How Gratitude Leads to the Book

The Story of how Gratitude Leads to Hooray for Parenting

In my long career as a psychotherapist and executive coach, I have always been inspired by new research and new insights into making a difference in peoples wellbeing and happiness. So when I discovered the new research on gratitude I began to read everything about it that I could get my hands on.

I used to think of gratitude as politeness, manners, and a warm good feeling when nice things happened for me. It was about doing the right thing and insisting that my kids write thank you notes. But then I began to understand gratitude as a deeper, more complex phenomenon than the simple art of saying thank you.

Cultivating a regular practice of gratitude and weaving it into every aspect of life contributes to better relationships, health, effectiveness, and fulfillment. I discovered that in other cultures, such as Japanese and Native American traditions, reverence for the earth and gratitude are fundamental and intertwined.

Human nature often gets in the way of being grateful. We are forgetful. We want something more, something better. We compare ourselves to others. We take things for granted in our daily lives and in our relationship to the gifts of nature.

When we weave the practice of gratitude into the fabric of our lives we are building our gratitude muscles and contributing to a world that works for others, our kids, ourselves, and the environment. The book "Hooray for Parenting" and the companion workbook and online course are the outgrowth of this exploration.

Our focus is about transforming confusion and weaving a new and empowering story for a new generation - a story of gratitude, sufficiency, satisfaction, and reverence for people and the planet.