Why You Benefit From Making a Big Deal Out of Little Things

Practicing micro gratitude trains your mind to find joy in the ordinary.

Updated May 23, 2026 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

You might be overlooking much of what makes your life good. Not because it isn’t there—but because it feels too small to matter.

You may have heard the saying, “Stop making a big deal out of little things.” That’s usually framed as a criticism—code for being oversensitive.

But let’s flip the script: What if the little things in your life are actually gifts? And what if you treated these little things as gems?

That’s what it means to practice micro gratitude —giving thanks for the ordinary, mundane things in life we tend to take for granted. You’ll benefit from making a big deal out of little blessings.

This means training your mind to notice the small, easily overlooked gifts that quietly enrich your life every day. The warm beverage you drink every morning. The comfort of the bed you sleep on every night. The beautiful tree outside your home that you barely notice.

Why We Miss What Matters

If micro gratitude is so vital to sustaining grateful living, why don’t we practice it? I can think of two reasons.

First, we are blind to the little gifts in our lives—they are so “little,” we’re barely aware of them. Or perhaps they’re invisible through familiarity. We experience them so frequently that our brain stops flagging them as gifts. They fade into the background like wallpaper.

Second, maybe we have the wrong definition of gratitude. We reserve it for big things, like the life-changing moments we’ll tell stories about for years.

Yet if gratitude depended solely on big events, you’d only feel it occasionally. Which means most of your life—the vast, ordinary middle—would go unappreciated.

But when we focus on the daily, ordinary experiences in our lives, we suddenly have thousands of little blessings to give thanks for. As a gratitude scholar, I’ve read hundreds of gratitude journal entries from folks who maintain a sustained habit of journaling. One thing is clear from these entries: They are mostly about micro gratitude.

The takeaway? If you want to be a grateful person—not just someone who occasionally feels grateful—practice micro gratitude daily. You’ll never run out of things to give thanks for—as long as you learn to see the gifts in your life that are hiding in plain sight.

Below, I share five categories of blessings to enable you to practice micro gratitude, along with three strategies to master this practice.

Five Types of Mini-Blessings

Conveniences. These are things that make our lives more convenient and comfortable. Here are a few in my life that I’m grateful for:
Simple Pleasures. These are the little gifts of joy you access with your five senses:
Positive social interactions. Positive social interactions don’t just include deep, life-changing conversations. Even brief interactions with strangers and acquaintances are worthy of our gratitude:
Your physical environment. I'd like you to pause for a moment. Look at your immediate physical environment like you’ve never been there before. Your room. Your desk. The light shining through the window. Imagine seeing it all for the first time. Everything looks new to you. What do you notice that’s interesting, beautiful, or novel? These are worthy of gratitude.
Small wins. If you’re working on a big project, like a dissertation, a major work assignment, or a health-related goal, don’t wait for the final outcome to give thanks. The process matters as much as the outcome. Each small win that moves you forward a little is a good enough reason for gratitude.

Consider the people who help you with these small wins. If you’re working on a major work assignment, thank the co-worker whose advice helped you move one small step closer to finishing the project.

(For more prompts that could inspire micro gratitude, click here .)

Three Strategies to Help You Practice Micro Gratitude

Gratitude requires practice. And practicing micro gratitude isn’t as easy as it sounds. Here are three strategies to help you become more aware of and appreciate the little gifts in your life.

Living in the Present

As adults, we often drift out of the present. We spend so much of our mental energy living in the past, and ruminating about regrets—or living in the future, and worrying about bad things that could happen to us.

Micro gratitude does something subtle but powerful. It pulls us back into the present (or the recent past). And that could be its greatest benefit. Like a child completely transfixed on the toys in a playroom, micro gratitude helps us savor our current blessings. The present—that’s where life happens.

In the end, micro gratitude is like cleaning the glasses we wear. Same world, sharper view. It helps us see the good that was there all along.

And suddenly, we’ve a lot more to be thankful for.

This piece is Part 7 of a mini-series on the Varieties of Goodness . It also appears in my Substack newsletter on the science and practice of gratitude .

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Joel Wong, Ph.D., is a Provost Professor of Counseling Psychology at Indiana University who studies gratitude interventions and practices.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.