My self-improvement journey began 2 years ago.

And since then, I’ve come a long way.

But until that point, I was a pitiful sight.

Productive habits weren’t in my vocabulary. Most of my time was wasted away in front of the computer screen, and trust me, I wasn’t working.

Video games and hours of mindless social media consumption were what dominated my waking hours.

I did hardly any physical activity and you could tell by looking at me.

Needless to say, nobody was placing any bets on my bright future.

And my mental health? Arguably in a worse state than my exterior.

But I thought that poor mental health was simply a feature of my miserable existence.

It never occurred to me that my destructive mindset was the reason that my life wasn’t going how I hoped.

See, I managed to convince myself that I had no control over my life. I managed to convince myself that how I turned out was because of something I couldn’t change. Often that was genetics.

When I was younger, I wanted to be the athletic guy in school. The guy who won all the races and sports events.

But, I told myself that this was just a fantasy. I could never be that guy because I am Indian. We aren’t athletic, we’re just good at maths, I told myself.

So I never even bothered trying to improve my fitness or put on muscle.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to become more athletic, and that reinforced my belief that I couldn’t change.

This shifted me into a ‘victim’ mindset. I was a victim of my circumstances, my genetics, and my upbringing.

This is a very dangerous mindset to be in because victims are helpless.

And when you see yourself as helpless, you don’t even try to change.

The unfortunate part is that these feelings aren’t unique to me, and you don’t have to be Indian to feel the same way I did.

Rates of depression are climbing scarily fast, and often it comes from feeling like you have no control over the outcomes in your life.

I mentioned that I have come a long way. In fact, I believe that I have left depression completely in the past.

And with that, my physical results, my academic results, and my relationships have improved exponentially (I do consider myself pretty athletic now if I do say so myself).

I managed to break free from this deadly cycle and it was using one habit which I have done every morning for the past 500 days.

It’s very simple and can be done in under a minute.

As soon as I wake up, I roll over and reach for a notebook on my bedside table. In that notebook, I write down 3 things that I am grateful for.

These 3 things can be anything. Do not water down your thoughts, no one else should be reading these. Just make sure you are genuinely grateful for whatever you are writing down.

Here are some examples:

• I am grateful for the car that I get to drive to work every day.
• I am grateful that I have such a kind and loving family, who support me no matter what.
• I am grateful that I have a comfortable bed
• I am grateful that I am friends with … because they are one of the smartest and funniest people I know
• I am grateful that I have access to healthy and nutritious food
• I am grateful that my life is difficult because it will make me a stronger person

This practice is called gratitude journaling. Despite how simple and quick it seems, it may have been the sole thing that pulled me out of depression.

As soon as I woke up, my mind was yanked out of its default state of self-pity, and into a much more desirable state of gratitude.

Sure, eventually I would slip back into negative thinking. But the more I considered what I was grateful for, the more I became accustomed to thinking this way.

Over time, I started noticing that I was becoming more grateful during the day. Even when I wasn’t physically gratitude journalling, I would begin to acknowledge how grateful I was for random things.

For example, I remember going for a walk one day and coming across a small stream in the middle of the woods. It looked beautiful as it reflected the sun’s rays, and I thought to myself: ‘I am grateful that I discovered this place’.

Every time I would get these moments of gratitude, it would pull me out of depression.

The difference between being depressed and being happy is how you perceive your situation. When I was in a state of gratitude, it was physically impossible for me to be depressed.

As I continued to fill my notebook up every morning, I noticed that I was spending larger portions of my day happy, and less of my day being stressed, anxious, or angry.

Now I have a whole notebook full of things to be grateful for. And when you can see all those reasons written out, page after page, feeling resentment towards your life starts to seem illogical.