No pot of gold at the end! The journey is the reward, celebrate it!

Happiness must never be postponed or forsaken for any ‘thing’ or person.

At a meeting yesterday, we talked about our Program, Help Yourself To Happiness. Someone pointed out that it was a very important Program for young folks who are faced with a “quarter-Life” crisis. All of us agreed.

I thought about this conversation for a while after we had finished the meeting. I shared with Vaani my observation that people of this generation were facing a “quarter-Life” crisis while our generation (from the 1960s) predominantly dealt only with a “mid-Life” crisis.  Indeed, it may well appear that a “what-is-the-meaning-of-Life” crisis is arriving early for the millennial generation. Surely this is not something to worry about. In fact, if our search for meaning is happening early on, that much better. This really means people will sort themselves out faster and will have that much more time to lead qualitative, happy, lives.

I realized only when I was 38 (in 2005) that all I wanted to do, for the rest of my Life, was to inspire people to happiness. Even then it has taken me over a decade of consistent practice, of being happy despite the circumstances, to reach the point, in the past few years, when I can share my learnings with others. I am keen to help young folks understand that Life is a limited period offer and that the most intelligent – and appropriate – way to live it is to be happy doing only what you love doing. I want to help them appreciate that while you can’t predict or avoid the upheavals in Life, you can surely sail through the turbulence better, without suffering, despite the pain, if you are happy.

So, I am delighted if people are asking existential questions early on in their lives. What is the meaning of Life? What is my Life’s Purpose? Am I living or am I just earning a living? What is all that I am doing adding up to? These are beautiful questions. These are seeking questions. And everyone must ask them. Only when you ask these questions will your seeking spirit awaken to lead you. Therefore, it is always better that these questions are asked early in Life, and you allow yourself to be led only by what makes you happy. This way, you can spend a larger part of your Life simply being happy!

Now, does this mean our generation was foolish enough to allow so much time to pass before we asked the most important questions of our Life? Before we understood what matters most and why? I don’t know about others. But I certainly squandered the first 30+ years of my Life thinking success was all about name, fame and money. It was only when I understood the impermanence of everything material, including Life itself, that I awoke to happiness.

I have realized that there is no treasure at the end of the rainbow. There is no pot of gold. I have understood that happiness is not a goal. It is not a destination. So, it must never be postponed or forsaken for any ‘thing’ or person! In Life, the journey is the reward. And the happier you are on this journey, by being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering, the more you will enjoy it.

So, just imagine what a beautiful world it would be if everyone was encouraged to appreciate Life this way early on. This is the way Osho beseeched us to embrace. This is the way that J.Krishnamurti championed in all his KFI schools, particularly at Rishi Valley. When more people help themselves to happiness, then, the answer “happy” – to the ubiquitous question that is unfailingly asked of all teens: “what do you want to be (when you grow up)” – won’t be startling anymore! So, let ‘em bring on the crisis. The earlier they know that the journey is the reward, the better. Then they won’t squander their precious lifetime chasing a non-existent reward instead of celebrating the magical journey!

How I celebrated a flightless year in 2016

Be ready and willing to go through any situation, experience everything, in Life!

“How do you console yourself when you don’t get what you want; when your Life doesn’t go the way you planned it?” This question came to me yesterday from a lady I met at the Help Yourself to Happiness Talk I delivered at a Rotary Club.

The answer I gave the lady is that you must not try to console yourself. Consolation has an air of mourning, of grief, inherent to it – that you tried for something, you did not get it, so it is ‘okay’! There is no ‘okay’ status that works in Life. The best state to be in is to be unmoved. There is no need to either exult in Life nor is there a need to brood or mourn. You must taste, you must experience, everything in Life – success and failure, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow – and eventually you will realize that they are all imposters. You will discover that neither the state when you are exulting nor the one when you are brooding is permanent. So, don’t credit yourself for creating contexts where you exult at your achievements and don’t discredit yourself just because the context is one where grief is gnawing at you, over what you lost or what you didn’t get. Just learn to be unmoved. If you can be unmoved, then everything, every event, calls for a celebration! Then every moment is a celebration!

The lady urged me to explain my point with an example. I shared this story from my Life that I had also recounted to Vaani on New Year’s eve.

I took my first flight in my Life at the age of 10, in 1977, from New Delhi to Madras. I loved the experience. And resolved that I would only fly when I grew up; also I because I find train journeys very boring, very uninspiring. To date, I prefer a flight over a train! My second flight was the one I took at the age of 23, in 1990, from Madras to Bangalore. I was flying on work for India Today magazine and was on an assignment to report on Veerappan, the dreaded sandalwood smuggler. It was a big moment for a young, ambitious lad – flying on company expense. I saved the Indian Airlines (now called Air India) boarding passes of both my onward and return journeys from that trip. I reckoned that when I became ‘very famous, very rich, very successful’ I would display these boarding passing proudly in my office or home, as a trophy of where my ‘high Life’ had truly begun. Soon, I was traveling more and most of my trips were by flight too. And I started collecting my boarding passes. I extended my idea of the saved boarding passes to reflect the number of air miles I had logged in all my active Life. For the longest time, I had this vision of me sitting in my private study and bar, smoking a cigar, and having an entire wall done up with boarding passes from all my flights in my Life. Soon the collection grew. I now have a whole mound of boarding passes saved up – I don’t really think I have lost a boarding pass or missed saving one in my Life. At one time I was taking even three or four flights a week, and traveling 21 days each month. So the boarding pass collection really swelled in good time. Within India I was loyal to Jet Airways and was their Platinum Card holder for several years – in all those years, our family of four, always took vacations on free tickets purchased with my miles! My boarding passes collection reflected the Life I led – busy and flying around! For someone who came from a middle-class background, this was exciting stuff, a sign that you had arrived, in style!

My Mound of Boarding Passes: 1990~2015

 

And then, as I recounted to Vaani on New Year’s eve, 2016 has turned out to be the year of no flights for me. No flights taken in an entire year. Even in the past decade, owing to our bankruptcy (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal) my flying has shrunk considerably. But I never bargained for a flightless year, that too in what should have been the 28^th year of an active, professional Life!

So, that’s my example, a story from my Life, I told the lady, who asked me to explain my point about being unmoved. Surely, I am not citing that I have traveled more than anyone else in the world. In fact, my story showcases how such a personal collection of boarding passes appears so vain now in the wake of Life’s larger design and Purpose. I am not even suggesting that I will not fly again or that I will not have that wall in my private study and bar. All I am saying is that I am no longer impacted by whether I am flying or not. It has ceased to mean anything beyond a data point to me. In the last quarter of a century, I flew a lot, then I flew less and last year, I did not fly at all! Simple!

The essence of intelligent living is that you must experience everything in Life. You must be ready and willing to go through any situation. Don’t ever expect Life to only be a particular way. Recognize that what goes up comes down. And what goes around comes around. Life is always flowing and you must learn to go with Life’s flow. This is the way to be unmoved, to celebrate Life’s every moment, no matter what you are faced with or are going through! This is how I celebrated my flightless year – 2016!

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The NY resolution that will not dissolve and disappear

Just live each day fully, make it memorable!

A manager asked me, after a Help Yourself To Happiness Talk I delivered on Friday, why New Year resolutions are often never followed through. I feel resolutions stop making sense because we attach too much importance to the time of the year than to what we resolve to do. So, when the sheen of the New Year wears away, the resolutions too dissolve, they disappear.

Now, I don’t believe in resolutions around the turn of the calendar year. I feel that New Year as a concept is over-rated, over-marketed and is, in several ways, exaggerated. Yes, I partied hard last night. But I didn’t party because it was New Year’s – I party every day. Some days, I drink and dance. On others, I simply am. I celebrate Life in all its manifestations. So, every day is a party. And each moment is a celebration.

I believe totally in management thinker Noel Tichy’s definition of leadership. He says, “Leadership is the ability to see reality and mobilize the appropriate response!” Now, consider the most evident reality of our Life – it is impermanent, it is a limited-period offer, we are all speeding towards our death and our Life will be over soon. So, what is the most appropriate response that we must bring to the table? We must live fully, not just exist, we must be happy and we must make each day count! This is what personal leadership is all about. Making each day count means doing what we love doing each day, so that the day becomes unputdownable and remains memorable.

Try this simple exercise. Take your age and multiply it with 365. That’s the number of days you have been on this planet. How many of those days do you remember? How many have been memorable? How many have been unputdownable? If you have started counting, you have lost the game of Life! Because the idea of this lifetime being handed to you as a gift is for you to enjoy living, to celebrate yourself, to be happy. It is not to merely earn a living and suffer just because you have problems in your Life.

Clearly, you can’t undo the past. But from today on, from this very moment, you can resolve to make each day count. Go on, just do that! And watch how the rest of your Life is filled with ‘Happyness’ every single day!

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Profit from happiness, let go of whatever is pinning you down!

You learn not to carry a disappointment in you when you realize its futility.

Yesterday, I delivered my ‘Help Yourself To Happiness’ Talk at a Rotary Club. I shared anecdotes and learnings from my Life (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal), telling people that we all have the choice to be happy despite our circumstances.

A member of the audience came forward after my Talk and asked me, “What is your biggest disappointment?”

I replied, instantaneously: “I have no disappointments.”

“But how can that be,” suggested the gentleman, “when you are in such a terrible financial state, when you have no money to cover even your living expenses, when you owe so much to so many people. How can you say you have no disappointments in Life?”

I smiled and shared my learning from Life with the man.

It is not that I had not felt disappointed before. It is not as though I don’t feel disappointed when our efforts to put our business back on track fail every single time that we try. But you learn, I told him, to not carry a disappointment in you when you realize its futility.

What is a disappointment? Simple – an unfulfilled expectation is a disappointment. A lost opportunity causes a disappointment. But Life does not bother whether you have an expectation or not. If you have an expectation from Life, and it goes unfulfilled, it is your problem. Life just goes on. Similarly, you got an opportunity, and if you blew it, it’s your problem. Life gave you that opportunity, you did not make use of it. Who is to blame? And what is the point in holding on to the blame, the guilt, the disappointment – the lost moment, the lost opportunity is never going to come back. So, why hold on endlessly to this feeling of  being disappointed?

In my case, surely, there’s a lot of scope for disappointment – I need not have taken some business decisions that led to our Firm’s bankruptcy and to my family being pushed to the brink of penury. I ought to have saved money for our children’s future, when our business was doing very well, and when my wife used to implore me to do so. That time’s gone. Those questionable decisions were made. The opportunities were lost. Events happened and we are in the state we are in. What has happened is irreversible. What’s the point in being disappointed now about whatever has happened in the past?

Understanding and avoiding disappointments helps in any context in Life. A disappointment always brings grief and depression along with it. Together they make a debilitating cocktail of emotions that can hold you hostage forever. Instead of being a slave to these emotions, be free. Learn from your mistakes, your choices, your decisions and let go of all disappointments and guilt. Forgive yourself for what you did. Forgive others for what they have done. This does not mean you become casual about what you have caused. This is not abdication or irresponsibility. I certainly don’t see dropping disappointments as irresponsibility. In fact, in choosing to remain non-worrying about my future, non-frustrated about the outcomes of my efforts, and non-suffering about whatever pain I am having to undergo, I am actually helping myself to happiness. This state of happiness helps me focus. It helps me see the futility of being pinned down by disappointments. It helps me let go of any wasteful emotion that will weigh me down – like anger, grief, guilt, anxiety, worry, fear – whatever! It is only through focus and fervor that I can retain the faith to change my current reality. So, to me, happiness is a hugely profitable choice.

You too can profit from happiness. Just let go of all your disappointments and whatever is pinning you down. Feel liberated, find focus and move forward – freely!

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Don’t intellectualize or pursue happiness; employ commonsense, just be!

There are no methods or formulae or mantras to be happy. You just have to be. Period.

A friend sent me a media story on an interesting venture that’s being set up at the IIT – Kharagpur. Supported by its alumnus Satinder Rekhi , the Rekhi Centre for Science of Happiness hopes to ‘research and help develop an ecosystem of happy people’. Although the story I read talked about the Centre actually being a ‘lab’ that attempts to ‘crack the code for happiness’, I don’t want to go by what the media says. I have no first hand knowledge of how the proposed Rekhi Centre plans to operate and what projects it initially will seed and develop. But I do know two things: 1. As a concept it is hugely relevant to help nurture an ecosystem of happy people 2. There is no code or formula or method or mantra for happiness – so if the people behind the Rekhi Centre really plan to go after these, then, sadly, they may well end up barking up the wrong tree.

In order to understand happiness, let us first know that it is like the breath we take; it is available 24×7 and free. So why then, for most of us, is happiness an elusive pursuit? It appears elusive because we are searching for something that is already there. What if something was available to you and you were searching for it? Like raising your spectacles over your forehead and searching for them all over the house. You will never find it unless you look at yourself and discover that it was all along on you. Similarly, you will never be happy unless you look within yourself. You are the happiness you seek. And this happiness is invisible to you because you have buried it under layers of wasteful emotions – fear, anxiety, worry, anger, hatred, jealousy and many, many more. Or simply, to be happy, you need to remove all those factors that exist around you, in you, that make you unhappy.

Learning to do this is possible. But you need to approach happiness with an open mind, with humility. You can’t just want to be happy. You must be ready and willing to be happy. Staying happy is a full-time job. It is really what living is all about.

So, I don’t know how the idea of a formula or a code can help anyone here. If you look at the body of work, research from the past, available over the centuries, almost everyone talks about happiness as just being. It is the ability to live with, love and celebrate whatever is, whatever is available in the present, in the now.

This morning I am dealing with a grave crisis. It requires several practical steps to mitigate – a resolution itself will take months. And all the steps to be taken immediately require money. This is a resource that I don’t have. Yet, I have made my efforts, and continue to make them, seeking work and income, but in the absence of any tangible evidence of my efforts bearing fruit, I have still decided to continue to write my daily blogpost. I am not complaining. I am not angry. I am not fearful. I am not anxious or worried. I wrote this blogpost just as the way you are reading it now – by engaging with each word, sentence and idea. After posting this, I will go on to have lunch. Vaani’s made some methi parathas – my favorite – and I will relish each morsel of what I eat. And I will eat while being grateful to Vaani for making them and serving them with so much love, I will be grateful to whatever energy is making such a wonderful meal possible even in such inscrutable and painful times. To me, this ability to be immersed in the present – whatever be the circumstance – is happiness. So, how can any formula help here? Or which mantra? Where is the code? What method can be uniformly, universally adapted and championed?

I hope the formula-seeking aspect of the Rekhi Centre venture is just exaggeration – an outcome of the media’s, predictable, overindulgence. I wish Team IIT-Kharagpur/Rekhi Centre for Science of Happiness all the best. We definitely need the ecosystem they envision. We need champions like them. And I am willing to contribute to their endeavor by way of leading workshops and Talks to inspire people to be happy despite their circumstances; I will try and connect with them soon. But my humble prayer to everyone is let us not intellectualize happiness. Instead, let us employ commonsense and learn to just be. For when you simply are, you are happy!

Don’t pursue Happiness, help yourself to it!

You can never get happiness, so there’s no point chasing it. You can only be happy!

I have been invited to speak at a forum of entrepreneurs belonging to a startup ecosystem this afternoon. And the theme given to me is “Pursuit of Happiness”. I smiled when I saw the mail from one of the event’s anchors, a young man who’s full of Life and enthusiasm. I wrote back to him seeking a significant modification in the theme. I said that “Help Yourself To Happiness” would be not just appropriate but true too.

Indeed. The truth is that happiness cannot be pursued. It is not a goal. It is not a destination. Happiness is who you are when you accept what is. Simply, you are the happiness you seek.

The reason why people pursue happiness is because they postpone it. Happiness is available 24×7, and is free, for everyone, uniformly. To be happy you must just drop everything – and everyone – that makes you unhappy. Simple. But you don’t do that. Instead you get into a mental rut saying you will be happy if and when certain expectations are fulfilled. I will be happy if I get a job of my choice. I will be happy when I make more money. I will be happy if can be cancer-free. I will be happy when I meet Ms.Right. And so on and on, you go on postponing happiness. The problem with postponing happiness is that a. you are losing precious time here because your Life is a limited period offer and b. you are wasting all that time being unhappy!

Which is why I always say, help yourself to happiness. By simply being available to whatever is, being present in the moment, accepting what is and moving on with what is. Happiness is not elusive. You are. It is only because you are not present in the here and now that you are unhappy. And so you are searching and seeking. Will Smith and the makers of The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) did the idea of happiness a huge disservice by giving the movie that name. Undoubtedly, it’s an awesome movie. But I wish they had called it The Reward of Happyness – which is what the movie is really about. Surely, there are huge rewards of being happy: you see abundance everywhere, you are forever celebrating Life and you are enjoying the journey without getting keyed up about when and where you will arrive!

So, from what I have learnt from Life, I would simply say, stop the search, drop the pursuit. Simply be. Be with what is, be who you are. And you will not just be happy, you will live happily ever after too, no matter what your circumstances are.

Fight the good fight but don’t fight Life!

Beyond ‘earning a living’, make time for living!

Why do we do precious little to nurture, develop, grow and protect all those things that come free in Life while ending up working 60+-hour weeks ‘earning a living’ and trying to cling on to, protect stuff, that in the end are impermanent, dispensible, unimportant, forgettable and replaceable?