Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The Art Of Happiness V/s #100happydays

When I embarked on this year, there were a few things I promised myself.
One of those things was to be inherently happy.

I got to know about #100happydays quite a few days later.

I am all for social experiments and so joined the bandwagon. After the 4th day, one of the two things kept happening to me. Either I had lots of moments in a day to be happy about or I had nothing special to talk about.

So I quit.

My utter state of panic and confusion of what I should be posting on Facebook bought me to realize a few things about happiness and the pathetic state #100happydays brings to our lives.

Should Happiness be defined by what our amazing digital life portrays to 600 people we 'kind of' know?
I love facebook. I am in the business of engagement and making sure social lines are blurred when it comes to communication. But the constant search for something different, weird and awesome to share on facebook to show people how happy you are is quite stressful isn’t it?

On a larger scale, it is quite sad that we need to find experiments to be happy
Happiness is a state of mind that we should constantly be in. Have we become so negative with everything around us that we need something to remind us to find one thing in a day that makes us happy?
A friend recently told me that being happy was his default setting. Simple, straight and to the point. There was no other option.

Looking at how 2014 is progressing, in the past 30 days, I have been inherently happy because of one simple thing. I told myself that in 2014, happy is what I will be. Anything else is not an option.

I have had 100 moments of happiness a day and they are so silly and simple that I cant even bring myself to think about serving them on a status platter to the 450 people I happen to share my life with on facebook!

Here are the 5 simple things I did and achieved #ahappylife (Readers, please apply at your own risk)

Eliminated negative people from my life
They are lovely, they are right but they are all wrong for me. People who are jealous, find the worst in every situation and have a life that revolves around work. They just don’t transpire their limited positivity to me. So out they have to go!

Bought the positive people closer to me
Life is all about give and take. Maintaining relationships takes an effort and I believe for those few that bring you happiness, it is worth the extra few steps.
I had to get out of my shell, express and radiate love to get back the same from those who make my world a happy place. Trust me, it was worth it.

Took risks
Those who know me are aware of how shy I can be. I can travel alone, sky dive and write all I want but when it comes to taking risks and putting my self out there, I am a shy puppy.
The things I realized that hold us back from happiness are our own fears and inhibitions.
So I let go.
And guess what? I made new friends.

Practiced the attitude of gratitude
The more I thank the universe for bestowing happiness the more I seem to get it. Someone recently told me, happiness is contagious.
And I can’t agree more.

Got out often, did the things that interest me
I ditched weeknights composed of TV shows with take out dinners and weekends at the mall to make sure I am meeting friends or doing things that interest me – theatre, art, music, poetry, food and of course alcohol.
I haven’t shopped in a month and I realize, not worrying about my dress size going up has made me so much happier.

So while #100happydays is a great experiment and a successful campaign, it’s just not for me. I don’t want to quantify my happiness and go back to being sad on the 101th day. I’ll choose to be happy forever.


Simple, isn’t it?

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