Why Are We Unhappy?

As a culture,

We are very much future oriented.

That's how we were conditioned.

That's how we are rewarded.

It can be a few moments from now.

The moment we do that,

There is a tension within us.

Our mind is not at ease and our body is a little tense.

For example,

I really want this to happen.

I really want someone to call me or I really want them to say these things or I really want this report to come clear or this test that I have taken needs to be negative or positive.

Whatever restriction we put on this,

Whether it's yes or no,

Good or bad,

Should happen,

Should not happen.

That's when we hold our happiness ransom to a future event.

A more relatable example would be,

Let's say we go and watch a soccer game and let's say all of us have our team that we are supporting.

As the player is dribbling the ball,

Moving towards the goal,

The team that we are rooting for,

The closer the player gets,

The more tense we get in our bodies.

The expectation starts rising,

The closer they get,

The closer they get.

Then when they kick the ball and there's a goal,

Suddenly euphoria takes over.

There's a lot of celebration.

A release happens in our minds,

In our bodies and that's what we as a society call happiness.

It's this euphoric event that produces intense release.

But if we were to zoom in a little more,

We will see that the release was proportionate to the tension that was built up and we voluntarily built up that tension.

We hooked on to a future event,

In this case the goal,

And when it culminated there was a release.

Now let's take a slightly different situation in the same soccer game.

Let's say the team we are supporting is down two goals and the player from our team starts taking the ball closer to the goal.

They start passing the ball around.

The more successful passes they have,

The more tension starts building up in our bodies,

In our minds.

The tightness and stiffness in our bodies and expectation in our mind.

As the passes culminate into a kick and the goal happens,

There is a release but there's no euphoria because we still want more goal down.

Same event,

Different reaction.

So what we would normally attribute to the event,

In this case to the goal,

Is not really the goal.

It needs to happen again in this case.

In the latter analogy,

It needs to happen again and one more time for us to feel the euphoria.

First to equalize and then to succeed.

But all along we create the tension and sometimes we get a release.

Of course,

Not every attempt at hitting a goal succeeds.

So there's a lot of disappointment and the disappointment is proportionate to the expectation that was built up right from the get-go.

Of course,

At the end of the game,

Some of us come out euphoric,

Some of us not so much.

But the mechanism,

I want you to pay attention to the mechanism of how happiness is held hostage to a future event and the only reason we feel that release is in juxtaposition with the tension that was built up due to expectation.

And after the release has happened,

You're back to the state before the expectation and that's the beauty of it.

So you go in neutral,

That is,

You go in a happy state.

Happy in this case means a peaceful state.

Then you raise the tension,

Raise the expectation and then there is a release and you are back to that happy or peaceful happy or peaceful state.

Now in this mechanism,

You reach the place that you started off at and then we start looking for experiences where we will reach that state of release again and again.

May it be eating,

May it be drinking,

Watching Netflix,

Scrolling our phones,

Extreme sports,

Whatever.

But we are looking for a release because that is the juice.

You raise your expectation and then you get that release.

But if we zoom in again and see that release brings us back to the same state as we started off at,

Doesn't it make sense to stay there?

That doesn't mean life gets boring.

That doesn't mean you can't enjoy the excitement of a soccer game or a football game or a basketball or a baseball game.

But we don't have to hold our happiness hostage to a future event or a future goal or a future target.

As kids,

We were taught to study hard,

Raise the tension in our bodies,

In our minds on what's going to be the result of this test and what's going to be the repercussions of the outcome of the test in terms of getting admission into a college or better job.

We become stressed.

Most mistakes happen in stress.

And if we do get the result we wanted,

There's a release.

And we say,

Okay,

You know what?

I'm happy because I got this result.

Actually,

You are already in the happy place.

Had you not raised the tension on what should happen,

Which by the way is not in our control.

The words that are going to come out from my mouth are not in my control.

The weather is not in our control.

What a customer will buy,

Not buy is not in our control.

Yet,

We hook our happiness onto a future event.

More often than not,

We are disappointed.

And once in a while,

There is a release.

Because we are disappointed more often,

We become used to being tensed,

Tensed in our body,

Stressed in our minds.

And we are running around like headless chickens trying to find a release.

But what if we recognize this for ourselves,

We recognize the mechanism on how we create this tension and this tension pursuing happiness,

Because we've been told that the happiness is in the future,

In the release,

After the release,

That we don't see what we have now.

So the objection is natural,

Because the identity is in threat.

But the identity is not serving us.

The recipe for unhappiness is not serving us.

And we've been disappointed again and again.

This mechanism was crying out for attention all our lives.

It's not that we have been disappointed.

It's not that we have just learned this mechanism.

This and the happiness or the peace that I talk about here is not the happiness or peace of a release,

Which is ephemeral,

Temporary,

Fleeting.

I'm talking about the happiness or peace,

Which is our natural state,

Unless we decide to bury it with expectations,

With tension,

With projections into the future.

So this doesn't mean we don't work hard.

We relieve our efforts from the fruit of the effort for a goal to happen or not in a soccer game.

Do we really think sitting in the stadium or in front of our TV,

We can influence what is happening?

How the player is going to run?

How the other player is going to run,

Kick,

Save?

What the wind velocity is going to be?

To be real,

Deadline at least means such a dark word that we take it as a life and death situation.

But what helps us meet deadlines is not keeping an eye on what should happen later,

But having our full focus.

All our focus is completely on the input that we have on what we do on our efforts.

That's the only way our efforts will be full.

You'll be surprised how many deadlines can be beaten if we only relieved ourselves from peeking into what should happen while we are working on what is happening.

Planning is not a necessary thing.

We need to have an end result in mind.

Loosely held.

That's how serendipity happens.

That's how inventions happen.

Not all mistakes are wrong.

And the only thing in our control is how we put our effort,

What effort we put,

How fully we engage.

Otherwise,

We are busy being stressed.

Creativity doesn't have a chance to strike any peaking into the future,

What should happen after you open your eyes,

Or even what should happen next moment.

Just complete acceptance of what is happening right now.

We signed up to be in this session.

Let's honour and be fully here.

Let's honour that decision and let's be fully here.

Just like that,

When we do work on any task later in the day,

Because we decided to work on it,

What if we fully engage with it and in the process become acclimated to the mechanism on how we hold our happiness hostage to experience what I'm describing to confirm if what I'm saying is true or not.

And if it is true,

We don't have to read any books or listen to any podcast or get a career coach or anything.

We just need to withdraw our permission from holding the happiness hostage to a future result.

It's not that if we didn't think about the future,

The future is not going to happen.

Right?

And we already know the future or any event for any event to happen,

The whole universe needs to cooperate for the winds to blow.

The rest of the universe needs to cooperate for the rain to fall.

It's not a local event.

It's a global event.

We are not local people.

We are global people.

What we do affect someone who we work with in our office,

In our geography,

In some other office,

Our customers,

Our consumers,

And see if you can stay at the baseline stay at the baseline of peace and crack open the mechanism of unhappiness.

Thank you.