For Suwarna, a doctor by profession, being human is like being a fish underwater. Just as a fish is constantly surrounded by water, humans live day and night inside a continuous flow of feelings. Even highly intelligent and successful people are constantly influenced by their emotions, yet this is not taught anywhere in school curricula, nor do parents, relatives, or society speak about it. Her true breakthrough in understanding this came through gratitude. She realized that it is not just an intellectual concept but an important emotion that must be felt from the heart.
She does not remember exactly when she began practicing gratitude, but she traces its true beginning to October 2020, during the lockdown period. A friend referred her to a group called the Gratitude Club from Jaipur, where the members practiced gratitude daily online via Zoom meetings by reading the book The Magic and completing homework assignments. Although she had owned this book for almost twenty years, she had never deeply connected with it, as she would read it and set it aside. Once she started reading and practicing with the group, she finally grasped its core message and understood how to incorporate it into a daily routine.
She began her gratitude practice sincerely and soon saw positive results. She felt better about herself, her relationships, and her mindset across all areas of life. Over time, it became a habit, and she has maintained it consistently for over five years. As her routine evolved, she noticed that it was not always possible to sit and read, so she recorded her practices in her own voice on her phone. Each morning, while doing her chores, she listens to these recordings, reminding herself of that day’s practice.
In the morning, she wakes up with a feeling of gratitude, saying thank you to the beautiful morning, the rising sun, and the bed she was sleeping in. When she gets up and touches the earth, she says thank you. Then, whatever she touches during her morning routine, whether taking a shower, doing her makeup, or brushing her teeth, the moment she touches something, she says thank you to that object. She finds that it gives a beautiful feeling when practiced in such a structured way. Likewise, she expresses thankfulness for various relationships, from close ones to distant ones, and for the people who made a real difference in her life.
Since then, she has also written in her journal daily, where every single day has a dedicated page. She writes the ten blessings daily in her journal. She strictly follows this early morning writing practice, but if she does not get time in the morning, she does it in the afternoon or evening. Working as a doctor, she also keeps a diary in her clinic at the hospital. Whenever she gets ten to fifteen minutes of free time between seeing patients, she sits down to write her ten blessings.
“With the practice of gratitude, I felt like it had opened a door to feeling something in me, and I started feeling.”
~Suwarna
As she started her gratitude practice thoroughly, she understood the importance of feeling. If she says ‘I love you’, ‘I am sorry’, or ‘thank you’, it has to be with feeling and not just for the sake of words. She realized humans are not machines where you can just press an electricity button to turn them on.
This realization opened a completely new door for her. Until that point, she had never truly felt positive emotions from the root of her heart. She had definitely felt sadness, depression, and anger to their depths. While she had always known joy and satisfaction, gratitude introduced her to a much wider spectrum of emotion. It allowed her to experience love, excitement, and contentment with a depth she hadn’t accessed before.
She eventually learned how it actually feels to be grateful, and it was the first good feeling she truly acknowledged in herself. Now, whenever she thinks about something, she checks if there is a feeling inside her mind, what that feeling is, how she feels it in her body, and how she expresses it.
Understanding her own emotions allowed her to understand others. She could suddenly sense if a person speaking to her was expressing themselves from the heart or just superficially through thoughts. This transformed her life and her medical practice. Being able to understand the patient sitting in front of her helps her treat them better. This new perspective touched every corner of her life, from the hospital staff and market vendors to her husband, daughter, parents, and siblings.
“There is a different connection when you are connected to another person with your heart and with your feelings.”
~Suwarna
Now, she experiences the true depth of these relationships. By allowing herself to be human, to get angry, to cry, and to speak her mind, she gives others permission to be human too. Empathy and compassion have always been her professional guides, but today they resonate within her with a new, heartfelt intensity. Gratitude showed her that transformation requires nurturing and does not happen magically in one day. Because she used to travel often and did not always have her notebook or a pen available, she started using the Gratitude app. Whether she was sitting in a meeting, travelling, or just sitting idle, she used the app to write her practice. She loved the feature that allowed her to put photos alongside her writing.
She is a published author who wrote a book about affirmations called A to Z about Affirmations. For a long time, she practiced affirmations extensively. However, she realized she had been doing them intellectually, without putting her feelings into them, which yielded very few results. Once gratitude taught her the significance of feeling, she started putting emotion into her affirmations, and suddenly, they began giving her incredible results.
When people go through difficult phases, they are often advised to start practicing positivity. She had experienced low feelings in her life and found that quick fixes like going to the gym, watching a movie, going for a walk, or dining at a hotel never lasted. They might make a person feel good momentarily, but the positive feelings do not sustain for a long period, and the person eventually goes back into that dip.
“Practicing gratitude is a sure-shot way of bringing yourself out of negativity and bringing yourself into a positive feeling zone.”
~Suwarna
Over the last five years, her daily practice has given her positive results most of the time. She now teaches gratitude to many people, and they report feeling positive a majority of the time. She believes that going to the roots and transforming feelings is the only way to create lasting change. Slowly, practicing good feelings changes a person’s entire personality. A person who complains throughout the day loses their ability to feel happiness, satisfaction, and joy, but by choosing to be grateful, she found that the true joy of living is fully restored.
Suwarna’s real-life story is proof that depth of feeling is very important in order to truly experience its power. It is about how keenly we immerse ourselves in it and understand it, something she has grasped well, considering the beautiful way she explains it. When we stop treating our emotions as tasks to complete and start feeling them from the roots of our hearts, life opens up in ways we never imagined.
If you know someone caught up in the rush of life, share this story as a gentle invitation to them to reconnect with their emotions.
This is Suwarna’s story, told beautifully by her and curated in its truest form by me to share with you.
I would love to hear your story.
Write to me at preeti@gratefulness.me 💌
Every story is a reminder that a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.
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