The commonest way a gratitude practice dies is not by failing; it goes stale. Same three things, same words, checkbox ticked, feeling long gone. Today we make sure that doesn't happen to yours.
There is an irony waiting in this practice: gratitude can fall victim to the very adaptation it fights. Write the exact same list every night, "my family, my health, my coffee," and your brain habituates to that too. The ritual gets filed under chores, the feeling drains out, and you conclude gratitude doesn't work for you, when really the practice just went on autopilot. The researchers are candid about this, and they have found what keeps it alive.
Of the practices tested in the classic Seligman study, one stands apart. You pick a person who did something real for you and was never properly thanked, and you write them a specific, concrete letter: what they did, and the difference it made in your life. If you can, you deliver it, reading it to them out loud. In the studies, that visit produced one of the largest happiness jumps of any single exercise measured, and the letter alone still lands hard.
It is more intense than a nightly list, so it isn't a daily thing; think of it as a periodic deepener. We'll set one up as an option this week. People tend to cry over these, usually the good kind of crying, and almost nobody regrets sending one.
None of this means forcing feeling you don't have. On a night when the well is dry, log three flat-but-true small things and go to bed; a light touch keeps the practice alive far better than a heavy demand. These practices are a supplement you keep taking, not a pill you take once. The real skill is noticing when yours has gone flat and reaching for a different tool, which is exactly the skill most gratitude habits die for lack of.