Hi everyone! Hope you have all been at the top of your spirits. It’s the great Indian festive season these days! Time for shopping, traveling, merry-making and for the bongs like me, binge-eating! 10th of October is also marked on the calendar as the World Mental Health Day. But our minds are hopefully quite safe from any mental health conditions at present, thanks to this whirlpool of activities and festivities of the month. We can feel the happiness in the air, there is music in every breath…
Well, that’s what happiness is all about. For that matter, that’s what all our emotions sum up to… in the words of Munnabhai MBBS, it’s nothing but chemical locha!
Don’t you think, friends, we take life a bit too seriously? And to think, all those feelings of sadness and elation that govern the course of our actions in life, sometimes driving us to the extremities of suicide or murder and sometimes mellowing our hearts to generosity and sacrifice, are nothing but a wee bit of excess or less secretion of some chemical in our body! I mean what the hell! We live and die for just this! And that too, when there are ways to control the discharge of those chemicals and they are in our own hands!
Yes friends, there are three things that can keep your moods upbeat and thoughts positive for all times by keeping a check on your vital chemicals.
1. Physical activity, which may include daily exercise like gym or yoga, or normal regular activities, your day’s work, keeping you sufficiently physically active.
2. Your sense of achievement or accomplishment, by doing something that gives you satisfaction. It can be as simple a thing as shopping or cooking or painting or creating something or doing something constructive… anything that gives you a feeling of achievement.
3. Appreciation or a pet-stroke from self and others. We all want recognition. We want our worth to be vindicated through appreciation. When someone gives us those thumbs- up, we feel more confident and our need of recognition is fulfilled. It is important for us to appreciate ourselves as well. That way we boost our self-esteem.
With all these three things taken care of, happiness is not an ever-elusive mirage, but is very much an achievable condition of the mind.
Let’s take charge… let’s stay happy…