The Gratitude Diaries

In this New York Times bestseller, Janice Kaplan spends a year living gratefully and transforms her marriage, family life, work, and health.

On New Year’s Eve, journalist and former Parade editor in chief Janice Kaplan makes a promise to be grateful and look on the bright side of whatever happens. She realizes that how she feels over the next year will have less to do with the events that occur than her own attitude and perspective. Getting advice at every turn from psychologists, academics, doctors, and philosophers, Kaplan brings readers on a smart and witty journey to discover the value of appreciating what you have.

Relying on both amusing personal experiences and extensive research, Kaplan explores how gratitude can transform every aspect of life, including marriage and friendship, money and ambition, and health and fitness. She learns how appreciating your spouse changes the neurons of your brain and why saying thanks helps CEOs succeed. Through extensive interviews with experts, and lively conversations with real people, including celebrities like Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, and Jerry Seinfeld, Kaplan discovers the role of gratitude in everything from our sense of fulfillment to our children’s happiness.

With warmth, humor, and appealing insight, Kaplan’s journey will empower readers to think positively and start living their own best year ever.

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
Kaplan (I’ll See You Again) shares her journey of embracing a lifestyle of gratitude for one year, and the practice’s remarkable effects on her physical and mental well-being. Over the course of the year, Kaplan focuses on being thankful for her husband, children, sister, career, and financial status. She keeps a „gratitude journal,“ adheres to a „gratitude diet,“ and begins reframing negative situations to accentuate the positive. Kaplan consults a number of experts, asking a social psychologist about privilege and entitlement, a „gratitude guru“ about ambition and achievement, and a medical doctor about the stress-relief and immune system regulation components of gratitude. Nonprofit maven Henry Timms discusses „Giving Tuesday,“ his antithesis to Black Friday, and Kaplan’s friend Jackie Hance remarks on crawling out of a bleak depression after the deaths of her three young daughters in an automobile accident. Other topics include teaching kindness and empathy to children as a means of cultivating gratitude, the value of quality experiences over material possessions, and appreciation as a motivating tool in the workplace. Kaplan’s study is insightful and loaded with compelling research and solid techniques for positive thinking, and her own example provides the most convincing testament to her ideas. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (Aug.)
– Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Gratitude Diaries

„Uplifting and entertaining, this book is sure to give readers a more positive perspective.“–Booklist

„If you liked Sheryl Sanberg’s Lean In . . . read Janice Kaplan’s The Gratitude Diaries.“–TIME

„Kaplan’s plan to be more grateful is approachable for anyone. Her conversational tone is encouraging, like talking to a good friend who’s having a great day and wants to share it with you. . . . Simple, effective procedures that can be easily incorporated into even the busiest lifestyle.“–Kirkus Reviews

„Kaplan’s study is insightful and loaded with compelling research and solid techniques for positive thinking, and her own example provides the most convincing testament to her ideas.“–Publishers Weekly

„The subtitle says it all: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life. Kaplan interweaves anecdotes from her year of living gratefully with interviews with doctors, psychologists, philosophers, artists, and A-list actors, teaching you that working at being happy pays off.“–American Way

„A heartfelt, thoughtful, and entertaining read on how we can bring more gratitude into our lives. It’s like The Happiness Project meets Thanksgiving–a guided tour through the science and experience of appreciation.“–Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take

„Janice Kaplan has written a warm, inspiring, wonderful book, showing each of us how gratitude and focusing on our blessings can transform our lives.“–Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of Jemima J and The Beach House

„Can there really be such a thing as a hardheaded woman’s practical guide to living in gratitude? There can and there is. After reading about Janice Kaplan’s transformative year, I’m here to say I believe it!“–Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Deep End of the Ocean

„I recognized myself in almost every word of Janice’s excellent book. And tracking my hours was an eye-opener for me, as it appears I’m one of the people who’s been unrealistic about how I spend my days. This book is liberating, useful, and so important in this era in which everyone seems to feel overwhelmed.“–Celeste Headlee, author of We Need to Talk
– From the Publisher

2015-04-22
How a year of being thankful led to big changes in a woman’s life. When editor and producer Kaplan (A Job to Kill For, 2008, etc.) made a New Year’s resolution to take a full year and show more appreciation in life, she didn’t realize what a difference that pledge would make. Since she had participated in a survey funded by the John Templeton Foundation on the idea of gratitude, she knew that „less than half the people surveyed said they expressed gratitude on any regular basis.“ Determined to conduct her own experiment, she began by focusing on being more grateful to her husband, and she discovered little comments made a huge difference not only in her own attitude toward him, but life in general. She then extended her expressions of gratefulness to include her children, income, career, and health. Each week, she made a point of writing down the things, events, or people she was most appreciative of at that moment. Kaplan’s plan to be more grateful is approachable for anyone. Her conversational tone is encouraging, like talking to a good friend who’s having a great day and wants to share it with you. These days, instead of grumbling about the weather or other things that used to bother her, the author finds the humor and bright side of each moment. Having a positive attitude has been proven to change the neural pathways in the brain and rewire a person’s automatic responses. By practicing the art of gratitude, a person can make a subtle change in life, and the ripples can have far-reaching effects. „If we put good into the world,“ writes the author, „maybe, just maybe, it starts to be returned.“ There’s no harm in trying, especially when one reads how successfully it turned out for Kaplan. Simple, effective procedures that can be easily incorporated into even the busiest lifestyle.
– Kirkus Reviews