Happiness is a choice

Contentment with whatever you have is the greatest path to happiness. Comparison with those better than us makes us discontented. Comparison with those who are worse off makes us proud and arrogant. Shanti or a peaceful, calm mind, suffused with affection and compassion, makes our field a happy one while spreading like a fragrance to embrace all those around us. Everyone has only two choices—life-enhancing and life destroying. An event is not as critical as is your reaction or perception of it. It continues its life inside you, a nuclear landmine of memories that wreak far more destruction than the actual event. The more mindspace you allocate to unhappy memories, the more time you spend in the past while being a spectator in the living present, the more you miss the joy the present moment offers. At any given time, the past should not inhabit. The ability to planning our future, should be devoted to a rational planning exercise, not aimless daydreaming that nibbles at your day like a rat in a godown of rice. All of us need a tender, loving caretaker within who nurtures us, not an internal drill master who victimises us in an insulting and disparaging tone, sucking out all our energy, enthusiasm and happiness.

Steps to Increase Your Happiness

The world is in your drawing room, it is clamouring to change your life with more and more sophisticated toys. As a popular saying goes, ‘What separates the men from the boys is just the price of their toys.’ Simplify and go home to what you really need. The world is like a buffet counter at a five-star hotel. Let’s not grab everything on our plates. Let us be choosy, so that we may avoid spiritual indigestion and physical exhaustion. Let us replace stress with positive emotions that engender joy. Let us increase our Happiness Quotient (HQ). Finding a job you love is one of the ways you can immunise yourself against heart problems. A good marriage is a protective shield against heart attacks. Merely avoiding negative emotions is not enough; one should consistently cultivate the positive emotions of love, compassion, courage and peace.

Building A Health Stable Development

Building a life is not like putting up a building, but more like growing a tree: slower, organic and evolutionary. It cannot be done in a hurry. Like Nature, human development, in order to be healthy, has to follow a slower, more stable timetable. Those who seek to speed it up beyond a point will have to pay the price. The price may be of their own lives. Many have died to live up to some unrealistic modern myth of yuppiedom and success. Genetics may enable us to accurately identify those who have a predisposition to heart disease, and take defensive action like following the Zero Heart Attack Path well before there is a problem. Interventions where the heart can repair itself with help from genetics are under discussion. But the fact is that each one of us can find a powerful ally in Mother Nature to repair our ailing hearts. We can do it naturally and happily with help from our families and friends. We must also never forget that knowledge without values is the abyss into which mankind may unknowingly fallen. You do not have to be a bean counter negating your soul for a few rupees more.

Women role in today’s Economy

Women have moved into the workforce in an unmistakable wave. In modern societies today, many of them bear the dual burden of managing a home and career. The infrastructure necessary to help them: crèches, dependable childcare, help from husbands, gadgets to make housework easier, is not yet in place. This generation of transitional women is at high risk from heart disease, particularly during the menopausal years. Statistics show that women have fifty per cent chance of dying of heart disease, ten times higher than their risk of dying by breast cancer. Dual responsibilities have reduced the woman’s capacity to perform her role of a primary caregiver. Her ability to absorb and reduce tensions has been greatly compromised. A common response is the super-mom syndrome. This is a woman who feels that she can be a super career woman and a super-mom. Maintaining this dazzling image can have a damaging impact on the overall health of women in this transitional era. Only joint efforts by the couple and the involvement of elders and the extended family, or community support can adequately fill this gap. To succeed today, women have to look like a woman, think like a man and work like a dog. It is a challenge all women have to meet and survive to enjoy success.

Music – Stress Reliever

Music has the power to purify the emotional field like nothing else. Pranayama helps you sing without losing your breath. The mindspace becomes sweetly harmonious and no harsh words can be spoken there. Here is a quote from Rabinranath Tagore’s Geetanjali: “I touch with the edge of the far-reaching wings of my song, thy feet which I could never aspire to reach”. Every day we should choose the sounds that allowed into our field. Perhaps we could set a song for the day in our mind. Those who met us would see the sparkle of that song in my eyes and feel the rhythm of its harmony in our, limbs. Why should we allow foul language into our mind? ‘Shabdh or sound is Vani Saraswathi, the Goddess of Learning. Words are sacred to her. Choose to say beautiful words, to hear lovely words. Banish harsh, angry and foul language from the inner spaces of your heart. A sure happiness killer is stress, hence beware of it.

Sustainable Environment

You can create a sustainable environment around you. This happens when you treat the Earth like a friend. Replace whatever you take from her with love. We need to stop doing many things to achieve a sustainable, clean environment. No Plastic bags, no empty shampoo sachets. Carry a cloth bag. Each of us has a personal responsibility to fulfill. Each of us has a personal duty to do something to spread the message. Use all communications for life changing, life affirming activities, Stop complaining. Do…do Something. The Carbon footprint is measured by the CO2 or other greenhouse gases created by an object, person or action. Each of us needs to aim at a lower carbon footprint. MCAfee estimates that 78 percent of all incoming e-mails are spam. 62 trillion spam messages are sent every year! The turning point is here. If we do not read the warnings, revolution is at our door. Let us not be caught unawares. We can still save planet Earth ourselves by being proactive.

The Happiness Quotient Killer

Stress is destructive. Stress is ageing. Stress is a killer. Thirty-six chemicals pour into the blood—lethal chemicals like adrenaline and histamine. Blood rushes through the heart, blood pressure and pulse rates shoot up. The rate of breathing increases. The body gets ready to fight or flee. Digestion is switched off. All parts of the brain, except the primitive ‘lizard brain’, are switched off. The force of blood-flow in an enraged person causes minute tears in the tender fabric of the arteries. Fatty deposits find a convenient place to park themselves to repair the tears, and cholesterol, the plaster of paris of the body, slowly builds up to occlude the artery. Soon the tender flexible artery becomes stiff and hard, preparing the stage for a heart attack. The good news is that there is hope at the end of the tunnel as people are becoming aware of the stress epidemic and are making conscious choices to not become just another statistic. A fundamental shift in leisure time and spending priorities has taken place in recent years. This includes higher budgets for movies, personal fitness, meditation, holidays, adventure sports and fine arts. You have a much better chance of doing what you love as an artist, sportsman, musician or film maker today than ever before. Meditation and pranayama provide a way of reducing the automatic and violent reactions to stress. You can actually control autonomous systems like heartbeat and pulse rate, which were thought to be outside the individual’s control.