As I flip my laptop screen open and place my thumb on the fingerprint detector, the beautiful wallpaper of a forest with tall, lush green trees emerges. I smile involuntarily. In a bustling city where I can still hear people laughing downstairs from my window, I feel the calm of being in an actual forest.
I can’t help but wonder. Is that all I need to be happy?
It is in these moments that I feel like such a fool. I feel silly thinking about all the times when Life didn’t happen the way I envisioned it. I tried so hard to find things to be happy about whilst I was surrounded by far more than the number I could count on my fingers. All I had to do was get over myself and look around.
It is easier said than done, though, isn’t it?
Secret Shifters
As a self-help books geek, I loved reading The Secret while growing up. From everything Rhonda Byrne’s book taught me, one concept struck me the most: the secret shifters. The book suggested an activity I still keep doing once in a while over the years — to make a list of things that make me happy for me to refer to whenever I need to “shift” my mood. I cherish my Secret Shifters List as a secret weapon to win over my victim mentality and self-criticism. This list is really a game-changer. You should try making one for yourself, too, as I am doing here once again!
Diya’s Secret Shifters (the latest version)
Going for early morning runs,
Investing Quality time with my loved ones,
Sitting for Non-doing, Writing, and Singing,
Learning something new,
Overlooking a gorgeous sunset view,
Completing my to-do list,
Honouring my commitment to every tryst,
Eating healthy, Becoming wealthy,
Reading a good book, even cook,
But the item that tops everything — Changing my outlook.
Making a list of things to be happy about is one outlook – to see happiness as a perfume. A perfume can make you smell good for a while, and throughout the entire day if it is a good, expensive one. However, eventually it wears off. That’s what picking up the items on my ‘Secret Shifters’ list did for me. As I lay in my mother’s lap, or put on my digital tanpura to sing the latest raag I had been practicing, it certainly uplifted my mood and made me feel happy. Only for a while. To sustain the happiness, however, I had to revisit the list and pick out new items, as the happiness gained from the previous ones wore off.
When I picked the last item on the list, though – the one that topped everything else – all of a sudden, I saw happiness differently. I could no longer see happiness as a perfume. Happiness now felt like the fragrance of a red rose, my favorite flower. Unlike a perfume, the fragrance of a flower comes from within. It is endless and inexhaustible. Irrespective of whether you choose to water it, or pluck its petals, the red rose will always exude its magnificent fragrance.
Happiness Independent of Life Situations
Just like my favorite flower, it is now my constant attempt to embody happiness as my fragrance. I don’t want my happiness to be dependent on my life situations. I want my happiness to continue flowing from my heart, in both good times and bad.
After all, the happiness that comes from within feels different.
When you do something you said you will, when you figure out a situation on your own you didn’t believe you could, when you challenge yourself to dream bigger, when you act upon the ideas brewing in the beautiful head of yours, when you own up your own mistakes in introspection, when you find the courage to forgive yourself and move on, when you choose to see the good in others, when you become a little more selfless, a little more loving and feel a little more beautiful, even if only for a few moments that last as long as you blink your eyes once, whenever you grow in your own eyes, you are enveloped by an inexplicable feeling — this is true happiness. Nothing in the world – neither earning a billion dollars nor travelling the entire globe, being surrounded by countless loved ones, nor fulfilling all your materialistic endeavors – can match the happiness of growing in your own eyes.
Happiness means different things to different people. Everyone thinks of happiness differently, feels it differently. I say that happiness is a choice — a choice of outlook.
Your entire life will depend on this one choice. It is up to you. Will you choose to wear happiness as a perfume or make it your fragrance?
