Amarnath Sankar, an entrepreneur from Kochi, has found a place in the India Book of Records 2022for a thought experiment he did, which has struck a chord with a lot of people – a gratitude journal he maintained religiously for 365 days, from September 2020-September 2021, on his Instagram page
December 30: ‘Not a thing is going my way, what could I possibly be grateful for?’ would probably be the most common refrain one would have heard, especially during the pandemic. Well, plenty actually, Amarnath Sankar will tell you. Beginning with the air you are breathing right now and your ability to breathe. The Internet you are reading this with, to which 3.4 billion people have no access. The food you ate yesterday night when 900 million slept hungry. And much more.
31-year-old Amarnath is no modern-day motivational guru; neither does he want to be one. He is the CEO and founder of a media production company based in Kochi named CAT Productions. It was a simple thought experiment he did, or rather the consistency he exercised, which has made him influence and strike a chord in the lives of quite a few people around him. The trigger, he says, was a strong revelation one day that the foundation for success in any field is the ability to accept and be contented with what one is and what one has. “But I found people around me complaining a lot about how bad life was while watching a Netflix series on an iPad! I realised that it’s only when we are in a balanced state of mind – physically, mentally and emotionally – that we achieve something extraordinary, creative or daring in life.”
So on September 20, 2020, Amarnath started a gratitude journal on his Instagram handle – amarnath_sankar – writing about one thing he felt grateful for each day, accompanied by its Malayalam version and a picture. He continued with it for the next 365 days until September 2021, by which time he had a loyal reader base. The subjects of the posts range across a wide spectrum of fields – at times, it was a poem suggested by a friend, a stray idea or thought triggered by someone or something, even the realisation of the existence of the gut microbiome in the body once!
But didn’t he have even one bad day where he found nothing to be grateful for? “No. In fact, the dilemma for me was always about which one to choose for the post,” he says. “There are thousands of reasons to be grateful if you look around – the age we live in is one of the most peaceful in the history of mankind, for example. The country we are in is fairly free of chaos when compared to perpetually war-torn ones. The list goes on,” he says. Soon people started connecting with him and sharing their own experiences with him. “The day I wrote about being grateful for breath, a friend called me and broke down. He was undergoing treatment for a lung illness and said this was the first time someone realised the value of normal breathing,” he says.
Amarnath has now found a place in the India Book of Records 2022 for
“Writing the Maximum Number of Bilingual Blogs on Gratitude on Social Media”. But all that is a bonus, and what matters more to him is the human connections he has formed, he says.
And what does he wish to tell people? “Well, life is full of possibilities as long as you are alive and breathing. It’s a new year and a good time to reflect on what we might be missing in life. We often get caught up in FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), but what we should actually fear is missing the beauty of life as it.
Check his Instagram handle amarnath_sankar to read #365daysofGratitude journal
