An Insight into Happiness

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[Applause]

yes my name is mohan i passed out from

this campus about

a little more than 20 years ago 21 or so

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i left from february 1999 uh i joined a

competitor with the mentor for a while

with conversation after that

you guys know that if you didn’t know

that before then just been introduced

but as a normal musician so people ask

me who i am

the world musician will probably be the

first or second quarter i’ll say

and if people ask me how i am i’ll

typically say i’m happy

but i’m usually happy i don’t

have a problem being happy i remember uh

it’s very later people ask you right

typically if you have a sad face someone

who

knows you like so someone who doesn’t

even know you for that matter

might come and ask you why you said is

everything all right and they might try

and

uh make things fair for you if you’re

happy and generally happy

we generally don’t really know why we’re

happy we just are

and that’s our way so that was the key

as a kid

uh except for one time when my parents

decided to take my sister and iphone

holiday this was when i was

eight i think my sister was 11. and my

parents decided the best holiday

best holiday 17 temples

in an ambassador so it was a big image

and my parents didn’t do it because they

wanted to teach us something they did it

because they thought it was a good

holiday

so we still forget about it and as you

can see i’m still bothered by it

but apart from stuff like that generally

you don’t have a problem being happy

you have a problem with rules initially

you’re trying to discover everything

around you

when you’re a baby you’re innocent

everyone’s loving you too much pinching

your cheeks and saying all your baby and

all that

which can get annoying but you don’t

know it yet uh so you find it easy to be

happy

and you discover things around you good

food mother’s love

uh other people’s love some that you

accept from that rejected

most of the time you’re happy then you

stop discovering things around you

because you think that’s something

my parents are talking about you know my

teachers have taught me all you need to

know

i need to discover myself

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you decide to go for parties with your

friends what your parents would allow it

you do all those kind of things which at

that time seemingly

important people to discover yourself as

an individual human being

you want to grow up in one day

but even within that kind of wanting to

grow up and not being allowed to grow up

and you ever realize that being a

student is probably the best thing in

your life

uh you’re so happy in

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i was a general bad student uh before

that i was

i was doing economics i loved it and

my source of happiness was one of my big

sources of happiness was the fact

all was the ambition to do good and if

you love it and if you thought something

would typically end up doing something

good

right so college was okay

uh i was doing basically well here i was

uh i think 84 among 114 students

i don’t

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bloody hell uh made some of the best

friends possible

and a lot more than we just met

and we see the same guys as we were 20

years ago that’s a source of happiness

coming back to what we’re talking about

already

uh oliver from from example that you’ve

seen call me

and ask me do you would you like to come

and talk and this is the theme

and that led me to ask two things

one is what they advise me for all right

so i don’t know

after you come and say go to others

but to speak about happiness some people

really haven’t bothered thinking about

i’ve never thought why i’m happy and i

just found it

easy to be happy now i needed to start

asking questions as to

what reason happens what is the money in

the corporate life

is it the fact that some of you or one

of you

will know the fact that perhaps on the

song somewhere is it

i remember when i first called someone

and heard my voice back and then you

told me

i cannot discuss

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so in my what else or whatever you call

i don’t have money i’ll make it one day

the same amount of money or more then i

can make it a year as a cycle

and why that is

i was sure that i could earn money there

but for me it was as much a business

decision as it was

about passion so

when these guys were speaking about it

before that she was most important yes

true to a certain extent

were not all true which brings me to

why am i saying this i was equally happy

when i was arrival

i’m equally happy now if you ask me

today i cannot choose

i cannot tell you that i am so much

happy because someone wrote my song

i did when i was masturbating

about it they told me they were my song

how much price would you

put on that again that is true it’s a

feeling

i’ve said on stage multiple times

the meaning of hearing your song being

sung by people who are listening to you

is more than anything any other

happiness in the world but that’s

because those are

things to say i do feel them but if i

look at it as a comparison i don’t

have a point to compare it with you i

was generally happy as a banker in fact

i was more popular probably

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out

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so i was lucky but again even in those

two years

when i was living of my friends or my

family um

we didn’t know where the next day was

coming from didn’t know

whether the next check was coming from

anyway

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we didn’t search for it we just got it

as a physician i’ve had this outstanding

experience of working with

this group of people from dharavi very

small kids so i like people

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i have some idea of what i’m speaking

about not really this

but that’s the way i deal with my life

that’s the way i deal with my music

i think the best songs come to us the

best feelings come to us

i genuinely honestly believe happiness

is an experience

that we just need to experience let’s

eat we don’t

have a specific need i want at least

i i do believe i have a lot of friends

who have the same feeling

that we don’t need to seek happiness it

is in the seeking of happiness

because which is probably this will make

me happier

than i am so

while i was planning the computer

industry after it said yes

without realizing what you have to speak

afterwards

and i saw quite a few videos of people

speaking on that

some of them technologies one videos are

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please watch it it’s a very scientific

psychologist’s view on happiness and

it’s a brilliant study the this is a

selection of studies at least one

and this was published in 2006 one of

the first ever videos to be published

the reason i’m bringing him up is that

he makes a certain distinction where he

says

choice is not good for happiness we

would think it is

that i can choose my future i think

whether to do this or that i could

choose to be a banker or a musician

and therefore i would prefer that that

would be more happiness to have that

choice

he goes on to prove within his talk

after various studies that choice is not

necessarily the best thing

i remember a professor

we have a choice no problem and we do

say that all the time

why don’t we treat happiness the same

way

because we believe that in our ability

to predict what will give us more

happiness

lies our source of happiness we have the

ability to compare

so we compare one happiness versus

another whereas

one happiness would be just as equal as

the other it would be contrasting

choices

it could be choices that can be made

simultaneously in my case

i still had that backup plan that two

years later

if i really couldn’t survive as a

relationship i could go back so for me

one of the biggest life-changing choices

that i made don’t know how to be alright

so i could continue and today

people know my music but if that had

happened

i would come back to writing and try to

make someone in there

come and tell me i love it but

the whole point of this is it was easier

for me to make because both choices were

still going to be available to me in

some way

a couple of years down the line i wasn’t

destroying one choice

we tend to think according to me we tend

to think that i need to be

happier than i am now or i need to be

happier than that

we tend to forget that we don’t know

what causes of happiness

is it when your kids are used to those

the same things that used to derive what

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uh one more example one more extremely

immediately spoken about example is how

money is not a source of happiness

i disagree i would rather be a rich

happy relation than a more happy

physician

anyone would be a happy person rather

than a happy person

why do you say money is not a source of

happiness we tend to want to put across

the point

that if you have unknown just looking at

it isn’t going to make you happy

the whole point of that is to buy

something

if someone is happy looking at their

money in the bank why do we need to stop

that

why do we need to learn after something

that we call permanent happiness

and forget those little transient

happinesses that we did that we don’t

even know came from any specific place

my whole journey as a musician as a

cooperative assistant

as son as a brother etc

is about this

i didn’t think about it now that i’m

thinking about it i probably have come

to realize

that i don’t fight happiness i don’t try

to find it

i’m happy when it happens to me and why

am i i am happy

and if i’m sad i can go out of that when

i need to

or i can move

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both sides you will sing to the song if

you’re happy i make this on my feet

happy

i listen to you sing that song back to

me i’ve been happy

so this is an industry that i’m a part

of which teaches me something very

simple

just like songs come to me one of our

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thank you