Be thankful and mean it too!

Gratitude is associated with wellbeing and happiness. If you don’t believe me, there is an entire field in psychology dedicated just to positive psychology and look up Sonja Lyubomirsky, who is one of the pioneers in happiness research and may be check this one article. If you are like me with high intellectual curiosity (LOL) or simply love reading, there is a lot more work and research out there indicating a positive correlation between gratitude and well-being.  

Well, the point of me writing this is not simply to repeat what research and google are already yelling at you, but to share something that I have come to realize. I have been maintaining a gratitude journal for over a year at this point. Every morning (that is days I don’t feel out of control crazy) I would journal 4 things that I am thankful for. It can be anything from being thankful for no snow and having sunshine to something bigger that I am thankful for all my education and my job etc. When I am good and in a great mood already, I have plenty of energy and writing in the gratitude journal would feel amazing because I would be able to find more than 4 things to be thankful for everyday. The challenge though is journaling when I feel low and slightly more on the depressed side. During these times, writing in the gratitude journal becomes way harder. I have come to realize two things. Firstly, it is more important to journal your gratitude when you feel low than when you feel high. Secondly, just simply writing about things you are thankful for does not give you as much benefit as writing about things you are thankful for and truly feeling thankful for those things.

"gratitude" (CC BY-NC 2.0) by sean808080

The first thing I said I think is quite obvious and common sense (or may be not). When you feel depressed or low, you need to count your blessings and be glad that even though you feel like you are losing your shit, but shit hasn’t hit the fan yet. This would help you get a perspective and feel better that life doesn’t suck as much as you think it does. Now I am not asking you to sugarcoat reality, but there is always some little thing you can be thankful for because in this giant world with 7 billion people, surely there would be atleast one person who is yearning for something you have.

"Reiki: the Power of Gratitude" (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Rlei_ki

Now the second thing, being grateful and meaning it – this is really important. There have been days when I have felt low and would just write in my gratitude journal just for the heck of it and feeling lame about writing on it because I would feel like my life sucks anyway I am not really thankful for any of the things I am writing about. Feeling truly grateful is easier (obviously only if you make the effort in the first place) when things are going well for you and when you are in a happy and positive mood. But the challenge and the true benefit is in doing this when you feel low and depressed. It takes a little extra effort to push your brain to truly open its eyes to something that you are thankful for. But trust me, this is worth the effort. We take most things in life for granted but it is when you are depressed that it is easy to take things even more for granted or to not even notice things in the first place. Be thankful for the simple pleasures in life, life is too short to be spent whining or complaining

Up in the Air!

I watched a movie called 'Up in the Air' yesterday. Aside from a few things, I learnt that heartfelt, romantic and feel good movies are not just called chick flicks but they are also called guy-cry films. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people, when did all of this become about men and women. Why are emotions such a bad thing or something people so scared of? Personally, I respect men who can truly feel and exhibit emotions as opposed to pretend stoic men. And why are emotions only associated with women? Because being ballsy enough to own up to your emotions makes you a pussy? Whatever, don't take my cursing too seriously. I do swear a lot though.

Anyway...let's talk about more serious things. There are 3 main characters in the movie -

Photo Credit: bangdoll@flickr

1) Ryan (played by George Clooney), the commitment-phobic, always working-always traveling guy who wants more miles on his cards than the breaths he takes for living. He fires people for a living and always tries to tell people why life should be light and drama free.

2) Alex (played by Vera Farmiga), the female equivalent of Ryan, an older single woman, well atleast she makes you feel so for a while but she is actually a traveling salesman (LOL) who is married and has kids but is trying to live a fake imaginary life when she travels where she is single and having casual fun.

3) Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick, the Pitch Perfect girl), the young, fresh out of college, nerdy top of class well educated girl who is ambitious yet so emotionally invested in concepts like love, settling, marriage, commitment etc. In other words she still has respect for emotions.

Why am I writing about these people? Well, as I watched the movie, I just realized I could relate to 2 out of these 3 characters and was able to relate to a lot to the 3rd character only because I encounter a lot of them everyday. I started out like Natalie, naive and believing romance, love, true love, commitment, and how love can change the whole world, even when my brain told me to go fuck myself. Then after a few breakups (crappy ones) at one point I began to become Ryan. Ryan is the older but frustrated version of Natalie who could never find or give commitment, who convinced himself that life sucks but it would sound cooler if you say you are single by choice and begins to run and hide from emotions (even though deep in he still is a Natalie). Don't get me wrong, love is not bad, but lovers can be bad.

And then there is Alex. There are so many fakers out there who are married (or in a relationship) and yet truly deep inside want to be single, unhappily married (and chances are their spouses don't even know that) and just want to get out of their mundane lives and don't have the guts to do that, so they try to live a fake second parallel life where they are single. They may or may not try to screw you (Ryan or Natalie) over completely, but they always have a ready get out of jail free card that says, hey this was supposed to be casual, I can't be in a relationship with anyone, I am married, I love you but I can't leave my spouse, in another lifetime we would be together...blah blah blah and oh my favorite one is - I am still trying to find myself...are you fucking kidding me? I don't blame the Alex's of the world, they are screwed up and delusional and can even break up with over phone and still ask you if they can be friends with you. I blame all the Ryan's and Natalie's out there who think they have to settle either too soon in the game or too late in the game and think they have to settle and compromise for no real reason. There are tons of people like Alex who are never going to leave their partners but would be more than happy to drag you and drown you into their low, full-of-self-pity lives. Oh and by the way, there are a lot of single Alex's too who are never ever going to commit to you or take you too seriously and are still 'finding themselves' because they like the idea of being your bf or gf or partner or whatever but without the actual responsibilities. 'Casual' is often the equivalent of bullshit in my opinion.

Reality is that emotional vulnerability is a very risky thing. This is especially the case when you have had bitter experiences in relationships - romantic or platonic or even family related. But without it, you can never truly experience anything. If you cannot open yourselves up to enjoy something, you won't have a fully mindful experience. After all, mindfulness is not telling you to go become a monk (though that is not a bad option at all, I still consider it often, but no point, if you are doing that to escape emotions), but rather to accept yourself, others and the world in general and look at things as they are. Love is the most beautiful feeling but is also capable of throwing immense pain and suffering. Love is about giving and not taking and is not a source that is going to be extinguished and non-replenishable. So you if you truly love to love then there is no stopping you, just accept that it can lead to pain and joy at the same time and each failed relationship comes with a lot of lessons and will teach you when to back off and when to invest emotional energy and when to completely walk away and never look back. And since we are talking about giving love to others, what you need to realize is that you must give a lot of that love to yourself. If you accept yourself, nourish yourself and be kind to yourself, good things will automatically get attracted to you and screw it if they don't, you have yourself to love you. Be happy with yourself and by yourself if need be but do that before trying to share your love with others. Moral of the story - Don't let the Natalie inside you die a premature death by feeding yourself bullshit stories even if they come from a place of self preservation, life is too short to live like a stone.

Break the monotony - Let there be life!!

I have been having a bit of confusion and doubts about life in general (trust me, I have a lot of that). I set myself some goals too far in the future. Now, mind you, these are not bad goals and having a vision in general is not bad at all. But sometimes I have these emotional outbursts where I get too excited about things or lose passion altogether for things (blame the goddamned disorder). Lately I have been kind of having a mid-life crisis, even though I am not sure I am old enough for a mid life crisis yet, but you get the point. I was confused, and heck I may still be a little confused, because I want to go back to school (for a PhD, already have my two trophy Masters), but I also want to travel, get a new job, move to a new sunny city, live a fairly luxurious life, and about my single status - I am perpetually confused about that.

With all this said, I had been spending the last few weeks just completely stressed out, confused and basically feeling like a loser and feeling very unhappy. I had stressed myself out to the point where I started getting persistent headaches, and the goals I set for myself suddenly began to feel like giant icebergs increasing the stress all the more. The result, I couldn't enjoy the simple things I normally enjoy doing. I lost 37 lbs in the last year and now I am in a good shape that I should be proud of, but guess what I haven't even gone shopping to buy some clothes that now will fit me or take selfies and post them (so childish). Similarly, I have hardly been going out, having fun or doing anything which makes me even remotely happy. And thanks to the east coast weather (I know it is an excuse) I haven't been traveling much either and life pretty much has been feeling claustrophobic. I just realized that all I really want is to break the monotony. A special mention here to a friend who made me reconsider my stress by simply stating some of the obvious. I give too many fucks about things which don't necessarily matter (got this from the subtle art of not giving a fuck). I get bored easily, I need constant intellectual stimulation and communing with nature. So I decided to list down a few little really simple things that make me happy and change my mood. Here are a few random things for example.I think everyone of us should do this little exercise every now, just to bring ourselves back to reality. These are just simple things, not your grand death goals -

1) Go to a beach, stare the water.
2) Go hiking up a mountain and stare at the ground below.
3) Go shopping, throw money on clothes and shoes and makeup (which I almost never wear).
4) Read a nice book.
5) Paint something.

Having been caught up with all my thoughts, confusions and doubts, I forgot that all I needed to do was to break the monotony of just going to work and coming back home and to simply stop being overwhelmed and worrying about how hard some of my goals are, how well or poorly planned my steps towards my goals are and even getting confused if the goals I have set for myself are truly things I want. All I needed to do was to just stop thinking and do one of the few silly things that would make me happy.

"Break the Monotony, Do something strange" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by MAXTACY®

I am not saying you should stop working towards your goals. Sometimes all you need to do is to take a break from your own self. Mindfully appreciating the simple pleasures of life does wonders and helps us enjoy the journey towards our goals instead of postponing our happiness until we achieve something, which, trust me is a recipe for failure and psychology will back me up on that. Instead we get caught up in the vicious circle of perpetual overthinking and getting nowhere. Even a car needs servicing every now and then, why then we as humans think we are exempt from breaks and re-servicing at times? You don't have to become the next Zuckerberg or Mother Teresa overnight. Just go start working out, take a new class, get a new hair cut, go to your building roof top and shout at the top of your voice, whatever it is, just break the monotony, do it today, do it now. Go do something and don't let yourself drown in your own dead sea of overthinking, stress, anxiety and monotony. Just break the cycle and go do something silly.

A simple restart!

Sometimes the simplest solution to your computer problems is to just restart the computer. Well, in essence that is just what I am doing to this blog. The last time I published something on here was over about 5 years ago and of course I looked through the drafts in here, there were several of them created subsequently but just not published.

A great deal has happened in the last 5 years, I have grown 5 years older (duh!), I was almost unemployed twice, had to sleep in a car for a while, got cheated on, changed a couple of apartments, moved closer to the river (as I always wanted to), traveled to several places including even a Euro-trip and so on. These last 5 years just like the few years before that have seen a lot of ups and downs.

If the last decade has taught me anything, it is that sometimes life is just a bitch and at other times it is not, but you have to just keep going on, accept yourself and stop giving into inhibitions and self limiting beliefs (and stalkers too). I am going to resume my journey of writing random crap on here and hell, I might even publish some of the drafts in here. Don't let anyone or anything take the light away from you, keep on shining!!