automatic conversations of great minds with dr sonia luba mirsky is a professor of psychology at the university of california riverside a.b. from harvard university or ph d. in social personality psychology from stanford university and is the author of the critically acclaimed book the myths of happiness let's get back to it you mentioned just as we were about to hit the break there at the last in the last segment how you were suggesting that people write gratitude letters or thanks letters of knowledge thinks things like that i remember enough to remember when the boy scout . i don't mandate i guess it was was that you had to do a good deed every day and i remember finding this particularly difficult that the definition of a good deed and i think this changed probably in the sixty's or seventy's but i was you know boy scout the late fifty's early sixty's was. is something that you do the benefits another person and they never know that you did it. i'm curious your thoughts on how you know what we might have lost by just losing that boy scout and presumably girl scout you know ancien