Читать книгу Trust the Grind - Jeremy Bhandari - Страница 6

August 4, 1901. Louis Daniel Armstrong is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Having a knack for music, Armstrong flourished as a trumpeter, composer, and vocalist. To this day, “Louie” is considered one of the most authoritative figures in jazz. Are you familiar with the song “What a Wonderful World”? You know, the one that starts out with:

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

The elegant voice behind the euphoric lyrics was Armstrong, who recorded the song in his sixties. By 2014, the single had been downloaded over two million times in the United States after it was released digitally. In 1999, twenty-eight years after Armstrong’s death, the song made its way into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

August 4, 2019. On a day when we should be celebrating Armstrong’s legacy and the “clouds of white” and “colors of the rainbow,” that he so gracefully described in his music, we are forced to captivate some stomach-churning statistics. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there had been 255 reported mass shootings so far that year in the US. By the not-for-profit corporation’s definition, a mass shooting is any incident in which four or more people are shot. 216 days into the year. 255 mass shootings.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Major Depressive Disorder, a mental health disorder specified by frequently depressed mood or loss of enthusiasm in activities, affects more than sixteen million American adults. One in four children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen suffers from anxiety. As said in national survey data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2011 and 2014, 11 percent of Americans, of all ages, reported taking at least one antidepressant medication in the past month. To put that in perspective, if you looked around a baseball diamond during a game, one of those nine individuals used antidepressants within the last thirty days. Just three decades ago, it was reported that less than one in fifty people (2 percent) did.

Stopbullying.gov reported that seven out of ten young people claimed to have witnessed bullying at school. Heck, even three out of every ten people admitted that they had bullied others. The 2017 School Crime Supplement (National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice) found that around 20 percent of students age twelve to eighteen experienced bullying in the past school year.

In 2017, CBS News published an article on happiness in the workplace. The article referenced a recent Gallup study, which reported that 51 percent of full-time employees in America are not engaged at work. Half of our working society is spending at least forty hours per week unsatisfied.

Yes, you could absolutely make the argument for gun laws in America. You could also come up with a pretty good case for why adults in the work force deserve more vacation. Creating a petition for change in the education system wouldn’t be a bad idea either, especially since public schooling has been run the same way since well before the internet.

But what if I told you there was a way to continue to see the kindness and light in the world, even with all these sad truths? Before you call me crazy, read this Jack Canfield quote:

“If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily.”

You see, when we have a sense of purpose, we give ourselves a real reason to get up every single day. A sense of purpose picks us up when life knocks us down. It can also help us create the life that we aspire to live. A purpose forces us to focus on self-growth, and spreading positivity and love to those around us, rather than expressing anger and unrolling hatred out to the world. By identifying a motive, we are able to appreciate “babies crying” and seeing “friends shaking hands.”

Remember when Benjamin Franklin said, “Our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”? While many argue about who coined the latter half of this quote, the premise is understood by all. With so much uncertainty in the world, the only guarantees in life are death and the fact that we will be faced with tax payments for as long as we are breathing.

However, I can make an argument that everyone, and I mean everyone, certainly seeks success and happiness. I mean, have you ever met someone that wakes up each morning and plans on being sad and a failure? Of course not. With that said, the idiomatic expression should really be, “Nothing is certain in life except death, taxes, and the pursuit of happiness and success.”

Everyone has their own definitions of success and happiness. Some people value success based on the amount of money and power they have. Others look at it from a broader perspective and claim that the most successful people are the ones who make the biggest impact on the world while they are a part of it.

A “happy” person can be defined simply as someone who experiences positive emotions in their current state. Positive emotions like gratitude, joy, satisfaction, love, amusement, and hope can be attained differently, depending on the individual. In order to experience happiness over the long run, we must program our minds correctly and be ready for anything that life throws at us. In life, we all face hardships and are forced to overcome adversity at some point or another, but the happiest people are those who avoid negative emotions in even the darkest of times.

Whatever your definitions of these two words may be, it is certain that when you rise each morning, you aim to experience as much joy and prosperity as humanly possible.

Anyways, my name is Jeremy Bhandari. I hail from Ashland, Massachusetts. At the beginning of 2019, I decided to go around and interview some of the best athletes to ever grace this planet.

Rather than ask them about their astonishing statistics and accolades, I decided to take a different approach—an approach that I found would be beneficial to all. After speaking to these highly influential men and women, I broke down each conversation into what I call “The Keys to Making Life an Ease While Enjoying the Breeze.” In writing terms, these are known as chapters.

I’ve included two poems to help distill some of the information in this book. If you don’t already, I highly recommend writing poetry. Poetry is a therapeutic exercise and an incredible workout for your mind. When you write rhymes, you enhance your memory and improve cognitive performance in your brain. Scribbling down thoughts in your head while forming those ideas into a rhyming pattern is quite fulfilling.

Following each segment, you will find “Paramount Points.” These are the main takeaways from each section and should be used not only as inspiration but also as daily reminders to keep yourself on track. Even after finishing the book, these ideas should be constantly reexamined to hold yourself accountable and keep yourself in the proper mindset. We all know how easy it is to get distracted in this world, so do yourself a favor and steadily brush up on these success secrets.

With that said, I give you Trust the Grind. While I can’t make any guarantees, I can promise you one thing: after reading this story, you will undoubtedly be in a better position to identify your true purpose and live a life of full satisfaction than if you didn’t pick up this book.

As always, be great, and avoid hate.