Much has made about the effectiveness of exercising your gratitude muscle. The health benefits of gratitude are broad and often begin with lowered stress, stronger relationships, and more energy. But how we practice this exercise, and make it part of our daily lives, is the dilemma. Here are five observations about what gratitude is not and a few tips for training the muscle:

The aging family dog relies on a comfortable routine to manage life. Slowing down is just fine. Needs are simplified: a little less food, shorter walks, a bit of help getting into the car. Decisions about health interventions are made with the perspective of limited time left. Still, there is delight in sharing life.

Moms: We all have one. At some point, they leave us. In my case, the end was bittersweet, knowing that she lived too long and would never have wanted her days to end in a nursing home. Can’t we do better than this?

We give in too often. Whether it is to an injury, disease, age, or to loneliness, the affliction overwhelms our potential. In such cases, the Latin expression Illigitimi non carborundum—“Don’t let the bastards get you down”—applies to all.

Depression afflicts us all at some point. It may be the more difficult, internal, life-changing kind or the post-injury, temporary loss of performance kind. It is deflating, demoralizing, and debilitating, yet the cause is often invisible.

We have all become hypersensitized to the effects of the things around us, the activities we do, and the food we put into our bodies. If each activity has a negative and positive effect, can we score them? Here is my effort to create the “Stone Aging Impact Score” with each activity having a negative or positive effect on a scale of minus 10 to plus 10.

When Serena Williams was penalized during the US Open, she turned her anger against her accuser—the umpire—rather than on her opponent. She lost. At the same event, when Roger Federer suffered from the high heat and humidity he couldn’t wait to get out of the poorly designed Arthur Ashe tennis stadium. He lost.

Perseverate, verb: to repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance, long after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased. Perseveration is a repetitive focus on the same issue, a recycling through the mind of thoughts that won’t go away—memories that trap you in the pain or anger of some past event. How to break free? Here are some of the techniques we use after sports injuries get you down.