By Dr Rajesh K Pillania
Happiness is a difficult journey with many challenges. To make it simple, we need the right direction. Even for small journeys to new places, one needs directions. Without the proper directions and activities, there are more chances of not reaching our destination.
We also need directions to live a happy life. The starting point is to identify what makes a happy life for us. The second point is to determine what we need for survival in this life. The third point is to identify the activities we do in our lives. To look at it in a better way, ASH, i.e. Activity, Survival and Happiness Paradigm, is quite helpful. In our lives, we do many activities; some are necessary for survival, some are good for our happiness, and many are just like that without any help in survival or happiness.
The Happiness, Survival, Activity (ASH) Paradigm suggests looking at each activity we do and asking ourselves: Is this activity helping me in my survival and in my happiness? The author deliberately chose the acronym ASH, which means the remains after a fire, to make us remember that Death is a reality. We should realise, appreciate, and cherish each movement of life and stay focussed on our happiness journey.
We should try to align our survival and happiness. It is challenging, but we can achieve it by taking small steps daily.
The best situation is when the activity helps in both survival and happiness. We should focus on and do more of this activity. The worst situation is when the activity helps neither survival nor happiness. We should stop doing this activity. The most difficult choice is the activity that might help in survival but not happiness. We should keep it for now, reduce it slowly, and work on how to align our happiness and survival. We need to repeat this regularly, say every week or month, to get rid of unnecessary activities such as gossip from our lives.
From today, start looking at each activity from the ASH paradigm perspective for a good direction for your happiness journey.
(The author Dr Rajesh K Pillania is a Professor at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon.)
