Gratitude

Gratitude – it makes your more resilient

Decisions, Fear, Flow, Gratitude, Habits, Happiness, possibility thinking, problem solving

This was news to me. I have always spoken about being grateful for whatever we have in life instead of bothering about what we don’t have. This habit has held me in good state, because God has genuinely given me a lot to be thankful for. That doesn’t mean I don’t have aspirations, but I definitely don’t get anxious about things which don’t come my way.

What I learnt over the last few weeks is that gratitude gets more dopamine into your brain. That spike in dopamine helps the brain feel good. Since the brain is designed to make you safe always, it is always looking for the next point of danger. So the brain is always looking for the next negative item.

When the dopamine enters and the brain feels safe, it does not have fear. When it feels safe it is willing to think of more possibilities. The moment you get into a possibility mode, you tend to solve problems better, you take better decisions and better decisions help you get better in life. You get into flow state faster because negative things are not bothering you.

When you are able to solve problems, then your brain does not get frustrated with the impediments that come your way.

When impediments come your way, your brain goes into negative mode trying to visualise all the negative situations in a snowball effect. When that happens, your ability to think of solutions goes down. And you get further frustrated, which leads to anxiety and most health related problems start from there.

Therefor being gracious, having gratefulness, is extremely good for your health. when you have good health automatically you become more resilient handling tough situations physically also.

Till next time then, be grateful for all that you have.

Carpe Diem!!!

Karmic cycle in play again

charity, Gratitude, Happiness, Karma

I keep coming back to these topics of Gratitude, Karma, Charity time and again. Actually these things keep you grounded when things are going well for you and lift you when you feel low.

Sometimes the universe has a way to send things your way for doing good. Today has been a very specific example. India had gone through a very tough period during the second wave of Covid between mid April to June this year. Quite a few people lost their lives and a lot of families were left without earning members in their families.

Through those time I had tried to do my little bit by doing some amount of charity.

Today it so happened that out of the blue I got a message on my mobile phone from one of the ‘Apps” called CRED that I use. Its an app that I have been using for a few years now and I had accumulated more than half a million points. While the App gives us an option to use the points to get different items on discount, somehow, I could not find any item in the recent past to utilise the points and they had just been accumulating.

Today I was just thinking randomly and this message came, where I could liquidate a hundred thousand points and feed 12 people. CRED has tied up with a NGO to feed victims of the Covid pandemic. This was like a God send. I didn’t have any use for the massive number of points that I had accumulated and they were going waste.

Now those same points can get used to do good. Amazing isn’t it. Something which was a waste for me, now gets utilised to feed people. I get the benefit of feeling good and also writing about it, while hopefully all those people get fed meals by this NGO.

I immediately liquidated 500000 points so that 60 people can be fed. if you have the intention to do good, the universe finds ways to help you get the capabilities to do good.

My father always said, you give a small thing in charity and God will find ways to give you many times over. I hope God keeps giving me the ability to keep doing good even more often.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Lucky or hardworking/smart work

charity, Gratitude, Karma

There’s always a lot of discussion which takes place whether a person is lucky because of which she is successful . While I would love to say that luck has no role to play, its pure work then there would be nothing more wrong in my view.

Being born at this time in the world when the world is a much safer place than 1000 years ago, its luck. As Warren Buffet says, being born in America versus some third world country was pure luck and more than half the battle won for him in his journey towards becoming the richest man in the world.

While tricks of the trade or skills are absolutely important – if you haven’t studied medicine you can’t get to become a successful surgeon. But as Napoleon used to say he would want to have a general in his army who was lucky. So a surgeon who is lucky could definitely be more successful in his surgeries, compared to another.

Or a surgeon who was born and practises in the United States of America could be much more prosperous than one in India – being born in the USA could be the one element – assuming the skill is constant.

Is luck a constant factor – again I don’t know. But having said that , my belief is that with your Karma you can change your luck and that is why I write so much about God / Karma / Charity / Gratitude. While I try to decipher the science behind it – like how gratitude improves your mood and therefore helps you think better and therefore you can do better – I am not sure if there’s a clear answer.

To cut the size of this post without sounding too philosophical, I do believe that luck does play a role – I would say at least 51% while you could attribute the remaining to hard work, smart work etc.

Let me know your views in the comments section below.

Till next time then

Carpe Diem!!!

Gratitude – Part 2

Fear, Financial Independence, Gratitude, Happiness, Human Brain, peak Performance

if you do a split of my posts, they can get equally split between Marketing, Financial independence, Human Mind & Performance, Charity / Karma / Gratitude.

I have mentioned multiple times that when I am feeling low, I decide to go and do charity. It gives me a high of a different kind. This is something which I seriously started doing when I heard Joe Polish on his podcast ilovemarketing.com. He had other ideas also about things which you can do when you are feeling low and don’t even have the money to do charity.

While continuing reading the book The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler, I realised that the human performance is very strongly linked to the human mind – nothing new here, but what was surprise was the scientific reason behind why gratitude or doing good for others helps improve performance.

As per the research which Steven talks about – gratitude trains the brain on looking at the positive things, for which you are thankful. The brain is otherwise seasoned to look for things which can ham us, so that it can protect us. When you are in the state of gratitude , the negative things which can harm us, get filtered out by the brain automatically. When the negative things are filtered out, there is reduced fear. Once that happens you automatically get into a good mood and you feel happy.

When we are in a good mood, we feel safe and secure. When we feel safe and secure, our mind is willing to wander and think. Due to this your creativity also gets enhanced. To get into the more technical details of how the neurobiology and neurochemistry work I would highly recommend reading his book.

Coming back to where I started this post, while I was splitting the Human Mind & Performance , from Charity / Gratitude / Karma, it seems from the research that Steven has done that actually these help improve the performance of the human mind.

So actually my blog posts then, have a skew towards the human mind and performance compared to other areas of marketing and finance. This is interesting.

While I have always had an inclination to continuously find ways to improve myself, I had never actually taken the rigorous analysis that Steven has done on improving myself.

Tell me what do you enjoy more – my posts on marketing, financial independence or human performance.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!