The tiny coronavirus took the world by storm causing death and destruction across the globe. The way the year 2020 went, things really looked dark and gloomy. In such an environment, staying locked down, I unlocked myself and created my own world. The world I created is beautiful and Has helped me emerge as a new person!

What happened in 2020 that transformed my life?

When the pandemic struck, I was scared, anxious, and had suicidal thoughts. I was finding it hard to come to terms with myself, watching the news with bated breath and the hope that things are back to normal. But that was not to be! The never-ending tunnel seemed dark and gloomy, with no hope!

It is said that when you hit the rock bottom, you have nowhere to go but to rise! Well! That is exactly what happened to me!

When India went under lockdown in late March, I was feeling miserable. I not only felt bad for the entire world but felt sorry for myself. This is when I developed an interest in watching motivational/inspirational videos. And, began to implement some of the teachings in those videos. 

Some videos suggested staying away from media and social media to reduce the negativity. I cut down my screen time drastically. This had a magical effect! My mind cleared and my anxiety reduced.

In my endeavor to maintain social distancing and follow lockdown norms, I was physically cut off from the rest of the world and I unlocked the doors to my inner self. I started spending a lot of time alone and understanding myself better. I met myself alone without any disturbance and distraction from the judgment and opinions of others. I quite liked the person I saw!

But there was scope for a lot of improvement! And, I discovered the direction of the course of my life for the rest of the lockdown-I decided to work on myself and become a stronger individual. 

For the first time in my life, I had this golden opportunity to focus on myself. This was precious! I work as a professional content writer. Unfortunately, the pandemic impacted my work and I lost some projects. So, I decided to use the time to fulfill my dream of becoming an author. I published my first book in June 2020. The book was a memoir about my personal journey during the lockdown. As I started recounting the positive things that happened to me during the lockdown, I realized that too many good things had happened!

This is when the idea of expressing gratitude to change the mindset began to make sense. I realized that when I acknowledged the positives in my life, my thought process changed from lack to abundance. This further boosted my mood. Staying positive also made me happier and healthier.

The happier I was the more I wanted to do things that made me happy. This kept me positive and I began looking forward to each day. I automatically began to notice more positives in my life. I prepared a gratitude diary in which I listed 3 things I was grateful for every day. 

This helped reduce my stress and made me lighter. I found that my family members also felt lighter and more at ease. The direct impact of this was that my relationships at home improved.

I focused on another hobby-singing. Initially, I started with my singing on the days I would feel low just to cheer me up. But I began to enjoy the experience and I added singing to my to-do list as one of the things that makes me happy!

I finally started leading a life where I seemed to be doing things that made me happy. But it was not as if I was only doing things that I liked to do. There were many tasks that I did not like to do which I continued to perform. But something had changed! I was not doing these tasks as if they are a burden anymore! In fact, my positive attitude helped me take an active interest in whatever I did and enjoy my chores.

I also discovered that my true passion was writing! And, my writing knew no bounds! I published 5 books in 13 months. Four of these were self-published as I mastered the art of formatting and other aspects of book publishing. Besides my writing style improved with each book. 

I also participated in a book writing challenge in which authors were asked to create the manuscript of a book of 50k words in 30 days. I was successful in this book writing challenge and this had far-reaching effects. My writing speed improved drastically. I am now able to write over 4k words in a day and the book I wrote for the challenge is titled, “You are the Hero of your Life!” While creating content for this self-empowerment book, I empowered myself and enhanced the quality of my life further.

It was while writing this book that I realized how irrelevant the opinions and words of others are! I consciously decided to ignore the hurtful comments of others. It was easy at this stage because I had not only discovered myself but also fallen in love with myself. The experience of writing this book further enhanced the speed and quality of content writing work I did for my clients.

Building a close relationship with myself helped me understand the real me, my strengths and weakness, the areas of improvement, and more. So, what others thought about me did not matter anymore. The more I read, wrote, and researched, the more clarity, I developed in my thoughts. It became easier for me to accept others around me without any expectations. This made my life easier as I was no longer concerned about what people did and why they did it. So, I adopted a philosophy every time I found someone doing something that I did not like, “It is right for them, so let them do it and feel good about themselves. It is none of my business!” This policy was ok for the rest of the world. Of course, when it came to the people who mattered, these things were a point of concern.

But then how many people mattered? Although I have many acquaintances, and “friends” in real life and on social media, I identified the handful of people who actually mattered. When you look for genuine people in your life, you will find that there are very few. And, this solves a lot of problems. You do not have to take care of the feelings and opinions of too many, you can focus on just those real relationships where the concern and love are mutual.

On this journey, I also realized that I had wasted a significant portion of my life in trying to be perfect and this had caused so much stress. However, when I gave up trying to be “perfect” I was more at ease, and doing things without stress improved my efficiency and finally the quality of my work.

All these discoveries about myself were made during 2020-21 and today I am a new person! Completely transformed and genuinely happy! But the journey does not end here-I now lead a life where I “keep discovering” and this makes it fun and exciting!