Gratitude is usually described as appreciating a benefit that matters to your life. You might admire high-tech toilets or bullet trains in Japan, but if you don’t live there and they don’t touch your world in any way, that admiration isn’t really gratitude. Gratitude requires personal relevance.
That sounds simple enough. But things get interesting in the following scenarios:
1. You have a 7:00 a.m. flight and live an hour from the airport. A friend offers to drive you, and you gratefully accept. The night before, the flight was canceled due to extreme weather. You no longer need the ride.
2. Your favorite aunt cooks you a lavish birthday dinner of lamb chops. Unfortunately, she has begun showing signs of cognitive decline and forgets that you’re a vegetarian.
3. Your adult daughter, who doesn’t live with you, calls asking for advice. You’re quietly thrilled because you’ve been feeling disconnected from her.
4. You share an unconventional opinion in a group discussion. The leader disagrees but invites you to explain your reasoning. The group listens attentively, reflects your perspective accurately, and makes it clear that even if the decision doesn’t change, your view is respected.
In each case, did you actually receive a benefit?
I’d argue the answer is a clear yes.
The harder question is: what kind of benefit was it?
Practical or material benefits are easy to spot. Food on the table. A roof over your head. Money, gifts, information, convenience. These are visible and concrete.
But in the scenarios above, the benefits aren’t practical at all. They’re psychological.
And because they aren’t visible, we often fail to notice them.
Our Basic Psychological Needs
According to self-determination theory, human beings have three basic psychological needs:
Autonomy: feeling a sense of choice and ownership over our actions
Relatedness: feeling connected to others
Competence: feeling capable and effective
These are the “big three,” but they are others.
I’m a strong proponent of mattering. We don’t just want to be connected to others; we want to feel valued by them and to know that we add value to others in return. I’d argue that mattering is also a core psychological need.
Other candidates include meaning and purpose, a sense of security (stability and predictability), and epistemic needs: our drive to understand and make sense of the world.
If meeting our physical needs keeps us alive, fulfilling our psychological needs is what helps us feel alive.
The more frequently these needs are met, the higher your well-being and the more energized we feel about our lives. In short, psychological needs are essential to human flourishing.
Re-reading the Four Scenarios
Let’s return to the four scenarios.
In Scenarios 1, 2, and 3, your friend, your aunt, and your daughter meet your needs for relatedness and mattering, even though the practical outcomes are ambiguous or even non-existent.
In Scenario 3, your daughter also supports your need for competence by seeking your advice.
In Scenario 4, the group honors your autonomy by treating your perspective with respect without denigrating you.
These are not trivial benefits. They’re some of the most meaningful gifts we receive.
They’re just invisible.
Practical vs. Psychological Benefits
Your psychological needs are like the air you breathe. They are essential, but most of the time you’re not consciously aware of them.
One way to think about benefits is to divide them into three categories:
purely practical
purely psychological
a mix of both
And here’s the irony: practical benefits are easier to see and point to, but psychological benefits are often what matter most for gratitude, especially when gratitude is interpersonal.
Imagine a leader in your organization offers you a promotion. It’s prestigious. The salary bump is generous. But there’s a condition: you’re expected to side with them in every major decision. You’re being invited into a clique.
The problem is, you don’t respect this leader or share their values.
Here, you stand to gain a practical benefit, but at the expense of a psychological one. Accepting the promotion would likely undermine your autonomy, perhaps even your sense of integrity.
This feels icky.
Maybe you accept but feel uneasy. Maybe you refuse the offer outright. Either way, I suspect gratitude would be hard to come by.
This tells us something important: when practical benefits come at the cost of our psychological needs, gratitude struggles to take root. Our psychological needs are simply too important.
Putting It Into Practice
How do we expand our sense of what counts as a benefit?
One powerful way is to pay closer attention to the moments when our basic psychological needs are being met. That requires retraining both our minds and our hearts.
This week, consider how your psychological needs are supported by the people and circumstances around you. Then give thanks for these experiences.
Here are three concrete ways to do that:
1. Follow your positive emotions
Notice when you feel confident, energized, authentic, accepted, or valued. These emotions are sometimes signals that a psychological need has been met. Treat them as an invitation to gratitude and ask yourself which need was fulfilled.
2. Attend to others’ positive motives
Don’t focus only on the practical benefits others give you. Consider why they might have done it—and try to assume the best in others. When you assume goodwill in others, you acknowledge that others may be meeting your needs for relatedness and mattering.
3. Be specific—thank others for meeting your psychological needs
We often thank people only for practical outcomes. But once we recognize how central psychological needs are, our thank-you messages can deepen:
“Thank you for your kindness. What you just said made me feel seen and valued.”
(relatedness and mattering)
“I appreciate that you didn’t tell me what to do but helped me think it through. Your trust means a lot.”
(autonomy)
“Your suggestion to attend that workshop was so helpful. It changed how I see myself at work. Thanks to you, I feel more capable now.”
(competence)
Some of the greatest gifts we receive don’t arrive in wrapping paper. They land quietly, shaping how we feel about ourselves, our relationships, and our place in the world.
Once you learn to see them, gratitude becomes much richer.
