“Your mind is your instrument. Learn to be its master and not its slave.” --Remez Sasson.
One week into a 6-month stint here in Bangkok, which I find pulling me back into its tight grasp several times per year (and my second visit since selling all my belongings to live a nomadic lifestyle & starting this blog series).
This 8,000,000-person-dense city is not only home to Buddhist temples, street food carts, & bustling markets, but also a strong, ever-growing cryptocommunity as well...I want in on it.
This mourning period--as well as inner personal struggles I was wrestling with--reminded me of the soul's imperative dependence on a simple, yet crucial factor: mindset. It's during these times of grief that one's character is put to the ultimate test; stretching their resilience & strength beyond limits they could have never perceived possible.
One simple, yet effective strategy of improving one's mindset is meditation. It comes in several forms (i.e., breathing exercises, active meditation, yoga, etc.), yet do worlds to improve your emotional well-being by regulating your mood as well as decreasing depression, anxiety, stress, etc.
Decision-making, problem-solving, & creative + cognitive skills are significantly enhanced by balancing brain activity in both hemispheres & decreasing the amount of grey matter within it, while physiological benefits include decreased blood pressure, inhibited aging, & increased cardiovascular + immune health.
The benefits go on & on, and thousands of books have been written on the subject matter. Yet what I know is that meditation (and the practice of mindfulness) is a common practice among Thai culture...and understandably so, as was demonstrated by the resilience shown by its people during their king's death.
It's strange waking up at random times of the day/night, when most people are either deep asleep or already halfway through their day. Such a lifestyle can make even the most crowded of cities like Bangkok seem lonely at times. Freedom + jetlag will do that to you.
That said, I see this isolation as an opportunity to escape into solitude (something that's not easy to come by when you bear the responsibility of holding others' livelihoods in your hands).
Doing so improves overall concentration, productivity, & creativity by allowing you/your brain to engage in deep thought. Additionally, it puts you more in touch with your inner voice & desires, thus allowing you to further discover yourself & improve your relationships with others (although the latter may seem like an ironic paradox).
Veering away from the mental world to return to the real & digital worlds--and in response to all the positive feedback received from my recent ICOs post, I'd like to take this opportunity to fill the Steemit community in on a couple more promising ICOs!
I’m excited to present to the Steemit community Datum: a promising new ICO that--up until this point--I believe is the most applicable & relevant to this platform’s users...and I’m even more excited to get in on it myself :)
Datum
Some of the top reasons we’re here on Steemit is because 1) we can personally choose how much personal information we want to share with the world based on our preferred levels of privacy, 2) we’re not being spammed by pesky ads that detract from the overall experience (like on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter), and 3) it provides monetary rewards you’re unable to earn on other social media platforms.
Datum is providing the solution to all of that!
Current online media giants (i.e., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) provide their services for free in exchange for one VERY important asset: data. From age, gender, & nationality down to the micro levels of food preferences & commuting habits, they know EVERYTHING! That’s what makes them such a valuable tool to advertisers & marketers alike.
Instead of giving away your personal data away for free, Datum allows you to upload this information to their platform to, in turn, be encrypted & stored in a secure manner. Advertisers, businesses, etc. looking to access this information for their marketing campaigns can then pay a fee (in DAT = Datum’s native token) in exchange for your anonymized data. The DAT tokens are then transferred to you as a reward for sharing your data, while this same data is made available to the advertiser. This entire transaction process is executed seamlessly through the use of smart contracts.
If that’s not enough to convince you, then maybe the hype will. Their public token sale just recently started at the time of this writing & according to their website (whose figures are constantly being updated in realtime) they’ve already sold over a third of their available supply, with $1.5 million raised in their presale alone & over 13,776 ETH (about $4,000,000) total! Get your spacesuits ready because the Datum rocket is taking off soon...direction: MOON!
Thanks again to everyone who took time out of their busy day to read this post! Your support means the world to me & I hope I was able to provide even the slightest amount of value to you & the Steemit community!
Check out past "Beginnings of a Digital Nomad: The Remote Year" posts here:
Day 115
"The Haze"
Day 15
Day 12
Day 8
Day 1