5 Ideas That Changed My Life
Often, more than the situation itself, it is how one perceives and processes the situation that brings about a change in their emotions. When I realised this, I began trying to manipulate what I feel in response to situations. I've curated these ideas or strategies over a number of years, and I can truly say that they have immensely contributed to my mental wellbeing and overall quality of life.
The 00:00 mindset.
I was complaining about a bad day to a friend, and he said that earlier that day he saw a tattoo reading, '00:00'. I thought about it for the rest of the day.
00:00 means reset, every single day. It doesn't mean everything that happened today doesn't count. But, it indicates a new data point.
Let's say you didn't eat healthy today and you feel bad about it, we can call today an 'undesired datapoint'. By eating healthy tomorrow and the days following that, you can offset the undesired datapoint(s), by adding more 'desired datapoints'. 00:00 is an opportunity for you to give more evidence to yourself (and everyone else) that you are the person you would like to be.
It can be applied to anything- failing an exam, lying to a friend, biting your nails. Just offset the datapoint. You still failed the exam, lied to your friend, and your nails are short, but the 00:00 mindset will make it just a blip, or it can show character development if you have been having 'undesired datapoints' for a while.
This mindset has prompted me to be kinder to myself.
Romanticise life.
When the hot chocolate tastes just right, when I see my favourite people laugh, when I walk home from the hospital after connecting well with a patient, when I drive by an aesthetic road, I think to myself (or out loud), "If this isn't life, I don't know what is." It's just appreciating the goodness in all the little moments that when stringed together make what we call 'life'.
Everyone thinks that we have a lot of time, but that is a cruel illusion. You might miss your sister's birthday because you are working. But what you might not know is, she only has two more birthdays with the possibility of spending time with you before she moves to Australia with her husband. You might miss a lecture because you wanted to sleep a little longer, but what if I told you, you had just 23 more lectures before the last time you ever see all your friends together in the same place? What is ordinary to you today, will be a special occasion, or a miracle in the future.
For the last few months I have been romanticising life, and writing meticulously in my journal. I used to write only to vent negative feelings before, but now, a lot of the pages and by extension my life is filled with everything that I am so grateful for.
There was a study conducted in 2003 by Emmons and McCullough on university students for ten weeks. They asked one group to spend five minutes everyday writing about what they were grateful for, and one group to record hassles and one group to record neutral events. They found that the gratefulness group were doing much better both mentally and physically when compared to the other two groups. Around 95% of our thoughts today are what we had yesterday. That means one can train themselves to feel happier or more content to a certain extent by consciously trying to appreciate moments.
The gaming perspective.
I came up with this idea when I was applying to medical schools. It was a lot more fun, and a lot less stressful when I started thinking about it like it was a game. Although the aim was to win the game and get an offer to study medicine, I was focussed on just playing the game well. When I told my parents this, they were worried and said, "But life's not a game, Niv."
Why can't life be a game? What is stopping you from doing what you want? The gaming perspective unlocked this whole other world of freedom. It made me a lot less worried and to not overthink about consequences.
It is very interesting to just see where the story goes. I'd change my narrative as I see fit. I got rejected from the University of Oxford. I was convinced it was my dream to go there to study medicine. There were two possible narratives that I could have told myself-
Narrative 1: I have just lost a part of my dream, there's a chance that the other three medical schools that I applied to might reject me as well.
This narrative depressed me, and I was grieving the person that I would never be. But I needed to keep going and prepare for the other medical school interviews that I had or risk losing my chance of studying medicine.
Narrative 2: There are three other medical schools, one of which I might go to and meet the people in the future who are waiting just for me to get there.
When I got my first offer to study medicine, I was sitting in the school cafe, and I cried. Around the same time, there were kids crying for the same reason in Wrexham, in Chelmsford, in Dumfries, and in Hull. Those kids are my best friends today. Narrative 2 became my reality.
Invest in people
Everyone is fighting a battle that you know not of, be kind and invest in people. Doing little things goes a long way. Is your friend going through a hard time? Maybe drop by their house with doughnuts. Is your brother coming home from a back-packing holiday? Drive to the airport to pick him up with a funny name sign that you made. There's a new student in the year? Smile and say hi.
At the end of the day, more than any of the other ideas I mentioned earlier, people change your life. If I'm able to play the game of life, it is because I have faith that if I do fall, there are people to catch me every single time. It is like chess, the king might be the most important piece, but without the other pieces, you're not going to win.
Investing in people involves being aware of what people are feeling, and catering to their need in any small way that you can. These small investments compound over time. For them and for you. Maybe sometimes I invest in the wrong people, but I can afford that because of all the other investments that I have made.
Love is after all, a verb.
The windmill ideology.
Imagine you're standing at the bottom of a windmill and you're trying to push the blades to make it work. Initially, it is very hard, you're working against air resistance and the blades are moving slowly. But if you keep up with the effort, eventually it builds momentum and picks up speed. It becomes easy for you to maintain the rotation.
This idea about work, and trusting the process goes a long way in improving motivation. This can be applied to any habit like going to the gym, or studying, or even trying to learn hair or skin care. At the start, it would seem difficult to keep up the motivation, especially when you can't see any physical result of your hard work. What might work instead is coming up with other ways you can give yourself that motivation.
For example, I only recently started writing online. I've been told to accept that it would sometimes feel like screaming into the abyss. I admit, it does feel like that if I compare myself to established newsletter writers. But my aim for now isn't to get a lot of readers, but to produce 100 articles. I'm just playing the game, and part of the reason for me to enjoy it is through understanding the windmill ideology.
On that note, thank you to every single person who has read this far, you make me feel less alone in the abyss. Thank you to my editor (my sister) who not only reads every single draft of every article that I write (to make sure I don't discard "the good stuff"), but also boosts my confidence (most of the time).
