Currently I am reading How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, a book about dealing with people and opening the door of your perspective and ideas to others. One of the big concepts Carnegie talks about is the art of gratefulness and appreciation.
Let’s not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don’t get it, we won’t be disturbed. It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
This side of gratefulness, the expectation side, is an important yet undiscussed aspect of gratitude. Understanding that you should be helpful or supporting not for the praise you may get from those actions but because it feels good inside of oneself. Ask yourself, does it feel better to help a friend with no praise, yet know you were helpful to a loved one, or avoid helping someone, making that persons life just that much harder, and live knowing you could have done something that they would have benefited from?