Ko Pongsagon

Keep on fighting for the things you love.

Throughout my life I have struggled with negativity. Day after day, I would allow negative thoughts to get the best of me. I would waste valuable energy on negative distractions. I would waste so much of myself on bad habits. Negativity was literally eating away at my life, destroying all value, and making life feel like a pointless prison sentence.  This however has all changed in June of 2014 when I began reading Alex Kassan’s daily  emails. 

This is the story of how Alex transformed my life.

(P.S. If you came to my page by accident looking for Alex’s page, his website is here www.alexkassan.com )

Part 1:  A brief introduction

My name is Michael Brauer, I am 27 years old, well educated, and working in the pharmaceutical industry. I live in New York City. My life has been relatively good. My parents are very supportive both emotionally and financially. I have good friends,  good personal relationships, I basically had all the things that were supposed to make you happy. But, I was not happy. Not only was I not happy, but I would constantly battle these pointless fears. I would spend my days worrying about things that I really did not need to be worried about. For example, I would worry about losing my job all the time, even when I got a promotion, I would worry about being unemployed, I would worry about growing old alone, I would just keep worrying.

It was this pattern of negative thinking that was slowly eating away at my very soul. It was turning me into what Alex would call ‘an eternal worrier’. It was running my life into the ground and it was adding so much stress and anguish to my life.

Negativity was like a cancer eating away at all the good parts in my life. It was turning me into a very neurotic human being, who never experienced peace of mind and the simple pleasures of life. Everything was a worry, everything was a headache, everything was a problem, and there was simply no joy in my life. I am not trying to sound like a whiner, but this was the truth. This was how I lived.

I was singularly unhappy with my life, because I was not embracing the positive things about life. I was simply letting it eat me away.

Part 2: How I Discovered Alex

It was early summer of 2014, June 9th to be exact, and I was still caught in all the negativity. It was consuming my very existence. One night I decided to write something on Facebook, something that was really negative. I wrote this:

“I am sick and tired of people pretending to care. Nobody cares about anybody. Everybody is worried about themselves. Everybody just wants to cheat everyone else. Everybody just wants to take things from everybody else. And I am sick of people pretending they are good when they’re more rotten than you can imagine. When deep inside, they’re just waiting for the perfect moment to steal something, or take something, or ruin something.”

I’m not sure what made me post this. It was late in the evening, and I just didn’t feel too good. Of course, I am now ashamed of having written such nonsense, such pointless negativity, such meaningless agitation. But to put it in a nutshell, my cousin Alice saw this status update, and told me to check Alex’s daily emails out. She said they will definitely make me feel better and help stop being so obsessively negative about life.

Part 3 – My Initial Thoughts on Alex’s Ideas

After Alice told me to subscribe, I wasn’t sure at first. I mean words are words. How much can an email really help you? How much can words really lift up your mood? But then I thought about the Bible and all the other religious texts, I thought about how much these words have affected people throughout history, how much they have made people feel better or worse. So I decided to give Alex a try. I subscribed to the one month instead of the year, just to see if it’s for me. Then I waited for the first email to arrive.

I still remember the first email I received from Alex, it was about the importance of focusing on positivity. After reading it, I somewhat chuckled to myself. I was wondering how anyone can be so positive and so enthusiastic about life. I was wondering if this person was for real, if it was possible to actually wake up each morning feeling incredibly excited about your day.

My first impression was that I found his writing almost surreal in the way that it refused to acknowledge negativity. Alex simply rejects all the negatives, he does not feel like one could ever possess too much hope or too much passion or too much love for life. The more the better. And he is right, the more hope, the more love, the more positives we have, the better our lives will be.

  Part 4 – When I First Noticed an Improvement in My Life

After reading Alex’s emails for about 21 days, I began to notice a difference in the way I was looking at my life and the world in general. I noticed small subtle things, for example, I would smile at people at work when I said good morning. I would say hello sometimes to people at work that I never acknowledged before. Also, I noticed that I was sleeping better. That’s something that struck me right away, the better sleep. When I lie down in bed, I am not focused on the negative possibilities. These really ruin your sleep, these negative thought-cycles. Instead, I felt good about life. I began to feel better about every aspect of my life. This helped me sleep better, and in turn, the better sleep helped me live better.

Before reading Alex’s emails, I would sleep about 5 hours a night, by the 21st day of reading him, I was sleeping about 7 hours a night. Today, I am proud to say that I get 8 hours of sleep every single night, unless there is a social event to attend.

Sleep is really important for your mental and physical health. People underestimate the importance of a good night’s rest, because they’re obsessed with negativity and are always worried about negative possibilities.

Another thing I noticed was that I became more excited about my work. Before reading Alex, I would always dread Mondays and I would sit there clockwatching at work. But Alex quickly showed me that this dread leads to more dread and anxiety. If you have to do it, just do it or do something about it. There was no sense in constantly dreading the things that you have to do. So I basically told myself either I stop whining about work or I quit work. There was no sense in being in this torturous limbo. This really helped me as well. Because now I can focus on my actual work, instead of wasting half my energy on dreading work. I can just get to it. I can just stay focused on it. I can actually embrace it and its importance to my life.

Part 5 – When I Really Began to Notice Drastic Improvements In My Life

After reading Alex’s emails for about two months or so, I began to notice significant improvement in my life. I felt all around healthier. I felt more inspired each morning. I began to drink a lot less, because I realized how negative liquor was for my mental and physical health. I also noticed that I felt a lot happier. Not sure how to describe it, but Alex really inspired me to seek the good things in life. He shows me that I can’t just sit around and sulk, I need to do things, I need to create things, I need to build things. Alex also shows me that life is not simply a struggle, it is an enjoyable adventure if you want it to be so, it’s all about what you want for you.

Another thing I noticed was that I was a lot more excited about my relationships with other people. Before reading Alex, I was one of those negative people who didn’t really like people. I found people annoying and abrasive. I found them needy and disappointing. But Alex showed me that this is untrue. He showed me that the relationships with people are all about what you make out of them. They’re all about how you build them, how you structure them. Alex helped me understand the importance of remaining positive about others. And it’s true, the moment you become negative about other people you start to feel very negative about your life. Also, the moment you begin to be positive about people, then you can start being receptive to positive experiences from almost every single person.

I also began to feel more confident, and my desires for personal and spiritual success began to slowly build up. You see you can’t have a happy life if your mind is obsessed with negative outcomes. You can’t have a positive existence, if you’re always waiting for the worst to happen. Everyday Alex reinforces this important message, and it always keeps me on track. It keeps me delightfully motivated.

Part 6 – What Alex Taught me About Motivation

Before reading Alex I did the bare minimum in life. The bare minimum to keep my job. The bare minimum to keep the relationships in my life alive, albeit on life support. But after reading him all this changed. I’ve become much more motivated because his ideas on positivity really do inspire me. I’ve become addicted to doing things, positive things. I am no longer addicted to the negative habits that give you immediate gratification. No sir, not at all. I am now addicted to the positives and let me tell you, it has been great. It has been incredible. I feel so incredible each and every single day. I feel glad to be alive. I feel like my life has purpose, and this purpose is simple: to do as much as I can, as many positive things, to spend my days embracing the path to positivity.

Everything else is irrelevant to me. I don’t need pointless distractions anymore. I don’t need fixes that numb my senses. What I need is focus and motivation, what I need is positive results that reflect the genuine positivity of my life. Alex taught me that you should never compromise your spirit in the name of enjoyment, instead, I have to learn to enjoy the work, the accomplishments, the creative process of actually building something with my life.

Part 7: How Alex Improved My Personal Life

Don’t worry: the answer is not as complicated as it seems.

💁 “In spite of” and “despite” do not have to be used at the beginning of a sentence, e.g., “Touka decided to go for a walk despite / in spite of the snow.”

Similarly, although, though, and even though don’t have to be used at the beginning of a sentence, e.g., “Touka decided to go for a walk  although / though / even though it was snowing.”