Maj Gen Anand Saxena, a serving Army officer, has written a veritable life manual in form of his third book, Nine Mantras for Happiness and Success. The book contains distilled scriptural wisdom, 79 life stories of persons, products, organisations, innovations and breathtaking Real-life experiences of a soldier.
Anand begins with a story, of a place called El Dorado. It is supposed to be a place where untold riches, everlasting youth and enduring happiness resides. The search for El Dorado began in the sixteenth century in South America by Spaniards, joined in by other European nations and continued till the twentieth century. Thousands perished but El Dorado was never discovered. Anand argues that the search was unsuccessful because the explorers were looking for it at the wrong place- the real El Dorado is not without but within. Ask yourself, if you have to be blessed with happiness, success, wealth etc. where will it come from? From within you where resides the unlimited potential.
And, this unlimited potential is seriously big. Anand does some interesting calculations by inserting his body weight in the famous equation by Albert Einstein, E=MC2. You would remember that E is the energy in Joules, M is the mass in KG and C is the speed of light. The potential energy as per him is, hold your breath, 1.80 Million Kiloton of TNT which is 85000 times the energy contained in the “Little Boy”, the Atomic Bomb that flattened Nagasaki in 1945. But why we are not able to convert this potential energy to tangible successful outcomes in life?
Anand postulates that the first problem is that we sabotage ourselves by our doubts, anxiety, fear etc. We don’t live in the NOW- we are 1/3 in the past, 1/3 in the future and only 1/3 in the present- the result is also 1/3, and then we curse our bad luck. There is no bad luck, it’s all cause and effect- we sow what we reap. And therefore, instead of fear and anxiety, we should embrace the happiness that will engender success and as a corollary, eternal happiness will engender enduring success. He alludes to 170 longitudinal, cross-sectional and experimental researches that prove this fact.
The second problem is that we forget that true happiness is never without but within. We long for happiness and success and this longing is our downfall. All the possessions, persons, achievements et al. will never give us enduring happiness. He alludes to a concept called the “Hedonic Treadmill”. Something which gives you initial pleasure will fail to do that subsequently. First and the hundredth bite of ice cream- does it taste the same?
Are we missing something? Is there a path to success and happiness but we fail to see it? Success leaves clues behind as also successful people do. This book, “Nine Mantras to Happiness and Success” provides you with the toolkit to charter your path to eternal happiness and enduring success on the Wheel of Life.
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