I heard it from a Taiwanese drama. It was a voice over of a dead husband, with flashing loving memories in the perspective of his living wife.
He said “Life is a slower simmer of goodbyes, so how do you choose to live in the next moment?” My answer was to be present, learn from the past,
choose to be uncomfortable and pay full attention in the now. Because before we know it, we’re yanked into a whole different moment with a whole different context,
like the movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. Are you ready for the truth? *Deep Breaths*
- yes practice that too, deep breaths teaches your body to calm your mind. What would you rather have on your mind during your dying moments?
For many of us that moment comes by a surprise. So I always try to come back to the default mindset filled with curiosity and gratitude. Is it okay to look back and wonder what went wrong?
Now, it is only smart to also look for the energizing moments too :). One last thing, please pretty please, write down that energizing moment for your future self, because it works very very well.
Aug 11th, 2023; 11:11pm PST, was a sureal moment for me, it was the moment I submitted SoGoHa Android to Google Play Console to beta testers. It brought me
immense joy just to see the app on my own phone. And noting down gratitudes for the first time on a production account. It still brings me joy to think back on that moment.
And now getting to scroll back in time, of the moments that brought me joy truely pulls me into the place of apperciation. Is a great place to be.
Got a pet and you’ve been raising it? Why, mostly likely because it brings you comfort/joy/relaxation, or all of the above. Now, how much does that cost? Maybe $50/mo for food, maybe $30/mo for dog facility access, maybe you got a $200 dog bed( or 3 dog beds!), maybe $300 health preventative med per year. That’s quite some amount of money, but we’re happy to pay it. Why? Some of us need that buddy to bring us outside more! Some of us need someone to cuddle up with because we live alone. Some of us just need to know, someone will always love us no matter the situation. Those comforts and stability is what we’re paying for. We’re paying for our mental health. We just never really looked deep enough, and chose to label it that way.
Now, think about how much you give away to be on the “freemium” plan of social media platforms. And do you enjoy the end result of those interactions? Likely not, but know that you are paying for it. If it drains your energy, upping your anxiety, and you wonder where your time went, those are your payments to the social media platforms.
The internet is still very young, and we haven't had the space to think about how we set boundaries with it, the practice of information hygiene. And the lack of information hygiene is destroying our mental health. If you agree, and are ready to practice information hygiene, you can go into your browsing history to get a bird’s eye view of what you browse, if you’re shocked at your browsing history, sit with that feeling. That’s the first step to recovering from addictions, being present with your shortcomings :) . And when you’re ready, and decided to not sleep walk through the internet anymore, you’ll come to realize even on the internet, there’s a lot of beautiful sights too :) .
How do I begin to write this… let’s start with the over work culture in America. As many started to realize, now that the pandemic has given us time to think, and forced the world to “stop doing things and just stay still”. We’ve been over worked, under paid, for too long. For what, cause many of us were caught in a rat race, just to survive. Now if you learned to work smarter, because you’ve tried harder and that didn’t give you what you deserve. You can buy your time back, by spending that savings account, or using that unemployment insurance money wisely. And during this “unemployed” time, you catch your breath, and reinvest in yourself by learning a new skill. It can be a job skill that will get you better pay; it can be moving to a different state/country to lower cost of living; it can be learning to be extremely aware of your spendings; and perhaps vote with your dollars. Whatever it is, it should result in you having a better life. Not “so I can get hired to another job and maybe things will be different.”. Most societies isn’t build to benefit most of us, is set up to keep those in power at the expense of most. Thus, it requires a lot of energy, smart navigation, everyday, to work against the systems that doesn’t serve us. Is draining to have to go to a job we don’t love, so we can earn enough, to buy ourselves the life experiences we deserve, I know. I am too, tire of it.
Which is why we need to learn how to recharge faster, be reminded why we do the hard stuff, in order to get to the good stuff. And so far, I’ve learned that skill is the mindset of gratitude. Notice the drain that’s not blocked so your street isn’t flooded. Notice the continuous supply of electricity hasn’t stop fueling your shelter for years. Notice the tastes of a certain comfort food that’s bring you stability every time. When you choose to think about it, there’s actually a lot that’s working well. When you practice the gratitude mindset, you’re constantly recharging yourself as the day go on. And as a result, there will be less and less bad days in life. You will get to continue doing the hard things, over time you get more efficient at it, and that skill of being comfortable doing more uncomfortable things. Will result in a better today :) .
Having lived through what felt like wave after wave of challenging times and complex situations, it has further proved a thought I had. “Bad” things doesn’t stop happening, and when “bad” things happen is an opportunity to make drastic changes. Often times, things just happens to us. Sometimes we let things happen to us because we ignore(or yet to learn) the signals from past experiences. So, what are you going to choose? I always ask myself, you’re going to sit in misery? Or you’re going to get yourself out of this misery and try your hardest not let it happen again? Because if you don’t, you will fall deeper into misery. At some point, you won’t remember who you were, and/or who you wished to be. If you been working hard to keep good people around you, you’ve got a good padding to land on. They can often times support and buy you time. But you have to do the work of getting back on your feet, because often times, it may not be our fault that something bad happened to us, but IS ALWAYS our responsibility to rebuild from it.
Now, how does one improve one self? Figure out what gets you excited/desperate. I consider myself a person who isn’t good with sitting in discomfort, so I often use that to my advantage, use the discomfort as an energy source to act/learn. And those actions often times turned into a life skill. And those skills are often times just practicing becoming who I wish I had. Learn to be, my advocator because no one else knew how. Learn to be, my cheerleader, because no one else can do it as often as I can. Learn to be, my accountable buddy, tell myself that behavior sucked, try again. Learn to be, my own engineer, because no one else will see SoGoHa as valuable as I do, an idea worth building and sharing with the world. Because life isn’t just about solving problems, we solve problems because it the maintenance necessary to have a good life. So don’t forget to celebrate the simple joys in life, those moments when things just work, and don’t forget to keep practicing becoming who you wish you had.
Two months into the war, as a very fortunate person, not having to experience the direct impacts of the war. I like many, praying from far away, hoping every past day was the last day of the war. And when that didn't happen day after day for 2 months, my mental health kept diving deeper into the void. Till I recall a past conversation with a co-worker, whom happen to major in History during their college years. We conversed about the past conflicts humans has dealt with, there was alot of curiosity, analyzing, and reflecting, but very little feeling horrible or the urge to act on the issues. Which made me realize, I'm living through history right now, a war in the mist of a pandemic, there are things one can do yet it be silly to expect anyone individual effort to stop such large scale suffering immmediately. Thus if we borrow the perspective of a historian while living amongst history, and stay in touch with what we can help as an individual and understand that that is enough. We'll start to become the observer of the events happening to us, not just a victim of circumstances. And know that according to history, suffering does end and humanity had always found its way towards a better future.
I happened to tune into Brene Brown's podcast where she invites her friend Karen Walrond to an episode of "Unlocking Us", in this episode Brene express she's felt immense guilt for feeling happy at her son's school activity when Urkraine boys of her son's age are fighting a war. Karen is an author of the book "The Lightmaker's Manifestor, How to Work for Change without Losing Your Joy", talks about remember to feel joy because that's the fuel that keeps us going. Which directly reaonsated with the reasons I wanted to create SoGoHa.
Hence, I thought it be imporant to share a little bit of their conversation here. Below is a snapshot of the conversation between the two that captures why we should make gratitude journeling a regular pratice.
[Conversation transcript credits to brenebrown.com]
KW: “What’s a good thing? What’s something good that happened? What is something that I can hang on to? What is something that I can hang hope on to, so that I can go to sleep and wake up tomorrow and try again?” And I think it really, really is a practice, I don’t think it… If you’re not used to doing that, it’s like an atrophied muscle, it can feel a little awkward to try to do it, and you can feel guilty, like, “How dare I do that?,” because it’s not something that you’ve done all the time, and so I do it, I’ve been doing it for 20 something years, maybe even 30 years now, and it is just part of what I do every single day, I have to. It’s the only way I can make it through.
BB: Wow. And I’ve never known you not to do it. Yeah. And you’ve taught me a lot. I don’t know if you know this, I was thinking about, while I was lying in bed last night because I knew I was going to get to talk to you today. I’m going to start crying. There’s a 99% chance. But the year that we met, I was taking up photography. Do you remember that?
KW: Yep. Uh huh.
BB: And you were this amazing photographer, and for Lent that year, I don’t ever give up anything for Lent, I always add something positive, and so I made myself take a picture with my big camera, which I barely knew how to use, although you taught me like F stops and stuff, I took a picture every day, of something I thought was beautiful during Lent. Fucking changed my life.
KW: Yeah. Yes.
BB: It changed my life.
KW: It’s so common at the end of the year, people to say, “Well, that was a crappy year. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I can’t wait for the new year.” I often tell people, “Go look in your cell phone camera at your archives, and you’re going to notice that the year wasn’t as bad as you thought.” Because we tend to pull out our cameras when something good has happened, we’ve run into a friend or we’re having dinner, we’ve got a great latte or whatever, we pull it out and I’m like, “I bet if you scroll through, you’re going to find moments that you forgot, were really great in your life.” And back to this feeling guilt about joy, there’s a part of me that really feels… I don’t know if it’s partially cultural, I don’t know what it is, but to me, if we feel guilt about the joy then the bad guys win.
BB: God. Yes.
KW: Right.
BB: Yes, because I can’t get out of bed. And I get fearful about speaking out about things that are important to me and… Yeah, they win.
KW: They win. We can’t let them win, we can’t let them win, and joy is how we develop resiliency. I was talking to our friend Laura the other day, and I was saying “The idea… ” I’m a black woman, I’m from the Caribbean, I’m from Trinidad that has a huge Carnival, which would normally be going full bore this week, and I was thinking about how Carnival in Trinidad and probably in Brazil as well, and even in New Orleans, it comes from the enslaved… The enslaved are the people who started the carnival, it certainly is in Trinidad, and talk about oppression and sadness and horror and trauma and everything. And there’s this time when we’re going to dance and sing and play. It’s because of things like that, that we become resilient, is because of being able to tap into that or making… Not even the capability, but making the effort and the intention to tap into that, that we remind ourselves of our humanity. We remind ourselves of why we’re interconnected, why it matters, why our work and our tears matter, they matter because there’s good. And so for me…
BB: Wow that’s beautiful.
KW: I feel like joy is… You have to do it, otherwise, why are we here?
BB: What’s the point?
KW: What is the point? What is the point of helping people in Ukraine if we don’t know what that help could get for them? We don’t know the joy that could happen. That’s why we do it.
BB: It’s so crazy. You really answered the question, you really unlocked this… You gave us some keys. Because people listening are like, “Brené, you’ve been writing about a lot of this stuff for a long time, what’s wrong with you?” The thing is that it’s a practice, it’s not a knowledge base.
[Conversation transcript credits to brenebrown.com]
I hope that bit of conversation made you feel more energized :). You can listen to the full postcast episode here. I hope that was helpful :D! That's it for this post, I'll be back to working on SoGoHa more, meanwhile, please take care out there!
It was an epiphany, on October 2016 on the streets of San Francisco, I picked up a pot from Macy’s, I looked at the recipe to check how much I paid for vs the original price. I noticed the receipt high lighted the amount I paid, bring little attention to how much I’ve saved. On my way back, I noticed a homeless man sleeping on the floor, surrounding him was snacks and small bites placed in a respectful manner by warmhearted strangers. But with 10 people passing by per second, it hardly felt like people noticed this moment of proof we do try to look out for each other. In the same moment, I had a flash back of how I felt when checking my bank account, the withdraws are in red text, giving me slight anxiety boost, while deposits weren’t highlighted. Those 3 events left me to conclude that good things does happen, the world just doesn’t seem to care to highlight it. I remember feeling conflicted, hopeful, and dishearten. Dishearten we’re surrounded with efforts to bring attentions towards the “bad” and little towards the “good” in the world, when both set of events are realities. Hopeful that this realization is the beginning of us doing something about the lack of positivity we live in. So I started making connections, the news likes to sale bad news, most social media are filled with fabricated glamorous moments, what if there’s a place on the internet where we’ll share moments in life that brought us joy and gratitude. A place where, spending time on it actually leaves you feeling energized and stress relieved after a long day. A place where a collection of something good happened is documented.