23 March 2014 - QA 2

Thank you Gurudev for constantly taking care of me, advising me, showing the way and providing help. I am achieving so much. Is there anything I can do for you?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I think we can all do the Happiness Survey. We should go door-to-door and ask people, ‘Are you happy? If not, what is the reason?’

We have a Happiness Survey; two or three of you get together, go meet people in your area, knock on their door and say, ‘We want to do a small survey. We want to know whether you are happy. If not, what are the reasons for your unhappiness?’
If they are happy, then ask them, ‘How often are you happy?’ (Seventy percent of the time, eighty percent of the time, twenty percent of the time?) There are about seven-eight questions along these lines.

When we put forward this Happiness Survey in the last couple of months, people have had amazing experiences. The interviewer had an amazing experience, and those being interviewed also felt very good. When you do the survey, people feel that they are being cared for, and they feel so good about it.
Some people said, ‘For the first time, somebody came and asked me, are you happy? What is the reason for my unhappiness?’
One lady in her sixties said, ‘In so many years, not a single person asked me, why am I unhappy? Now I feel that there are more caring people in the world.’

You are all meditators; you all do yoga, breathing, meditation and you carry a positive glow, an energy with you. So when you go and talk to people, they already feel some energy being transferred to them. They already feel happy. We are spreading happiness in some way. And we also come to know how many people are not happy, and how we can bring happiness to them.
At the end, we have to share (details of our experience of) the Art of Living Happiness Program. If they want to do it, they can enroll and do the course also.

At a mundane level, this is a way to reach out and connect to people; it is a very good way for them to know you.
There may be some people who bang the door on your face, never mind. Walk away, smiling; that is your ego busting process.
See, even if someone does not like you, it does not bother you, it does not matter to you. Move away with a happy and smiling face to the next place.
If you visit ten people, few people may be that way (who bang the door on you), but the ones you interact with, they feel so grateful to you. They will be so grateful that you even asked them, that you took care of them. What do you say? How many of you like this idea?

Before we leave the course, we will make lots of forms in all the languages. You do the Happiness Survey, and send them to me. We will do the data analysis to make a graph and see how many people are happy in each region and what the reasons for unhappiness are in each age group. It is a good idea!