wisdoms, and universal practices for every season and circumstance

"The practice of gratitude confers numerous advantages," writes Angeles Arrien. "Its embrace melts anger, arrogance, and jealousy. Fear and defensiveness fade away. Gratitude removes barriers to love and inspires happiness, preserving what is meaningful to us." Living in Gratitude is a reliable resource for making this cherished virtue your guiding light as you travel through life.

Author: Angeles Arrien

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Gratitude-Journey-That-Change/dp/160407082X

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 42 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #329,161 in Books

#711 in Emotional Mental Health
#31,240 in Self-Help (Books)

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is the founder and primary Bible teacher for Revive Our Hearts, a ministry that seeks to call women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Nancy's love for Christ and passion for His Word shine through her writing, digital, and conference outreach, as well as her two daily audio teachings, Revive Our Hearts and Seeking Him. Her books have sold over four million copies and have touched the hearts of women all over the world.

Gratitude is an option. If we do not choose it, we are forced to choose ingratitude. Ingratitude, once allowed into the heart, comes with other seedy companions who only succeed in stealing joy.

Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy, based on the popular Revive Our Hearts radio series, challenges and equips the reader to live a life of intention, a life based on thankfulness for the freedom Christ has provided and for the blessings of others. The book is regarded as one of the best books on gratitude.

Bitterness and entitlement are replaced with joy and the humble realization of how undeserving we truly are when we intentionally thank God and others.

Not choosing gratitude costs us more than we realize. When we choose a life of heartfelt, humble gratitude, we are aware of the blessings we have received from our gracious Savior and those He has placed around us, and our joy is complete.

Author: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Gratitude-Your-Journey-Joy/dp/0802432557

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 801 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #21,164 in Books

#197 in Christian Personal Growth

Thanks a Thousand, It's All Relative, Drop Dead Healthy, and the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and My Life as an Experiment are all written by A.J. Jacobs. He writes for NPR and has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly.

The concept was deceptively simple: New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jacobs decided to thank everyone who contributed to his morning cup of coffee. The journey that ensues transports him around the world, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected.

A.J. Jacobs discovers that his coffee—and everything else in our lives—would not be possible without hundreds of people we take for granted: farmers, chemists, artists, presidents, truck drivers, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers, and goatherds.

Jacobs finds some much-needed brightness in his life by thanking these people in person. Gratitude does not come naturally to Jacobs—his demeanor is more Larry David than Tom Hanks—but he embarks on the journey on his son's dare. And by the end, he's convinced that scientific research on gratitude is correct. The benefits of gratitude are numerous: it increases compassion, heals the body, and aids in the treatment of depression.

Jacobs gleans wisdom from colorful characters all over the world, from Minnesota miners who extract the iron used to make the steel used in coffee roasters to Madison Avenue marketers who captured his wandering attention for a brief moment, to Colombian farmers.

Jacobs provides wonderful insights and useful tips along the way, such as how to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day rather than the few that go wrong. And how our culture places too much emphasis on the individual over the team. And how to master the art of "savoring meditation" and sleep soundly at night. Thanks a Thousand reminds us of the incredible interconnectedness of our world. It demonstrates just how much we take for granted. It teaches us how to be happier, kinder, and more impactful in our lives by practicing gratitude. And it will motivate us to create our own "Gratitude Trails."

Author: A. J. Jacobs

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Thanks-Thousand-Gratitude-Journey-Books/dp/1501119923

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 304 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #106,469 in Books

#206 in Self-Help & Psychology Humor
#781 in Fiction Satire
#1,255 in Happiness Self-Help

Robert A. Emmons is a University of California, Davis professor and a leader in the positive psychology movement. He is also the Journal of Positive Psychology's editor-in-chief. His gratitude work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New Republic, Newsweek, and other mainstream publications. The National Institute of Mental Health and the John Templeton Foundation have both awarded Dr. Emmons grants.

Did you know that there is an important aspect of happiness that is frequently overlooked? In Thanks!, Robert Emmons, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology, investigates what it means to think and feel gratefully and invites readers to learn how to put this powerful emotion into practice.

Regular grateful thinking can increase happiness by up to 25%, and keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks results in better sleep and more energy. But there's more to this book than science: Emmons bolsters the case for gratitude by interweaving writings by philosophers, novelists, and theologians that demonstrate all the benefits of grateful living.

In Thanks!, Emmons demonstrates how "wanting what we have" can significantly improve people's lives. It is among the best books on gratitude.

Author: Robert A. Emmons

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Thanks-Practicing-Gratitude-Make-Happier/dp/0547085737

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 192 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #101,010 in Books

#218 in Emotional Mental Health
#302 in Emotional Self Help
#1,159 in Happiness Self-Help

Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center, is edited by Jeremy Adam Smith. He is the author of The Daddy Shift, as well as the coeditor of three anthologies. His reporting on racial and economic segregation in San Francisco, CA, schools has earned him numerous honors, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and he is a three-time winner of the California Teachers Association's John Swett Award.

Kira M. Newman is the managing editor of Greater Good magazine and a former edX course assistant for The Science of Happiness. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, HuffPost, Social Media Monthly, and Mindful magazine.

Jason Marsh is the Greater Good Science Center's director of programs and the magazine's founding editor in chief.

Dacher Keltner, PhD, is the founder and director of the Greater Good Science Center, as well as a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct and the author of The Power Paradox and Born to Be Good.

Gratitude is a powerful emotion that has been shown to improve our well-being in a variety of ways. The Gratitude Project, the result of a multiyear collaboration between the Greater Good Science Center and Robert Emmons of the University of California, Davis, investigates gratitude's deep roots in human psychology—how it evolved and how it affects our brain—as well as the transformative impact it has on living a meaningful life and making the world a better place.

This important book delves deeply into the neuroscience and psychology of gratitude, and explores how thankfulness can be developed and applied, both personally and in communities large and small, for the benefit of all, with essays based on new findings from this original research and written by renowned positive psychologists and public figures.

This edited volume, which includes contributions from luminaries such as Sonja Lyubomirsky, W. Kamau Bell, Arianna Huffington, and many others, offers more than platitudes—it offers a blueprint for a new and better world.

Author: Jeremy Adam Smith, Kira M. Newman, Jason Marsh and Dacher Keltner

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Gratitude-Project-Cultivating-Thankfulness-Resilience/dp/1684034612

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 118 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #130,590 in Books

#33 in Evolutionary Psychology (Books)
#1,441 in Happiness Self-Help
#3,001 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)

Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist and the author of the best-selling book Buddha's Brain, which has been translated into twenty languages. He is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as an Affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. He has given talks at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and he teaches in meditation centers all over the world.

"It's the little things that count," as the saying goes. It's more than just a cliche. According to research, incorporating small daily practices into your life can actually change the way your brain works.

This guide provides simple things you can do on a regular basis, primarily inside your mind, to support and increase your sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight, and inner peace. Taking in the good, protecting your brain, feeling safer, relaxing anxiety about imperfection, not knowing, enjoying your hands, seeking refuge, and filling the hole in your heart are some examples. You might be tempted to underestimate the power of these seemingly simple practices at first glance. However, they will gradually change your brain through a process known as experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

Whatever you are aware of in the present moment—sounds, sensations, thoughts, or your deepest longings—is based on underlying neural activities. This book provides simple brain training practices that you can do every day to protect yourself from stress, improve your mood, and increase your emotional resilience.

One practice per day can help you to:

• Take care of yourself.
• Enjoy your life as it is. Focus on your strengths.
• Be more efficient at home and at work.
• Make peace with your feelings.

Among the best books on gratitude, Just One Thing is a groundbreaking combination of mindfulness meditation and neuroscience that can help you deepen your sense of well-being and unconditional happiness. It includes over fifty daily practices that you can use anytime, anywhere.

Author: Rick Hanson PhD

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005LQ6UNO/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 666 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #182,891 in Kindle Store

#51 in Buddhist Rituals & Practice (Kindle Store)

#183 in Buddhist Rituals & Practice (Books)

#283 in New Age Meditation