Steps To Increase Your Gift Of Happiness

o   Take up a hobby.

o   Take up a sport.

o   Become a volunteer.

o   Join your local community association.

o   Get involved in your spiritual community.

o   Reach out for someone today.

o   Plug into the healing web of relationships.

o   Establish a family assembly.

o   Develop family traditions.

o   Eat together.

o   Give your child a hug.

MettaBhavana – Feeling of immeasurable

When you give compassionately, you receive the gift of happiness.  The Buddhists believe in metta bhavana, a feeling of immeasurable loving-kindness towards all living beings. Like colour dropped into a glass of clear water, metta bhavana colours and permeates your whole life with the joy of all beings. In systems like pranic healing or reiki or even in organised religions, one prays for the peace and happiness of all beings in the universe. This can be an unending source of joy.

Sharing, helping each other and cultivating strong social relationships keep us healthy and contribute to a peaceful life. The rasa of compassion is a great source of creating a positive mental state and fortifying the body’s immune system as it taps into the feel-good chemicals in the body.

Studies have shown that those with eight to six close relationships were healthier than those with less than four. It is this feeling that promotes altruism and the many service clubs in the world. We need social relationships to truly thrive. Social networks can help us change our health activities. Laughter Club, Alcoholics Anonymous (the Twelve-step programme), Weight Watchers International, regular dance and exercise groups are examples.

Pets in cancer wards have been found to improve healing and reduce the negative response to chemotherapy.We need social relationships to be methodically developed to promote compassion and mutual empathy.  

Emotions and Feelings

Emotions, and the way you deal with them can affect your health. This guide will help you understand the impact of nine primary emotions in maintaining health. The positive emotions create a positive field which fills your blood with the chemicals of happiness and wellbeing. They are conducive to the building or rebuilding of the healthy heart.  The negative emotions create a negative field which fills your blood with the chemicals of unrest and unhappiness.

Navarasas are a two-thousand-year-old Indian concept of emotions which see the mind as a space filled with positive and negative emotions. These emotions are: love, laughter, compassion, chivalry, anger, fear, abhorrence and wonder. Shantha or peace is the result of handling all these emotions correctly.

Obviously, the positive emotions or states like love, humour, compassion, chivalry and wonder put the mind in a happy and enthusiastic state, thereby fostering health. On the other hand, the negative rasas like anger, fear and abhorrence produce a state of mind which creates, as described in Daniel Goleman’s book, an ‘emotional hijack’.

Family Networking is the best protection

Belonging to a supportive nurturing group, is the best protection you can have against disease and unhappiness. Being loved can prevent you from the flood of negative emotions that have the capacity to destroy you.

With the breakdown of the joint family in India, the shock absorber of family ties is threatened. Nuclear families are creating explosive situations, which are lethal.

Invest in your family. Keep in touch with your extended family. Join supportive groups.

Being ‘included’ in a group is very healing. Study the group to which you belong and see whether you share:

common goals, a common language

shared jokes, your pet-name

personal successes and failures

time together

a common shorthand of thinking and speaking

compliments

comfort and support

affirmations and help

Innovative approach in marketing

Peter Drucker, in his classic work on innovation, speaks of a real estate company which became a success in a depressed post-war market. It was months after the Second World War. No one was buying a house. Young people, just married, were particularly averse to investing in a home. Till a young real estate genius created a runaway success. He did not sell houses, he sold dreams. He sold a little 200 square foot studio apartment with a 2000 square foot blueprint of a dream house. ‘Build your dream home as and when you can afford it, in modules,’ was the message. He used the concept that people invest in dreams rather than immediately visible, touch and feel products.

The innovation tool, ‘Turn it upside down,’ helped me turn a major corporate hospital brand from a place of illness to a sanctuary of wellness. The same hospital taught me that the most important element of a place of healing is not the floor, not the walls, not the counters…. These things are important to care-givers who are on their feet and vertical to the floor. But hospitals are built for patients—most of whom are horizontal, on their back, lying on beds, looking at the CEILING. One of the hospitals where special care has been lavished on the ceiling is the Singhania’s hospital in Kota. The ceilings are a blaze of colour. Collages are created out of broken marble chips. What must have started as an attempt to practice economy, has resulted in a masterpiece to keep patients as happy and amused ‘watching the changing patterns on the ceiling like clouds in the sky!

Action plan to have Innovative Workplace

1. Create meaningful personal relationship with co-workers.

2. Take short relaxation breaks, at least thrice a day.

3. Eat fresh, energy giving foods.

4. Take a walk outdoors during lunch break.

5. Stay away from politics and back-biting.

6. Bring your family to the office during lunch break or on a Saturday.

7. Cultivate a hobby.

8. If you have a toxic workplace, look for another job.

9. Celebrate achievements, even small ones.

10. Make your workspace clean and comfortable. Surround it with happy pictures.

11. Listen to music with headphones.

Building a Social Goodwill

Man is a social being, and interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people.  It is to be able to see what motivates them, how they work and how to work cooperatively with them.  Interpersonal intelligence is the inward sense of being able to understand oneself, to form an accurate model of oneself and to operate that model effectively to live life.  Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Psychology told me that the two aspects of personal intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal, form the most important foundation for a happy, fulfilling life.  To those who define success as happiness, these two elements can be the bedrock of a happy life. This skill involves being able to pick up subtle verbal, tonal and non–verbal signals from others.  Charismatic leaders are able to reach others by breaking the barrier that exists between people.  A charismatic speaker can make thousands of people react like one mind.

Develop the Capacity to Create Positive Field From Others

Develop the capacity to pick up subtle verbal, tonal and non-verbal signals from others. Learn also the ability to send out soothing, nurturing signals to others, thus creating a positive interpersonal field. Unlike in a magnetic field, where positive attracts negative and vice versa, a positive, emotional and spiritual field, attracts positive people and events and, in addition, transforms even a normally negative person into a positive one.

Practice working with people and listening to them with the same attitude as you would a beloved child, or respected parent. Your word, tone, your very glance should be completely focused on the person. Don’t dilute the interaction by playing with your Blackberry, talking on your cellphone or fiddling with your laptop. When you are with someone, pay complete attention. Anything less will only elicit a lukewarm response. Those who can create positive fields around themselves attract and build lifetime relationships.

Work with love and desire

Many of us spend most of our time at work. If we do not enjoy our work, if we feel overwhelmed by it, it will surely damage us. The constant pressure of negative emotions causes inescapable damage to our arteries and other delicate tissues. It also slows down the body’s capacity to repair this damage. To work at something you love, to be ‘self-actualized’ in Maslow’s terms, is to protect yourself against dying young. As Khalil Gibran wrote, ‘What is it to work with love?... It is to weave the cloth from the strings of your heart, as though your beloved were to wear it.’  ‘Fast tracking,’ being a corporate star, will extract the inevitable price of damage to arteries if you are not ‘mindful’, if you are not aware of the impact of everything you do on your system. 

Century of Mind

The mind is central to success in business today. Carl Segan wrote of the mind: ‘Every human being has the capacity to store the equivalent of 7550 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.’ Women managers, like men, need to develop the powers of their mind. The Indian ethos gives us key answers in this journey towards having a razor-sharp mind that can cut through all that is superfluous to the heart of truth. Develop the ability to wipe your mind clean and silent through meditation, because great concepts can be created only when the mindspace is clear of mindless static.’

As the first few generation of women who have entered the workplace, women managers must conquer fear and overcome the need for instructions. Pursue the ability to adapt and be a leader of proactive change. The New World is not for those who are what Nehru called, unwilling victims, dragged to be sacrificed on the altar of change. It is for the promoters of change. Those who dictate the unknown future. Women must be leaders to be accepted as such. They need to banish forever their fear of being centre stage, their reluctance to accept that; they are where the buck stops. 

Power of Energy

‘We draw energy from the wind or air and sunlight. We draw energy from water, earth (things grown on the earth).  We also draw energy from the divine forces of the universe, which pour into us through the chakras.

The sun pours heat, light and vitality, which greatly improves health and wellbeing.  That is why people feel depressed during the winter especially in the far North, like Scandinavian countries and the Arctic

A place can have a positive or negative field.  You can feel it when you enter a temple or church where regular services are performed. That is why people go to places of pilgrimage like Tirupathi. The feeling of prayerful sacredness envelopes all who go to that space.

During a disaster, a cloud of fear is created.  Anyone who enters that space is filled with fear, even if he is normally brave. The infectious nature of all emotions is similar. Hatred speaks from mind to mind, till the cloud of hatred draws to it all the people in that space even when the person is usually rational.

Remedies for Depression

Depression is signaled by a pervasive low mood, loss of interest, in everyday activities. The person has a lowered ability to enjoy things or experience pleasure.  ‘Nothing pleases me,’ a depressed person will say. ‘I did not feel like waking up in the morning.  Combing my hair and bathing needed a major effort.’  This is how a depressed person feels and all of us are depressed at one time or another. No laboratory can confirm this.  Doctors have to depend on what the patient says.  It can appear suddenly or be a life-long disorder.  This can affect one’s whole life and harshly impacts the family and its ability to enjoy life.

•             Being able to rise above the gloom is crucial.  Soothe yourself by talking kindly to yourself.  First-aid by the self is necessary while we are feeling low, insulted or tired.

•             Any form of meditation or silence will heal and illuminate your inner space.

Anti Happiness Action

             Expecting too much from others. 

             Not accepting yourself as you are; wanting demand too much of yourself.

             Not being content with anything.

             Feel you are not contributing.

             Not Feeling incuded.

             Play politics and being manipulative.

             Feel you cannot prevent another’s suffering (Eg mother’s pain)

             Constant craving for food.

             In a rush all the time; in a hurry. Toomuch hurry

             Excessive anger.

             Lethargy and inactivity.

             Too much tiredness.

             Ignoring others and harm the world (selfishness).

             Being too self-absorbed.

             Promising more than you can deliver

Bravery or Josh in Life

Chivalry or bravery is definitely a feel-good situation.  Chivalry is represented on the stage by firmness, patience, heroism, pride, zeal, valour and wit. Bravery fills you with enthusiasm, energy and spontaneity. It is this brave and gentle quality that defines a true hero and it reaps the benefits of other’s happiness.  Bravery is seen in the small everyday courage that each of us is called to manifest in the face of obstacles.  The ability to sacrifice, which is the core of emotional intelligence, is a part of the vira rasa.  The ability to persist in the face of difficulties is a part of this.  To meet the jealousy and pettiness of the world with gentleness, humour and fearlessness is part of it.  Brilliance and elegance belong to the true warrior, who aligns himself with the powerful forces of goodness. 

‘Josh’, wakefulness, energy and boundless enthusiasm are an expression of this energy.

Laughter increase your life span

Laughter increases the levels of endorphins in our bodies, which are natural pain-killers.  Norman Cousins, an American journalist who wrote “Anatomy of an Illness” was suffering from an incurable disease of the spine.  Laughter therapy helped him when no pain-killer could.  Endorphins released as a result of laughter may help in reducing the intensity of pain in those suffering from arthritis, spondylitis and muscular spasms of the body.  Many women have also reported a reduced frequency of migraine and tension headaches. Norman Cousins recovered from what is usually a fatal disease

He who laughs frequently is less likely to suffer from heart attacks.  ‘A light answer turneth away wrath,’ says a proverb.  An anger hijack can be stopped by a joke.Laughter is certainly the best medicine.

• Watch films and television features that make you laugh. 
• Be with cheerful people. Avoid the Cassandras and the Agony Uncles. Avoid toxic people.
• Read and share jokes on the internet.
• Smile.  Do not smother a laugh.
• Play with babies, make them giggle.

·         Buy balloons for toddlers.

• Listen to laughter in a school playground.

Laughter is the best Medicine

There are a number of causes for high blood pressure and heart disease like heredity, obesity, smoking and excessive intake of saturated fats.  But stress is one of the main factors.  Laughter definitely helps control blood pressure by reducing the release of stress-related hormones and bringing relaxation.

In experiments it has been proved that there is a drop of 10-20 mm in blood pressure after participating for ten minutes in a laughter session.  It does not mean that those who are taking 2-3 tablets for blood pressure every day will be completely cured.  Maybe, you will require two tablets if you are taking three, or if you are a borderline high blood pressure patient, you may not require any medication after some time.  It takes years to develop high blood pressure.  It cannot be reversed in a few days or a month.  But definitely laughter will exercise some control and arrest further progress of the disease.

If you are at high risk of developing heart disease, laughter could be the best preventive medicine.  Those who are suffering from heart disease and have stabilised on medication will find that laughter improves the blood circulation and oxygen supply to the heart muscles.  Due to improvement of blood circulation there are less chances of forming a clot.  Those who have had heart attacks or have undergone bypass surgery can also participate in laughter therapy.