Striving Towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Your brain defaults to stress mode—but you can actually retrain it. Life has a way of highlighting what’s missing. The gap between where you are and where you thought you’d be can feel especially wide.

Most of us think happiness comes from fixing our problems and getting life “under control.”

But researchers studying gratitude found something surprising.

People who spent a few minutes each night writing down what they were grateful for didn’t just feel a little better. Everything shifted. They slept better, had more energy, felt less anxious.

Get this: their circumstances hadn’t changed. Their brains had.

Studies show that gratitude writing actually rewires your brain’s emotional center. Your brain holds onto appreciation long after the moment passes.

You can train your mind to notice what’s working instead of only what’s broken. You can change your default from “what’s wrong” to “what’s right.”

What to do:

Tonight, write down a few specific things you were grateful for.

Don’t write “my family” or “my health.” Write actual moments:

• “That first sip of coffee when the house was still quiet”
• “My son teaching and taking over my classes”

Abstract gratitude is background noise. Specific gratitude is something your brain can actually use.

Do this consistently, and these small moments will reshape how you see the world.

You don’t need a different life. You just need to see this one more clearly.