To be happy, people need to be true to themselves: Expert

Dubai - This was the agenda of the 'Happiness Talk - Spreading Happiness Forum' this week

Giving is central to happiness and studies have shown that generosity is strongly associated with well-being. This was the agenda of the 'Happiness Talk - Spreading Happiness Forum' this week, where monthly sessions are held with local and international speakers sharing tips, tools and tecwhniques to develop a happy mindset and live a happy lifestyle.
The first speaker of the day to give people a true view of happiness was international author, media personality and a popular peak performance coach Roberto Re. He gave 10 strategies that can be used in daily lives to simplify thinking and increase level of happiness. Re said people not living in the present and not knowing what they really want are the main factors that affect their happiness levels.
"People need to be true to themselves, conduct accurate self-awareness and stay in their own 'story' to attain and retain true inner happiness."
He concluded by convincing the audience that they need to let go of the too many and too much rigid rules set for themselves and people around them. "Stop conditioning your lives on others, rather condition it on your values, believes and sense of contentment," Re stressed.
Mind and mend stress levels
The second speaker, Eva Kovak, a sports psychologist and consultant for workplace health and wellbeing at 24aLife, focused on the significance of health for happiness. She elaborated on how stress has a strong impact on our health and happiness.
Starting with giving people awareness about the bodily, behavioural and mental symptoms of stress, she focused on giving the audience tips on how to manage stress in their daily lives for better health and happiness levels. She continued saying that stress is contagious by sharing a study and emphasised that for us to be happy and have a happy environment, we need to condition our minds not to let stress interfere in our happiness and in the happiness of people around us.
Her tips on how to recognise stress and develop a stress-coping mechanism gave the audience some very valuable tips to use in their daily lives for improved health and happiness.
The event aims at supporting the UAE happiness initiative and spreading happiness in the 'Year of giving 2017', said Rehan Naeem, director of corporate happiness at Touch Points, while opening the event.
Naeem, also the moderator at the event, stressed that giving is not just associated with money. "Practising gratitude, kindness, compassion and empathy, the main factors that increase happiness levels, all involve giving." He concluded that giving is the central and significant element of happiness.
The audience was given 30 seconds to think about and make note of one thing that affects their happiness levels in their daily lives, take a tip or tool from the sessions on how to do it differently and give their minds a signal that it would act upon it as decided and rewire their brain over the next few days by practicing it.
A corporate social responsibility initiative by Vonni Events, Touch Points Consultancy and Marsam Mattar, the initiative was supported by Bevy Solutions and BLK water.
saman@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai