The festival of lights arrives this week, and for many households the celebration arrives alongside an endless feed of news and notifications. Suneet Bhatt, writing for Good News Network, proposes a different observance: five days, ten questions, and a few quiet minutes at the start and end of each day.
Bhatt frames the exercise around his father, Kiran, whose name he notes means "a ray of light" in Sanskrit. Bhatt's book, Making Sense of Purpose, was written in his father's memory, and Kiran's name appears in the subtitle. Bhatt describes his father as someone who could accompany people without carrying them, guide without issuing directions, and hold space for their wants, needs, and expectations before illuminating what mattered to them.
The central argument is that reflection is a more useful response to the year's end than distraction. Bhatt acknowledges that avoiding a doom scroll is difficult, but suggests that giving people an alternative activity may help. He attributes the pull of constant scrolling to the environment people have built rather than to any personal failing, noting that individuals tend to grab whatever fills them without asking whether it nourishes them.
To support the case, Bhatt cites research from Harvard Business School finding that new employees who devoted the final 15 minutes of each training day to writing and reflecting on what they had learned scored 22.8% better on their final test. The implication is that even a brief, structured pause can produce measurable returns.
The playbook itself is deliberately modest in scope: one prompt in the morning, one at night, across five days. Bhatt advises readers to write their answers down or simply reflect and take note, stating that either approach counts.
Day 1 centers on what is already working. Bhatt observes that people are poor at predicting what will make them happy and rarely articulate what made a good moment good. The morning prompt asks what still brings a smile; the evening prompt asks what the reader has done recently that impressed them.
Day 2 turns to identity. Bhatt argues that people are strengths to be harnessed rather than weaknesses to be fixed, and that values define who a person is when circumstances are at their messiest. He cites Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot, whose work found that goals rooted in personal values produce more sustained effort and a greater likelihood of achievement. The morning question asks what the reader wishes more people knew about them or turned to them for. The evening question asks what they held onto when the year grew messy, followed by an invitation to pose the same question to someone they love.
Day 3 addresses stalled progress. Bhatt contends that not every plateau requires breaking, and he identifies self-forgiveness as the most powerful action fully within a person's control, one that allows them to set down unnecessary weight. Carrying guilt forward, he suggests, slows the escape; releasing it speeds the way out. He adds that large wins are assembled from small steps. The morning prompt invites the reader to name where they feel stuck, and the evening prompt asks for the first milestone they can complete.
Day 4 concerns how a person moves through the world. Bhatt quotes David McRaney's formulation that anxiety equals fear plus uncertainty, and recommends sorting concerns into what one can control, what one can influence, and what lies outside one's control, a practice that makes uncertainty feel less overwhelming. He also distinguishes compassion from carrying, describing compassion as caring rather than bearing another's load. The morning prompt asks the reader to select one thing on their mind and identify the part they can control. The evening prompt asks whom they are carrying and how they might care for that person without carrying them.
Day 5 looks ahead. Bhatt cites Tasha Eurich's research suggesting that only about 15% of people are truly self-aware, and he argues that writing helps because it becomes difficult to hide from one's truth once it is on the page. The morning prompt reads, "The truth about where I am today in my journey is …" The evening prompt reads, "The truth about where I'm going next in my journey is …"
Bhatt closes with a memory of his father at a family gathering, describing a 75-year-old man who lay on the ground in a crowded room, gazing at his sleeping granddaughter with no concern for anything else around him. The image serves as his example of shining a light on what makes a person and what matters to them.
For readers who wish to go further, Bhatt describes the article itself as the gift and points to a series of reminders available for those who want to do the work across the week, as well as the option to purchase the book through a local, independent bookstore. Bhatt is described as the two-time USA Today best-selling author of Making Sense of Purpose, and he works with individuals and organizations through coaching, workshops, and his course, Find and Evolve your Purpose. His stated conviction is that purpose should shift from an aspiration people chase to a foundation they rely on.
