First experience with a long bike drive, night stay in a tent with a camping 🏕️ fire, 4 AM trek 🧗🏻‍♂️⛰️ preceded by a sleepless night filled with gust of cold winds ❄️ 

Deliberately said no to my regular comfortable lifestyle. Felt like exposing myself to a challenging environment to experience that discomfort and see how it feels and perhaps learn something valuable.

1. I'm deeply humbled by the end of this trip. We often take our comfortable lifestyle and the privileges that come with it for granted. There were literally moments in the trip when I wanted nothing else (literally nothing) but fire and warmth. I still remember those chills and how desperately I was rubbing my hands against each other to generate warmth. I'm very grateful for whatever I have at this moment and wish to continue exhibiting this gratitude throughout, especially when the going gets tough (which it will, in my ongoing journey). During your lows, I hope you remind yourself how grateful you are, too, to whatever you have in your life.

2. Speaking of the comfortable lifestyle that we have today, this trip was a big reality check for me (especially during the midnight trek). Its like life has hit me hard on my face with a brick to remind me to bloody be in sync with the way our bodies and brains have evolved over time. We're not wired to live in this environment with a sedentary lifestyle. We're wired to be in motion. Especially with the ongoing pandemic and the adaption of remote work, we're now even more inclined towards this sedentary lifestyle, which unfortunately is a red flag to our bodies and brains, tho it might seem comforting in the short term. So a big big reminder to get our bodies to physically do something whenever we can.

Had quite a few hard hitting moments throughout, each one bringing with it a different experience and a different lesson to be learnt and remembered.

Another lesson that I've learnt the hard way in the context of happiness is about "DEPENDENCY" 

Since our childhood, we've been conditioned to associate our happiness with some goal, event, person or an object. We've been told not to feel joyful unless you get something. So we've always convinced ourselves that we're dependent on a particular person, object, goal so we better chase them or end up feeling like shit in case we don't manage to get them. We often end up blaming that person or that entity for the cause of our suffering.

Looking from an evolutionary lens, this would have helped us not feel complacent every time we got a reward and made us strive harder for more rewards that would have assured our survival especially in a rainy day. In this age of abundance, this concept has kind of become flawed owing to the current mental health issues in our gen z and millennials.

So how do we go about this ?

We need a mindset shift to stop being dependent on other people, entities, goals or experiences for your joy. Your happiness should be your own thing and not somebody else's responsibility and vice versa. You shouldn't wait for someone or something to make you happy. If you do, you'll end up being unhappy most of the time. You don't chase happiness, you become happiness. You should learn be happy by your very nature, irrespective of things around you. It should be a part of your identity. This way, people also would show interest to be with you. People generally attach themselves with someone cheerful and vibrant and not with the ones who're gloomy most of the time. This way, you'd have a chance to spread your joy to others in the room. You'd have the required resource to fill up somebody who's deprived of it.

Another thing is there's something called as 'hedonic treadmill' that states that we humans tend to get back to a relatively stable level of happiness despite any major positive or negative events in our life. In modern times, for a lot of people (including my past self), this baseline state doesn't really have the required elements of joy due to which they spend a lot of time being sad and gloomy.

We need to practice to make this default state itself have the elements of joy and peace. So any negative intense life event will only affect you for a while and you'll be back on your toes healed. Any positive experience will be like a bonus high. We should learn to have that subtle contentment with life so that we'd appreciate the processes more than the outcomes.

By happiness, it doesn't mean that you jump and laugh all the time. Its more of a something felt from within. On a subtle level, you don't feel empty. You feel content and complete with an inner sense of calmness. You know that you're doing sane. You're at peace with yourself.

“Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop" 

One of the things I've learnt the hard way is about "change"

Things like, "be who you are", "be yourself", "you're enough", sure, these things do help us, especially when you're hit mentally, but during the good times, when you get to use your rational side of your brain to contemplate over the events and behaviors along with considering the possibility of "things going wrong from your end", you realize that they kinda mislead us sometimes and perhaps become one of the root cause of all that toxicity that emerge out. You realize how much of a limitation your current opinions, beliefs and habits had on you, your thinking, your mindset and your levels of joy. It just blows your mind. It blew mine.

Here's 2 statements from Naval Ravikanth, somebody whom I admire and respect a lot :

1. It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself, to be able to take your habits apart and say, “Okay, this is a habit I probably picked up when I was a kid trying to get my parent’s attention. Now I’ve reinforced it and reinforced it, and I call it a part of my identity. Does it still serve me? Does it make me happier? Does it make me healthier? Does it make me accomplish whatever I set out to accomplish?”

2. The mind is just as malleable as the body. We spend so much time and effort trying to change the external world, other people, and our own bodies — all while accepting ourselves the way we were programmed in our youths.

I couldn't relate more with these. We accept the voice in our heads as the source of all truth only to realize later on in life that all of that is changeable. We think just becoz we told ourselves long ago that we're going to do something in a certain way, we feel obliged to continue doing it that way. We think it's wrong to go against our old identity where in, in reality, "leaving your identity behind" is what's going to open you up to a whole new possibilities.

Challenging your current belief systems (beliefs through which you operate and live) and habits is what's going to let you form new ones that could give you joy and set you free...(continued in the post slides)

Over time, I've realized the importance of "unlearning and relearning" in almost every aspect of our life. Started practicing it since a while and I'm surprised to see myself change a lot in the way I approach things.

Change is an essential component of growth (socially, mentally, physically, professionally). Certain change is good to you and your environment

How much of the change is required is again very subjective. You gotta figure out by sitting with yourself, spending some time in introspection, what is it that you could pick up from your past experience with something/someone. What is it that screwed you in your social interactions. Go down the roots to understand what created such a mess in the first place. I'm sure you'll come up with a bunch of different things which you'll eventually pick a few and try tweaking them a lil.

At the end of the day, you do not know unless you experiment and we're all experimenting with things in some way or the other. So go easy on yourself on the go.

Having an open mindset is the key to becoming a better version of yourself and I'm sure all of us share this one common goal/desire : "to become better than what I was yesterday"

I appreciate that you've come till here reading the entire thing. It shows how much you care about yourself, your happiness and your well being. Read that first line of the caption once again and get it embedded in your head.

"Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop"