Social Network: The significance of being grateful

One of my favourite words is Kaizen, which in Japanese means continuous improvement on a daily basis. In 2016, one of the habits I’m very proud of imbibing is listening to audio books and Podcasts during my daily 10-kilometre walks. My favourite podcasts are The Tim Ferriss Show’s and The Art of Charm’s where achievers are interviewed and they talk about their journey to success. The more I listen to successful people, the more I hear them talk about the power of journaling and the habit of capturing thoughts, ideas, experiences and failures. Inspired by Tim Ferriss’ idea of maintaining a ‘Five Minute Journal’, I started to actively seek an online version. After spending an hour on the Android Play Store, I finally decided on the Bliss app which had a very high rating. It’s a rather simple app that helps ask you to write down answers for following categories. Out of the eight categories, here are my top four.

Often times, we take many things in our life for granted. It’s a good exercise to pause and reflect on the things we are blessed with and people who have helped us. Marinating a gratitude journal helps make your life very positive.

This section encourages you to visualise the perfect life you would like to sculpt. By writing down your wish lists, it helps you make the right life choices that take you closer to your life goals.

In our constant quest for improvement and perfection, we can be overtly self-critical about ourselves. This exercise motivates you to look at the brighter side by asking you to write down three wins for the day. These could either be small wins or big and this helps you power you further for higher success.

Ryan Holiday, the author of the best-selling book, Obstacle is the way encourages us to look at problems as opportunities to get solutions instead of getting bogged down. This exercise helps you to list down your everyday problems and failures. By acknowledging them and openly embracing failures, you set yourself to avoid making the same mistakes in the future and set yourself on a path to regular improvement. This New Year, get yourself on a path to better success by making use of apps like Bliss. Remember that we overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in the long term. Journaling apps and Gratitude Journals help us get better slowly but surely. Here’s wishing you a fabulous year of achievements.