Gloria's Blog

I have written a series of six blogs related to the happenings in Christmas 2017. This is the second one. This piece is dedicated to a good friend, Li, and his girlfriend, who actively and tirelessly organize activities for the Chinese community in Seattle. You are sharing your love to each other to warm and light up the community. Thank you! *** I have a friend in Seattle. His name is Li. We are not super close (yet), maybe a bit more than colleague. Li and his beautiful and sweet girlfriend are good people, and, very social. They love to organize drinks, dinner, all kinds of fun activities for the Chinese community in Seattle. I have been to a few. Usually, I need to try very hard to enjoy “just for fun”, unless I am under alcohol… I tend to seek meaning before and when doing things, maybe too much. Going to parties and talking about general, daily, random things, are not my favorite things. But sometimes life can be hard. For example, during Christmas. I have b...

Last December, I attended an amazing training - High Performance Training sponsored by my amazing employer Microsoft. It answers why and how the most elite masters in each field achieved what they have achieved - in sports, business, arts, etc. The training empathized the importance of mindfulness, positive thinking. During the training, they introduced a challenge, "To write down three good things that have happened everyday, for 30 days." I was inspired, and decided to do it with a friend. We made it through. We didn't expect it to be such a profound experience. ***** Here are ten things I learned from the 30-Day-Challenge. 1. Today’s happiness can only be appreciated today. We don’t remember yesterday well. One day we forgot to do it. It’s very hard to think three things that have made you happy yesterday. So live in the moment.  2. It’s not easy to stick to it for 30 days. Probably anything for 30 days.  We need discipline to do that. I tol...