Aardbron

• Geluksbedrading is standaard voor de mens.
• Gelukkig zijn is onze aangeboren aard.
• We spenderen ons hele leven te leren ongelukkig te zijn.
• Ons mentale model—ons idee van hoe de wereld werkt—maakt ons ongelukkig.

Geluk:

• Laat het ‘als ik dit heb/ben/doe dan ben ik gelukkig’ los.
• Accepteer en omarm ‘wat is dat is’ volledig (zoals Byron Katie ons helpt herinneren).
• Stel een paar doelen of een vurig verlangen.
• Investeer alles wat je hebt en kunt in het proces en níet in de doelen of uitkomsten.
• Geniet van de reis.

Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness

rough transcription of Srikumar Rao’s talk

You do not have to get, be or do anything to be happy.

What you can get, you also can unget, right? If you unget everything, are you still happy?

Being happy is your innate nature.

You have spent your entire live learning to be unhappy.
You have spent your entire live learning to be unhappy.

The way you get unhappy is by buying into a mental model.

Your mental models make you unhappy.

A mental model is a notion of how we think the world works.

We all have mental models, on how to get a job, how to pick a restaurant, etc.

The problem is not that we have mental models. The problem is that we don’t know that we have mental models.

The more we invest in a mental model, the more we think that this is the way the world works.

But it isn’t. It’s just a mental model.

The mental model that we buy into so strongly is that we have to get something so that we have something so that we can be happy.

The ‘if then’ model. If I would get moew money, I could travel and I ‘d be happy.

Key question: what is the particular if you are focusing on?

Think of your life ten years ago. There probably are things you wanted to have ten years ago. Odds are that you probably have them now, right? Where has that left you?

The if-then model itself is flawed. We invest a lot in changing the ‘if’. If I would be a CEO, I’d be happy.

Can you remember a spectacular scene that took you outside of yourself? A valley, a rainbow, a view on the sea. Have you ever wondered why that happened? The reason that happened is that somehow, for some reason, at that instant, you accepted the Universe exactly as it was.

You didn’t “That is a beautiful rainbow, but it’s kind of off to the left, if I can move it 200 yards to the right, it will be ever so much more beautiful.”

The moment you accepted the Universe as it is, your habitual wanting self falls away, and the happiness—which is your innate nature—surfaces and you feel it.

And you know you felt it, because now, after all thos years, you can still remember it.

The problem is that your life, right now, with all the problems that you have—more precisely: all the problems that you think you have—is equally perfect. But you do not accept it. In fact, you are spending all your time, striving with might and main, to make it different.

You are not accepting it. And when you are not accepting it, you are buying into the if-then model and is the model itself that is flawed.

Let me show you steps to get out of that. Because action [blah] our lives to get something out of it, right?

I like to share that action…

Action results in outcome, you would like something to happen.

Actions are within your control, not entirely, but within a large extent.

The outcome is completely out of your control.

Has anyone noticed that when you work towards a goal, some of the time you don’t achieve your goal, and some of the time what you get is the exact opposite of what you wanted?

E.g. guy buys expensive dress for wife to give attention: wrong size, wrong color, etc.

In the western world we define our lives in outcome. Here is where I am, here is where I want to go and these are the steps I have to take to get there. If I succeed, life is wonderful, and if I don’t, I have failed, life is no good, life sucks.

We invest in the outcome, and the outcome is out of our control and frequently different from what we want. We aer ‘happy’ to endure all the frustrations and problems that come with it.

There is an alternative.

The alternative is that you do NOT invest in the outcome, you invest in the process.

The best way to describe that is to quote John Wooden: He’s the only person that made it into the basketball hall of fame both as a player and a coach.

What he would tell a new team, he never spoke about winning. He always said “When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” That is investing in our process.

What we do is the exact opposite, we invest in the outcome. This is what I want, oh, I want it so bad. If I get it I will be happy.

Focusing on the outcome is fine, it gives you direction. Investing in the outcome, you make the xxx of the particular outcome dependent on your happiness. And that is a surefire receipe for failure.

Here is where I am, there is where I want to go so this is my direction and then you invest yourself completely in the process. Here are the steps you want to take and you invest everyting into it. If you succeed, wonderful. If you don’t succeed, STILL wonderfull. Because now you have a new starting point, you select another outcome and continue. When you do that you will find that every day is a blast.

E.g. child learning to walk between 11th and 13th month. She sees everybody walking and she wants to walk too. Standing up, falling down, than finally, baby’s first step. Big smile on her face. Then very soon, normally within 24 hours, she walks all over the place.

Imagine that each time the child falls over she thinks “Oh I have failed again, I’m never going to learn to walk. I need to get counseling to learn to walk and to get rid of these feelings of inadequacy and not being able to achieve and fail again.

How long would it take you to learn to walk if you need a counseler every time you fail. That is exactly what we are doing.

The child invests in the process, not in the outcome. What we do is the exact opposite. As we grow up, we lose the ability to invest in the process and we atart investing in the outcome. By definition, the outcome is outside of our control. And if that is where we spend all our emotional energy, we are going to get drained as we do.

But if, on the other had, we said: “Here are the outcomes. I am going to invest in the process and give it every single bit I can.”, every day is a blast, and you are well on your way to achieve the vision that I outlined to you.

The question that I get all the time is “But sir Rao, nothing gets me passionate.” And I say “What would?” And they invariably come with list of how their boss, spouse, customers, colleagues are, how big the office is, how much they travel, how deep the carpet is, how many windows there are. A bunch of parameters.

All of that stuff… First of all, it doesn’t exist. Second, even if it did and you were plugged into it, it would not take more than six months for you to be the same misserable sorry yourself there as you are now.

Because passion exists inside you. It does not exist in the job. And if you don’t find a way to ignite it, within you, right where you are, you are not going to find it outside.

But if you do find a way to ignite it where you are, then you will find that the external world rearranges itself to accomodate the person that you are becoming. And as you do that, you will find that miracles happen on a regular basis, new persons come up who you are delighted to meet, people enter your life, it is just a breeze.

Because all you do in your life is, you take journeys. You came here to this conference on a journey. You hang around the watercooler telling how terrible your workplace is, you went on a journey. You watch Desperate Houswives, you are on a journey.

Nothing wrong with that, but aks yourself “Is this the journey I want to take? Does this journey take me to a place I want to spend time?”

If you start doing that, you will find that your life changes. The kind of people you meet, the kind of things you talk about, the movies you go to, the books you read. Everything changes.

You begin all of that by focusing on the process. Invest in the process, not in the outcome.

Thank you.