Do you want to be happy?
Try this easiest scientifically proven method…..
All of us try to feel the happiness in and around us every single day. Wealth, status, etc are the ways to be happy is what we have concluded. Isn’t it? And most of us have actually accomplished a lot yet we feel something is missing and that’s because we have understood it all wrong. Happiness is in you, stop hunting for it on the outside.
One afternoon on my way back home I stopped by a supermarket to load my refrigerator with some fresh fruits and veggies. As I parked my car and walked through the pedestrian to enter the supermarket I encountered a young man with a green-colored uniform of a cleaning company sitting on the roadside edge, gazing at the ground.
I felt strange for a moment. Common who sits right under the sun during summer in the middle east zone? Assuming that he is busy thinking something I walked past him into the supermarket. A few minutes later when I was walking back to the car park he was still there and in the exact same position. I didn't think much and walked to him. He got scared when he saw me next to him. Maybe he thought I am CID in casual attire and it's illegal in Abu Dhabi to sit along the roadside for obvious reasons.
I asked him, “Are you okay?”
In a meek voice, he answered “I am okay.”
To reconfirm I asked, “Are you sure?”
He replied, “I am Okay!”
I wasn’t much satisfied with his response but I accepted and walked towards my car and then suddenly I turned back to him out of nowhere to see him again.
I asked him, “Do you need anything?”
This time with a smile he said, “I’m tired. I Will be Okay.” and that was convincing. I don’t know about him but at that moment I felt butterflies and unicorns in my stomach. I was experiencing a warm feeling of connectedness.
When we try to make people feel good our body releases a chemical called Oxytocin which is responsible for all the feelings of love, friendship, togetherness. Oxytocin binds Humans. One way to produce oxytocin is through acts of kindness and generosity. It feels good when someone does something nice for us and it feels great when we do something nice for someone else. When I reflected kindness to that man with no expectation in return I got a little surge of Oxytocin, I felt good. He smiled at me, he felt good. I entered the car park and as I sat on the driver’s seat and a total stranger, knocked on the glass pane asking me to pull down the window, and said, “I saw what you did back there, that was really cool.” As it turns out, witnessing an act of kindness releases oxytocin and he felt good. And the best part about oxytocin is the more oxytocin we have in our bodies more generous we become and then we produce more oxytocin and it's a never-ending cycle.
It’s mother nature’s way of tying us desperately to get us to look after each other. I can guarantee you that the man who witnessed what I did, must have done something nice for somebody that day simply because he saw someone do something nice for someone that day. So what if we commit to doing something nice for someone with no expectation of anything in return. Imagine what happens at home, at work, with friends when it's a genuine act of generosity.
Let's start with family and move to society and then community and then nation and then the world and then the Universe. It's high time we start spreading kindness as it’s the only way to cure the negativity that we’ve spread and I promise, it will all come back to you multi-fold.
