Category: Personal mastery

“Horrible #!@& shot”, screamed my golf buddy as he saw his ball disappearing into the trees. He had had a good round so far and felt this shot was going to ruin it. He was furious with himself and stayed flustered the rest of the afternoon.

Unfulfilled expectations are one of the biggest sources of unhappiness in human life. Our life is laden with these events – you miss out on the promotion you so badly hoped for, your partner and you have such diverse views that you can rarely agree, your child’s performance or behavior is at complete odds with your expectations, your favorite team loses the final, the weather in your much awaited holiday turns out to be lousy.

They are all potential sources of discontent. Essentially, any mismatch between our expectation and reality leads to disappointment. We feel frustrated, angry and sometimes bitter – a perfect recipe for being unhappy. Unfortunately, we routinely encounter such situations in every day life and even the smallest of mismatches contributes to the accumulating unhappiness.

The cause

At a deeper level, this discontentment is linked to our deep identification with our egoistic mind. Our mind routinely conjures up images of the future, elaborating on the potential rewards of our actions, which would take us closer to our dream of greater success and happiness. In the process, we build strong attachment with specific outcomes – the promotion, the child’s strong performance, the favorable weather and so forth.

Additionally, conditioned by our judgmental nature, we see things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and operate from the belief that one outcome is necessarily better than the other. This makes us further cling to the one outcome that we believe is most desirable. Any mismatch is then unacceptable and perceived as a serious setback.

The case for cultivating acceptance

Deeper acceptance means surrendering to what is – not what…

Do you sometime notice a sense of restlessness within you – a subtle feeling of wanting more from life; a desire for more success, more happiness, more wealth, more comfort, more love, more acknowledgement, more friends, more wisdom, more time, more fun or more healthy years?

Initially, I thought this was a fleeting feeling that arose from time to time, but I have now come to recognize that its subtle presence can be a persistent one; it’s undercurrents a constant companion. While this feeling is the source of fuel that moves us forward, it is also the cause of our discontent in life. How we quickly get used to any new circumstances in life and start nurturing these cravings from thereon.

If we had been dreaming about buying a Toyota Corolla, no sooner than we get to buy it, we get used to it and start eyeing the Camry. Not that the guy driving the Camry is any happier as he’s wondering when is he going to get his next upgrade.

3 Reasons For Our Discontentment

1. Belief that more is better

In our achievement-oriented society, more is often synonymous with better – the underlying belief that the person with more is likely to be happier; that more success, more money equates to greater happiness. Further, the capitalistic philosophy of ‘winner takes all’ and its tempting, instant and disproportionate rewards make us constantly yearn for more. Further, high decibel advertising touting the latest consumer products reinforces our sense of inadequacy.

As a result, we subconsciously dedicate our life to seeking perfection in all aspects of our life – from perfect looking teeth and perfectly shaped body- even if it means undergoing cosmetic surgery- to the most desirable perfume and the perfect partner. In the process, we develop a lop-sided sense of priorities and end up living a poor inner life because we are constantly thinking…

Happiness has been a conscious pursuit of mine lately. Driven by a quest for deeper meaning and in search of a purposeful life, I left the seductive life of a corporate executive some years ago. Since then, examining, exploring, and experimenting with happiness has been kind of a hobby. I have also developed a happiness test (please click here to check your happiness score) and have pored over the positive shifts my clients- and I personally- have experienced on the happiness scale over time.

Born to be happy (or unhappy)
I have come to believe that some people are simply born with a happiness gene. They lead a happier life irrespective of their circumstances or their station in life. They are happy whether they are materially successful or not; marry a loving partner or not; win or lose; are healthy or ailing and so forth.

However, they are a minority. For the rest of us, we instinctively drift towards unhappy feelings, as if we carry a dominant unhappiness gene that’s continually ready to assert itself. The consequent unhappiness ranges from subconscious undercurrents of incompleteness, constant desire for more and lack of joy to substantive sadness, anxiety and moments of depression. However, any of us can discover real happiness – just that for the majority of us, this requires making a conscious effort.

From some of my work in this area, I could not help observe the key symptoms of this unhappiness gene. Developing an understanding of these has been very helpful in working through my personal moments of confusion, anxiety and unhappiness as well as those of my clients.

‘MOODS’
MOODS is an acronym I have coined to capture the five key traits of this so-called unhappiness gene. It stands for Me, Overwhelmed, Obsessive, DIY and Set in stone. Let me elaborate what they mean and some quick thoughts on what we can do neutralize them.

Me
‘Me’ represents our self-centered instincts to take…

Anger is a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure or hostility. Instigated by any number of triggers – someone cutting our lane on the freeway, a child not following our advice, the spouse saying something that appears hurtful, a colleague’s aggressively worded e-mail or somebody’s actions that simply appear unjust, it’s an emotional state that ranges from minor irritation to intense rage.

The temptation
We are easily tempted into anger. Often, the underlying factor bringing up anger is a sense of lack of control – a perceived threat to getting what we want. This temptation for control is rooted in our ego and in our attachment with specific outcomes.

Further, anger originates from the tempting belief that the real source of our unhappiness or provocation is entirely external to us and is hence targeted at an external object or person. It’s always someone else’s inappropriate behaviour that’s the cause of our anger. At least that’s how we rationalise our outbursts anyway!

Anger also resides in the conviction that a burst of aggressive energy aimed at the other person would improve the situation. The child would change his/ her ways, the subordinate would start behaving in a desirable manner and the spouse would listen to us more often.

Its toxic impact
Anger is an emotional illness and has some serious consequences for us. While small and occasional releases of cortisol can provide the body a quick burst of energy during emergencies, uncontrolled and frequent anger has a host of harmful effects on our personal and social well-being.

The physical effects of anger include increased levels of heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. Anger also activates the release of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which in turn impair the ability of the brain to function optimally. Anger creates blood sugar imbalance and suppresses the body’s immune system.

When angry, we are unable to make judicious choices – in such a state, sometimes, we are indeed out of our mind! Further, after…

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius

One of the principles of the journey of personal mastery that I have been writing about is self-responsibility: taking charge of ourselves and putting into practice all the meaningful ideas that emerge from our efforts at raising self-awareness. It is about making conscious choices that help us breakaway from our conditioned responses and instead create a new reality for us.

Self-responsibility is grounded in the tenet that the real change lies within us and that the only way to change our world is to change ourselves. It demands that we are open-minded about the capacity in each of us to discover- and implement- our unique solutions to our personal dilemmas.

It relies on the conviction that all of us do have a choice in every situation – the notion that it’s not what happens to us, but how we react to it that makes the real difference; the understanding that our inner thoughts have the power to create the reality we want to experience; and that we are indeed the co-creators of the world we inhabit.

Changing habits
Since humans are creatures of habit, real change is possible only by changing our deep-rooted habits.

Instead of trying to undo well-ingrained old habits, it is more effective to introduce new positive ones. Working with new habits makes the process of change far more positive and solution-oriented and is hence more empowering. For example, instead of working on how not to get angry frequently, it’s more effective to focus on being calmer more often.

These habit changes often operate at different layers of our personality. Starting from our behavior patterns, they encompass working with our thought processes, emotional responses and our fundamental beliefs. Practicing to stay calm in the face of a disturbing stimulus, becoming accustomed to actively appreciating one’s colleagues or sticking to a diet plan are all examples of desired behavioral changes.

Even so, at a deeper level, they…

“People often expect different results from doing the same   actions” – Alcoholics Anonymous

When we think about addiction, the first image that crosses our mind is that of someone addicted to alcohol, tobacco, gambling or drugs. However, addiction includes any form of fixation, obsession or habitual indulgence in an activity. So much so that when addicted, we cannot resist this indulgence despite being aware of its injurious impact. While in some cases this dependence on a substance or an activity is apparently physical, in most situations it’s essentially a psychological one.

Addiction starts with our initially flirting with the substance or the activity, mainly to enhance our mood at that moment or seek some momentary pleasure. However, with frequent flirtation, this indulgence becomes a habit – one that we find difficult to live without. All the same, overtime, once we get addicted, engaging in this fixation merely serves to make us feel normal.

Many more of us are addicted than we know.
Addiction then includes any uncontrolled obsession that we have – for example, for food, sweets, watching television, work, shopping, buying latest gadgets, facebook, or loveless sex. It refers to any deeper emotional dependency that we develop to feel good. While some of these may be less harmful than the others, they all have  a significant negative impact on us. Defined this way, I feel we all are perhaps guilty of multiple addictions. Furthermore, while many of us escape the more visible addictions, we do get caught up with our own set of inner demons. Our recurring stream of thoughts and feelings about stuff- routinely getting anxious about situations, our persistent desire to control outcomes and the volatility of our temperament that we find challenging to moderate- are all examples of a compulsive behavior.

To my mind, all these are addictive patterns we live with, but are ignorant of, for the most part. These instinctive responses get so ingrained in our state of being that we…