TED Talk Tuesday: Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful

Brother David Steindl-Rast said happiness comes from being grateful for opportunities.

SPONSORED 4:16PM • 02/16/16

Humans have an inherent urge to want to be happy. Looking at the world with a glass half full mentality can lead to others striving to be happy. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, believes happiness comes from being humble. In his 2013 TED Talk: Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful, he argues being grateful leads to being happy in your everyday life.

Steindl-Rast argues being happy does not automatically make you grateful and vice versa. Gratefulness he contends is birthed out of opportunity. You are grateful for an opportunity and if you take advantage of it, you will earn being happy.

“Every moment is a new gift, over and over again, and if you miss the opportunity of this moment, another moment is given to us, and another moment,” Steindl-Rast said. “We can avail ourselves of this opportunity, or we can miss it, and if we avail ourselves of the opportunity, it is the key to happiness.”

He said a way to harness being grateful on a daily basis is to stop, look at the situation and go. Too many times we will rush through life, trying to get things done quickly to achieve happiness. He related a story about the water situation when he took a trip to Africa. He had no drinkable water on his trip and when he returned to America and saw a running faucet, he was taken aback. He was so grateful for running water that he became happy. He said having opportunities like this can open up one’s thinking and lead to happiness.

“People are becoming aware that a grateful world is a happy world, and we all have the opportunity by the simple stop, look, go, to transform the world, to make it a happy place. And that is what I hope for us, and if this has contributed a little to making you want to do the same, stop, look, go,” Steindl-Rast said.