Race and Gratitude

Are you not running?

You: I’ve not taken part in any race.

But we all still are running in the race of life.

We woke up.
Create our to-do list.
Set our weekly and monthly goals.
And boom starts working on them relentlessly.

Isn’t it this race?

No break. No pause. No reflection. Just running.

Checking items of the to-do list have become the only goal.

Is there’s something we are missing on too?

It feels like a lot. What about these:

  • Relationships
  • Health
  • Peace and calm
  • Mental sanity

All of them are equally important and most of us missing out on most of them.

Btw, Aren’t the 3rd and 4th items the same? A question for both you and me to ponder about. Essentially, I think that 3rd is part of the 4th one.

Currently, for me, it looks like I’ve been missing out a lot lately on maintaining my mental sanity.

After practicing gratitude for few days and reading the benefits that two of my twitter friends (KP and Sharath) have enjoyed because of gratitude, I’ve realized that gratitude is one of the components to maintain mental sanity.

I’ve been thinking about kicking out to form this new habit of practicing gratitude every day from today itself. I will not wait for 1st January. No point in doing that.

Whenever I try to think about things that I should be grateful for today, I find it hard to come up with something, and a mental war starts in my mind at that moment. However, there are tons of things present atm that I should be grateful for (even like I’m alive today is bliss) but nothing comes explicitly at that time.

One of the solution or way I’ve been thinking about to ease this process more is the following:

  • Block 2 or 3 pages for gratitude in your notebook.
  • write down your lowest point of life or your past problems
  • write down about your and your family past physical injuries and your situation atm
  • Read those pages every day, realize and feel that you’ve been not going through any of these things for today and be grateful for your situation.

This idea was mainly inspired by a tweet by Sahil Lavingia:

Falling sick reminds you that the largest competitive advantage you can have is being healthy.

Peace and Power
Rishabh