Here is the full transcript of mindset and wellness expert Sonia Jhas’ talk titled “Where Do The Happy People Live?” at TEDxDupreePark 2021 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Questioning Happiness
Let me ask you a question, are you happy? Do you know anyone in real life who’s like happy? Where do the happy people live, do you know, because I used to think I knew and honestly I was so wrong? See, I was sold on this idea of the end destination, this idea that happiness lives in this place where there’s sun and sand and ocean and blue skies.
If I could just drive there fast enough on the highway instead of taking the scenic route, then I too would get to that place where the happy people live and then I’d finally feel like I’d made it. Not realizing until I got there that I don’t even really like the sun and I find sand kind of annoying. The beach is too touristy and the ocean is cold and there’s stuff in there that can touch you or more importantly eat you, which is why I only like swimming in pools that are 94 degrees.
Chasing Happiness
Yet there I was on the beach where the happy people supposedly live, each step of the way convincing myself that it was okay that I wasn’t happy yet because if I just tried a little harder I would be. But happiness never came, instead I woke up one morning with this sinking feeling like I had been following the wrong GPS this whole time. I was 21 years old, finishing up my degree with all the right ticky marks.
I was engaged to an older guy that satisfied all the Indian parental criteria, I’d soon be starting what I believed to be my dream job as a corporate executive and I was considered brown girl beautiful, long hair, fair skin, thin body thanks to my disordered eating habits and thin eyebrows thanks to my Revlon tweezers. Yes, I had made it to the end destination and was just months away from checking marriage off my happiness to-do list. But as I got closer to the wedding my square princess cut engagement ring started to feel less like a flawless diamond and more like a glass box that I was being held hostage in.
Breaking Free
Remember, I was only 21, like so young, too young, I had only just started to settle into my own skin and the more that I did the less my reality made any sense to me. How would I have gotten here, how had I been so tuned in to the voices of other people, how had I not realized that I’d never really been happy, too busy suppressing, compressing and denying parts of myself in order to achieve success and stay in my relationship? But I was awake now and all I could think to myself was, “Oh my God, what have I done?”
It made me sick to my stomach but I remember I broke the news to my parents, I said, “I don’t think I can go through with the wedding,” and in that moment I broke their hearts. I was shattered, you see I grew up in your typical Indian household where high performance was the norm, image was everything and feelings were swept deep under the rug. Naturally my parents were viscerally against me calling off my wedding, I mean what would people think, how could I, their daughter, do something like this and how would I ever recover from the guilt of ruining everyone’s lives?
Facing the Unknown
Total chaos ensued, I was two weeks out from my first wedding event, all my family from India had already arrived and there I was, backed into a corner having a literal panic attack on the bathroom floor. I felt so trapped by the shame of it all, it felt too early for me to be making the biggest mistake of my life but which choice would be the biggest mistake, following through with the wedding because this was all I’d ever been taught or calling it off and then facing the unknown? I chose the unknown and the unknown was me, this one single decision changed the entire course of my life.
I called off my wedding and I quit my job and I cut my hair which by the way is practically the Indian version of getting a face tattoo. Then I became a personal trainer and nutrition specialist and I launched myself into the world of social media in order to inspire others back to their version of health. You see, by tuning into who I really was, I was able to begin living a life guided by my internal compass, my voice, not what had been projected on me through my culture and my parents and the random aunties who always seemed to have opinions about everyone else’s lives except their own, you know which aunties I’m talking about.
Letting Go
Look, I’m not saying it was easy, the unlayering took a lot of work. I had to let go of the idea that as an Indian woman I needed to be dainty and frill with long flowing hair in order to be considered beautiful. I had to let go of the idea that I needed to have a high-paying corporate career in order to be considered successful.
I had to let go of everything my parents had taught me about life, this idea that getting all the ticky marks would eventually lead me to happiness. Social media provided me an opportunity to actually explore all of this and it was so interesting. For a while it felt so good, it was just right, this was the new me, clear and in control, like a really good deodorant.
The Return of the Sinking Feeling
Until the sinking feeling slowly started to come back again. At first it was kind of insignificant, I wasn’t really sure the way you’re like, “Was that just the faint jingle of the ice cream truck I heard in the background?
No, it couldn’t be because I was healed, wasn’t I?”
But then the feeling became more palpable and it felt sickly familiar. As I sat with it I knew what my gut was trying to tell me, I had all these thoughts racing through my head like, “Why don’t I have more followers? How come the pores on my face are visible in pictures?
Chasing Perfection
Should I get my PhD so that I’m finally a doctor? Maybe if I focus on building out my curves, then I’ll look Instagram fit.” There I was, back in the car, racing towards the damn beach.
You see, after a couple of years of living in the world of social media, I realized this one haunting truth: social media is the ultimate Indian parent. Let me explain. Indian parents, they’re incredible, honestly, in fact, on behalf of most Indian children, let me just say, we love and value and appreciate our parents deeply.
The Impact of Social Media
But growing up, I bought into my parents’ very strong ideas of who I should be, I did everything I could possibly do to satisfy their requirements and I never felt quite good enough. Social media, love it, God, we love the machine so damn much for what it brings to our lives and yet, we feel suffocated by the pressure, we hate the expectations and we resent all the evaluation criteria that just don’t fit who we really are. The two are different, obviously, but their impact is actually the same.
This was a hard one for me, I’m not going to lie. How had I spent the better part of my 20s, course correcting my entire identity, re-examining everything I had been sold as a formula for happiness, only to find myself back in the same race, again, in my 30s? It happened because this is the world we’re now living in.
The Comparison Game
Look, I’m just going to say it, okay? I may have grown up with Indian parents, but frankly, now you all are too.
This entity that is defining happiness for you, that is shifting your reference points on success, that is causing you to question every bit of who you really are, this is social media. I grew up in the comparison game, reports coming back to me on whose child has the best grades or is getting the highest paying job. My reference point on success was all 850 of our family friends and you better believe I did my best to keep up.
Chasing Society’s Version of Success
It wasn’t about who or what I wanted to be, it was about racing to become an engineer or a lawyer or a doctor. Of course, it didn’t help that my brilliant brother was both an engineer and a doctor, I mean, talk about pressure. But that aside, I chased that version of success because that’s where I was told the happy people live.
Our reference point now is the entire globe, every single person on social media changing our interpretation of what the perfect end destination looks like. We can’t even stay in our own lanes anymore, we’re not comparing like for like. Now you want to be the best at it all.
The Pressure to Be Perfect
You see someone juggling motherhood impeccably and you think, “I’ve got to try harder.” You see someone becoming an astronaut and you think, “What? I would have done that too if I had known.” An entrepreneur sells their company for big money and you’re like, “Oh my God, what does this mean for my career?” when you’re not even self-employed?
We deduce to ourselves, right, careers, relationships, our bodies, taking picture after picture, hoping that in the next shot, your body’s going to look perfectly snatched, contorting yourself with obscure angles just to look as good as the random influencers. Going on diet after diet because apparently happiness is just 10 pounds away. And if you can get there like all the other beautiful people online, then you too will get to feel good in your own skin because that’s where the happy people live.
Breaking the Cycle
Look, I get it. I used to believe it too. In fact, I tried desperately to crack the code for more than 10 years, yo-yo dieting on the wagon, off the wagon, again and again and again. If you’ve been living this way, I want you to ask yourself, “Is this what I want? Like, is this what I want for myself?”
Choosing Differently
Because it doesn’t have to be this way. And I got to the point where I realized I didn’t deserve to feel this way. I learned that I could choose differently and so can you.
And yet so many of us aren’t doing it because we’re tuned into this machine that is telling us that we need to achieve this perfect persona with the skin and the money and the body and the followers. We’ve been taught to believe that this is what society values. And so we’re mindlessly playing the game just like I was chasing a version of perfection that we all accidentally agreed upon when we didn’t know any better only to be killing the magic of who you really are along the way.
But look, we know better now, like we actually know that this is ruining us. I mean, the stats speak for themselves.
The Detoxify Beauty survey conducted by Dove found that 59% of girls with lower body esteem regularly distort their photos before posting on social media and that 37% of all girls, all girls, don’t feel beautiful enough in their own skin without any photo editing. I mean, come on. Come on.
The Need for Change
This isn’t what we want for ourselves. This isn’t what we want for our children. And yes, you could dismiss all of this and say, “Well, whatever, like why don’t we just get off social media,” the same way you could have said, “Well, why didn’t you just tell your parents to F off?”
But you know better than that. This is not that simple. This is decidedly gray.
The Value of Social Media
There is love here and so much value that comes from social media like knowledge and inspiration and business and community. So then where do we go from here? Not surprisingly, and kind of like underwear, there is no one size fits all solution.
Sure we can blame the social media platforms the same way that I used to blame my parents. But change will only come when we recognize that the shift is ours to make. It’s our responsibility because we’ve all been the co-creators of this new distorted reality, success, beauty, viral TikTok dances that nobody wants to be doing.
The Power of Awareness
It starts with awareness. You have to surrender to your feelings. I had to look at the role that I had been playing in my life to see that I had given up all my power because it was easier for me to blame my parents than it was for me to have the courage to be myself.
We are social media, and the choices we make have the power to shift the reference points, to change the destination, because you don’t have to like the beach with all its freezing cold water and creepy seaweed, and it’s okay if driving makes you carsick and you need pit stops along the way so that you don’t vomit. You can take the scenic road instead of the highway to go wherever it is you actually want to go because you are in the driver’s seat and only you control the GPS. So ask yourself the question, “Where do I want to go? Why have I been pretending? Who would I be if no one was watching?”