00:00I woke up one day about age 45 and I realized I had a theory of happiness, which was completely flawed.
00:07My theory was, if I work really hard and I am really successful, people will, you know, give me a lot of recognition and reward and I'll be happy.
00:19And I realized where that happened. It started happening in school.
00:22Every time I got good marks, the teacher smiled and my mother gave me a hug.
00:27Every time I didn't get good marks, there were frowns.
00:30So like an obedient dog, I've tried to get good marks.
00:35Then I went to join the company.
00:37Every time I did some good work, boss was happy, gave you a raise, a promotion.
00:42Every time you didn't do it, you got a kick.
00:45So again, you're trained.
00:48Okay, so you get on this treadmill.
00:50The problem is like an alcoholic, you need to drink more and more to get the same high.
00:57And one day you wake up and you say, man, how long can this continue?
01:00I'm no longer enjoying this.
01:02I'm no longer happy.
01:04So I spent 10 years reading about the literature from different religious faiths.
01:11I went to a counseling to understand this issue of happiness.
01:14First of all, happiness has nothing to do with success or achievement or what you have in your life.
01:21You know, we all know people who have everything and are miserable.
01:25We all equally know people who have nothing, but they're always smiling.
01:30So it's an attitude.
01:32It's a psychologist called the synthetic.
01:35Synthetic means it's made, manufactured by our mind.
01:39And so the trick here is to control your thoughts.
01:41The second thing I learned painfully is the more you think about yourself, the more unhappy you're likely to be.
01:50The more you lose yourself, the more happy you are.
01:56So you can only be happy if you forget about yourself.
02:00It's been a very good lesson for me.
02:03The third one is acceptance.
02:04And, you know, there was a beautiful moment for me when the shoe dropped.
02:12Irfan Khan, the actor, he was dying, very young, cancer.
02:16The person was interviewing.
02:18He said, how are you able to smile when you know you're going to die in two months?
02:24He said, well, I had hoped life would be different, but life has no obligation to give us what we expect.
02:30And then I put that with Dalai Lama who said, happiness comes from liking what we have rather than having what we like.
02:41Okay.
02:42So this is very hard for me because I used to think, I wish I were a big CEO of a big company like Satya Nadella at Microsoft.
02:54Okay.
02:55Why have I not become that?
02:56And I used to go a little crazy.
02:58Then I realized, life has not turned out too badly for me.
03:03So let's be grateful for that and enjoy that.
03:06So cultivating this acceptance is very, very important.
03:09And the final piece around happiness is relationships.
03:13You know, loneliness is the biggest driver of unhappiness.
03:18And the more we are connected with each other, the happier we are.
