By Dr. Krisztián Galánthai Fekete
I live in a house that is about a thousand years old, in a small Swiss city that is about two thousand years old. Solothurn began as a Roman settlement called Salodurum on the river Aare, and pieces of the old Roman fortress wall can still be seen in parts of the Old Town. It is a magical place, and it has a magic number: eleven. There is a clock here with only eleven hours on its face. The great staircase of St. Ursus Cathedral climbs in three flights of eleven steps. Even the local beer is called Öufi, which means “eleven” in the local dialect.
I mention eleven because it taught me something. A whole city can choose a small thing and repeat it until it becomes part of who it is. I think a person can do the same with purpose.
My morning mirror
I wake early. The first thing I do is go to the mirror. Yes, to wash and get ready, but also for a small ritual. I look at myself and say: “This is my day. I am a child of fortune. Everything will go wonderfully today.”
I know how that sounds. Some days I don’t feel like a child of fortune at all. I say it anyway. It isn’t a prediction. It’s a decision about how I will meet whatever comes.
Twenty minutes of thanks
Then I walk to my office, about twenty minutes along the bank of the Aare, while the city is still quiet. On the way, I go through what I am grateful for. Not as a list in my head, but slowly, letting each one land in my body: my daughter, a friend’s message from the night before, the light on the water, the fact that my legs carry me. I usually smile the whole way. People probably think I’m a little strange.
The river helps. Like almost every Swiss river, the Aare is a clear greenish-blue. You can see the stones on the bottom and the fish going about their morning. In summer, divers swim in it. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself next to water like that.
You don’t need a river or an old city for this. It works whether you are walking, cycling, driving, or riding the bus. What matters is that you choose a stretch of your day that already exists and give it a job.
There is good research behind this habit. In a well-known 2003 study, the psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough asked people to keep short weekly records. Some wrote down things they were grateful for; others wrote down hassles or neutral events. Over the following weeks, the gratitude group felt better about their lives as a whole, were more optimistic about the week ahead, reported fewer physical complaints and spent more time exercising. Nothing dramatic, just a few lines a week. Small virtues add up.
The walk itself helps too. In a 2015 study at Stanford, people who took a 90-minute walk in a natural setting reported less rumination, that loop of repetitive negative thinking, than people who walked at the same time in a city setting. My riverbank is short, but I believe in it.
On summer afternoons, the same river becomes a slow parade. People float from one town to the next on rubber dinghies and bright inflatable mattresses, with music and a cocktail in hand. Some towns have a beer garden or a café right on the bank, where you can climb out, refill your coffee or your glass, and drift on. Nobody is in a hurry. I have never seen a more convincing argument for small pleasures.
The evening, too
My daughter lives in Budapest, and I visit her every week. Each time, I am surprised by her evenings. She is fourteen, and yet she can sit down calmly, make herself a cup of lemon balm tea, and read a good book she bought herself on her little sofa under a soft blanket. That is her ritual to wind down for sleep. Just tea, a book, and a blanket. I find it quietly wonderful, and every week it reminds me that a ritual does not need to be big to be strong.
My own evening ritual happens when I close my eyes. I go through the people I am grateful for. Then I imagine how good tomorrow will be: my daughter’s day, my parents’ cheerful day, my own good day. Some people do this with prayer. For me, it is this imagining. I let each picture stay for a moment, the way I let gratitude land in my body on my morning walk, and let the day end on something good.
If the day has been tense and my mind won’t settle, I start with my breath. As I put it in my book, slow breathing tells the body it is safe, and the mind follows. A 2018 review of studies on slow breathing found links to greater calm and relaxation, and less anxiety. A few slow breaths are often enough to let the gratitude in.
The Stoics knew this hour well. Seneca wrote that the philosopher Sextius would ask himself each night, “What bad habit of yours have you cured today? What vice have you checked? In what respect are you better?” and that he himself, once the lamp was taken away, would pass “the whole day in review.” He did not do it to punish himself. It was a calm summary before sleep: what went well, and what could be better tomorrow.
Purpose is built, not found
I used to think purpose was something you discover once, like a hidden door. Now I think it is closer to Solothurn’s eleven: a small thing, chosen and repeated, until it shapes who you are. A sentence at the mirror. Twenty minutes of thanks. A quiet review before sleep.
Tomorrow morning, try just one of them. Choose the sentence you will say to yourself, or the stretch of road where you will count your blessings. Then notice, by evening, what you chose.
And if your road home is a river, all the better. On some summer evenings, I could swim home: I walk down to the Aare, let the current carry me for ten minutes, and climb out almost at my door.
Sources
- Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdf (DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377)
- Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(28), 8567–8572. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4507237/
- Zaccaro, A., et al. (2018). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 353. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353/full
- Seneca, Of Anger (De Ira), Book III, ch. 36, in Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue on Clemency, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900). Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Of_Anger/Book_III ; Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64576/64576-h/64576-h.htm
- Region Solothurn Tourismus, “The magic number”: https://www.solothurn-city.ch/en/discover-solothurn/why-solothurn/stories-about-solothurn/the-magic-number – Region Solothurn Tourismus, “History of Solothurn”: https://www.solothurn-city.ch/en/discover-solothurn/why-solothurn/stories-about-solothurn/history-of-solothurn
About the Author
Dr. Krisztián Galánthai Fekete is an investor, computer scientist and philosopher, and the author of Find Your Meaning in 60 Days, In the Age of AI and Robotics, a 60-day guide to finding purpose as smart machines change the way we work and live. More at book.drfekete.com.
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