Practicing Happiness

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful”. (Albert Schweitzer )
When we talk about happiness and success, we are talking about two different things. What makes a person feel happy and what makes a person feel successful do not always coincide with one another. Most of the people want to be happy. But they also want to be successful. While each person might has an individualized definition of just what each of these things mean to him, the overall desire to lead a life that’s free of stress, worry, anxiety, and fear, while being replete with happiness and success, is constant.
Recently I watched a TED talk by young Harvard professor Shawn Achor whose lecture at TED is one of the twenty-most viewed lectures. He redefined the concept of happiness and its impacts on success. Achor explains in his book, “Happiness fuels success, when we are happy our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient and productive at work.”

We are taught exact opposite: “once you are successful, then you can be happy”, “once you get into grad school, then you can be happy”, “as soon as you get that great job, then you can be happy”, I grew up listening this but as Achor says ,’ doctors put in a positive mood before making a diagnosis show almost three times more intelligence and creativity than doctors in a neutral state, and they make accurate diagnoses 19 percent faster. Optimistic salespeople outsell their counterparts by 56 percent. Students primed to feel happy before taking math achievement tests far outperform their neutral peers. It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive.”
There are countless occasions when I become negative and because of this, I suffered BPD. I won’t share the story because it wrenched me to the core every time I think of it, besides its personal. However, after meditation and a year of writing my journal, I feel better and happy. I will practice these in future

1) Bring gratitude to mind: I will thank to me and give me a motivation by saying that thumbs up for me i have done best. Feeling gratitude for ourselves and others bring happiness in life and ultimately leads toward success.

2) Exercise: I will engage myself in 15 minutes of mindful cardio activity

3) Meditate: I will give 15 minutes to myself to remain calm and think about beautiful things.

4) Engage in a random act of kindness: I will help others and make them happy by doing small act of kindness.