To know why I’m here, and what I’ve chosen to teach, you’ll need to know a few things about me. And I’m more than happy to tell you.

Since I’ve never believed in cliffhangers, this section will be a tad longer than you’re used to, but I’m hoping you’ll nod at some bits, relate hard at others, and in the end feel like you know me enough to give me a hug and join me in my HAPPYness Movement.

Ready?

I have 22 international advertising awards that I won while working across 3 countries. And for the longest time I thought that that was the most interesting thing about me.

Not that that isn’t something to cherish, but I sincerely believed that my hard-earned awards (and by extension my career) for which I sacrificed more than I should have, were the only things that made me worthy. That they alone made me lovable or desirable.
My whole life I’ve believed that HAPPYness was in something other than myself.
Gently put, I was mistaken. Big time.
It took me 2 and a half decades to find out that HAPPYness was within me the whole time.
But to find that out, I first had to have the courage to actually look within.

Scary, isn’t it? Our soul? Our ‘insides’?
It's considered ‘brave’ just to explore it.

We hardly ever go within. We don’t really sit with ourselves or even talk to ourselves.
We’ve made a career out of avoiding our feelings, of looking for HAPPYness in the next job, next relationship, midnight dessert binges, cigarettes, alcohol and so on.
And here’s the thing, I religiously did the whole ‘avoiding my own self and my own wounds’ thing for over 2 decades and I can say with utter confidence that that doesn’t work for very long.
At least, it didn’t work for me. AT ALL.

What it did do is led me to multiple breakdowns.

At 29, I was on my knees. AGAIN. For the 3rd time.
Too much trauma had gone untreated, too much pain still remained from years of physical and emotional abuse that I tried to bury deeper and deeper.
I was at wits’ end because damn it I deserved better from life!
And so I decided to look at all of it.

Look at what, you ask? Well, everything I was running from, of course.

All the pain, all the feelings, all the emptiness, all the self-doubt.
Yes, it was scary. Too scary.
But not as scary as going back to a life of pain, silent suffering, avoiding (and slowly killing) the little faith I had left! I could not go back to a life where ‘UnHAPPYness’ was my default setting and pain was my best friend.
No. I was done with that. I had to look at what stood in the way of my HAPPYness.

But I did it bit by bit. Step by step. Breath by breath.

If we were to look at all our wounds and blocks all at once, it’d be too much to handle and may end up causing even more damage.
But when we use simple tools to make small shifts and small changes, it leads to miraculous results. In fact, making those shifts is, in itself, a miracle.
Because when we look back, those small shifts are what’ll have led to our whole life changing.
How do I know? I’m living proof!

Just a mustard seed of faith is enough to get the miracles rolling in!

I kid you not when I say that when I finally decided to give HAPPYness a shot, when I set that intention to be happy, solutions for healing started pouring in.
Resources, teachers, courses and tools started pouring in.
The point here is that I left the ‘HOW’ to the Universe.
Instead of focusing on the problems, I just focused on welcoming in solutions.
That in itself was a massive shift for me.

I was led to a journey inwards. One full of healing and finding joy.
It wasn’t easy, and had many bad days, but the result?
Insanely rewarding.

I was led to revisiting the principles I’d learnt while doing a Theta Healing certificate course years back. That didn’t feel like enough.
So, determined to do my best to feel better than I ever did before, I took a leap of faith and invested in learning Access Consciousness, I started practicing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) regularly, did classes on learning meditation and I even completed courses by Gabrielle Bernstein, Joe Vitale and Steve G Jones.

And today I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, and that’s all thanks to my arsenal of HAPPYness Tools.

Yes, really. I have an ARSENAL of tools I’ve picked up ever since I was 21.
Thing is though, until 2 years back, I’d never committed to properly using them before.
Fear had too strong a hold on me, and I truly believed I wasn’t meant to be happy.
But 29 years of choosing fear over faith had left with health issues, doubts of severe depression, and just an overwhelming sense of being unhappy all the time.
So clearly fear hadn’t worked for me and yet I was so loyal to it.

I figured if I just tried being 50% as loyal to HAPPYness as I was to UnHAPPYness, and just use the HAPPYness tools I’d learned, maybe I’d feel somewhat better.
I had nothing to lose at that point and the way I saw it, things could only get better.
And did they ever! They improved a 1000 times more than I’d imaged!

Because the truth is that I know now, at 32, that the most interesting thing about me isn’t the awards, it never was!

It is the fact that I mustered all the courage I had and decided to keep choosing LOVE and HAPPYness over FEAR. That I decided to share my truth and my light with the world.

And that led to me becoming:

A spiritual artist who churns out inspiring, affirmation-card-like artwork that grounds people in joy and also personalizes HAPPYness art for people.
(Check out @TheHAPPYnessAddict on Instagram)

An author who’s going to have her first book published in a few months’ time (also called More than ‘Mostly Happy’)

A mental wellness advocate and influencer who keeps teaching HAPPYness tools and hacks on her Instagram page along with her art. (Yup, I really love Instagram!)

An aspiring motivational speaker!

And now a Skillshare teacher!

Like whaaaaaaaaaat!
I still have to pinch myself to believe I am living this life because I LOVE ALL OF THESE THINGS!

All of the above became my reality because I decided to be brave and choose love and HAPPYness over fear by constantly, stubbornly, deploying my HAPPYness tools!
And mainly because I decided to share these tools with as many people as possible!

It became my mission and soul purpose to help people witness in their lives the same miracles I did! Because if it can happen for me, it can happen for anyone!

But there IS A CATCH to this whole HAPPYness thing.

The catch is that you have to be CONSISTENT.
You have to keep calling on your HAPPYness Practise (which consists of the HAPPYness tools I’ll teach in my class here) each time fear and old patterns try to take over.
Or even if they’ve taken over, to choose to return to HAPPYness.

After this entire thesis on why I choose HAPPYness every single day, why I’m a full-time HAPPYness Addict (because miracles are SO FUN), and why I want to help you to do the same as well, I have just one question for you:
Are you ready to become happier than you’ve ever been?

It won’t be easy, but it’ll be beyond worth it!
And I’ll support you every step of the way!

If you’re in, I’m in.
And so is the Universe, I guarantee it.

Do follow my profile when you're ready, and I hope to see you in class!

Rajivi Rao

Full-time HAPPYness Addict

18

17