Bet you didn't know this...

Saturday
4:07 PM

It's been a fun day. I drove to Escondido, CA for a street fare, only to find out that the fair wasn't until Sunday.

Go figure.

But hey, I went to Temecula, and went to the Rod Run. There were about 150 or so cars, and some of them really nice. There was some old classics, some hot rods, and even some really nice street cars.

But since this is a marketing site, I'm going to give you something to think about.

Steve Toepfer, an associate professor in Human Development and Family Studies at Kent State University at Salem, has conducted research showing writing letters of gratitude increases the author's happiness.

That be you. So not only does it help you, it helps cement your relationship with the people you write the thank you's and letters too.

Steve Toepfer has always been interested in the power of writing.

In 2007 Steve created an assignment in his Building Family Strength class to show students that being kind to others had psychological benefits, and he measured these benefits in a pilot study where participants wrote letters of gratitude.

Toepfer co-authored the paper titled “Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits".

The study examined the effects of writing letters of gratitude on three primary qualities of well-being: happiness (positive affect), life satisfaction (cognitive evaluation) and depression (negative affect).

Gratitude also was assessed.

A sample of 219 undergraduate students who were relatively happy were recruited by the university’s Kent, Salem and Stark campuses to participate in the study.

Study participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 65 with a mean age of 25.7, filled out a battery of questionnaires about their well-being, and then they returned to the research lab three more times about a week apart.

The experimental group wrote a letter of gratitude each time while the control group did not.

Both groups filled out questionnaires at each visit.

For the group that did not write letters but filled out the questionnaires, their well-being did not change.

So when I tell you that you need to hand write thank you's and letters at least once a week, I'm seriously talking about you helping yourself, as well as the patient.

It's not hard, you just have to do it.

I know it's hard, but hey, you want to be busy and you want your patients to be happy, so just get a pen out and start writing. It's not that hard.

Dr. Carney