KATHMANDU: Back in school, our teacher used to ask, “What do you want to become in life?” The answer was unanimous, “Successful.” The next question used to be, “When will you be happy?” Again the answer was unequivocal, “When we are successful.” I carried this impression for a very long time and in my interactions with students, business people and politicians, I find that this psychology still persists. We still think success leads to happiness. This means that happiness for us is the means and success is the end to all human endeavours. And this is where we have gone wrong.

Research in neuroscience, leadership and on the job performance has proved beyond doubt that to have extraordinary success we must have extraordinary psychology. It is now understood that over 80 per cent of our success (or failure) is

determined not by what we know and what we can do but by what we are from inside. And the most important

factor determining our psychology is our emotions. So, to have extraordinary psychology we must have extraordinary emotions.

Adele B Lynn, in her best-selling book The EQ Difference proposes the following model of emotional quotient (EQ):

Self-awareness and self-control: The ability to fully understand oneself and to use that information to manage emotions productively.



Empathy: The capacity to understand how individuals and groups interpret events affecting their lives and how their emotional reactions colour the meaning that these events have for them.

Social expertness: The ability to build genuine relationships and bonds and express caring, concern and conflict in healthy ways.



Personal influence: The ability to positively lead and inspire others, as well as oneself.



Mastery of purpose and vision: The ability to bring authenticity to one’s life by living a life based on deeply felt intentions and values. This is about consciously understanding one’s own dreams, desires, expect-ations, intentions and feelings and leveraging them towards realising one’s highest purpose in life.

EQ suggests that you need to trust your own feelings and emotions by paying close heed to what is going on inside you. Your attention must change from the outside to the inside, enabling you to recognise and understand your moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effects on others. That is the clue to your personality, motivation, career, relationship, spirit-uality and leadership.

Happiness is the result of the presence of very strong positive emotions in us and the bedrock of all emotions. When you feel happy, you are in charge of your emotions and they are automatically directed towards bringing out the best in you. You are not only emotionally charged, but also full of understanding and empathy towards everyone around. This is what I call the ‘feel great’ factor. If you are feeling great, you are in complete control of your psychology, your energy is focused towards what you want to achieve and you become the centre of attention.So, the new age slogan is: ‘Happiness leads to success’.

(The author is the president of Jeevan Vigyan Kendra, a modern spiritual organisation, and principal of Apex College.

He can be reached through bhanu@jeevanvigyan.com)