An elixir of well-being
Every day I can’t live without writing daily gratitude.
A few months ago, after many times crashing and burnt out so badly, I decided to solve my personal problem instead of searching around. It was a period of time when the first thing that popped up on top of my head was the same thing, prolonged stress, and anxiety.
It had been a super lonely experience for more than a year. I woke up at midnight and work till the early morning then slept in the late afternoon. Surrounding me were the four walls. Sometimes I walked outside the house in the early morning to have some fresh air. I thought it would be OK because this was not my first time.
In the past, I spent around three years working on scientific research. All by myself in a corner of a room. It was a year and a half before my first trip to the Valley, another before the second trip to the West. All the time, it was only me with a computer and internet, but I made it through.
I used to see it as the norm. My original track was to be a mathematician. I locked myself in a room and released my imagination. Sometimes an experience was so intense that I could not even talk in any human language. My mind was full of abstract visualization. When I was in grad school, people often caught me stay in the lab at midnight, overnight, and on weekends. This might look daunting because of a long period of time, but it looked short to me. I was in the flow without a concept of time and space, even who I was at that moment.
This time, despite the fact there is a policy to stay at home, I just could not lock myself from the world anymore. There was so much pain out there that I would rather kill myself to end it. So, I picked a fight that was obviously not meant for me.
With everything I have, a computer and the internet, I move around in the digital world as if I was in the physical world. And I wrote. Emails. Notes. Summaries. Blogs. Code. A lot. However, it did not change anything. The world was still collapsing. My heart kept broken deeply.
In the end, when I could not do anything else, I came to Gratitude. It used to sound super trivial and ridiculous to me. I would say thank you to everybody for what I have earned from them every time. However, I always wondered whether I should take it more seriously or not. After hearing so many people talking to people about it, I decided to give it a try. Comparing to all other tasks, this was something that I could measure and tried naturally. At least, I knew that I wrote a lot.
I got stuck.
Completely miserable at writing down anything that makes me feel good that day. That was only five bullet points. I slowly dragged myself out of an abysmal nothingness. Then it came to a list of ten. It was like an intense battle between me and my 24-hour memory. After moving to that milestone of progress, I started to be more productive with … coding. That’s when I realize the power of gratitude.
However, this was not an easy process. I thought that I found an elixir of well-being. However, many months later, despite building a landing page and collects some emails, I could not make myself build a complete product. I did have a scrappy version with Notion, but it was only for me. I could not share it with anybody outside, then I decided to build a web app.
In three months, I built more than 100+ toy projects. Just to give me a better sense of tech development. I got stuck several times with the back-end. My computer was broken. Even when I try to testing and simplifying all unnecessary processes to get things done more quickly, everything was still broken again. I continue to crash and burn another time.
This time, I just accept that I am living in GMT +7 not PST or EST or Greenwich anymore. I do not return to my nocturnal schedule. I resist taking more coffee to stay awake. Just let it be.
Gratitude does not only helps us detox emotion but also builds genuine human connection.
During that period of time, I try to keep writing. I change two things. I don’t force myself to remember and increasing the bullet points in the note that I have to write. It was hard. I asked myself what else to write. I completely ran out of ideas for gratitude. My mind was empty in the list of 15 bullet points.
As an introvert, I found myself easily either drained or gained too much energy on social media. This was not good, so I had hibernated most of my channel by unfollowing news and stopping checking notifications. However, this time I returned to social media and online forums. Different from previous experience, with Gratitude, everything just felt so good.
I joined a group of strangers. After listening to what people felt gratitude and reading so many quotes about gratitude, I personally felt very resonated. It was an amplification of positiveness left in this world when every day there was news of hundred of thousands of deaths along with the economic recession.
This is so interesting. I’ve been doing research on the intersection of human, machine, and the mind for a couple of years. In the beginning, my investigation was more about intelligence, then it shifted to the imagination. When I tried to write the first chapter of my 1st time book, I struggled with the philosophy of design and what was called creativity.
My core training is mathematics. Whatever I look at, I always trying to see the math behind the scene first. At least it’s primary school math to tell a story. This is for my sanity. So, when moving to a topic of human and the subject experience and the philosophy, I was completely struggling because I could not see it through. This leads to me to many different projects to earn more experience, especially AI 4 Good, and get involved more with the global startup community. I also try with religions after some fail relationships. And get to know with art and game design community.
It turns out that there is a whole science behind Gratitude. And here I find myself again.
Summary
Gratitude looks trivial and obvious. Under ratted attribute that it can massively improve mood and human relationships.
Make it a habit. Acknowledgment and appreciation. Give and take.
Start and end slow. The middle becomes faster.
The science behind the scene.
Marcus Aurelius started his personal journal, the collection of his "Meditations", with a list of people whom he was thankful for. Now I also see your post, so I'll give this daily gratitude practice a try as well. Thanks for sharing your experience.