6 Ways To Be Incredibly Happy Every Day: Kristina

Mänd-Lakhiani | 1

Oscar Wilde once said, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” The
question Kristina raises here is simply, “Do you know what is happiness?”

In this talk from Mindvalley University City Campus in Tallinn 2018,

Kristina Mänd Lakhiani talks about the one topic often discussed in
personal growth but rarely addressed in everyday conversations.

The following is full transcript of Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani’s, co-founder of

Mindvalley speech.

Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani – TRANSCRIPT

1. GRATITUDE

Gratitude is a beautiful example of long-term strategy over instant

gratification, because the thing is that when you express gratitude, you do
feel a little bit better. But generally it doesn’t make you feel euphoric,
ecstatic, joyful. It just makes you feel a little bit better; it shifts your
perspective.

But the thing is that there is a research that shows that if you express
gratitude on a daily basis for 30 days, your perception of your own
happiness goes up 25%. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about. We
have to look into long-term strategies which may be in the instant are not
as effective but in the long-term they help you raise your set points of
happiness.

And you express gratitude for the things that you are grateful for in your
work life, your mission, your purpose, in your personal life and for the
things that you’re grateful for in yourself.

So this is the exercise we do on a daily basis to raise our set point of

happiness.

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1. BEING PRESENT

Another methodology which I really love is the idea of being present. And
the idea here is that in reality time is an illusion. There is no future, and
there is no past. And most of the unpleasant emotions that we feel they
have something to do with either the future or the past. If we’re scared, if
we’re stressed, it is usually because we are afraid about something that
might happen in the future, usually.

And if we feel, let’s say, resentment or anger, this kind of negative

emotion is also usually rooted in the past. And the happiness is the
emotion that you feel in the present. If you move happiness to the future,
it will become excitement. If you move happiness to the past, it will
become usually nostalgia. But the truth is that the happiness, the true
pure joy, is in the present moment and only in the present moment.

So if you practice consciousness and bringing yourself back to present

moment, that actually over time works wonders. You start — your set point
of happiness starts going up. You walk out into the nature and you feel the
freshness of the air. That’s the moment to be happy about, because how
many times we don’t even notice how we breathe, what we see around us.
And when we see these things around us, if we don’t bring ourselves back
to the now to notice, the life might just pass by without us truly learning
what is happiness.

1. RELATIONSHIPS

You know in personal growth we have the idea that transformation starts
with taking on personal responsibility onto yourself. And there is this
beautiful thing that says that we don’t need anyone for happiness.
Happiness is within you but if you’ve ever had a child sick or a parent sick
or I don’t know a fight with a person that you love, with a friend, with your
spouse, you know that it is really hard for this wisdom to make sense in

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that very moment. And in the moment when something is happening to

you and your loved ones, it is okay that you do not feel happy. It is okay.
Because you are a social being.

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And what is I? Is I just this physical body or is I all of this? Is I —

perception of me, does it include you? Or does it only include me?

So in that moment I felt that yes, as long as I have myself I’ll be okay. But
it is also okay to not feel so happy when something is wrong with the
person who is really close to you. You have to surround yourself by people
whom you love, whom you care about, who you’re attached to even though
it means that sometimes you might be a little bit unhappy if something
happens to them.

So just to sum up that idea about the relationships, scientists have shown
that people in relationship, they are healthier, they heal better, and they
live longer. And the reverse is true, as Vishen said “Social isolation is the
epidemic in the current day society,” and he said “it is despite Facebook
and Instagram.” But I would say it is also because of Facebook and
Instagram. We are forgetting how to interact. We’re forgetting what it is
to truly connect to each other.

Facebook and Instagram is another layer which we put on ourselves. This

is another thing we have to learn to deal with and not to lose the social
connection.

And I’ve also heard that social isolation is apparently the number one
killer in the current day society, because social isolation makes you less
likely healed from, let’s say, such things as cancer or cardiovascular
disease. So relationships are important not just for happiness but also for

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our health and longevity.

The strength of your social relationships is super important for happiness.

1. SELF-LOVE

It is clear that you cannot truly be happy unless you are happy with
yourself. And I know the number one question that I hear when I talk
about this topic is that “But where do I know the difference between
healthy self-love and actually egoist or unhealthy relationships to yourself
or self-centeredness?”

And I haven’t lived a very long life; only 40 years but that piece of life has
taught me one thing, that almost all the bad things that we do to other
people are because we don’t truly love ourselves. Because if we truly love
and accept ourselves, we don’t need to prove anything to anyone. We don’t
need to prove anyone wrong to show anything to anyone. And that’s where
all that unhealthy stuff happens is if when you truly don’t have the self-
love.

And people who seem that they’re self-obsessed, this is them

compensating for the lack of love for themselves. This is what Vishen was
talking about — I’m really sorry kids – but unequivocal, is exactly when
you do not need anybody’s approval to be okay with yourself. And a lot of
the times when I hear somebody saying, “Oh they’re so full of themselves”,
that’s exactly the problem. We do not see — we only see the mask and we
only see what social media shows us. We don’t see the void and the pain of
those people.

We only are nasty if we don’t love ourselves truly, which is why I think this
is a very important point in learning to be happy. And there is never such
thing as too much love for yourself. You cannot be happy unless you truly
accept and love yourself.

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1. DEALING WITH THE NEGATIVE

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Years of Your LIFE (Transcript)

Dealing with the negative. When we talk about happiness, often we talk
about shifting the perception, looking at things differently, seeing the light
versus the dark. But the truth is that there are both. There’s light; there’s
dark. We were just talking about seasons in Estonia. I come from
Malaysia. We don’t have seasons there.

And I remember when I lived in Estonia, I loved spring. And spring is not
as warm as summer but just the sight of Sun makes you feel happy. Just a
little bit of warmth when you can take off those gloves and feel the air on
your hands, that makes you happy. And you can only truly appreciate
spring if you have survived the winter.

So what I’m talking about is there is going to be negative in our life. And
the art to learning to be happy is not to ignore or not notice the negative
or be okay with the negative. It is actually to learn to work with it.

What you do when you feel a negative emotion? First of all, you
acknowledge that it exists. You give it a true and fair and honest name
without spiritual bypassing. You actually acknowledge this is what I feel.
You allow yourself to feel it, to feel it and every emotion feels in your body
in certain way which actually helps.

I like the connection between emotions and the physical body, because by
translating your emotions into physical body it’s easier to work with them.

So let’s say if you feel fear and it’s somewhere in your stomach, just
relaxing that part of your body really helps. Or if you feel like anger and
it’s up here, breathing deeper really helps. And then after you let it be,
that’s when you’re ready to move on and transform this emotion but you

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have to let it be.

1. FORGIVENESS

One thing that life will throw in you are negative emotions in the form of
being upset with someone. And I think that the point is that we are
sometimes thinking that forgiveness is about — you know if I forgive, the
evil is not going to be punished. So we don’t want to forgive, because we
want some kind of learning out of that, or the evil to be punished. But the
truth is that forgiveness is not a practice for anyone else but for you.

Being upset with someone is like taking poison hoping that the person who
upset you is going to suffer. If you upset with someone, if you are angry
with someone, if you hold a grudge against someone, the only person who
is suffering is you. Just you.

And the moment when you realize that, the moment when you realize that
forgiveness is not about the other person who has hurt you but it is only
about you, you have much more motivation to work on that.

You cannot help anyone if you are not happy.

Be happy.

Thank you.

For Further Reading:

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine

Your Life and Succeed on Your Own Terms

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