If you're devoutly religious,
if you're only mildly religious,
if you're happily an atheist,
If you decide to give this 12 minutes,
and if you can ignore the god parts,
I think gratitude is a universal healer.
Some people pray.
Some people meditate.
No matter how you get introspective,
give gratitude a try.
Maybe it's to a god.
Maybe it's to people.
Maybe it's to science.
Maybe it's to the universe at large.
.
.
I assure you I'm not trying to evangelize anything here but gratitude, and I hope that this message from a religious leader won't offend anyone. If it does, I am truly sorry, and I urge you to see past the religion and listen for the message about gratitude.
.
.
I am very grateful for each of you. I am grateful for hubski as a mechanism to make the world a better place even in some small way.
It's a great message to keep in mind, even in 2020. I'm grateful that Hubski didn't completely shun me for the years of my Trump-centric bullshit. There's gonna be much less of that, gradually, but I'm not sorry for Rudy Giuliani content. I'm thankful for you too, bruh, and for everyone here. Love this community. I shall evangelize gratitude with you.
On gratitude. You may have seen Shawn Achor's video on Happiness - where he claims that "Happiness" is not the result of success but rather that success follows from first being "happy". His book The Happiness Advantage expands (backed up by research) and gives steps we can take to become happy. One of the exercises he recommends is to keep a gratitude diary where every day you reflect on your day and write down something from the day to be grateful about. Here's a video summary of his book. The relevant section is The Tetris Effect. Or a written review if you'd prefer. The point is that regularly reflecting on things to be grateful about helps re-train your brain to scan for positive patterns in your everyday life rather than negative and over time, it has a beneficial effect.