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Happiness 365©

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Hungary in 1936.  A tall, well-built and handsome army sergeant.  An excellent shot.  This young man was Karoly Takacs.  At that time, Karoly was gaining fame not just in Hungary but also across Europe as a world class shooter and was favoured to win a gold in the forthcoming 1940 Olympics.  He was a very fine right handed shooter and his specialty was the men’s 25 meter rapid fire pistol shooting.

During an army drill, the hand grenade that Karoly was holding, exploded.  And Karoly lost his right arm.  His right arm, his shooting arm was no more.  Gone in the blast.  Gone too his career as a shooter.  Gone hours and hours of rigorous practice.  Everything finished in that blast.

Karoly was hospitalized for more than a month and made a slow but steady recovery.  I am sure, I am absolutely certain that two thoughts must have buzzed around in his mind.  And perhaps the first of which was, ‘why did have to happen to me’?  And the second, ‘why did this happen to me just now’?   Maybe his family, friends and army buddies would have said to him, ‘we are so sorry that this happened to you, Karoly.’  ‘We are so sorry that the universe is so cruel and that not only has your arm been snatched away from you but also your whole career as a shooter’.  And amongst those visitors and well-wishers, some may even have said to Karoly, ‘God has been totally unfair to you.  Your entire life is destroyed.  Your shining future is gone.  You could have been an Olympic gold medalist and now everything is lost’.

Well, nobody is very sure what happened during the time Karoly was hospitalized.  He emerged from the hospital determined to continue training for the Olympics with his left arm.  Somehow, somewhere Karoly had figured out that he had a healthy, fully functional hand.  So what if that was not the arm, the hand that he had practiced with for years and possibly decades?  So what if he had to retrain himself to use his left arm, his left hand? So what that he had to start from scratch?

Karoly started to use his left arm and gradually started to train to shoot with his left hand.  Without a doubt, it would have been painful.  Physically painful and emotionally difficult.   It may have seemed hopeless and impossible.   Yet somehow, Karoly Takacs persisted.

In 1939, just one year after losing his right arm, Karoly showed up at the Hungarian National Pistol Shooting Championship.  His former shooting buddies and competitors came up to say hello and compliment him on his sporting spirit that he had showed up to wish them luck despite his own misfortune.  They were totally taken aback when Karoly said that he was not there to wish them, not there simply to see the competition but to compete. He went on to win this championship.

Karoly, like so many other athletes and sportspeople, across the globe was so looking forward to the 1940 Olympics.  Alas! The Second World War deferred not just the 1940 Olympics but also the 1944 Olympics.  And once again, it seemed that fortune was not favouring him at all.  Something longed for, something awaited and something for which he had sweated, laboured, prepared and endured was not happening.  The future would have been not just uncertain but also bleak.

But when finally the 1948 Summer Olympics took place in London, the one armed Karoly who was by then almost 40 years old, went on to win the gold.  In winning he beat the reigning world champion and world favourite Carlos Enrique of Argentina.   In 1948, Karoly was the world’s third known physically disabled athlete to have competed in the Olympics.   He went on to win yet another gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

We suffer through the ‘why me’ of our lives.  We feel the pain of being left out.  We feel singled out in our misery many a time.  Why did this awful lockdown happen now?  This is happening to me because of someone else.  If only …. my circumstances were not against me.  What can I do?  This is my fate, this is my destiny.    And our sense of hopelessness becomes deeper.

Whether it is this lockdown or the next speed breaker at work, the fact is life seldom moves in a straight line.  There is no upward curve that just keeps going up and up without a plateau, without a dip, without a bend.   And so, in our work there are peaks and dips, dips and curves.

Yet we peg our happiness to the peaks, the increment, the promotion, the award, the before lockdown incentive trip to Switzerland, the Atlanta visit, the Singapore posting, the Harvard MBA paid for by the company, the year on year at least 25% growth, the quarterly sales target, the new tranche of investment of at least a few million dollars and so on.

But if your happiness and mine is pegged to these phenomenal milestones, to these annual events, to these things that may or may not happen, then are we, you and I, doomed to unhappiness the rest of 364 days? Because all this happens only once a year and we are lucky if there is more than one occasion to celebrate a milestone like this during the year.  So, what is going to happen to our happiness? Are we going to stay unhappy or conditionally happy the rest of the days?  When we depend on that one thing or that one person to make us happy, we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness.

The key to Happiness 365© lies in cultivating the habit of gratitude.   This is the attitude that leads to wellbeing and drastically cuts down on stress.   I am near certain that Karoly gave thanks for the one healthy arm and hand that he had.  Without that gratitude he may not have been able to even think of starting from scratch with his non-dominant hand.

Research has well established a connection between gratitude and the feelings of happiness. I remember reading this nugget of wisdom somewhere, and I quote “Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.” If this is not the basis for happiness, what is?

So if the practice of gratitude can do all this and more for us, are we still going to continue to focus on what is not?   Based on global research and my experience, I know that with gratitude grow our reasons to celebrate.  I remember writing this last year, “As we find reasons to celebrate and express gratitude, those reasons multiply and grow”.    I feel that somewhere Karoly must have held onto his gratitude for the one arm he had left.  And because of the way he responded to his misfortune, he could think about, aim for and achieve Olympic gold not once but twice.

The most amazing things can and do unfold when we live with gratitude for what is.  When we are filled to the brim with stress and frustration over what is not, over the delayed stuff, over the unexpected, over the disliked, we are not able to use our mind, our brain and our energy to move ahead.  There is a natural conflict within us.  We want what we want.  We want to progress.  But we hold ourselves back by losing our focus.  When we lose focus or even when we focus with underlying stress, our brain does not find the space in which to think well, to decide well and to choose well.  Gratitude is the one element that reverses all this negativity and allows our mind to relax.  Then we think better, we choose better and we do the better thing.  We simply live better.  We create happiness for ourselves and for others around us.

But how should you develop the habit of gratitude?   Is it easy?  Is it hard?  Is it about just saying thank you God whenever you can or a thank-you- so- much to the people around you?

Well, gratitude is a training like any other.  A habit that has to be developed very consciously.  You are unlikely to wake up one fine morning and declare, ‘now I have gratitude’. The habit has to be formed deliberately and constructed carefully.

Take a big fat notebook.  Something you really like.  Maybe with a pretty cover or a macho leather one.  Whatever appeals to you and is handy to keep close to your bedside.  This is your gratitude journal.  This is the key to transformation of stress into ease, unhappiness to happiness and a unique enjoyment of life.  Keep a smooth fluid pen specifically for your gratitude journal with a bright ink that appeals to you.  We all have our preferences.  This is too important to not give it this kind of attention.  After all, you and your gratitude journal are about to become constant companions.

Every night, without fail, jot down either three or five things that made you thankful or happy during the day.  Please, please be consistent with the number.  If you are starting with three points, please stick with three.  Do not vary this number and don’t think even for a second that three points of gratitude are way too less.    The idea is not write 30 points one nights and then not even one for the next 30 nights.  Consistency is key.

After a period of professional struggle in 2015, I felt frustrated and at a dead end.  I undertook a deep dive and researched many, many ways of breaking a deadlock in life and of pushing away despair.

The one thing that research threw up at me again and again was the practice of gratitude.   Even within the practice of gratitude, there are many ways and many views of doing it.  I found the way I have shared with you to be the most practical, the most doable and also the most effective.   Within less than 100 days I felt more energized and somehow more hopeful about my professional choices.  I felt more empowered.  As my gratitude deepened, my relationships improved.  I felt calmer and more patient in thinking through my decisions.  I naturally took better decisions than earlier.

I do the three points only.  And no more than three.   And as I wrote in my globally acclaimed bestseller Buddha At Work©, “Each statement must begin with: ‘I am so happy or I am so thankful’.  My gratitude index can cover something as basic as the taste of an unusually sweet mango, on the one hand and something far more complex, as getting published in 3 languages, on the other.   Without fail, please follow this for the next 100 days.  Without any break or any gap.  Just do it and feel something shift in the depths of your life.  Feel a new sense of ease.  Feel and create Happiness 365©!

By the way, Karoly ended his career as a national coach.  He rose to the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Hungarian army.   And created that happy life that lasted.  Happiness 365©

in Life Self-Improvement on

Get Over It: Simple Steps to Overcoming Regret of Lost Opportunities and Lost Time

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A few months into the lockdown I realized that my growing hopelessness was directly related to not just the uncertainty of the COVID-19 Pandemic but the fact it had taken so many of my choices away.  The small choices of everyday life.  And the more these small choices rolled away into the past, the more my basket of regrets grew in size and weight….

Soon this basket of regrets was all that I was holding onto.  Even brooding about.  Constantly looking back on my life.  Regretting decisions taken long ago.   It seemed as if all the wrong stuff of the past had come to roost inside my head and made it near impossible to remain happy and hopeful in the lockdown.  Yes, there were practical reasons for unhappiness.  Yes, there was the financial impact.  Yes, there was a negative impact on work.  Yes, there was disruption of life.

And here I was, simply adding to it all by wallowing in it night and day.  ‘Soon I was going to get a crick in my neck with this gazing back into the past’, I thought morosely to myself.  It was time to get over it.

You and I often turn back in our thoughts and in our mind.  Our regret is often erosive and sets up roadblocks to our progress in life.

Looking back is looking back on life and looking back on time.  It is that moment of regret which whispers softly within, ‘if only’.  Why didn’t I accept that job offer?  Why didn’t I complete my project in time?  Why didn’t this, that or the other?  Why did I not take this opportunity and why did not I do this while I was still working with XYZ?  We are in a state of self-blame and regret over something that has passed us by.  Whatever has passed by becomes even more precious, way better, more delicious, more rewarding and perhaps just the very best thing we could have done ever.  The very best that happened to us.  This sets up a pattern of thinking that hijacks our physical brain for a time.  Converting it into stress and brings about a feeling of helplessness in life.

This happened with me in June 2014.  India’s largest, biggest corporation flew me down to Mumbai for a chat at their head office and we shook hands over a CHRO role for their newly acquired huge media business.   The job offer reached me the following month.  The only condition was that I must join within one week or less.  Having successfully argued my case for a significant increment at my then employer, having also accepted a performance bonus I felt that a 5 days notice to join a new organization was not professional.  It was simply not a decent thing to do.   And so I let this opportunity go.  Yes,  I let the opportunity slip past.   And in a twist as worthy of a Bond movie as of real life, I had a falling out with the Chairman of my then company within one month of having declined that offer.   And it was evident and clear that I will be leaving the company shortly.  With or without a job in hand.

I would mentally re-live the moment of declining the new offer, the new opportunity countless times a day.  Innumerable times a night even while sleeping and most certainly, while tossing and turning.  My sense of regret was enormous for a long time.  What had happened with me was certainly troubling but I was torturing myself even more by reliving the past again and again.  Saying to myself, ‘if only I had accepted the offer in June, if only..’. And as my then working environment somehow went from bad to worse, the feelings of regret and reliving the lost moments, deepened.  Adding to the regret was the feeling that I didn’t really deserve what happened.  After all, I was actually doing the right thing by my current company.

How could I move from this feeling of being mentally frozen and stuck in regret?

I knew I had to get it right.  The first effort was to create an immediate goal, rather goals, on which to focus my energy and therefore my thoughts.  To give the circling thoughts a pause.  To provide something important and different to my brain and actually shift from stress to ease.   How interesting it is to learn that our thoughts are in direct communication with our body’s chemicals and hormones!  And shifting focus also changes the stress chemicals in our body.

I got out my trusted companion (my diary, no less!) and wrote out a fresh set of personal and professional goals.   Some things needed to be done immediately and some of them were longer term.  The beauty of small immediate goals is the keen focus they are able to provide us.   And when we complete the short-term stuff, it lends such energy to transform, to change our stressful thoughts.

I have learnt, the hard way J, that a small powerful technique to stop regret from overtaking me is to literally tear it all up.  Just tear up the regret, the whole experience around it.  Write down the negative experience.  Write also your stress filled and negative thoughts.   Honestly.   And then take a good hard look at the whole thing you have written.  Read it.  And tear it to bits.  That’s right.  Tear it up into little itsy-bitsy bits and throw it out.  Experts can sometimes also tell you to burn this piece of writing and that is a very powerful way of getting rid of it.  But the safety elements involved are so many in burning a page that tearing it to itsy bitsy bits is preferable.

So now you know that when regret strikes, you need to follow these two simple steps – give the mind and the physical brain something else to focus.  Concretely focus on.  And the second, burn it safely after writing it or tear it up.  With energy.  Both will help you get over it.