This Navratri, I’ve decided to challenge myself for 9 days and fight my 9 demons. Every day will be a new demon, which will be carried out the entire nine days. I’ll tell you how this works; my day 1 challenge is to not feel any emotion other than happiness. So this challenge will carry on till the ninth day.
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Even though I woke up early, I was pretty optimistic, looking forward to this challenge. Even though this day was much better than a lot of other ones I’ve had in the past, I realised just how hard it is to stay happy. I’ll run you down my day and what were my thoughts at different instances.
My early morning was spent doing household chores, and even though I usually get annoyed thinking that I have a lot of work to do, it didn’t really bother me that much today. Every time I thought about the work I needed to get done, I thought about this challenge and smiled so I could be happy.
I got a call from my friend and she asked me if I wanted to join her spontaneous plan. On regular days, I would’ve refused, but today’s challenge was to encourage only happy thoughts. I spent the next 5 hours with my best friend and who isn’t happy when they’re with their friends? I then went to work, and since I enjoy it, there were no feelings that could change my happy mood. Here comes the twist, when I leave work with a bad, bad headache.
I reached home at seven and couldn’t even stand. That’s when I realise that I have to make dinner. Of course. Of course, this is going to happen to me. Of course, this will happen on the day I decide to be happy consciously. To be honest, I tried so hard to think of positive thoughts, to not think of how much of my energy is going to be used for making dinner. I knew I couldn’t get irritated because come on; it’s the first day of my challenge. I can’t lose on the first day itself. From one thought to the other, I kept telling myself to be happy and the funny thing is, it actually worked.
I was dead tired, I could feel my bones hurt and at that point, it’s very obvious that you wouldn’t think of ‘being happy’. But you know what? I tried. And it worked. Me being me and humans being humans, my brain kept reminding me that I was tired, but the deed was done. Once my consciousness had realised that I’m happy, there was no going back. I mean, I stayed up till two in the morning (my Instagram is proof) despite being dead tired. You see where I’m getting at?
It’s really all in our head. Every little thing is in our head. Every little move we make, every single thought we think can shape your entire day.
But we all knew this, didn’t we?
Yes.
Then why do we not practice this?
I’m a psychology student and have vigorously believed in the fact that it’s all in our head. But I’ve never ever tried to shape my whole day based on one little thought. I never thought it was that important. When you are thinking a thought the whole day, it is kind of hard to follow it. Especially for someone like me as reverse psychology works best on me. This I guess, was the hardest part, to listen to one positive thought in my head and ignore all the other ones that were pulling me down.
You don’t know which thought of yours is pulling you down; you just get carried away until it’s too late. But sometimes, maybe once in a while, try to pay attention to those thoughts, counter-attack your thoughts and you’ll find out what is right and what is not.
What I learnt from this challenge is the practical to the theory that it’s all in the head. Yes, it’s hard to constantly monitor your thoughts, but once you get the hang of it, it’ll become a habit. And who says happy people don’t have the better end of the bargain? They always do.
SHREE: 1
DEMON: 0
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