Good morning,

How are you doing?

Here’s what I have for you today:

• One big thing. What if a pair of glasses could rewire how you see your life? 👓

• You have to check this out. 101 rules for living, male friendships, and lessons from the Dalai Lama. 😁

• Tools and tech. The true size of countries. 🗺️

Are you ready to jump in? 🦘

1️⃣ ONE BIG THING

Gratitude glasses.

A cornerstone of Generation X is our history with technology.

There will never be another generation that grows up in an analog world and then lives in a digital one. I believe it gives us powerful perspective and appreciation.

If you traveled somewhere in the 90s with only a guidebook (like Let’s Go!), you will have deeper gratitude for the miracle of perfect maps and bottomless knowledge in your back pocket.

If you’re like me, you may also have what I would call productive nostalgia for the surprises of navigating and exploring new places without the aid of technology. Getting lost. Failing to find what (or who) you were looking for… and finding something else (or someone else) instead. The experience of encountering obstacles and creatively overcoming them invigorates travel and fuels memories.

I call it productive nostalgia because you can contrast the benefits of our pre-digital experiences with the miracles of current technology. Then, you can pick and choose, blending these into a uniquely Gen X approach.

For example, in 2020, I purchased a spiral-bound Road Atlas and took a trip two-thirds of the way across the U.S. without using Google Maps. I found this demands far more in-the-moment consciousness. What road is this? How many miles until my next turn? However, when I was in a very rural section of northeast Texas, the FM (farm-to-market) road I was on was randomly closed. I flipped on Google Maps, followed its route, and arrived as planned.

Technology face-plants.

Gen X has also seen some hilarious tech failures. The clapper. Microsoft Zune. Iridium satellite phones. Somehow, people are still using fax machines.

These face-plant technology fails are hilarious. However, with perspective, you often see that they herald a coming technological leap forward. The Zune sucked. The iPod ruled.

Enter Google Glass. Surely you remember this comedy. Turns out, no one wanted to look like a nerdy alien cyborg while tripping over curbs.

When products like this fail so spectacularly, the inventions that come next have a steeper hill to climb. Perhaps that ultimately helps them succeed.

I love new technology. I find it thrilling to experience what is possible. As a small example, the tools that enable me to create, distribute, and grow this newsletter are remarkable. You can accomplish more today as an individual than you could have with ten people a decade ago.

I also believe keeping up with new technology is essential to aging well. I’m 53. If I stop learning about and using new technology today, I could find myself 73 years old, relying on technology from 2025. Think back 20 years. There were no iPhones. No Netflix.

Now, if your reaction to that was, “Yes, I wish it was still that way,” I hear you. So do I, in some ways. Keep reading. 😄

Robot glasses.

Was Google Glass a failure? Oh, yes. Google lost $895 million on these $1,500 glasses.

From that, it’s tempting to laugh at all new smart glasses. Indeed, some laughter is still in order. I still laugh (to myself) at people seemingly talking to themselves at the grocery store (using small earbuds). I groan when I hear people on the phone in a bathroom stall. WTF.

Robot glasses are back.

You have probably seen the Meta/Ray-Ban glasses.

I don’t want these, but I’d argue they are getting a lot of things right. Ray-Ban is solving for style (no more cyborg chic) and the evolution of core aspects of this technology has come a long way since Google Glass was launched 11 years ago.

The core question now: What would you do with these?

Real-time language translation. Hands-free Q&A. Open-ear audio. Mind-blowing? Not yet. However, these glasses offer appealing glimpses of what is to come.

The Meta glasses take in images and sound and talk to you through open-ear speakers (that, in theory, only you can hear). They aren’t displaying anything in your visual field.

Other companies are layering in augmented reality visual elements, including the still-clunky-looking glasses from Rokid and XREAL, the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey-ready Apple Vision Pro (requiring a home equity loan to purchase), and Meta's nerd-ski goggles.

Look, I’m just a Gen X guy writing you a letter once a week. I'm no expert on smart glasses, nor am I the grey-haired Marques Brownlee. Between you and me, I don’t even know who Marques Brownlee is. 🤫

However, Google’s new XR glasses may be more like an iPod than a Zune. They feature what Google calls extended reality (or XR) and full integration with Google’s Gemini AI.

For a little glimpse into what’s coming, check out Google’s TED Talk from last month. The presenter is wearing a black hoodie, so you know he’s the real deal. The "where did I leave my hotel room key” feature they demo probably works only 1% of the time in real life, but this is the kind of feature set you and I might find more and more helpful in the future. 😂

Gratitude glasses.

As usual, many of these tech advancements are making it easier for you to buy more things or enticing you into an ecosystem with the implicit goal of showing you more ads.

But what if smart glasses could fundamentally improve your life?

Imagine along with me how Kevin’s Gratitude Glasses might work. Pretend I am wearing a black hoodie.

As you move through the world, my gratitude glasses would layer in subtle “extended reality” text prompts to remind you of the miraculous world we live in today. Or cue you to tell your friends how much they mean to you next time you see them.

This isn’t a perfect product demo, but something like this:

Positive psychology sees gratitude.

Of course, you don’t need fancy glasses to become more grateful.

I do love new technology, but flexing my Gen X muscles here, I also know that the pathways to making your life better and more meaningful will always be analog.

Interestingly, as I’ve touched on in these letters over the past few weeks, the field of Positive Psychology didn’t get started until 1998. The development and scientific testing of interventions to improve well-being have progressed in tandem with the mainstream use of the Internet. This feels like coincidental yet fortunate timing.

Practicing gratitude is one of the most robustly tested positive psychology interventions.

Martin Seligman’s “three good things” intervention was one of the foundational, placebo-controlled research studies in the field, published in 2005. It involves daily journaling or reflecting on three good things that happened that day and why they happened. The research showed this practice leads to increased happiness, reduced depression, and improved resilience.

Hey Meta, what is gratitude?

Robert A. Emmons is a professor at the University of California-Davis and the world’s leading gratitude researcher.

He’s created a two-part definition of gratitude that I find useful. His ten-minute presentation, "The Power of Gratitude" (YouTube), is a concise primer on what gratitude is and why it has such a powerful, positive impact on us.

First, gratitude is an affirmation of goodness—that there are good things in our lives and the world (without needing life to be perfect).

Second, and most importantly, is figuring out where that goodness comes from. Who do you have to thank for this goodness? It implies there is a giver behind the gift.

The sources of goodness are outside of ourselves. As Emmons says, “In humble dependence, we acknowledge that other things did things for us… Or there are other forces that provided this benefit for me.”

This creates a distinction between your feeling grateful —the short-term feeling, the emotion of gratitude you might feel when given a gift—and your being a grateful person.

This is a distinction I did not understand previously. Emmons suggests there is a continuum from people who regularly say thank you to those with an “abiding sense of thankfulness for life as a fundamental life orientation.”

Gratitude is inherently prosocial, and it deepens relationships. It enhances empathy, trust, generosity, and social bonding. It counters narcissism, entitlement, and cynicism.

If you know anyone whose perspective on the universe matches the graphic below (we all do), then you know someone who would truly benefit from practicing gratitude.

Practicing gratitude.

All research measuring the short- and long-term impacts of gratitude utilizes tools that enable you to practice gratitude. What these studies clearly show is that you can work out your gratitude muscles. If you hit the gratitude gym regularly, you can boost your baseline disposition toward gratitude.

Research from 2002 showed that gratitude exercises led people to experience gratefulness differently. Practicing gratitude led to more intense experiences of gratitude; the positive emotional experience lasted longer and occurred more frequently.

Like changing your fitness or strength, these bigger changes do not come from one week at the gratitude gym. Trying a gratitude journal for a few days may boost your short-term emotional experience, but it will not boost your disposition.

The good news is there are many helpful gratitude tools.

I wanted to give you the two I like the most. Perhaps one of them will resonate with you.

Gratitude Venn Diagram.

The first asks you to think about three things: a favorite person, a favorite place, and a favorite activity. Next, reflect on what these things have in common. What feelings does your favorite activity and place elicit? How are your favorite person and activity similar?

The creators of this simple exercise have found that by “extracting these specific similarities, you are most likely left with favorable feelings and emotions in the overlapping areas, such as safety, confidence, or respect.

Expressing Gratitude to Others.

I’m including this one because this is a weak spot for me. I am very grateful to many people in my life. Still, I am not naturally good at expressing my gratitude to them. Engaging in this exercise exemplifies the overlapping benefits of a gratitude practice: you feel better, the person you express gratitude to feels better, and your relationship deepens. These are cool positive reinforcement loops.

This exercise comes from this Positive Psychology resource How to Express Gratitude to Others: 19 Examples & Ideas:

1. Make a list of all the people who have positively impacted your life and who inspire a sense of gratitude.

2. Choose one or more people to whom you can demonstrate your appreciation.

3. You can choose to write a letter or a card, handcrafting a gift, inviting them for a coffee or a meal, or anything that you think would be appropriate.

4. Arrange a date and time to meet up; it can be in person, via a call, or a video call.

5. When you meet up with this person, express your gratitude by reading what you wrote to them or explaining the reason for meeting up.

Prompts from your gratitude glasses.

The red icon on your smart is irresistible and maddening. But prompts like this work. They are the root mechanism creating the habit loops that drive phone addiction.

In my imagination, my future-tech gratitude glasses can use this mechanism for good.

As you look around your world wearing my gratitude glasses, you will see extended reality prompts reminding you of the infinite things to be grateful for in our world.

As these prompts slide into your field of vision, you take a moment to be grateful for the miracles of modern living and the many people around you, including those you know and those you don’t.

The way habit works, you would only need to wear these glasses for several weeks. By then, your practice would be set. Your disposition will have shifted.

Or, use a post-it note or string around your finger like it’s 1981.

If you want an immediate gratitude boost, watch this video. It will make your day.

Thank you reading my newsletter. I am truly grateful. 😊

See you next Sunday,

Kevin

Arthur Brooks: Lessons from the Dalai Lama

As the Dalai Lama has told me many times, “Remember that you are one of 8 billion.” By this, he means two things. First, no one is any better or worse than anyone else; we are radically equal in human dignity. Second, each person counts as the face of the whole world. And as such, each individual kind deed I do for another, no matter how small, is an act of love toward the whole world. That makes every act of compassion empowering, important, and worthwhile.

What you can do

Based on Tibetan Buddhist teachings, here are five examples of small-seeming yet world-changing acts that His Holiness has urged me to undertake each day.

1. Serve the tea. Practice common acts of generosity and humility, like serving tea to visitors in your home. Small acts require conscious intention to begin with but can become a habit in short order.

2. Show your teeth. To the Dalai Lama, to “show your teeth” means to smile authentically—no half smiles, no Mona Lisa–style ambiguity. The true smile, he believes, starts a kind of contagion.

3. Change places. If someone is bothering you, think deeply about their troubles. This is a variation on the loving-kindness meditation in many traditions, in which we change our attitude toward others by focusing on their good and wishing them well.

4. Think, don’t just feel. Enlightenment requires us to manage our negative emotions—so that they don’t manage us. The Bodhisattva Shantideva counsels us to do this by exercising our powers of logic and reason, urging us, for example, to remember that “if there is a remedy, then what is the use of frustration? If there is no remedy, then what is the use of frustration?”

5. Let it go. In our world of conflict, many cultural combatants look for offenses—even when none is intended—as an excuse for aggression. Even when offense is intended, we have the opportunity to make the world a little better by refusing to take it as such and maintaining our equanimity.

Will the globe change overnight with these five lessons? Of course not. But in your own local way, the spirit of the Dalai Lama and his wisdom will be with you, and you will be a force for good in a world that badly needs it.

Arthur Brooks