How I carefully curated my happiness

I am usually not the smartest person in the room. I am not the prettiest person in the room either. I am not the fittest, richest or nicest person in the room. But somehow, a few years ago, all that started mattering a little less. You know who I usually am? I’m the happiest person in the room.

January, 2019 was when I first tried reaching out to a therapist. The reason? Anxiety attacks, panic attacks, difficulty breathing — mental problems galore! The reason I share this very fact is to take out the “luck” bias out of this article. No, I am not blessed with a “great” life, I just turned it around into a really happy one.

A lot of happiness is genetic, sure. You are blessed with a scale of happiness that you can play with. Some people have 5 as the highest setting, some have 7. That’s out of our control. But being at the top of your scale — that’s what we’re talking about here. Being consistently and sustainably at the top of your scale — that’s the north star.

I don’t want to preach and say I have figured it all out, but here is a blueprint of what has worked for me, and if it can help any of you become a happier version of yourself, I’d consider this a success-

1. Quality of relationships — For nearly 80 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been producing data and lessons on how to live longer and happier. The surprising conclusion? That it is our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships that has the most powerful influence on us. Health, work, money — sure, but most important? Your relationships. How you nurture them is really up to you, but one thing that I’ve learned so far? There is no cheat code. Relationships flourish when you genuinely care for your people, and that comes only when you choose the right ones.
2. Role of everything around you — People say the shortcut to being happy is being busy. Maybe…but in my opinion, it only works if you’re organically busy. It doesn’t work if you drown yourself in work/activities to live in denial. Nothing is ever resolved until you resolve it — this includes your sorrows, anger, heartbreaks — it only gets parked for later. And we all know..the longer the timeline, the higher the amount on that parking ticket.
3. Good mood is a state of mind — YES, you actually can cheat yourself into getting in a good mood every single day. I dance 5 minutes everyday before I leave the house. It helps me walk into a room with a spring in my step, which sets the tone just right for the rest of my day. No, it’s not inorganic; it’s simply science. Serotonin, ever heard of it?
4. It’s a bad moment, not a bad day — There is no cosmic significance of bad things — don’t milk them. Sure you had a bad moment, but your day is made up of tons of other moments. It’s a balance sheet. There are liabilities. But can you add more assets to it? The way I think about it, you can do two things about a bad moment — really indulge in negative thoughts, self pity and anxiety, or tell yourself that you need to work on getting some happy moments in. Find happy moments to tally the score of the day — get dinner with a friend, go to a group workout session, order a really nice meal — rewrite the story of the day!
5. Your biggest religion is your body — Life, death, peace, war, energy, happiness, mental balance — your success rate at these really depends upon your body, so why should you not prioritize taking care of it? They say a good litmus test for your problems is to think what all would matter 5 years from now. Close your eyes, think about it. What would matter 5 years, 10 years, 15 years from now? Your body is going to be on each of those lists.
6. Focus on what matters to you — decisions are not simple average metric, but weighted average metric. For a decision, your pro-con list would probably be identical to most people’s lists, but the weights you assign to those pros and cons would vary differently. Know what matters to you, and own it. Your decision making becomes much more simple and thorough once you know your weights.
7. Be true to yourself — Cannot stress on how important that is. Your relationship with yourself is the most important one in this world. The masks you put on for the world for those 16 hours of your day, start dictating what you think of yourself. Deep down you know that’s not who you are, but you behave like that for most of your day, and your actions become you. Now your brain doesn’t know who you really are. Confused? Think about how confused your brain is to live it everyday, and a confused brain is an antonym to mental peace.
8. Time — the most valuable resource, and super finite. Delayed gratification does not work well with time. As cliche as this sounds, you don’t know what tomorrow holds for you. Usually we see ourselves debating between short term pleasure and long term gains but why “or”, when you can “and”? Find things that you enjoy both in the present that contribute to your future growth.
9. Dopamine and Serotonin can be manipulated — Find cheat codes to kick these in your brain. Some activities that flood these in me (and are universally known to trigger these hormones) are checking off to-do lists, walking, laughing, spending time under the sunlight, listening to music.
10. Peace of mind — Difficult to understand, more difficult to achieve. The strategy that worked for me here? Grab the lowest hanging fruits [a] Declutter your space, it declutters your mind. [b] Select which battles to pick — make a list about things that matter to you, let everything else happen without beating your brain too much about it [c] Journal — pen your thoughts down to relieve your brain of them. Once you achieve the low hanging fruits, you create some peace in your brain. It’s like a puzzle — once you’ve put some initial pieces right, you see a structure and then it becomes easier to put the difficult pieces in the right place. Low hanging fruits are those initial pieces of the puzzle in your brain.
11. Own your decisions — it’s your life. Half the stress I took most of the time while making a decision was thinking how would I justify the decision to the world — the truth is, I didn’t need to. The only tally you have is the one with yourself. The only person you need to justify your decisions to, is yourself.
12. There is no competition — we’re all in this together. Biggest sham is the seed that’s been planted inside our head, that asks us to be the best at work, best at fitness, best at dancing, best at speaking — nope. Give it your best — that might make you feel really good. If it doesn’t make you feel good, give it your moderate, that’s okay too. P.S. A tip here — don’t indulge too much in social media stalking. Don’t compare the highlights of someone else’s life with everyday reality of your own.
13. Be yourself — own it. Every time someone is perfectly and comfortably themselves, the world becomes a bit more colorful. I am so good at being Avisha, I love being her — so why should I even try to be someone else?