I'm a behavioral scientist and my way of looking at happiness is slightly different, which generally, people look at in order to be happy. As a researcher, my point of view is that happiness is something that gives us more insight, more awareness, more of our orientation rather than just calmness, peace, or comfort. Towards this end, we believe that happiness is more a process rather than a target. It's a journey rather than a destination. We firmly believe as a foundation member that happiness, we generate more in the process of creating happiness for others rather than trying to be happy by ourselves.
Millions of people are now suffering in this world, under the pain and difficulties of this pandemic. The last couple of years we have been suffering from this, and probably someday it will go as well, but the scar will remain for a longer period unless we do not play by the rules. That is unless we know that, what really happens if we do not follow certain practices.
In this talk I'll try to tell you in nutshell, without going into the jargon of clinical psychologies, how to live in a situation beyond pandemic and how to reconnect happiness, which is the focal theme of this festival, congress, symposium, seminar, all put into one bracket, we call World Happiness Foundation. Every year we celebrate it.
In the pandemic, two major changes have come up. One change has come up in the area of lifestyle and the other change that we are noticing is in the coping style. Let me tell you what do I mean by that.
Lifestyle is something, the way we live our life. While I talk about coping style, the way we develop a strategy to accommodate stress within and outside, both consciously and unconsciously. As human beings we have been doing it for quite some time, coping with the environment, the stress we get, come back to our safe point, and once again we get it. It's a dynamic process.
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Manas Mandal
Welcome you all in this discourse on happiness, and at the auspices of the World Happiness Foundation. It's an opportunity for all of us to listen to many of these discourses, to spread the message of happiness to millions.
We are thankful to the foundation for giving us the opportunity to share our views, opinions, and research ideas that can assist people to achieve the happiness we are aiming at. Well, every researcher in the field of happiness has his or her own way of looking at happiness that, we try to understand.
I'm a behavioral scientist and my way of looking at happiness is slightly different, which generally, people look at in order to be happy. As a researcher, my point of view is that happiness is something that gives us more insight, more awareness, more of our orientation rather than just calmness, peace, or comfort.
Towards this end, we believe that happiness is more a process rather than a target. It's a journey rather than a destination. We firmly believe as a foundation member that happiness, we generate more in the process of creating happiness for others rather than trying to be happy by ourselves.
With this note, I would like to tell you what is that I'm going to discuss in the next 15 minutes. Millions of people are now suffering in this world, under the pain and difficulties of this pandemic. The last couple of years we have been suffering from this, and probably someday it will go as well, but the scar will remain for a longer period unless we do not play by the rules. That is unless we know that, what really happens if we do not follow certain practices.
In this talk I'll try to tell you in nutshell, without going into the jargon of clinical psychologies, how to live in a situation beyond pandemic and how to reconnect happiness, which is the focal theme of this festival, congress, symposium, seminar, all put into one bracket, we call World Happiness Foundation. Every year we celebrate it.
In the pandemic, two major changes have come up. One change has come up in the area of lifestyle and the other change that we are noticing is in the coping style. Let me tell you what do I mean by that.
Lifestyle is something, the way we live our life. While I talk about coping style, the way we develop a strategy to accommodate stress within and outside, both consciously and unconsciously. As human beings we have been doing it for quite some time, coping with the environment, the stress we get, come back to our safe point, and once again we get it. It's a dynamic process.
What happens if the resources are depleted, as it is happening right now? For the past two years, many of us have been suffering, including us. Our lifestyle is changing, our coping style is changing, perhaps has changed for many of us, and we need to know how to adapt to those situations.
In simple language, because the idea is not to do research, the idea is to go for more and more practice. In this discourse or talk, I will try to tell you certain simple ideas that may help people in general, how to cope with such situations if that becomes trouble for all of us.
Now as I said, lifestyle is something, the way we live. What happens today, the way we are using technology, since we are all into a compartmentalized house or apartment, or a living place, we are overindulging with the technology like mobile usage has gone up tremendously.
The way we are learning lessons, the children are more often going by e-learning process. The way we exercise our freedom. We can't do any mess-ups. We can't go out, we can't do anything that we at times, give liberty to all of us.
I call it freedom. Whether it is really freedom or not, I do not want to argue, but no nuisance. We are restricting ourselves to a packaged life full of restrictions. The way we are upholding our personal hygiene. We are using this face masking all the time, handwashing all the time, social distancing all the time, and keeping all kinds of personal hygiene.
It's a silver line, it's a plus side for all of us, but at the same time, we are probably constrained in that condition. The way we are securing our personal finance. In a developing world, using cash was a practice, not so much of e-businesses or e-marketing, or usage of plastic cards, credit cards were not in vogue.
Today, people are forced to use all those, so we call them as new age poor. The way we are getting the breaking news, much of this news is a half-truth, and we don't know what to believe and what not to believe. The way we are staying, getting informed, the daily counts, almost everybody is trying to estimate and calibrate whether it is thousands, millions. People are getting all this information from time to time.
Likewise, our coping style has also changed. As I said, lifestyle is all about how we live life. The coping style is how we manage those stresses because the stress is inevitable.
The way we are finding our personal space is causing one kind of stress. We call it proximity stress or cohabitation stress. We never lived together so long, over a period of time. Probably we are living, all within our family members. Initially, it used to be jubilation for a lot of us, but gradually we have started getting the cohabitation stress.
The way we trust each other, social paranoia, we call. We don't know, the person who is talking to me is having some kind of bias, affliction or not. So we develop some kind of paranoia. We have started having collective whispering against each other, not talking to each other, but at the same time not trusting also, each other.
The way we are following a daily routine, procrastination has come into our life. We really don't feel the pressure of doing things on time. We are not going on time to the office. Not doing anything that we are supposed to do at a particular time. Children are not going to school at a particular time or point.
People have been thinking "Well, there is enough time, so we can do it later," but it never happens. The way we are experiencing day-to-day tragedy, the secondary traumatization is taking place to almost all of us because we are seeing all these things in televised programs. People have been suffering from oxygen. People are on ventilation. People are in crisis. Dead bodies are all around.
We have been experiencing this secondary trauma. Even if I'm not afflicted to COVID, so much trauma is going on, and we need to accommodate, develop some strategy against such stress which is unwanted, as a result of which some kind of contamination obsession has engulfed us.
We always believe that there is something going to happen even if something has not happened to me. Even if it has happened to me, there is no guarantee that it may not come back to me once again.
We have lost the time anchor. We do not know, at what point in time I must do certain activities that I'm supposed to, as a result of which our biological rhythm has also changed. Our sleep is not on time, not in full. Even if we are sleeping for a longer period, we do not feel that rejuvenation because we are not having a sleep ritual today, a bedtime ritual today. We are using bedtime more often, but not getting the benefit out of it, properly or purely.
We have become more suggestible to a possible cure. A lot of people, because suggestibility is a common thing in mass hysteria or public hysteria, the moment people say that something will help you, and people have started doing it without looking for the scientific evidence for it, behind it.
The anxiety about testing. A lot of people are not doing the testing with the fear that they may be declared or diagnosed as having COVID virus affliction. Treatment affordability has also created some kinds of anxieties. Put together, all these things have engulfed us and it has created a lifestyle problem and a coping style problem.
How to get rid of it? What can we do? I have four simple messages based on whatever studies I have done, or whatever I have gotten to know in the last two years as a clinical psychologist. My first suggestion is that it's better not to question uncertainty. Ambiguity, tolerance, and uncertainty management is big problem for all of us. Particularly if there are untested stories, we should not try to accumulate our stress further. Let us not question uncertainty.
If there is an uncertain situation, go for the scientific evidence only. We need to unlearn old habits and change to COVID-appropriate behavior. We need to do it. Many times, we forget, but then as long you don't put it as a default strategy, we'll keep on making mistakes.
The scientific evidence suggests that to change any kind of past habit, we need at least 20 days or three weeks' time. If not, two months. Under two months' condition, if we continuously change our behavior, probably we'll be able to develop a new habit because the brain, by that time will be set at autopilot.
Once the brain is set at autopilot, you do not have to remind yourself quite often. If the brain sets your behavior as a default set, then you should also give a reward to your own set of behavior rather than trying to find some kind of excuse behind it.
Many of us try to find paradoxical happiness, which we should not take because since we get bored over a period of time, we try to do something which is not invited by, either the government or the society, or as per the known. We try to derive some kind of good frustration, which I call, paradoxical happiness and get into optimism bias.
Optimism bias is something that, "Nothing will happen to me. Everything else will happen to others, not to me because I'm a fit man." This is an optimistic bias and this causes a lot of trouble for all of us.
Also, stay informed, but do not obsessively check the news. You stay informed, get the right kind of information that you want to get through the scientific process, but don't obsessively check the news, how much is the spread today, of COVID virus.
A point will come now. Now in two years down the line, probably we'll be able to get rid of the pandemic, as we know that some scientists have been telling. Even the World Health Organization has been saying, there is a possibility that we get rid of the COVID situation by 2022. Now, this is just speculation. My point is that, even if it goes, what happens to our coping style? Will I be able to go beyond the contamination obsession that I have nurtured for the last two years? That's a question.
Our baseline by this time may have changed. That is, the way we used to live our life, the way we used to cope with the environment, everything has changed in these two years. Our habits, past habits that we used to have two years before, have all got terrified. We don't meet those people whom we used to meet. We don't do those small activities from where we used to get happiness. They have all changed.
Our interest levels have changed. Our priorities may have to reset. We may have started getting some kind of comfort in flight syndrome, because with the excuse of pandemics, probably we have developed some kind of comfort in getting back to our home, and not trying to do too many things within that setup.
We may have started getting some comfort in flight syndrome. Even if the COVID-19 situation goes, we'll find it very difficult to cope with the environment once again. What I'm trying to emphasize repeatedly is that our lifestyle and coping style, have changed in the past two years. Even if the virus situation or COVID-19 situation goes away, we might not be able to free ourselves from that kind of situation which we have undergone in the past couple of years.
The proximity stress that we have, may have created some belongingness barrier. With so much cohabitation stress and proximity stress, our sense of gratitude and belongingness may have started getting some kind of barrier. We may have started getting some kind of compassion fatigue. The compassion fatigue comes when you do not find any motivation or reward out of doing such kinds of noble acts. We may have developed some kind of behavior fatigue. That is, we have started reacting to every situation that makes you intolerant.
All this situation may come up even if the pandemic situation goes away. It's important that we reconnect happiness, which is the focal theme of this congress or this symposium. That is, it's important that we understand the true nature of happiness. As I said, stress is inevitable. Even if there is no pandemic, stress is there, all in our life.
Today we are all suffering together, therefore we understand what pandemic stress is all about, and we believe that "Well, everybody is suffering." The question is, stress is inevitable, suffering is optional. You may suffer, you may not suffer. Many of us remained very resilient over a period of time, remained happy. They do not have to, probably reconnect happiness, but most of us need to reconnect happiness.
The sense of suffering, which is a coping style, is optional. It's up to you. It's a choice. We need to reinvent ourselves. We need to understand how we can transform ourselves in this situation. Those who are capable of doing it, are simply processing information differently. They are not doing very many things in order to make themselves happy, neither they have to do too many exercises in order to make sure that they remain happy. They simply process information differently.
It's the information processing stage that we need to do, where we need some kind of qualitative change. Disciplines, the past two years, if we are compelled to do certain kinds of habit, compelled to nurture certain kinds of habit, it's fine. If the pandemic situation goes away, the novelty will come once again. Novelty will give us a new target. Novelty surprise element will give us more happiness if we try to achieve it. That process is very important.
Of course, happiness is not all about achieving a target. It's all about how I enjoy the process. It's important that I find pleasure in simple things again. It's a choice for us. A lot of people say that "If happiness is a choice, then why so many of us are unhappy in this world?"
Question is, finding happiness is a choice, and through that, we should be able to reward ourselves from time to time, instead of looking for some kind of reward from outside. We need to fine-tune our social relationships because intimacy matters. We need to develop more and more betweenness amongst us rather than trying to develop only withinness.
In a pandemic situation, you get to know, who is your real friend who could help you in real-time. You know them. You can fine-tune the social relationship. You can develop that kind of personal, intimate, and social relationship with whomsoever you are interested. It's a time to reorganize your social relationship.
If you should indulge in some kind of senseless act of duty, that is your inner call for kindness, instead of only looking for your own benefit, you can also give something back to society. As I said, happiness is all about creating happiness for others rather than trying to be happy by yourself. If you create that, even if you are not happy, the ambiance will give you happiness. That's the inner call of kindness, which I call a senseless act of duty.
The coping strategy that I want you to follow. If you are anxious, you are not alone. Everybody else is suffering. We are not alone in this world. It's better to be optimistic. It may be a bad time, but not a bad life. Let us try to focus on what we can do. Something that I cannot do, it's better not to waste our energy in that. That's the very important thing that, why we should be mindful.
We must understand, we must focus on what is in my hand and what is that we can control. If we stay too much in the future, we'll develop apprehension. If we stay too much in the past, we may develop depression. It's better to be mindful, to be in the present. That requires the ability to bounce back. It's important that we remain resilient even if there is some kind of failure, there is some kind of boredom, there is some kind of frustration.
We need to adapt to the new normal. The new normal is the new dawn which is going to come to all of us. Let us hope for that. Finally, what we can do? Let us allow our positive thoughts, else our body has to bear the burden. If you are anxious, anything that enters into our mind has to find some expression in our body. If you are having some negative thoughts, it will find some expression through your body. Maybe your vital organs would be affected in the process. Positive thoughts also have their own expressions. Therefore, words matter. The way you talk, tells about your thought process. We get to know each other through our talking, through our gestures, through our behavior. So our gestures matter. A comforting gesture gives us strength.
It's better to live in the present, not to be overwhelmed with the discussions on viruses. There are so many other things we need to discuss amongst ourselves. We can create a new world. We can create a new word. Therefore, in critical times, we bring out our best or the worst of ourselves. The choice is ours. If that is the choice, we'll choose happiness. Let us reconnect happiness once again. Thank you so much.