Don't allow someone else to define the meaning of happiness for you

We all live under various psychological pressures. We have pressure from our family to perform certain duties and fulfill their expectations. We have pressure from society and from our peers to confirm their expectations, there is also pressure from social media, the pressure created by different advertisements, and different products marketed which seem to be necessary if we want to be happy, and so on. The point is, that someone is continuously telling us what to do to look beautiful, they want to explain to us what it means to be a cool person or a happy family. These things are explained in a very vivid and glossy way. Advertisements tell us how one should enjoy life, many vacation package-offering companies insist on why we need to go on vacations to strike a balance between work and life. These messages are very tempting and often irresistible, not easy to ignore as a lot of effort and research goes into making these advertisements. Many such things are going around us in the real world as well as the virtual world which try to define happiness for us. If you believe in all these things, then you have to have the latest phone to be cool, you should look a certain way and wear fashionable clothes to look beautiful, you need to have a certain type of body or complexion, you need to go on vacation to fancy places, buy a home, get a new car as your old one is junk, and the list can go on depending on your need to fit in. The question is do we really need others to define what it means to be happy for us?

Maybe many of us do need some advice about how to be happy as we may not know what we really want. In that case, these advertisements can be of help as they can help you to find something which you like. But, there is a catch, these advertisements are made by very talented professionals using the information from the research and data based on human behavior. This is why they are so compelling that you end up liking what advertisement makers want you to like, not what you really like. This whole process is very confusing because it is very difficult to figure out whether what we really want is a product of our own needs and desires, or a result of influence from all these external factors. Many people, including me fall for these tricks. We all are bombarded on social media with such messages, and our online search is continuously tracked, whether we are watching a movie or a TV we are continuously exposed to such messages that want us to do something or buy something. 

These messages are very useful if we use them to our advantage, but they are very problematic if we get consumed by them. When we start chasing the dreams designed by others for us, we may not get that feeling of fulfillment even after living that dream. It is better to spend time looking for our own needs and dreams rather than trying to be successful in society's eyes or in the eyes of people around us. At the same time, let me acknowledge that it is not easy to resist the pressure to fit in. It is not easy to walk a different path when most people around us try to follow the path paved by these consultants of happiness. I have learned to evaluate most of my needs and desires objectively to see if I really need them or if they are the product of pressure created by all the messages which my brain knowingly or unknowingly receives from my surroundings. Many times, I reject these things as I can't justify their presence in my life, and many times, I chase these ideas and try to fulfill those desires. Technically, I am not a minimalist. I don't own only what I need, but I do try to limit as much as possible as per my own wish. If the pressure to be a minimalist is created by some undue external guilt, then it is as bad as the pressure to buy something or to spend on something that you may not need but are buying just because everyone else has it. 

The pursuit of happiness was comparatively easy for our previous generation, for us it is more complex and it is going to be even more complex for our future generation. This is why we all need to come up with our individual plans to pursue our own happiness. Humans are complex organisms, and our happiness is even more complex (because our brain is a very complicated organ). It is not necessary that we all must enjoy or dislike the same things, our choices can vary a lot, and there is nothing wrong with it. Try to define your own happiness, don't let these external pressures dictate terms to you. Don't go on vacation unless you really want to go, there is nothing wrong with enjoying your work so much that you don't need a vacation. There is nothing wrong in loving your own body the way it is, or working out hard to change its shape, provided you are doing these things as per your own wish, and to make yourself happy. Don't allow your surroundings to define happiness and force you to work for it. Define your own style, your own happiness, needs, and desires yourself, and then take the help of people and resources around you to fulfill them. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Junk food marketing to kids is a very serious issue

This issue was mentioned to me by my friend Vishnu a couple of years back. At that time he was working in the area that specifically dealt with this issue. When he mentioned me about this I didn't think it was that serious issue. I used to think that after all most of parents decide what they want to buy for their kids so as long as parents are aware of these things it should not be a big problem, but I was wrong as things are not that simple. There is a nice TED talk on this issue by Anna Lappe. I encourage everyone reading this to listen to this talk, it's really educating. She nicely explains from her personal experience how these big food (or junk food) firms strategically target kids to sell their products and develop brand loyalty. They got their mantra right "Catch them young." Once you develop a passion and likeness for your brand among kids you have a loyal customer who will promote and use your product rest of their lives. Sounds like a great marketing strategy for the 21st century. However, I feel that this great marketing mantra was invented long ago by people who wanted to spread their religion or cult movements, these organizations saw how well this strategy works so they all are using this formula to market their products.

All these big corporates that want to substitute everything on your dining table with products produced by them are pretty successful in their marketing. They have already established their brand value and all these brands have huge fan following and loyal customers. We can see that more and more people eat out and don't like to cook their meals at home and even naturally available and free drink, water, is substituted by a variety of soft drinks or energy drinks and there are so many zero-calorie flavored water products sold in the market. Because of all this heavy marketing in today's world people prefer to pay money to buy water rather than drinking freely available, easy-to-purify tap water. Many terms like zero-calorie soft drinks (like Diet Coke and Pepsi), chemical-free products (I wonder what they mean by this because even pure water is a chemical), or 100% natural, are used as marketing tricks to attract and mislead customers. These terms are used to make people feel that they are consuming very healthy stuff that is good for their health. There is no limit to what extent these advertisements can go to target their customers and they also use popular cartoon characters and very attractive packaging to attract kids to their product. I am not against marketing, companies have the right to promote their product and market it to potential customers in a legal way but if they purposely target customers who are not in a position to evaluate their product and judge their claims (kids and in some cases teenagers) then it's unfair to target such consumers so aggressively. Even many educated adults also fall prey to many marketing gimmicks so just imagine kids who don't even know that they are being targeted as potential customers and have no idea about the quality and effect of the product which they demand. Once they fall into this trap then it's very difficult to come out of it. This becomes a sort of addiction that is done by using legal means so that no one can question this.

Till now there was no public awareness about what can be the result of this targeted marketing on consumers. But now we can see the effect of these things around us. Health issues resulting from poor diet choices and sudden lifestyle changes are putting enormous pressure on the public health system in various countries (obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are some examples). For the first time in human history, there is a possibility that the life expectancy of the next generation might be less than the previous generation. This is because choices they make in their diet and lifestyle. Aggressive advertising has a huge influence on the choices consumers make today. The issue is serious enough that it should get the public attention. It should be discussed at every level as consumers of all ages are getting affected because of this. Public debate is required and some policymaking is also required before it becomes too big of a public health crisis to handle. It's all about our own health and the health of our future generations and if we don't talk about this then I wonder who will.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:
1. TED talk by Anna Lappe
2. Amount of sugar in some average sized bottles.
3. http://www.sugarstacks.com/