Happiness Re-Defined

While I was doing a workshop for children between the age of 10 and 19, I asked a question to all, “Could you tell me the moments in your life when you experienced real happiness….moments you cherish the most.” One boy said, “my dad works in a city which is almost 300 Kms away from our home. He comes home every Saturday evening and goes back on Monday early morning. On the Saturday evenings he takes all of us out for dinner and ice cream. These are my happiest moments in life.”A 15 year old girl said, “while I was in the 7th standard, we were taken out from the school for an adventure camp. All of us had to do rappelling (climbing down a steep rock). When I saw others doing it, I was literally afraid and was thinking of running away from the camp. My turn was on the next day. I couldn’t sleep in that night. When my turn came I told my instructor that I was sick and I couldn’t do that. But he insisted me to do it and I had no other options. Though I was dead scared I started stepping down the rock, I thought my breath had stopped and my heart had failed. I thought I was going to die. But in a few minutes I was down there on the ground. I couldn’t believe it. I never ever thought that this was that easy. I was so happy and confident, whenever I think of my past these are the most memorable happy moments in my life.”It seems happiness is not what we think and perceive. It is more than achieving a goal, in fact it is a state of the mind. Hence even if you have no money or positions and possessions you can still experience happiness, just by being in that state. The key question is, are you enjoying what you are doing; be it your job or sports. The best coaches in the world always inspire the team before they get on for that final match, be it hockey or cricket or football, to play the best game today and to enjoy every moment of the match. The teams which come in the final must be equal in all terms. The difference is going to be ‘the day’. That is why after losing the match the captain says, we did our best, but it was not our day.In fact the day was the same for both the teams, but for the winning team it was a good day and the loser it was a bad day. Hence it is not the day which made the difference. It is the team which makes a day good or bad. The moment the team decides that today is the best day and is going to be our day, and that we are going to enjoy every moment of the match, the whole atmosphere changes. The moment they decide that we are not going to be under stress or strain, we are just going to bring out the best in us today and going to enjoy it fully, you will see a winning team on the ground.Why not you consider each day as match? Just like you will have to face challenges and hurdles during the game, you will have challenges and short-term failures on your day. Sometimes you may even think that nothing is going in your favor and that you are going to lose out. But still if you have decided that you are going to enjoy the process, enjoy every moment of the day, irrespective of the outcome, you will end up with good feelings. In some matches all odds may go against you. You may get frustrated about the way things are going. Same way on some days you may think nothing is happening the way you wanted. You may wonder why things are going against you. You, as a sales professional, may face only rejections and refusals on that day, as a system administrator you may see more and more machines getting crashed on that day, as an office manager you may see many employees absent without notice on that day… What is going to be your response?Feel frustrated, irritated and thinking of quitting? Understand that all those things were just part of a process. On the next day you may see a completely different scene. Hence it is dangerous to make judgments based on things happening on a day to day basis. When you had a tough day and when you come back home your children will ask you, “how was the day, mama/ papa”. Never say it was a bad day. Say, “Son, It was a Character Building day.”