Green Side Syndrome

I was recently at Bangalore attending a wedding function and was chatting with my friends there. As the usual conversation starter, there were questions around how is Dubai? People who listened to me felt that my response was extra ordinarily positive (although I didn’t make it up that way).  One of my friends told me after a while that she was surprised to hear my response as that is not something, she hears from other people who are living in Dubai. This was an interesting conversation for me. So, I asked her “why?”

She has been listening to her other Dubai friends who complain about the stress at job, home sickness, extreme weather, cost of living and lot more. She kept on going for a while and I listened. When I got a chance to speak, I asked her “how’s Bangalore?”. This time I sensed an opportunistic smile on her face as I asked her something that she had first-hand information. She went on for another 20 minutes explaining how bad Bangalore is – traffic, lack of waste management process, cleanliness, pollution, population and lot more. All I said to her as my response was: I would say greatest things about Bangalore if I relocate here. That could be proximity to my parents, could be the ability to attend functions at home, could be living in a top IT hub, could be the local biriyani shop (Bangaloreans – If you haven’t tried the Dhonnai biriyani in the military hotel, please give it a shot) . Because am not living in Bangalore, am I missing any of these today ? Absolutely not !! I love my Dubai and has myriad reasons to love this place. It is worth noting that my response was less to do with the place and more to do with my attitude.

We all have heard the famous statement: Always the other side is green. I have been thinking that due to the popularity of this quote, people have started looking over that statement. Looks like, lots of people are still being victims of the so called “green side syndrome”. (don’t even know whether such a word exist – let it be my contribution to the literature).

It’s a human tendency not to remain content on what they have – this could be due to the living conditions, could be due to the demanding family, peer pressure, big dreams whatever that is. To add spice to the natural human tendency to be this way, lots of people are made to believe this way by the society. There are businesses who dwell upon this “not upto the mark” as their main USP – be it cosmetic companies, recruiters, schools, hospitals or the migration consultants. I get at least 2 calls in a month asking whether Iam interested in migrating to Australia or Canada. What make the people feel that this side is not green? what make them believe that the other side is green? What are they seeking? If we dissect that into the actual reasons, we would understand that the bottom-line is “happiness”. All of us are chasing happiness. For many, It’s not only about making themselves happy, but is also about making the society jealous looking at you. I know people who take pictures for the sole reason that they want to post that on social media to prove a point. People are keen to prove to the society that they are happy. Question is where do we find happiness – Is that attached to a place, a material, a job or even a person. Will we be happy if we relocate, will we be happy if we have a particular brand of possession, will we be happy if we have that particular relationship? I believe that is where we are getting it wrong. The moment we attach our happiness to an external entity that is degradable, that we have no control on, there is a problem. So how do we solve this?

The only way you solve this is by not attaching your happiness to an external entity. What else can we attach this with? We can attach this with what matters to you the most – your own self. Key to happiness must be inside you, not outside. We can do this by changing our mindset. Once you get to that mindset, then the external factors wont excite you anymore. The law of attraction says: you attract what you think – so the happier you are, happier you would become. Universe operates on frequencies. For you to attract happiness, you need to be tuned into the mode of happiness. You need to change your mindset from “let me do/have/be so and so, I would be happy to - let me be happy and then everything else will fall in place”. This is not easy to do – but trust me, its worth it.

So where do you start ? Let me share some tips that has worked really well for me.

• Start looking for good in your life today – be it your health, your wealth, your kids, your job, your parents, your friends – there should be something you like about your life. Focus on that. There are enough people out there who are focusing on your weakness – let them do their job, you do yours.
• Stop complaining - If you want to change something, work towards that – but don’t complain. If you are particular about talking about that to someone, just do that in not more than 60 seconds and move on.
• Ignore Peer Pressure – don’t worry about what other people are upto. Don’t try to be better than anyone else. Just try to be better than how you were yesterday.
• Practice Gratitude – take 1 minute before you go to bed and think about (if you can, write that down) at least one positive thing that happened in your life that day. If there is nothing to write, just write : “Iam breathing, I have got options”

Be aware that Happiness isn’t a Goal, it’s a Mindset.

All the best. Be Happy !!

PS: In spiritual language, there could be even deeper explanations to this, but some of that is not easy to grasp for most among us.