Gratitude and Happiness
"Gratitude turns what we have into enough"
- Anonymous
Beautiful weather, meaningful relationships and exciting projects have made for another remarkable summer here at Orange. In fact, we're feeling pretty thankful for those many extraordinary people we come across in our day to day. Now as fall approaches and the collective mood starts to shift, we thought it a good time to reflect just a little on gratitude and happiness.
In his TED Talk "Want to be happy? Be grateful" Benedictine Monk Brother David Steindl-Rast says "The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, and the master key to our happiness starts with gratitude." Put another way, we’re not grateful because we’re happy, we're happy because we’re grateful.
But what do we really mean by grateful? Brother David defines it as a feeling that swells inside of us when we're given something valuable. We haven’t worked for it. We haven’t earned it. It is purely a gift.
When we acknowledge these gifts with gratitude, we also acknowledge that there is goodness in our lives. And we begin to understand that the source of that goodness lies outside of ourselves. In other words, being grateful helps us connect to something bigger.
In fact, suggests Brother David "every single moment in our lives is a gift". Every moment is something that we haven’t earned, it is something that has been given to us. And within each moment lies an opportunity– an opportunity to seize, to tackle, to overcome or to simply ‘enjoy'. When we seize the opportunities it brings us happiness.
In his inspiring talk, Brother David not only reveals a solid strategy on how to seize the opportunities presented in each moment, but also a way that gratefulness can change the entire world.