Unhappy? Then create your own reality.

My trip back to Sg felt a little different this time. What can you say when your friends start saying:

"If I sold my shares today, I'll lose 40% of the money I invested."
"I'm not buying any more gadgets.'
"I don't know how long my job will last."
"I can survive until next month. After that I just don't know..."
"I am stuck."

Seems that happiness and money go hand in hand and few people are more aware of it than Singaporeans.

Malaysia's not that far off either. Okay, maybe its more dire because of other "extra" issues that I won't get into. And everybody knows America's not in the best of shapes too.

You know how people say that for whatever pickle we're in, we're responsible for it in some way? I think there's a lot of truth in it. I've always believed that the decisions we make are like the white ball on a billiards table. Strike it and it knocks around some red balls. These balls in turn knock around other balls and so on. Sometimes one nudge is all it takes to change the entire picture.

And that's what decisions do. A decision to go out for a stroll could result in bumping into a friend and subsequently a decision to buy shares or take up a job that will take us in directions we never dreamed of. It would be easy to say that like the red balls, we're hapless passengers caught up in a train wreck but that's where the billiard ball analogy ends. The difference is that billiard balls can't generally think and decide how to respond to an incoming ball. We can.

There are people who (still) believe the world is flat. Everyone's entitled to their opinion and we too have our own preferences that make us unique. Its another way of saying our reality is shaped by what we choose to believe in. Implication: it is very important to choose what to believe in.

If we decide to believe we can't be happy unless we're swimming in a pool filled with hundred-dollar bills, then we will have to deal with the good and bad consequences of that belief. If we choose to believe in the opposite, we also have to face the consequences of that belief.

So back to my dear friends in Singapore. What's done cannot be undone. You cannot un-invest in a bad investment or un-apply for your job. There's only one path left - ahead. If you're unhappy with this reality, you can always create a new reality by letting go of things that aren't working and choosing a path that leads to a different reality. Even at the cost of losing doting friends and a branded lifestyle. And that's your biggest challenge - letting go. And learning the Newtonian art of understanding how action-reaction works so you can spot a train wreck before it happens.

You can see that while I'm acutely conscious of the financial and social mess in the region, it doesn't bother me much. That's because a different mental formula keeps my eye on a different ball. A disaster in your reality is a nice sunny day in mine and maybe vice versa. I'm still learning but my hunch has always been this: happiness is having few needs.