Erwaman's Personal Journal - April 2013

Gratitudes

In mid-March, I watched this YouTube video on the benefits of optimism. At the 11-min mark, the speaker, Shawn Achor, brings up a slide that lists 5 things you can do to boost your positive-thinking. One of those things is listing 3 things you're grateful for each day. By doing this, after a while, people start scanning their lives for the positives, instead of focusing on the negatives. I did this for 21 days, and here's the final list I came up with:

1. I am grateful that my neighbor Jeff showed me how to start the lawn mower today.
2. I am grateful that the weather was beautiful today and that Planet Granite set up a slackline outside so I could mess around on it.
3. I am grateful that my brother gave me his bike, so I didn't have to buy one or a car.
4. I am grateful that I am healthy and able to live independently and go on runs.
5. I am grateful that I have a friend like Andy Tien who I can talk to about anything and who listens and responds with support and advice and ideas of his own.
6. I am grateful that I live in a world where we have the technology that enables us to communicate with each other no matter where we are in the world.
7. I am grateful that due to Daylight Saving Time, when I left work at 6:30 PM today, it was still bright outside.
8. I am grateful that there is a rock climbing gym a mile from where I live.
9. I am grateful that a newspaper is delivered to my house every day, so that I can read about what's happening in the world.
10. I am grateful that contacts were invented, so that people like me can use them while playing sports.
11. I am grateful that there are free public libraries, which give people access to books and movies for free.
12. I am grateful that my manager Tim Herby swung by my office yesterday and helped me figure out some Mongoose issues.
13. I am grateful that I live within biking distance from work.
14. I am grateful that Microsoft gave me a Caltrain Go Pass, which enables me to ride the Caltrain for free.
15. I am grateful that we live in a country where tap water is potable and where water fountains are ubiquitous, allowing people to get free water practically anywhere.
16. I am grateful that Wikipedia exists and allows me to learn about any topic in the world.
17. I am grateful that Hanyu Pinyin exists, allowing me to easily input Chinese on my computer.
18. I am grateful that sites like MDBG.net and Google Translate exist, allowing me to learn Chinese independently.
19. I am grateful that my brother gave me his digital camera when mine broke, so that I did not need to buy a new one.
20. I am grateful that the world is full of beautiful places like Iceland.
21. I am grateful that on the first night of our trip, we met a group of high school students who we went bar hopping with and from whom we learned a little about Iceland from Icelanders' perspectives.
22. I am grateful that despite my bag getting checked in to the wrong flight, it was still delivered to my house within 24 hours of my flight's arrival, at no extra cost to me.
23. I am grateful that on the last night in Iceland, we randomly chose Ban Thai Restaurant for dinner, where I had the best meal of my life (spring rolls + ginger curry).
24. I am grateful that we stumbled upon Baejarin's hotdog stand, where I ate the two most delicious hotdogs in my life.
25. I am grateful that I saw the Gulfoss waterfall in Iceland; it was the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen.
26. I am grateful that geothermal hot springs exist, allowing one to soak outdoors even during the winter.
27. I am grateful that there are duty-free stores at the airport, allowing me to buy goods at a cheaper price.
28. I am grateful that the hotel we stayed at in Reykjavik had a free computer cluster with free printing, as well as free wifi in the lobby.
29. I am grateful that I heard about the sole Icelandic Nobel laureate, Halldór Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955, which led me to buy an English translation of his Nobel Prize-winning book, Independent People, from Eymundsson, a chain bookstore. The book has been fantastic so far.
30. I am grateful that Microsoft gave all its employees a free Surface. It is light and a good alternative to bringing a laptop on short trips.
31. I am grateful that Microsoft allowed all its employees a free PC refresh, which allowed me to get a work laptop.
32. I am grateful that both SFO and Seatac have free wifi, allowing me to send some emails while waiting for my flights.
33. I am grateful that I can access my pay statements, benefits, and 401k plan online, allowing me to easily keep track of my money and to download a copy.
34. I am grateful that English is widely spoken in Iceland, allowing me to easily communicate during my visit.
35. I am grateful that Google maps has walking and biking directions, and that thousands of people have contributed to Google maps, adding and editing trails, allowing me to plot out my runs and bike rides.
36. I am grateful that so much research has been done on health and diet, and that this knowledge is freely available online, allowing me to make better-informed decisions about my lifestyle and what I eat.
37. I am grateful that I have my own office at Microsoft, allowing me privacy and a quieter environment in which I can focus better.
38. I am grateful that my bike lock locks and unlocks so easily, allowing me to lock it even at tight angles or when it's a tight fit.
39. I am grateful that when I purchased a bike pump, the bike shop employee watched me pump my bike tires and gave me some suggestions: to raise the pump bar all the way up before starting to press down and to not jerk the connector so suddenly off the air valve when I was finished but instead to jiggle it loose more gently.
40. I am grateful that when I went for my run today, twice, people reversed their cars in driveways to allow me more room to run by.
41. I am grateful that my landlord fed me while she was here and that she left me a fridge and freezer full of food that she allowed me eat while she was gone.
42. I am grateful that I work with such talented and intelligent people, who write complex features, find and fix subtle bugs, have such deep knowledge of various technologies, and are so helpful and supportive in sharing their expertise and improving our product.
43. I am grateful that my mom patiently spends time answering my Chinese questions.
44. I am grateful that my dad gives me lots of financial advice and helps me file my tax forms.
45. I am grateful that my brother has given me lots of college, interview, work, and life advice and shared his extra five years of experience with me.
46. I am grateful that Tyson Mao was kind enough to be my partner for taking my lead climbing certification test on multiple occasions (I have failed multiple times.).
47. I am grateful that my team at Microsoft holds monthly socials with free food and drink.
48. I am grateful that Microsoft developed TypeScript (typescriptlang.org), which adds some type checking to JavaScript and has reduced the number of runtime bugs we have.
49. I am grateful that Alan Bishop and Vadim Gorokhovsky helped my team convert our code base over to TypeScript. In the process, I learned a lot about TypeScript from them.
50. I am grateful that even though the Sunnyvale Library did not have a book I was looking for, they were able to request it from another library and notify me when it arrived.
51. I am grateful that with Gmail's large inbox capacity, I never have to delete emails and can dig up old emails easily by searching.
52. I am grateful that someone created gmap-pedometer.com because it allows me to plot and save runs, and it will automatically add in mile markers for me.
53. I am grateful that while I was on vacation in Iceland, my teammates figured out and fixed the root cause of the P0 bug that I had been working on for several weeks.
54. I am grateful that the Bay Area is such a bike-friendly area -- there are many bike lanes and you can bring/load your bike on almost every kind of public transportation.
55. I am grateful that someone invented bike lights, allowing me to see and be seen while riding at night.
56. I am grateful that someone invented fenders, which reduce the amount of splash that hits me when riding through puddles.
57. I am grateful that the refrigerator in my landlord's house has a built-in water filter and dispenser, so I can easily get clean, good-tasting water.
58. I am grateful that Hal Higdon created and posted his marathon training guides online, so that people like me can use them to train for races.
59. I am grateful that my laptop has an SD card slot, so I do not need extra cables to transfer the pictures from my camera to my computer.
60. I am grateful that my bike light flashes orange when it is low-battery, so that I can recharge it before it completely runs out.
61. I am grateful that I had a weird bug that prevented me from checking in my code for a week because in the process of fixing it, I cleaned up and optimized my code.
62. I am grateful that my landlord is coming back tomorrow; it's difficult taking care of the house and cooking myself, and it can get lonely sometimes living by yourself.
63. I am grateful that Tyson Mao biked behind me on my 12-mile run and carried my water for me.

During this experiment, it definitely felt uplifting writing my gratitudes and rereading the gratitudes I had already written. I also noticed that I focused more on the positives in life.

In addition to "3 Gratitudes", Shawn also listed the following four things you can do to increase your positivity:

• Journaling
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Random Acts of Kindness

I'm thinking of giving journaling a try next - basically writing each day about a positive experience that you've had in the past 24 hours.