Want more joy? Be grateful.

Did you know that being grateful creates happiness? And being grateful is a choice of perspective we can make at any moment? I believe we usually see it in a backwards sort of way. We believe something good has to happen TO us and then we CAN be grateful. We see ourselves as passive recipients of reasons to feel grateful. We don’t create gratitude and joy, it happens to us.

I don’t think that’s how it works.

To be clear, we can’t necessarily be grateful for everything. Some situations and experiences are just hard, and they hurt, and it’s important to be real about those more difficulty feelings and challenging times in our lives. Let’s not sugar coat things. Life is often hard.

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful for the opportunities and positive experiences that do exist in our lives. Let’s be willing to feel the good and the bad, the easy and the hard honestly in our lives.

I think it’s safe to say as human beings, we all want to be happy, we all want to feel safe, and we all want to feel like we have enough. Based on my experience, being grateful is a big part of that — AND the wonderful thing is, that is within our control far more than we probably realize.

The really exciting thing is, the impact of practicing gratitude goes beyond individuals feeling good. This really stood out to me in the video below. He said:

“If you are grateful, you are not fearful. If you are not fearful, you are not violent.

“If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough, instead of a sense of scarcity, and you’re willing to share.

“When you’re grateful, you’re enjoying the differences between people, and you’re respectful to everyone. That changes this power pyramid under which we all live.”

Without gratitude, our hearts stay closed, our eyes don’t recognize the beauty and gifts around us, and we can become scared, unkind and grasping.

How do we become more grateful? He gives a very simple method in the video.

We stop. We look. And then we go.

Most of the time, we’re so busy that we forget to stop and notice how good we have it - and how many opportunities we have at any moment to make it a better day and a better world for ourselves and others.

I’m interested to hear what you think. What are some things for which you are grateful. And what are some things that make it difficult to feel gratitude?

For me, I know I sometimes feel guilty for being grateful for what I have because I know there are other people who have less. OR, I’m afraid to feel grateful because I fear the thing I’m grateful for will be taken away and then I will be sad.

Watch the video: Want to be happy? Be grateful. - David Steindl-Rast, TedGlobal 2013.