By Susan Hines-Brigger
Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful TED Talk
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Brother David Steindl-Rast
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to look around and take in all that we have been given. Then, he says, we must go. With this practice we can transform the world and make it a happy place, he adds. Steindl-Rast divides his time among monastic life, writing, and worldwide lecturing. He has written 10 books and contributed to many other books and periodicals. He is the cofounder of Gratefulness.org, an interactive website with several thousand participants daily from more than 240 countries and territories. In addition to this TED talk, you can find many other videos from Steindl-Rast on YouTube regarding the topics of gratitude and happiness.
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“Every moment is a gift, over and over again. And if you miss the opportunity of this moment, another moment is given to us. . . . That’s the wonderful richness of life.”
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f you search on YouTube for videos on the topic of gratitude, chances are you’re going to find a video from Brother David SteindlRast, an Austrian-born Benedictine monk and interfaith scholar. He is probably best known for his 2013 TED Talk on that very topic. As of this writing, the video has been viewed almost 3 million times. In the talk, Steindl-Rast digs into the connection between gratitude and happiness, saying that one leads to the other. Grateful people, he says, are joyful people, adding, “If you think it’s happiness that makes you grateful, think again.” He acknowledges, though, that we cannot be grateful for everything. We are not grateful for things such as violence, war, oppression, or, on a more personal level, the loss of a friend or unfaithfulness. What we can be grateful for, he says, is the opportunity that those experiences provide us. “Even when we are confronted with something that is terribly difficult, we can rise to this occasion and respond to the opportunity that is given to us,” Steindl-Rast points out. “We have this saying that opportunity knocks only once,” he says. “Think again. Every moment is a gift, over and over again. And if you miss the opportunity of this moment, another moment is given to us. And another moment. We always get another opportunity. That’s the wonderful richness of life.” But how can we live gratefully? “By experiencing,” he says. “By becoming aware that every moment is a given moment. It’s a gift. You haven’t earned it. You haven’t brought it about in any way.” At the end of his talk, Brother David offers a simple formula for being grateful. He says it is the same way we learned to cross the street when we were younger—stop, look, and go. If we don’t stop, we will miss the opportunities around us. We must then take the time
