Tasks for the week (Finding meaning in our lives)
- Read Chapter 8. “Committing to Your Goals.” - Lyubomirsky, Sonja. The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want
- Do the values inventory from Chapter 7 - Ramsay, Graham Gordon, and Holly Barlow Sweet. A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life: Self-Reflection Using Photography, Art and Writing
- Write a mini-autobiography
Task 1 - Summary of Chapter 8. “Happiness Activity No. 10: Committing to Your Goals.”
Author - Lyubomirsky, Sonja. The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want
Summary
An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding - Robert Louis Stevenson
Australian psychiatrist W. Beran Wolfe - If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert.
It turns out that the process of working towards a goal is as important as its attainment.
Six benefits of committed goal pursuit
- Provides us sense of purpose
- Bolsters our self esteem
- Adds structure and meaning to our daily lives (outcome, deadlines, timetables)
- Helps us learn to master our use of time
- Commitment to goals helps us cope better during times of crisis
- Often involves engaging with people. Such social connections can be happiness inducing
What kind of goals should you pursue?
Intrinsic goals - Goals that are meaningful to you, and that allow you to grow. Intrinsic goals satisfy these three needs -
- autonomy (I control it)
- sense of competence (I can do it) and
- relatedness (I have people around who can help me achieve my goal).
Extrinsic goals reflect more what other people approve of e.g. making more money, getting a good job etc. Extrinsic goals are important because they provide resources (money, power..) to pursue intrinsic goals
Authentic goals - Authentic goals are around long-held interests and core values. The more a goal fits your nature, the more rewarding its pursuit will be. (Ref - Self-determined goals - Ken Sheldon and Andrew Elliot).
Approach goals - Do your goals involve approaching desirable outcomes (viz making three new friends this week) or avoiding undesirable outcomes (viz avoiding an argument)?
Harmonious goals - The goals should complement each other
Flexible and Appropriate goals - The goals that we set for ourselves in our twenties are different from those we set in our forties.
Activity goals - Hedonic goals bring short-lived happiness whereas Eudaemonic goals bring sustained happiness. Examples of Hedonic goals - more of sensory pleasures (entertainment, culinary pleasure, socializing and parties etc.) Examples of Eudaemonic goals - personal growth, meaningful relationships, contributing to society, self-discovery…
Exercise
- Think about goals that are currently important to you (around 8). Assign attribute to each - Intrinsic/ Extrinsic, Authentic/ Inauthentic, Approach oriented/ Avoidance oriented, Harmonious/ Conflicting, Eudaimonic/ Hedonic, Flexible, Appropriate/ Rigid, Inappropriate (described in the table below)
- Describe in writing the personal legacy that you would like to leave (Already written in assignment 2)
- Write summary of your life, your values and accomplishments (Covered below)
- What kind of lives you would like your children/ grandchildren lead as adults (I would like them to write their own self-help book and implement it in their lives)
Exercise - Current goals that are important to me
These goals are intrinsic (meaningful to me and allows me to grow), authentic (created by me for me), approach (approaches desirable outcomes not avoiding outcomes), harmonious (not conflicting with other goals), Flexible and Appropriate (they are appropriate to my age) and Activity (whether Eudaimonic or Hedonic - as below)
Goal # | Goal | Eudaimonic or Hedonic | Evidence |
1. | Study the art and science of happiness (this course) | Hedonic | Celebration after completing the course |
2. | Create study material on the art and science of happiness for my near and dear ones | Eudaimonic | Availability of study material to people Awareness to people |
3. | Achieve emotional well-being - Breathing (Pranayam) - Meditation - Daily journaling - Practice public speaking | Hedonic | Pranayam/ meditation - record of daily score in the journal Public speaking - availability of videos |
4. | Achieve physical well-being - Walk 4 kms/ do Yoga - Create and follow good diet calendar | Hedonic | Record of daily score in the journal |
5. | Achieve occupational well-being - Create a career plan post this study | Hedonic | Career plan |
6. | Achieve social well-being - Calendarised meets/ call with family/ friends | Hedonic | Record of daily score in the journal |
7. | Achieve intellectual well-being - Daily study of life skills | Hedonic | Record of daily score in the journal |
Task 2 - Values inventory in chapter 7
Author : Ramsay, Graham Gordon, and Holly Barlow Sweet. A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life: Self-Reflection Using Photography, Art and Writing
Exercise - Insurance inventory of valued items
The background to this exercise
The authors write - When we talk about meaning in our lives, we are focused on that which gives us a sense of purpose. We all find meaning in our own ways, based on what we consider to be important. But no matter what it is that we care about, we govern our lives based on the things that we value and that give meaning to our existence.
The more we are conscious of what we find important, the better able we are to make more informed choices about what we want to do with our lives.
Team exercise -
Purpose: To help you conceptualize what you value by looking at what you own and have in your living space
Materials needed: Camera, pen and paper or computer.
Instructions:
1. Go to your living space and look around you. Make an inventory of ten things that you notice that you might want to include in an “insurance inventory.” These items need not necessarily be of great monetary value—they can be of sentimental or symbolic value.
2. Next to each item in the list, describe where the item came from, when you got it, its dollar value (if any), and its meaning or significance to you.
3. Take a quick snapshot of each item and attach it to the description of that item.
Write a para for each item considering these questions and share with your partner
- When you look through the objects in your living space, how do they reflect your core values?
- Which items in your living space would you be most distressed to lose and why?
- What can you surmise about someone’s values from the objects in their lives?
- How do you relate to what your partner values? What kinds of commonalities and differences can you see?
My insurance inventory of valued items
The first question to answer about each item is - how does it reflect my core values. My core values have been - Creativity, The world is a family, Corporate citizenship.
I see a flute in front of me. I remember with gratitude that it was gifted to me long ago by my colleague UshaRani Kamath. I will be distressed if I lose it because it is a gift from someone who cared about my well-being. This item is not in line with my core values. If it were someone else, he/ she could have made better use of it.
Maybe someday.
Monetary value - INR 3,000/-
Manual for people managers
Designer books
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After I published my first book, I felt like re-creating it to suit the CEOs I loved. I created some 20 such designer books - a single copy for each CEO (of course I printed one copy for my collection too😀, but now I'm giving them away to my near and dear ones).
When I sent them these books, I really hoped these folks would implement the concept. Maybe someday, they will.
Colleen Barrett, President emerita of Southwest Airlines, was really sweet. She sent me one of her books, a return gift.
I see a copy of the book that I received during the workshop conducted by Peter De Bono in 2002 in Oxford.
It helps me practice creative thinking even after twenty years.
I won’t be distressed to lose this piece because it is available on the internet. But its presence reminds me often that I must keep practicing creative thinking.
Monetary value - INR 20K
It was my wife’s 60th birthday and I wanted to give her a unique gift. She is a die-hard fan of Sachin Tendulka (the God of Cricket for Indians). So a greeting from him would be really unique.
I created a greeting card and sent it to Sachin to sign it and send it to my wife. Surprise, surprise, the guy actually sent it along with this letter. I would hate to lose it. Monetary value - ?
Nearly 100 of us cousins created an e-book about WHO’s Life-skills. It was a gift for an uncle on his 90th birthday. Monetary value - 2 months of efforts to get my relatives to record their piece.
Now hosted on YouTube. It will be a great source for people who want to study all the 10 topics of Life-skills.
Collaborative painting with my 80 plus aunts and uncles
Some time ago, I suddenly developed a strong need to meet my senior relatives. But I couldn’t just get up and travel and meet them. I had to create a reason. So I created a collaborative painting event. I went around cities meeting each of my 80 plus uncles and aunts and got them to paint. For them it was like going back to their school-days. Please feel free to watch the video.
Gift for my Mom on her 83rd birthday
My mother did not know that I was secretly collating her research work papers to print it in a book.
I felt my gift was something really special for her.
I am happy to share the video of the event when my mother released her book.
Task 3 - Mini auto-biography
Who are my heroes? And did I live my life like them?
Here’s my mini autobiography -
Let me first write about my heroes and what I liked about them.
My heroes were successful, they gave utmost importance to their time.
They had high self worth, they were not afraid to speak their mind.
They had clarity about their goals and they could bulldoze anyone who came in their way when they were busy achieving their goals.
I had none of these skills but, looking back, I think others worked hard to bring success and happiness for me.
As a school goer, I was a bright boy. Like any bright kid in India, I was supposed to be a Doctor. But this plan went out of the window when I got engulfed in the chess whirlwind of the famous world chess championship, 1972. I watched Bobby Fischer’s matches day and night and played chess every waking minute of my life.
As a result, I had to forego my studies and start working. I was about 19 then. I had accepted myself as a failure in life.
No one told me then that failure is the first step to start your wonderful life journey. No one told me that it's the ‘violet band’ of a rainbow, the ‘do’ of the musical scale.
Surprisingly, I have had an amazing journey. ‘Somehow’ opportunities just landed in my lap thanks to so many of my friends. I am saying ‘somehow’ because I never planned my career. I just loved working. I could easily go into flow in any type of work.
I worked in small start-ups, in large companies, in government run behemoths, in large multinationals. I worked in a traditional banking company and in hi-tech software companies. And I worked in almost all functions of organizations.
Then I became a coach and an author, ultimately landing myself as a student of the art and science of happiness😀.
I realized over time that though I did not have the strengths of my heroes, I had something else.
Someone told me that I have a creative mind, and I believed it. It became part of my value system.
Someone guessed that I have good people skills and they made me a head of a people function.
My boss felt that I can write well (I had no evidence then about writing). And he sent me on leave asking me to come back after I write a book (and I did).
If I am asked to analyze why I progressed in career, I would say this about me -
- His personal brand has a good recall. It helps people to refer him to others
- He believes that he is the brand ambassador of the organization and acts accordingly, always
- He is creative, he is creative in whatever he does
- He loves people and people know he loves them
Let me stop here and share my life’s learning that I found after long years of study.
Takeaway 1 - The fundamental philosophical questions
I am no longer confused about questions, such as Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? What is the purpose of our existence? Does God exist? … etc.
I am aware that the search for answers to these questions has been going on for thousands of years and will continue in the future.
My takeaway - I will think about these questions only if I choose my profession as a philosopher
Takeaway 2 - Miseries of life
I know that our life is full of misery, hardships, torture and hell. We have no answers as to why people suffer.
This is what Matthieu Ricard writes about suffering -
Everyone suffers. At every moment and throughout the world…..Every second, people are murdered, tortured, beaten, maimed, separated from their loved ones…..Some are killed out of hatred, greed, ignorance, ambition, pride, or envy… Some die of hunger, cold, exhaustion; others are charred by fire, crushed by rocks, or swept away by the waters….At any given moment tens of thousands of animals are killed by humans, torn to pieces. Others suffer endless torments at the hands of their owners, bearing heavy burdens, in chains their entire lives….
My takeaway - I used to feel sad when I saw suffering. I now choose not to get impacted by these miseries, unless I want to make it my purpose in life as an activist or an artist or a Tchaikovsky.
Takeaway 3 - Success and Happiness
The search for the right mantra for success and happiness, the elusive intangibles, exists for many many many years. There are hundreds of religions, thousands of Gurus, millions of books that provide mantra for these.
My takeaway - Happiness is just a chemical concoction and success is one of the triggers to feel happy (It is my takeaway. Yours could be something else)
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