DIABETES REVERSAL AND GOOD HEALTH
5 DAYS OF DFF GRATITUDE CHALLENGE
Conducted by : Dr.Bhagyesh Kulkarni
Summarised by Arthur G Aranha
Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni conducted a 5 days Gratitude Challenge Course online.
While explaining the importance of gratitude in our leading a happy and peaceful life, Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni emphasised how to go about expressing such gratitude and what is its impact in our lives.
Day 1 - 8.5.2024
At the outset he asked the participants to sign a contract to themselves to channelise all their thoughts into positive thoughts and connect them to good emotions. Thoughts create our destiny. Whatever thoughts come to mind during the day, convert them into positive ones and connect them to good emotions. Thoughts when they are connected to emotions, the actions that spring from such thoughts and emotions, turn into one of gratitude. Positive affirmations train our mind to accept whatever comes in our life as good for us. This provides peace of mind and helps to lead stress free life.
Dr. Bhagyesh gave some daily tasks to the participants as a part of the course.
1. Express and write down gratitude with reasons to five things or people.
Dr. Bhagyesh has asked us to maintain a daily diary of gratitude. This is a great idea. Otherwise we tend to forget in our daily chores that there are small things and big things for which we have to be grateful. The very feeling of being grateful, creates happy hormone like Endorphin. This hormone relaxes the body. You start appreciating all that you have when you are on gratitude mode. Sulking or complaining mode is something which is natural. It is the gratitude mode which needs to be worked on, practiced and efforts put in to make it work. Gratitude improves both our physical and mental health.
In this exercise, I sat down to list the people to whom I need to be grateful and the list went on, right from the seventies till today there were and are so many individuals and instances which I am grateful for. Many of them I had forgotten. It is in this exercise that I had to go back in time to recollect all those people and instances to thank them. One colleague in particular, who stood by me in times of distress and saw me through, I penned a special thanks note to him during this exercise after so many years.
2. List out 5 things or people who are complete and you feel gratitude when you think of them.
We get thousands of thoughts throughout the day. These thoughts when connected to emotions, provide positive results and action. What are the qualities of these people which make you grateful to them. It could be parents, mentors, friends, acquaintances ,spiritual leaders etc. I recollected all those who helped me in my life and in particular a friend and colleage who stood by me in times of difficulties and saw me through. I penned a letter to him thanking him for being there for me when it needed the most.
3. Do an act of kindness today.
Kindness is contagious. Whatever kind act you do today, may come back to you in some form or the other later in life. The story of “Full Glass of Milk” is an good example of kindness and its repayment.
4. Hug your near and dear ones.
This gesture of giving a hug conveys our feelings to the next person without having to utter any words. The action itself speaks. It provides comfort and affinity towards each other.
Day 2 - 9.5.2024
GRATITUDE AND POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS
When our thoughts get connected to positive emotions, the actions that come out of it are positive.
Today’s Tasks:
1. Send a mail/letter to a person appreciating minimum 3 characteristics of that person.
In our life we come across a lot of people, some of them close and some of them just acquaintances. Best way to remember them is to send a mail or a letter to them mentioning their qualities which appealed to you and why you want to continue their acquaintance. Even saying just a “hello” can also help in renewing the contact.
2. Do at least 3 random acts of kindness.
Such acts of kindness are to be impromptu and should come from the heart, without expecting anything in return. Today I could do one of them.
3. Write a letter to the food you eat.
We eat food without even thinking about it. Where does it come from, how does it reach my plate, what all has gone into that food reaching my table etc. To be grateful to the food which you eat, recall the events like where that particular food item is grown, how does it reach the market, how does it reach your house and to your table. What happens after you eat that food. This introspection provides us an opportunity to be grateful to the food and also to the universe for providing it to us.
4. Write 5 things that you are grateful that money cannot buy.
There are many things in life which money cannot buy like health, home, respect, friendship, Love, Self-satisfaction, Wisdom, Purpose, happy kids, Loyalty, Character, Inner Peace, Gratitude, Happiness, Self-esteem, Confidence, Self-love, Intimacy, Inner beauty, Manners, Mindfulness, Emotional Mastery and Empathy. I am grateful for the five qualities of Character, Friendship, Mentor, Purpose of Life and Love.
5. List 5 things that you are grateful for using your senses
senses like sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste and what are your favourite things regarding these senses. I listed my gratitude to the five senses of my body without whom life would not have been easy.
Day 3 - 10.5.2024
This is a continuation of the Gratitude and Positive Affirmation session. The tasks assigned for today are :
1. Send a thank you letter to someone who has inspired/coached/guided you.
Everyone has a mentor in life. I have many mentors who have contributed to my growth right from initial study days, to the career progression and finally in diabetes reversal. Besides Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni, I remembered Dr. Jason Fung, a Nephrologist whose videos on diabetes reversal gave me a clear understanding of the subject. I prepared a letter to him thanking him for the guidance.
2. Observe this day as ‘NO COMPLAINTS DAY’ .
This was a wonderful activity suggested by Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni. The interesting part was you tie a rubber band to your hand to remind you not to complain during the day. If you do, then pull the rubber band and leave it. It causes pain. This pain reminds you not to complain the next time. I wore a rubber band around my wrist for the whole day and except for one instance, I did not have to pull the rubber band.
3. Think of amazing things that have happened to you in the past week or month.
This exercise takes you back to remind of something good that has happened to you and you cherish those memories and also to inspire you to continue the effort. I could recollect two amazing things that happened to me during the previous week.
4. Donate 3 things which are of no use to you.
Not in the usual course of cleaning the house but as a conscious attempt to donate things to people who are in need. I did donate some old clothes to the hutmet dwellers.
5. Write a glowing review to the organisation which you love.
I could think of two organisations which have tremendously helped me to grow. One is my employer, the Bank who provided me many of the amenities for which I am thankful. The second is YouTube. This channel provided me a lot of opportunity to learn many things right from web designing, to cyber safety to diabetes reversal and so on. I am grateful to YouTube for making so much of information available to me free of charge. I am also grateful to YouTube for allowing me to create my own Channels on Travel, Diabetes Reversal etc. I am also grateful to my Advocate who was instrumental in saving me a lot of heartburn in a property matter.
On the 4th day onwards, Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni suggested to observe 3 days of Fruit Fasting. This is to detox the body while gratitude detoxes the mind. The holistic approach of Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni in this direction is really praiseworthy.Fruit fasting was done under his guidance from 11.5.2024 to 14.5.2024.
Day 4 - 11.5.2024
This day was devoted to exrpessing gratitude to my workplace, to my adversities, to people who hurt me, and to the disabled people.
1. Express gratitude towards your workplace/place where you earn your money:
Express your gratitude to your workplace or place where you earn your money for three things which have contributed to your welfare and growth. I expressed by gratitude to my Bank for providing me not only a job, but career progression, housing, vehicles and many other gadgets and necessities of life.
2. Express gratitude towards adversities/problems in life/suffering you have gone through.
This is a tough task. Why thank adversities or problems which made by life miserable? Because it is these adversities or problems which gave you the patience and courage to pass through them. They gave you opportunities to correct yourself. Where the factors were beyond your control, to face them courageously and go on with your life. I did express my gratitude to such adversities (which were quite a few in the initial days of my life), problems and sufferings for giving me the resilience to pass through them in making me what I am today.
3. Express Gratitude towards people who hurt you/put salt in your life.
People normally make their business to add salt to someone else’s life. Although I don’t have that many people who hurt me, but I forgave all those who did and today express my gratitude to them because if it was not for their actions, I would not have derived the courage and determination to pass through many a problems in life.
4. Gratitude towards Disabled people.
(Physically/mentally/socially). When you think of Mariba Mazari and similar disabled people and their courage in facing the problems, I need to express my gratitude to them for making me realise what is that I have in life which they don’t. How fortunate I am. Whenever I see people who are physically, mentally and socially challenged, I consider myself very fortunate and thank the Almighty for it.
Day 5 - 12.5.2024
The 5th day was the last day of the gratitude challenge. After experiencing the magic of gratitude for 4 days, this day was reserved for being grateful and thankful to self. Self love is the purest form of love and unless we love ourselves, we cannot love others.
The task for the last day was :
1. Write a Love Letter to yourself.
containing atleast 10 things which you love about yourself. This is an exercise to accept yourself as you are. You don’t have to show to others what you are. Your actions themselves should exhibit who you are. I wrote a very emotional letter to myself recalling some of the incidents in life and the characteristics which made me what I am today. This was the most interesting and challenging part of the gratitude challenge.
The gratitude challenge of 5 days ended with Dr. Bhagyesh Kulkarni asking the participants to prepare a chart of the different activities of gratitude done in the five days and continue to follow them for the next 21 days.
This challenge is accepted by me and I will review it after 21 days.