I was playing an online game, fighting a powerful boss alongside a stranger I’d never met. For people unfamiliar with video games, a “boss” is a difficult enemy you face more than once to defeat. When you finally succeed, there’s a chance—often very small—of receiving a rare “drop,” an in-game reward that might never appear again.
The first round went well enough. I made mistakes, but we survived. The second round didn’t. I was hit by a fireball from the sky, and we lost.
Afterward, my teammate typed a brief but sharp message: “You’re bad.”
That commentlanded harder than I expected. I was learning, trying, and still improving—but I was judged for being imperfect. In that moment, I felt discouraged and hurt. A familiar urge appeared: to withdraw, to stop trying, to protect myself from feeling that discomfort again.
I thought about quitting. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game, but because staying meant being open to more judgment.
This is a familiar fork in the road. Discomfort shows up—self-doubt, fear—and we have a choice. We can move away from the feeling by avoiding the situation, or we can make space for the discomfort and continue acting in line with our values.
I chose to stay. Not to prove the other player wrong, and not because I suddenly felt confident—but because I didn’t want one person’s unkindness to decide my behaviour.
Eventually, I defeated the boss. And this time I received one of the rarest drops in the game, all while playing with someone patient and encouraging.
The drop felt satisfying, but that wasn’t the real reward.
For people who don’t play games, it might be easy to dismiss this as trivial. But the “drop” is a useful metaphor. In life, we often chase outcomes—success, approval, confidence, relief—hoping they’ll arrive if we just endure enough discomfort. Sometimes they do. Often, they don’t.
Resilience isn’t about getting the drop. It’s about staying present and choosing actions that align with our values, even when the outcome is uncertain. Confidence isn’t something we wait to feel before acting; it’s something that grows because we stay.
What I learned in that moment is that unkind people don’t define us—they test us. They reveal the values we want to live by when things get uncomfortable.
We all face these moments: a cutting comment, a small humiliation, a situation that makes us want to retreat. The question isn’t whether it hurts—it does. The question is whether we let discomfort make our choices for us, or whether we choose who we want to be, drop or no drop.
Over the years that I have been working on happiness, I have found that one of the main challenges I run into is the idea of happiness means feeling “good”. The kind of feeling you get when you find a $20 bill. However this goal is an unhelpful one, as it is normally due to random chance and there is little you can do to intentionally replicate the feeling. Positive Psychology often uses the definition “mental wellbeing” as a definition of happiness, because if your mental wellbeing improves you will be happier.
What different ways can happiness be defined? The World Happiness Report uses the “Cantril Ladder” when ranking countries, which addresses mainly the quality of overall life, but there are also equally useful approaches, such as addressing everyday happiness.
The Cantril Ladder:
Quality of overall life.
(The question used by the World Happiness Report world rankings).
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.
On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
Alternatively another way to define happiness is by looking at the quality of your life. This means focusing on the day to day feelings you have around happiness by looking at the day to day feelings around happiness, which of course are more prone to daily ups and downs.
Positive Affect:
Quality of your everyday living.
Answer Yes or No to the following:
1. Did you experience enjoyment during a lot of the day yesterday?
2. Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?
3. Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?
The problem with such wide variations of what we mean for one word can and often does lead to confusion. It is too cumbersome to ask someone what they mean by happiness each time they use the word. And we always assume we know what people mean when they use the word happiness.
If I want to clarify what I mean by happiness when I normally say, “I do not mean that feeling of butterflies in your stomach, rather the hard work it takes to keep your mental wellbeing in good shape”. As you can see, one is a fluttering momentary feeling and the other is long term hard work that leads to a stronger, more resilient person. In the same way if you do exercises to increase or maintain your physical health, you can do work (exercise) to manage your happiness, you will increase or increase your mental wellbeing, or in simple terms, be happy.
How do you know when your happiness increases?
If we had a simple generally accepted definition of happiness, it would be easy to know, but the way we know we are increasing our happiness is by managing our stress and looking for the small things that we should be grateful for. For me, practicing gratitude is the most common way people practice building a better, happier life.
From Routine to Ritual
It is easy to imagine. The alarm is blaring, your body is heavy, it is Monday morning, and all you want to do is stay under the covers and sleep until Friday afternoon. You manage to stumble out of bed, into the bathroom, then into the kitchen for your morning toast and coffee. You scroll through the daily news while you finish your final sips then you dress yourself and make your way to work.
From morning to evening, we cannot help but find ourselves falling into routine ways of living. Most of the time, this habit of ours is harmless and completely unconscious. However, these routines mean more to us than we often realize. Part of the stress of moving, or starting a new job, is the disruption it brings to our established routines. Moreover, how often have you found yourself subtly agitated when someone inadvertently disrupts your long-established routine?
Since routine is such a common feature of human life, it is worth investigating how we can modify our routines to favour our happiness and wellbeing. Our days usually begin, and end, with routines and there are countless moments in our day that can develop into them. There are numerous ways to modify routines in favour of happiness, but I would like to suggest one simple way: shifting from routine to ritual.
On the surface, routines and rituals are actually quite similar. They are a set of behaviours or actions performed in a fixed and predictable way. However, we all know there is something deeper underlying ritual that sets it apart from routine. I would argue that the biggest differentiation between ritual and routine lies in one word, intention.
A good example of how intention creates ritual is the Japanese tea ceremony. In these ceremonies everything from the teaware to the setting of the ceremony is intentional. For example, guests must enter the teahouse on their hands and knees through a small door, which reinforces the equality of all in the teahouse. Regardless of status, everyone crawls (and must bow) to enter the tea house. Behind every act and behaviour in the tea ceremony is intention.
We all drink a hot beverage from time to time, many of us drink coffee or tea every morning, but how many of us drink with attention, care, and intention? Being intentional about our routine is a way for us to reframe our lives. Rather than seeing the morning coffee as another task to get through, we could instead consider the many hands that brought that cup of coffee to our lips from the farmers, to the pickers, to the distributors, manufacturers, and packagers. Or, we could choose to make the morning coffee a time for peace where we are free from screens and distractions for a little while and fully able to appreciate the preciousness of a hot cup of coffee.
There are an indefinite number of ways to shift our routines into rituals through intention. We hope this has inspired you to reconsider some of your routines and how, through intention, you can create more ritual in your life. Bringing intention into our lives is a great way to promote greater mindfulness, compassion, contentment, and joy. When we stop to cherish our daily moments we cannot help but connect deeper with the present moment, which eventually leads us to greater happiness and wellbeing.
This is part three of the three stages “To forgive or not to forgive”.
Please read Steps 1 and 2 before step 3.
Step 1 Before we can forgive; finding safety and security.
Step 2 The art of forgiving yourself; Healing and self care.
Step 3 To forgive or not – the third step.
The Art of Forgiveness: To Forgive or Not to Forgive
If you find yourself in this third stage of forgiveness it is worth taking a moment toacknowledge the work you must have done to get here. Hopefully you are now feeling more at peace with what has happened. However, the work is not quite finished because one more important decision lies ahead: to forgive or not.
At Happiness Management, we think of the person being counselled as the captain of their ship and the counsellor as a lighthouse. The counsellor prevents crashes, and lights up the waters for the captain, but steering the ship through the difficult waters of life ultimately falls on the captain’s shoulders. Deciding to forgive, or not, is a decision that can only be made by you, the captain.
Forgiveness allows for growth, a sense of freedom from the past, and an opportunity to repair harmed relationships. On the other hand, you may feel someone is not deserving of your forgiveness andchoosing not to forgive will allow boundaries to stay in place. We are supportive of either choice, but we do advocate against one approach: forgetting.
Too often, forgetting is really repression. Repressing harm is like pushing a beach ball under the water. It might remain submerged for a while but there is no telling when it will come rushing out of the water.
What we encourage is not forgetting but letting go. It is easy to confuse the two. When the harm has been processed and you have worked through the stages of forgiveness then at a certain point it comes time to let go. You allow the past to be in the past and you rejoin the rest of life in the present moment.
At this final stage, we are here to support you whether you choose to forgive, or not. There are advantages to both approaches and it is up to you to decide which direction makes sense for you. It is a personal decision but that does not mean it must be made alone. We are here to support you, on your happiness journey every step of the way.
This is part two of the three stages “To forgive or not to forgive”.
Please read Step 1 first
Step 1 Before we can forgive; finding safety and security.
Step 2 The art of forgiving yourself; Healing and self care.
Step 3 To forgive or not to forgive, pick one and mourn the loss of the other.
How to Heal.
As discussed in part one, the first step to forgiveness is finding some space from the harm or finding safety & security. This can be in the form of boundaries or complete isolation from the source of the pain. It is only once safety is established that the rest of the journey towards forgiveness can unfold.
There are numerous pathways to healing, but they can be divided into two general areas: introverted and extroverted. There is merit in both of these approaches, and most healing journeys will require a combination of the two.
The Introverted Path.
Introverted paths to healing and self-care include meditation, journaling, reading self-help books, listening to relaxing music, and even simple acts like maintaining personal hygiene and cleaning the house. In all of these approaches, the spotlight of attention is turned inwards, allowing you to see where you have been hurt and where your work needs to be done. These introverted paths require the courage to be with yourself in the present, with all the baggage you bring, and if you practice any of these paths, you should commend yourself for your courageousness.
The Extroverted Path.
Extroverted paths to healing, on the other hand, involve those experiences that are outside the individual and greater than the small self. Some extroverted paths could be seeing a counselor individually or attending group sessions, joining online communities, gardening, or volunteering. If someone has harmed you, these forms of healing are especially important because they help to rebuild trust in others and the world around you. Again, these approaches require a degree of courage, and that is worth noting and celebrating.
Forgiving yourself.
It is vital at this stage of forgiveness to approach yourself and your past harm with a sense of compassion. If you find yourself beating yourself up for what you could have said or done in the situation, you are only continuing the harm that has been done to you. Whenever you notice this tendency to blame and judge yourself, gently remind yourself of your intention to forgive yourself, make peace with your past and not continue the suffering. Do not be a bully to yourself.
There is no fixed timeline for this second stage of forgiveness. It depends on the harm done, the individual, and external factors like family and work life. For some, this stage could last a week, while for others, they could spend decades in this stage. There is no “right” amount of time to process and heal from the past. Be patient with yourself at this stage and respect your own unique timeline towards your healing and ultimately, forgiveness.
Please read:
Step 3 To forgive or not The Third Step.
