November is the month where we all focus on gratitude, and with Thanksgiving only a couple of weeks away, it’s not surprising. Gratitude is more than simply saying “thank you,” in fact, it has this amazing ability to shift us from focusing on the negative to appreciating all the good in our lives. Practicing daily gratitude gives us a deeper connection to ourselves, the world around us and our higher selves/the Universe/God.
Everything in our lives has the ability to improve when we are grateful. Research has shown that gratitude can enhance our moods, decrease stress and drastically improve our overall level of health and wellbeing. On average, grateful people tend to have fewer stress-related illnesses and experience less depression and lowered blood pressure, they are more physically fit, they are happier, have a higher income, more satisfying personal and professional relationships and will be better liked. Grateful kids are even more likely to get A’s in school.
If everyone practiced daily gratitude, we could change ourselves and the planet for the better. Everyone would be much happier. Love would grow and hate would decrease. And the world would know true peace.
1. 365 Days of Thank You
This 8-minute talk comes from Brian Doyle, who discusses how a near-death experience led him to start thinking about the role of gratitude in his life. Specifically, Doyle made a commitment to genuinely thank one person in his life every single day for a full year. This short talk is not just an inspiring story but might cause the viewer to consider how they engage with gratitude in their daily lives.
2. Your Happiest Days Are Behind You
This 13-minute talk from positive psychology and happiness researcher Robert Biswas-Diener approaches gratitude by discussing happiness like Steindl-Rast does in his TED Talk. Biswas-Diener argues that most people try to reach happiness by ascribing it to accomplishing things in the future, rather than looking back at happy moments in their pasts. Biswas-Diener claims that once people realize they have a lot to be grateful for in their pasts rather than exclusively looking towards the future, they are closer to reaching happiness.
3. How Thanking Awakens Our Thinking
This 17-minute talk from Dr. Kerry Howells, an award-winning educator of teachers, discusses the importance of gratitude not in the workplace but in the classroom. In the talk, Dr. Howells discusses the importance of cultivating feelings of gratitude in both teachers and students to lead to increased learning for everyone. This is an excellent talk for anyone who is a teacher, and people who want to learn more about Dr. Howell’s approach can read more in her book, Gratitude in Education.
4. The Happy Secret to Better Work
This 12-minute talk from positive psychologist Shawn Achor is extremely popular because of Achor’s use of humor throughout. In the talk, Achor starts out by discussing a story from his childhood involving his little sister, which underlines the importance of seeing the positive side of everything. By the end of the talk, Achor has laid out a plan for everyone to rewire their brains to recognize the positive before the negative, starting with recognizing things they are grateful for. This funny, actionable talk is a must-watch.
5. The Transformative Power of Gratitude
This 20-minute TED Talk is a deep exploration into the power of gratitude and why it works, including why a lot of people do not practice gratitude. In the talk, leadership and education expert Katia Sol discusses how gratitude is an ancient “technology” which many are just now identifying the power of, and explores some of the recent research into gratitude, including some of Robert Emmons’s work.
The sound quality of this talk is not great, but the information within is very well-presented and justified by research, so anyone interested in learning about gratitude should give this video a watch.
6. Measuring What Makes Life Worthwhile
This talk is by hotelier Chris Conley, who was looking for a business model based on happiness. He found answers in an old friendship with an employee, along with the wisdom of a Buddhist King.
7. Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.
This 10-minute talk comes from photographer Louie Schwartzberg, with an assist from the above-mentioned Steindl-Rast. In the talk, Schwartzberg presents some of his photographs of nature and explains how they can lead to feelings of gratitude with a story about life from a child’s perspective as well as life from an elderly man’s perspective. This is a good option for people who are more engaged by visual information than other types, as well as people who are looking for a shorter talk.
8. Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful.
This 15-minute talk, from “monk and interfaith scholar” David Steindl-Rast, discusses gratitude and specifically its relationship to happiness. In the talk, Steindl-Rast argues that:
“it is not happiness that makes us grateful” but “gratefulness that makes us happy”.