Joel Osteen Talks About Joy, Service and Gratitude

Hi, I’m Joel Osteen. I’m the author of Every Day a Friday. 

The reason I wrote Every Day a Friday: How to be Happier Seven Days a Week,” it’s because there’s a lot pulling people down these days. And it seems like many people are not necessarily enjoying life. They’re just enduring it, just going through the motions every day. And I believe that if we don’t see each day as a gift from God, it’s easy to not live life to the full. And so this book is about how we can be happier, just seven simple principles that I think if we all put in place, including myself, we can live happier and really enjoy life. 

I think one of the good points in this book—there’s are seven major principles, but one that’s really helped me I call it knowing what to ignore. And the principle is there’s a lot of battles we face in life that we’re not supposed to fight. They’re distractions. Somebody at work annoying us. We have to just ignore them and move forward. Really a lot of the things that we give time and energy to are simply distractions. 

The encouragement I always give to people is, number one, find something to be grateful for. If you let yourself get negative and bitter and depressed that doesn’t make matters worse, it just draws in more negativity. So as hard as it is, sometimes it goes against human nature, but you got to get up in the morning when it’s not going your way and just find something to be grateful for. Another thing I think that can help people is if you’ll go out and do something good for somebody else. When we’re just constantly thinking about our problems and what’s wrong in our life, really that’s selfish, and it pulls us down. But when you go out and you make somebody else’s day, I believe God will make your own day. 

I saw my father, when he was alive, he modeled such a great kindness and just a loving—he kept our family so warm and close together. And many people get their image of God from their earthly father, and I think that’s why I have this image of God being loving and kind and for us, and not somebody that’s mean and out to get us. And I think that’s what keeps a lot of people away from God is because they didn’t grow up with a good family concept. And it’s created the wrong image of God on the inside. 

We all deal with people that are rude and grumpy and hard to get along with, but I think it’s so important—one of the principles in the book is called don’t give away your power. And what I really mean is don’t give away your joy. I don’t believe that anyone can take, or any circumstances for that matter—they can’t take your joy. You have to give it away. And often, we’ll let somebody that cut us off in traffic in the morning sour a good part of the day. And it’s just the fact that we haven’t been trained not to give away our joy. 

In other words, you can just as easily as dismiss it and say, you know what, I’m not going to let that bother me. Because I think of it like this, the scripture says no man can take your joy. So it means somebody does me wrong, they can’t make me unhappy. I have to give my joy to them. And so I encourage people don’t give away your power. Life is too short to let things upset us and pull us down, especially, small things. I mean, there’s enough big things that we have to deal, but let’s don’t let little things steal our joy—a grouchy person at a cash register, somebody cut you off in traffic. Life’s too short, just wave at them and move forward.