Happiness Index

We have been spending half an hour every morning listening to Brahmakumari Sister Shivani on Star plus, while she talks about personal & self management and one of the key concepts she talks about is the Happiness index.

Sister Shivani is obviously a very well read computer savvy person who seems to be counselling people from the corporate and business worlds, apart from others who have come to her either when life has dealt a few blows to them or when life seems to cruise along, seemingly quite complete; yet they have felt a void or a vacuum, which worldly things like money and relationships have not been able to fill.

So the young and pleasant looking Sister Shivani's USP is the contemporary language she uses. Happiness index draws its parallels from the Sensex or other market indices which cause such ripples around the world when they go up or down. According to her, we should aim for a stable happiness index, which is not as sensitive as the Sensex and doesn't jump up and down with good and bad news or events from around us.

Since the happiness index is dependent on the quality of the thoughts we create in our mind, which in turn determine our destiny by karmic law, one of the crucial things Sister Shivani advises is a check on our operating system. Just like if your operating system on the computer is defective no program will run properly, so too we need to ensure our belief system (operating system) is compatible with our hardware and software.

For instance if I believe "My work should be appreciated" or better still- "I need to be appreciated to feel happy", the counter argument will automatically hold true as well-"If somebody is unappreciative, I become unhappy"  

Hence, the next time my boss says "We need better communication from you", when I might have been feeling like actually nobody was listening to me or my husband says- "The chicken curry was tastier the last time you made it" even though he was too busy eating it to say anything about it the last time I made it....

I need to take a deep breath, observe the tirade of explosive thoughts my mind creates in a jiffy, stop them from running amock and change my belief system. So I need to believe that "I do my job to the best of my ability because it makes me happy" "It is not necessary that people will find my work worth appreciating" "Criticism should be taken on board in a constructive manner." Wow! now doesn't that feel better already? 

Happiness comes from within and should not be dependent on external factors like people's appreciation of you or your efforts. This a belief system or operating system which is difficult to integrate into your hardware and software but it can be done. It can be done to the extent that it helps you remain stable without causing a rise in heart rate, breathing or blood pressure. Maybe if I carry on experimenting with Sister Shivani's truths I might actually manage to keep calm while dealing with the most difficult task both at home and at work- human resource management. 

Sister Shivani uses very real examples to illustrate the principles of self management and another phrase she uses a lot in her computer savvy manner is "Press the delete button"

All of us have gone through quite a few computers and laptops in our computer using lifetime and we all know how important it is to do a clean up to ensure the computer continues to work quickly and effectively. This is exactly the case with our minds. We need to press the delete button for all our past experiences which disturb us. If we accumulate clutter, it clogs the system, reduces clarity and focus, reduces performance which in turn leads to uncomfortable situations with less than optimum tasting chicken curry or miscommunications at work!

Therefore "PRESS DELETE"