The Opposite of Happiness.

I have been thinking about happiness lately, and my mind jumped to: What’s the opposite of happiness? 

And I think the opposite of happiness is trying to be someone you are not. 

For example: It took me years to understand that I wasn’t competitive. How strange! When I was younger, I tried to be competitive partly because I grew up in India where there’s so much competition, and partly because I grew up in a family where being competitive was thought of as a good thing. 

So, I tried to put on the face of it. But that face didn’t match who I was. So, I failed miserably. 

It took many long years to dawn on me that being non-competitive was not a “weakness.” I couldn’t will myself “to be motivated” by trying to best other people. Because that’s just not who I am.  

Other things motivate me. Other things work for me. 

It’s good for competitive people to be competitive. But if you’re not someone who is naturally competition-oriented, it makes you miserable to try to be like that.

As I have gone along, it’s been really interesting for me to stumble across people who are successful AND also admit they are not very competitive, like in this post I wrote many years ago. In it, I talk about New-York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin discussing how she is not very competitive. And so, competition can’t motivate her to do things. 

How obvious! 

And yet, not so obvious. 

So many of us are encouraged to become part of a template. 

We are asked to twist ourselves into a shape that is unlike us. 

Some of this is well-meaning, coming from parents or teachers who want to see us succeed. But even if it is well-meaning, it still does twist us out of our natural form.

Maybe, this is what it means to feel good in our skins: It’s to accept more and more of who we really are, to see the qualities we have in their right perspective. And to see that we can only thrive from this place. And that, in fact, the only “success” we can ever have is to grow the seed of the true self we have been given.

Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey and a Silver Medal Awardee at the Rex Awards, co-presented by the United Nations in India. Find more about Ritu HERE.

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