5 ways to remain happy on Monday to Thursday & Sunday

Do you find the title strange? Why would someone talk about being happy on selected days. Reason - people find it relatively easier to remain upbeat on Friday and Saturday. Today I will give you some quick ways to find bliss on those days when you are generally counting the number of hours left for Friday evening!

1. Spend a little money 

"Whoever said money can't buy happiness, didn't know where to go shopping" said an American actress years ago. I agree. Although it is not the only source, there is no doubt that money can get you bliss from time to time. There are endless possibilities and an endless budget if you think in broader terms. But to buy a few moments of smile during a heavy week can be surprisingly inexpensive. Buy a bunch of flowers or a house plant and adorn your living room. Buy that yummy blueberry muffin you have been avoiding, from the bakery on the way home. It can be anything which you have been thinking of getting for a long time!

2. Play a sport

It is good exercise, good recreation, a good way of catching up with friends and an excellent way to recharge yourself mentally. Playing a sport adds a little bit of verve to the week. Take out an hour every week for any game of your choice - Squash, Badminton, Pool etc. Join a team or league. Soon it will be something you will be eagerly looking forward to!

3. Cook a dinner

As someone who loves cooking and does it day and night, I vouch for it. There are few things more rewarding than having a home cooked, delicious and aromatic food, made with carefully picked ingredients and spices. Add colours and flavours. Experiment and use your imagination to come up with something which you have not tried before!

4. Phone a Friend

Although usually we leave such 'errands' for the weekend, try this out on a weekday. Just pick up your phone and call a friend from school or university you have not talked to in a while. Just refreshing those wonderful memories and having a laugh will leave with a great feeling! 

5. Write your journal

Although it does not sound as much fun as the other four, retrospection during a week will definitely bring more value and meaning to your days. Write down about anything which made you smile, anything which you are grateful for, or anything which you are glad you did or did not! Make a collection of moments and memories and update it every week! Just going through it once every week will only take 10 minutes but the joy will last for 10 days!

"Remember, it is not really difficult to become happy. It is just that we forget to do so!"

Starting afresh this New Year! Time to let go the past!

                              
Hi Friends! Happy New Year! 

I hope that the year started great for all of you. For me, yes it did! I had a great time in India with my family and friends and now I am back in Hong Kong, just in time to celebrate the Chinese New Year! 

And as the first month of the new year is coming to an end, I tried to retrospect this morning if anything had happened worth noting down here. If I had discovered some pearls of wisdom to share with you all. And I realized that I had in fact understood a very important point. 

To tell you this point, I will start with a short story which I had read in the Speaking Tree section of The Times of India newspaper. The story goes like this.  

A wise man once told a joke to a group of people. Everyone was amused and laughed a lot and appreciated the humour. After some time, he narrated this joke again. This time, people were slightly less amused and just smiled. He repeated the joke the third time and nobody gave a reaction. When he tried telling the same joke again for the fourth time, people got irritated. Someone shouted at the wise man asking why was he repeating the same joke again and again. The man replied, "If repeating a joke ceases to amuse after a few times, then how do we carry on with repeated remembrance of painful stories?"

As per my last post, when I was noting my experiences of the last year and the dreams and challenges for the coming year, I was reminded of some of the sad memories and unhappy incidents from my past. I realized that I had been carrying them with me since many years and they had only accumulated and become a huge emotional baggage affecting my present and future. This baggage had only hurt me and given me more pain with time.

Many of us have been carrying the weight of these unnecessary painful memories since ages. A lengthy warm discussion with my mum made me see that it was time to let go, time to be free from this baggage. Time to be free from fear, anger, hurt, resentment, guilt and all kinds of negative emotions from the past. 

Hence as the Chinese celebrate their New Year with fireworks today, and the world rejoices with them, let us all decide to leave something behind in 2011 and start the journey of 2012 afresh! Lets free the diaries of our mind and heart and fill them with fresh happy chapters. You might say that this is not easy. I agree. I wish that the human genius would invent some device to retain only selective memories in our brain. However until that happened, we would need to do it manually. And this how I did it:

1. Free from Anger - Try to make yourself free from all the anger, resentment, or hatred that you might have carried for many different people since childhood. You are only doing a favour to yourself by letting go of these feelings towards them. Forgive them. I am not asking you to make them your best friends. But rise to a level where it no longer affects you. The moment is over. Now it is time to move on. 

2. Free from Guilt - Quite often we life we blame ourselves for things which happened in our lives or in the lives of our loved ones. However, don't forget that we do not have control over everything. So free yourself from guilt. If you know you made a mistake, try to redeem it. But do not spoil what you can do today or tomorrow because of one wrong thing you did yesterday. 

3. Free from regret - Time machines only existed in fiction and hence there is no way we are going to be able to go back and change our decisions, our situations, our mistakes. Hence, believe that everything happened for a reason and learn from them. Live in the moments of present and think of the dreams of future. Try not to regret the past. 

4. Believe in yourself - Believe in yourself and believe in the beauty of your present and future. Just because something happened once in the past or someone told you something, it does not become a reality. Trust yourself.

I had read when I was a kid, that every story has two parts. A beginning and an end. If you didn't like the beginning you could give it a beautiful end. So don't remain stuck on the beginnings which didn't start well. 

I have decided to give some fresh endings in the year 2012. I have decided to forget and to forgive. All the best to you too!

Kung Hei Fat Choy

Are you ready.....for a CHANGE?

Hello...my dear friends! First of all, apologies for not having added anything new to the tapestry for a long time.  I have now moved to Hong Kong and so the last couple of weeks were extremely hectic, moving and settling down in the new place. Yeah, everything is different – new city, new home, new people, new language and a new me! Everything has changed! The question is, am I ready for this change!

Moving and adjusting to a new city is not a new phenomenon in my life, however every time it occurs, it adds a completely different perspective to my persona and to my life. As a kid when I changed cities, it was all about changing schools, making new friends all over again, learning a new language etc. My concerns appeared to be more challenging than my parents, who had to worry about a new house, getting admissions for me and my brother into a new school, packing and unpacking etc. As I grew, the concerns translated into littlemore serious aspects like changing jobs, working with a new team etc. However, throughout the years, only one thing remained constant in my life – CHANGE! And thus, I grew to love it, be excited with it and look forward to embracing it! 

After school, the university I got into was not by my choice but by situation, only to realize later that I couldn’t have been happier at any other place. I have been a day scholar throughout and never took to hostel life as I couldn’t afford to miss the luxuries of being at home, only to discover (after being married to a student studying and staying at IIM Bangalore) that life couldnt be the same without experiencing the hostel nightouts. I hated when my alarm went on at 8 AM, only to see the beauty of the rising sun, because now  I have to get up at 5:30 AM. I used to be scared of heights and would never go the balcony of my friends appartment on the 10^th floor, only to realize two days back, that the view from the 22^nd Floor window of my hotel room is simply mind-blowing! With each changed situation, I had something to learn. Some people prefer to call these incidents unexpected or unwanted changes. I, on the other hand, prefer to call them as “Serendipity”! 

I think its upto us, how to react when the road called life presents us with a change at the next exit! Are we ready to take the new road or do we wish to take a U-turn and go back to the familiar route? Do we want to remain in the comfort zone or go ahead and let interesting accidents of change happen to you? I say, take a chance and face the change! You never know whats in store for you!

I know its going to be a different day tomorrow than what it was exactly a week ago! I know that when I wake up, I will not be seeing the green leaves of gulmohar through my window and I will miss that. But I know that I will see magnificent tall skyscrapers of HongKong outlining the sky. Its different. And I am loving it!!