Yes I am grateful and show my appreciation.
I was taught to say thank you as a small child.
Every Christmas I would get post office set or a kiddies stationary , after Christmas I would write my thank you letters . I enjoyed doing it…still do.
I am thankful and show appreciation.
Nobody wants to be taken for granted .
Assuming that by and large we tend to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves, it stands to reason that if this is a positive thing with a good affirmation, then it reflects on our own self esteem. It came up recently jow positive thought may well have healing properties. Ergo showing gratitude to others may well be physically beneficial to oneself.
To me, there’s at least two sides to gratitude. One side is when we affirm it to ourselves and one is when we show it to others. I don’t like to be forced into anything so let’s say I was forced to thank my boss every day for giving me a job or I would get fired, I wouldn’t feel gratitude, I would feel resentment.
Showing gratitude in that instance may look like appreciation, but it wouldn’t feel like gratitude. Feeling gratitude and going through the motions of appreciating someone for someone else’s benefit doesn’t feel like gratitude to me. It may still be necesary, depending on the situation, but I wouldn’t call it gratitude.
Because it’s not, in precisely the same way that being coerced or feeling duty bound to say “I love you” to someone does not imply you love them.
Actually it does imply you love them. . . to them or maybe others seeing it. It doesn’t mean you really feel love for them.
But yes, your analogy is spot on.
My OP was about the feeling of gratitude, not necessarily what it might look like to others.
We’re on the same page with this.
I know this is a little off topic but here goes…
I went to a school reunion about 3 and a bit years ago.
A WhatsApp chat group was set up beforehand and one guy asked if I was going (before I’d even joined the chat). Of course everyone started to joke and tease him asking him if he was going to propose to me and all sorts of stuff. His reply was “I wanted to see her particularly because she was always really kind to me”. He was one of those kids who had been brought up by his single father and so always looked a bit unkempt and even grubby and he wasn’t gifted at anything either. He was an easy target and so I always made a beeline for him whenever we would do games or folk dancing that required partnering up. I knew he would be left til last otherwise and so I was happy to do it.
He had obviously always remembered that and that made me feel very glowy inside.
The same Reunion evening I met up with Belinda who had come to my parents’ house for tea when we were in about 3rd grade. We were all taking part in a big production of Oliver! that week and the teachers had asked for help to look after and feed some of those pupils who lived further away. My Mum offered being the lovely person she was and my close friend Meinir and the not so close Belinda came for tea on the Wednesday. When my Mum found out that Belinda’s younger sister had been eating a packed lunch provided by the school while she waited for the performance to start that evening she was beside herself and promptly told Belinda to invite her sister to tea the next evening. We weren’t a well off family but my Mum always fed us well with great home cooked meals and there was always a baked treat after.
Belinda told me that Reunion night that she had never forgotten my Mum’s kindness towards her and her sister and she had looked forward to meeting me that night in order to tell me so.
That same evening the aforementioned Meinir, whose son is one of Aidan’s (my son) best friends since high school, also made a point of telling me that her son, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend of 3 years had told her how kind and caring Aidan had been to him during his heartbreak. Aidan would call at his flat to seem him some evenings and once or twice took a gift of a McDonald’s fries with him to cheer his friend up!
I remember being really touched by their words and was bursting with pride inside that the kindness that had been instilled in me growing up was alive and well in my own children 
More on topic…
I always say “Please can/may I…” and ALWAYS thank people for the slightest thing.
My favourite reply to being thanked is “You’re very welcome”
Thank you and good night!
Same here, Tabs. 
Not always a good to over think everything.
It would often do us more good to learn to accept instead.
By the way, thank you for creating this thread Butterscotch. 
Does anyone really need to PRACTICE gratitude?
Isn’t saying thankyou just good manners, or expressing what you feel?
Anyway, there are thousands of things to appreciate and be grateful for, that are nothing to do with another human being. For an example, I am grateful I have my eyes to see a spell binding sunset. We all appreciate different things in life.
And is there a difference between being appreciative, and being grateful?
Hi
Yes, always say thank you with a smile.
If they are doing a boring job on minimum wage they need a bit of cheering up
Please, please - a little bit of gratitude to waiters and waitresses 
A tip is nice but a smile and a thank you go a long way too
It’s hard, busy work, they get the flak both ways from both the kitchen and the customers and they don’t get paid a lot
Yet some people are really rude and ignorant in the way they ignore them and treat them like servants and inferiors
The people I went out with on a business lunch yesterday were a prime example, just ruddy rude!
They were paying and weren’t even going to tip so I showed them up by saying “I’ll take care of the tip, shall I?” and put a generous one on the table
They were supposed to be wining and dining me so didn’t want to look small, so they matched it!
I do tip for good service but I don’t think it should be automatic otherwise you end up like America where waiters etc expect a tip for doing their job however surly or badly done that is .
No, a tip is optional, ( and watch out for places including it automatically in the bill)
“Please” and “Thank you” and a smile and treating them with respect isn’t optional! 
As an aside, dont know about you but when I click on the “like” button it’s a combination of making you aware that I’ve read it, liked it and am grateful that you wrote it.
Yes, that’s true, but sometimes it’s not all three.
Even if I don’t like what someone writes, sometimes I’m grateful to them for responding to my post or to a thread I started, so I do a like
Agreed. In the absence of having multiple choice “like” buttons, one can only leave it up to the author/other observers to guess one’s intent.
And that’s probably a good thing ! 
I do practice gratitude, I always have from a young child, I’m just so grateful of others…and I am also grateful for the
Good.
The bad.
And the down right ugly…since I have grown and matured as a person…that’s just me!..
