For as long as I can remember, I’ve been asking my gurus/teachers only one question: “What is happiness?” After what seemed like an awfully long search for an answer, I derived my understanding of happiness: For me happiness revolves around four aspects of life.

Health

Imagine a day when everything is going right for you but you are experiencing a splitting headache, would you feel happy? The answer is a definite NO. Our body is an extremely intelligent machine. It keeps giving us signals when something needs to be addressed. If the body is not healthy, we cannot function optimally. Life could become a burden for someone who constantly falls sick. Just like a machine that works all day, so does our body; so it is important to make sure that this machine gets high quality fuel, enough downtime and regular repair and maintenance i.e. good food, enough sleep and regular exercise.

I firmly believe that “Yoga is the only form of exercise that leaves you energised yet calm”. Even after doing 50 suryanamaskars [if done correctly], there is a sense of balance and calmness in the body and mind. So to me, physical wellbeing and freedom from illness is the foundation of happiness.

Relationships

Sharing great relationships with your loved ones is a beautiful space to be in. As humans we need to have connection in our lives, people we love and people who love us back. We are after all social animals. Have you noticed how an argument with someone can be so draining for us? It can change our mental state immediately and make us uncomfortable. On the other hand, healthy and peaceful relationships are so comforting. If the relationships that matter most are healthy, we experience happiness within.

Sense of purpose

We all need a sense of purpose to drive us. Having something to look forward to every morning is a great motivation. It should just be something that you love doing and wish to do more of. This need not be categorised as right or wrong or something lofty that will change the world; as long as it makes you feel good, it fits the bill.

Don’t you feel drained when you do things just because you have to do them? Take a moment and think of your favorite activity, and remember that day when you didn’t have to push yourself even to wake up at 4am to do what you love doing.

Journey

If the journey is not interesting, it doesn’t matter how good the destination is. Life becomes boring unknowingly. Let’s assume you are on a long plane journey to an exotic destination with your loved one, and you get into an argument on the flight. What a bummer! It can ruin the whole vacation no matter how exciting the destination may seem. Similarly in life, if we focus on enjoying our present moment, life can be a lot simpler and enjoyable. If you enjoy every moment of your journey, life is rocking.

In my opinion, striking a balance between these four pillars is what brings happiness. When all of these are in place, we don’t need to chase happiness. We just have to live our life and these work as magnets that will attract happiness to you.

Would love to hear from you. Do write to me your thoughts on what brings you happiness.

The post The four magnets that can attract happiness into your life appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Published by: Cognite—an Imprint of Embassy Books

ISBN: 978-9383359660

Pages: 232

Price: INR 250

Death and the afterlife are among the most debated issues, not just today, but forever. Do we go to heaven or hell? Do our loved ones remain in the skies, looking over us? Do they walk among us? What is the journey like? The questions are innumerable, and there are as many answers as there are people. The answers could be religious, spiritual, or philosophical, and there are many tomes which deal with it in detail. Priya Kumar’s latest book deals with the same subject, though in a much simpler, easily readable manner—one that we can all relate to, and actually understand.

I will go with you is a story of 300 passengers and the crew aboard a flight, whose pilot has decided to commit suicide on duty. It might seem, at first glance, to be fatalistic, as well as macabre, but Priya Kumar tells us a story filled with adventure, twists and turns and suspense, intertwined with deep philosophy and as well as discussions on life and death that leads the reader to introspection.

There are 300 passengers on board, but we hear the stories of only those in row 26: Sarah, a writer, struggling to decide whether to trust her boyfriend, or not; Jim, a young man obsessed with technology, who falls in love with Sarah the minute he sets eyes on her; Muttu, a clairvoyant and blogger, the only one who has an inkling of the death that awaits all of them; and Paul, a rich and successful businessman who struggles with questions about life and living in the larger perspective, and who changes his seat from the Business class to join the other three on Row 26 in Economy, thus leading to the conversations which enable him to finally get answers to his questions, albeit at the very end of his life.

In this book, Priya Kumar lives up to her reputation of being a stellar story-teller who has developed a keen knack of inspiring people even as she entertains them. Her wisdom flows through in the dialogues by Muttu, the most evolved character of this story.

This is an intriguing story that combines the heavy questions of life, death and everything in between, in the form of a suspense thriller. The author intersperses the fictional narrative with bits of philosophical thought, making make us stop and think about the situation, and even  helps us relate them to our own circumstances. In spite of this, the story doesn’t lose its momentum.

The book is aptly titled for it is indeed a journey of a lifetime—for the passengers of the flight as well as for the reader. After all, every journey of life ends in death.

I especially like the end, because it reminded me of a conversation I recently had with my son, where he said that in his opinion, people who die, don’t really go to heaven or hell. They stay back, unseen, with their loved ones, in the form of memories. Priya’s ending, though not exactly the same, brought back that conversation, and I appreciated how she turned the negative emotions into positive ones, by choosing to let her departed characters turn inspirational—for those they loved, as well as those who needed them.

The genre of ‘inspirational suspense’ is new to me, but this is one book I enjoyed reading!

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post I Will Go With You: The Flight Of A Lifetime By Priya Kumar appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.