Sunday 29 March 2020

Feeling gratitude right now à la Fumio Sasaki

“Goodbye, things” by minimalist Fumio Sasaki, which I've written a book review about (published here yesterday), includes a chapter that proposes a thinking technique for feeling gratitude right now, at this very moment. It is bafflingly easy to implement and, as I’ve found, highly effective:

It involves turning any negative thoughts creeping up on you into positive ones instantly, within the same sentence. Fumio Sasaki lists a whole page of (heart-warming and funny) examples of his thought-processes while he is thinking in this way.


Fumio Sasaki proposes a thinking technique that’s designed to help us change and reframe our thoughts and feelings
(Image source: Image by 昕 沈 on Pixabay)


His technique helped me overcome my disappointment about a translators’ conference I had booked to attend in Milan, Italy, at the end of February 2020 being cancelled due to the sudden coronavirus outbreak in a region in Lombardy near Milan. I had just finished the packing, when I heard the news on the radio. The conference was cancelled the next day.


My thought-processes went like this:

I am so disappointed that I’m not heading off to the conference in Milan … but it is, of course, always better to be safe than sorry! I’m so lucky the outbreak in Europe was discovered a few days before – and not during or shortly after – my journey.

It’s such a shame that the opportunity of exploring Milan this week has evaporated … but it hasn’t evaporated – it’s just been postponed. Now I have plenty more time for current work projects and other things, which is a real luxury!


I was looking forward to chilling out at the hotel spa at the end of the two conference days … but I’m doing yoga right now at my regular yoga class instead and I’m feeling absolutely amazing!


I’d already been gearing up for writing a blog article about the stay in Milan … but there are plenty of other topics I can blog about instead.



See what I mean? It’s thinking that is unbelievably simple and very effective.


Fumio Sasaki in his book “Goodbye, things” describes a thinking technique that’s designed to help us change and reframe our thoughts and feelings. He argues that when we aim for gratitude right now, we become more positive, tolerant and generous.



Note: I tend to batch-produce my blog posts, and I wrote this blog post several weeks ago, but I have meanwhile also integrated this technique into my efforts to mentally cope with the dire situation of the coronavirus pandemic that we are finding ourselves in right now.

It is, of course, very difficult to stay positive amidst all of this, but turning some of those nagging coronavirus-related thoughts and fears around mid-sentence in this way has had the effect that it’s made me feel, admittedly, not great, but at least a bit better.


Figuring out ways how to look after and protect our mental health is vital – perhaps now more than ever before.