Monthly Archives: June 2017

Jun

Myth of Happiness: Why a little dissatisfaction is good

How you can be motivated and Stronger with RAKESH SHUKLA™ by dispelling the notion of “happily ever after”

From when you’re very young you start getting the message — you should be happy. You are told that the purpose of life is to be happy! By the time you leave childhood, you start telling yourself that. In adulthood, you start worrying because you’re not happy and start finding ways to be happy. And are a whole lot of people to help you, that’s for sure. The trouble is — helping you helps them — not you.

But it never does happen like that. Entire religions have been constructed from this idea of happiness. The lure of happiness is so great and so unfathomable that it goes into the ‘next life’. If you live good you will be happy forever in Swarga, in Heaven or in Jannat. It is a far off carrot dangling from a divine stick.

But here’s the rub — everlasting happiness is a myth that has been propagated on us for thousands of years. Because it is easy to sell and that’s because everyone wants to be happy. But the human state is not of some perpetual happiness even remotely. You can look at Gandhi, or Dr Martin Luther King and ask yourself — they should have been happy, but were they? If they had a life full of strife and stress with moments of happiness, why should you be better?

That is what I talk about here, that happiness is the opposite of what everyone has taught us. And the opposite of happiness is not necessarily unhappiness — it’s just trying harder. I want you to see why happiness is a state that exists only for a while and that is the nature of being human. First, let’s look at how humans perceive happiness. Then we’ll look at why they do. And last, what can make us happier without the mumbo jumbo.

The construction of happiness

The construct that religions, pseudo-religions and new age gurus give us is that happiness is an ‘existential state’ in which you live, or not. It is an either-or-state, so you are either happy or you are unhappy. But happiness is circumstantial.

Over a lifetime — the overachiever, the underachiever, and the failure — everyone is happy for about the same percentage of their lives. Comparing 99.9% of the life experience when you are not happy with that 0.01% when you are ‘happy’ may make it appear pointless and bleak.

However, it should not be so. This is the very nature of being human. It is not pointless because all human progress has really come from the point of being not happy. Even art, that one place that reflects self-expression more than ambition, has seen its pinnacle rising out of a deep state of being dissatisfied and unhappy.

Happiness in the future: The optimism bias

If you don’t agree with me that happiness is transient consider this: how many times have you said, “Won’t it be great when I get that promotion/ fall in love/ go for that vacation…” It is because our brains have an ‘optimistic bias’ — which is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present. The brain overcomes the monotony of being unhappy by creating happiness in the future.

Happiness in the past: The Pollyanna principle

An older person is likely to say, “Wasn’t it great when… I got that promotion/ fell in love / went for that vacation…” It shows we remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. The reason that the good-old-days seem so good is because we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.

This modelling of both the past and the future is an adaptive part of the human psyche. These are delusions but this self-deception has a purpose — it enables us to keep striving. If our present is unpleasant but the past is great, and our future can be great, then we can work our way out of the present!

Competition between states of happiness

We all know something that makes us happy; being with a loved one could make you happy. Being successful at work could make you happy. However, happiness isn’t complementary and sometimes may actually be in conflict.

A satisfying life built on a successful career and a great relationship are built over a long period of time. But having too much time with your loved one may compromise your professional success or vice versa. Committing yourself to avoid momentary pleasures such as going for a party or a spur-of-the-moment trip — typically as happiness in one area of life increases, it’ll often decline in another. It’s impossible for us to simultaneously have all states of happiness!

Happiness creates dissonance

Everyone has their baseline happiness — everyone has triggers to go above it and to fall below it. But over a period of time, they fall back to this baseline. You think buying this bag, or shoes or that car will make you happy. In reality getting something like that is a happiness ‘hit’. It does feel happy for a few hours then you slide back to your natural state. Else, everyone with a Louis Vuitton bag or a Porsche should be happy forever but they are not.

This is true not just for underachieving or distressed people. There is a lot of research that shows that making a lot of money or meeting a terrible accident actually does not significantly affect your long-term level of happiness. And there is a reason for it. The dissonance happiness creates (and the resulting unhappiness) is how the human brains start chasing the next thing. While we do not think of it like that, it is a survival skill. This ‘hit’ is what motivates us and gives us this quest of happiness.

The law of diminishing happiness

However, if it were not so, ambition and achievement would be a straight line and every year you would want to achieve the same as the year before. No human system works like that — each year you want to achieve more than the year before. As life progresses in terms of your own expectations you are going up the funnel not down it.

Unhappiness is an evolutionary trait

Unhappiness and some pessimism actually do us good and help us see the world more accurately. Evolutionary scientists believe that those of our ancestors who were very anxious, a little depressed and hypochondriac were the key to the success of human species. They were more alert for danger and disease, and more prepared for potential problems in life. We no longer value misery as a learning experience or seize it as a time to re-evaluate. Instead, we try to mask it.

Humans did not evolve to be happy

Stress stresses people out! There is a reason we feel stress — no stress is technically called homoeostasis. This is when an organism is in balance, for instance, there is an ideal level of glucose in the bloodstream, enough oxygen supply and the body’s temperature is favourable. All systems are a go. A stressor is anything in the outside world that knocks a living being out of balance. For example in the case of an accident you are out of homeostatic balance and the stress response is what your body does to reestablish it.

Humans are more complex than other living beings though:

For one, we can anticipate that something unfavourable is about to happen and can have a stress response prior to the event. This anticipation of unpleasant events is unhappiness, but unless it is chronic and it paralyses you, it helps you cope with the event. Distress, on the other hand, is when stress is so chronic that you believe you are about to be knocked out of homeostatic balance. Actually, you are really not, but this belief continues paralysing you.
For another, this stress response is till homoeostasis can be achieved or the animal goes into shock or dies. So stress is about three minutes of screaming after which either it passes, or you collapse due to it. That is why a deer panics when attacked by a tiger but if it escapes, in a few minutes it will munch grass like nothing happened. Deer don’t have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. People are not like that. A human will see a tiger in every shadow for the rest of his life. That’s what phobias are made of.

I will look at the happy hormones in a while, but for now, let’s look at stress hormones. Stress causes the release of adrenaline and cortisol. They prime us for a fight-or-flight response, they reach into our fat cells and liver to take out sugar and dump it in our blood streams. They simultaneously increase the heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate.

However, humans generate these responses in non-life threatening situations. We worry about our work, loans and loved ones and respond the same way. It allows us to achieve more, though at a physiological price.

A few decades ago psychologists started observing African baboons to study stress. The reason baboons are such good models is that like people, they don’t have real stressors. They work three hours a day for food and have no predators. They sleep for 12 hours. So they have nine waking hours every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other baboons.

Surprisingly, all the behavioural and physiological data including blood samples, tissue biopsies and electrocardiograms show that physiologically baboons feel stress the same way we do. When they have elevated stress hormones their immune responses and reproductive systems are compromised. Baboons like people are not being done in by predators and famines; they’re getting done in by each other.

Can you think your way through with happy thoughts and success?

In his book If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? Prof. Raj Raghunathan of University of Texas McCombs School of Business writes that there doesn’t appear to be much correlation between academic success and career success, and there is an even smaller correlation between career success and what he calls life success or happiness.

You’d also expect that with superior IQs, greater drive, high critical thinking ability and a better work ethic, the predominant thoughts of a person would be happy. His subjects expected 60-75 per cent of their thoughts to be positive, but the result of two weeks of logged information was surprising — actually, 70 per cent thoughts were negative. These thoughts were predominantly (a) feeling inferior (b) lack of love and connectivity with others, and (c) lack of control over themselves and other people! Overall the greater the career success, the more unhappy, out of shape, harried and distracted the subjects were.

One of the regular paths to being happy that is frequently told to us is improving our self-image. Which should be true, because if our self-worth improves our happiness should too. Except that it’s not true. Not because happiness does not go up with self-worth, but for the most part self-worth does not change over a lifetime!

In his book Self-esteem: The Costs and Causes of Low Self-worth Nicholas Emler examines what is self-esteem and what causes low self-esteem. His research studied ways to address low self-esteem since it seems to be the cause of unhappiness, personal and social ills, crime, drug addiction, educational failure and suicide.

His study concluded that self-esteem is not only difficult to gauge, it is almost impossible to be modified through interventions. It also recognised that high self-esteem does not necessarily guarantee only positive outcomes, either professionally or personally.

A 1922 study in the UK began with 1,200 children who were monitored from childhood until death. It found that those who were the most happy in their childhood died earlier than those who were less cheerful. In adult life, the happy children turned out to more likely to drink, smoke and take risks, possibly because their happy world view made the dangers of those choices appear smaller. The conclusion of the study was, “The long-term effects of cheerfulness are complex, and seem not entirely positive.”

The biology of ‘happy’ hormones

We feel happy when our bodies release one of these hormones. The most interesting part is that their release is not routine. It is infrequent and precisely the reason why being happy is such a positive stroke that our body craves for it. But it is hard to come by and reinforces our survival behaviour but we want to feel good as much as we can.

Dopamine

Dopamine motivates us to take action toward goals and gives us a surge of reinforcing pleasure when achieving them. Procrastination, self-doubt, and lack of enthusiasm are linked with low levels of dopamine. Studies on rats showed that those with low levels of dopamine always opted for an easy option and less food; those with higher levels exerted the effort needed to receive twice the amount of food.

Serotonin

Serotonin flows when you feel significant or important. When serotonin is absent you feel lonely and depressed. Unhealthy attention-seeking is another symptom of lack of serotonin. Most antidepressants focus on the production of serotonin.

Oxytocin

Oxytocin creates intimacy, trust, and builds bonds. It is released by men and women during orgasm, but much more in women than in men. It is released and by mothers during childbirth and breastfeeding. Most animals will reject their offspring when the release of oxytocin is low.

Endorphins

Endorphins are released in response to pain and stress, and help to alleviate anxiety and depression. The “runner’s high” during and after a vigorous run are a result of endorphins. It is an analgesic and a sedative similar to morphine and diminishes our perception of pain.

You can’t be perpetually happy, but you can be happier!

So we can’t be happier? We can be, but not necessarily through the “happiness industry”. The whole industry is dedicated to teaching us how to be happy. It’s almost as though it is our duty to be happy. The trouble is — the happiness industry wants us to fixate neurotically on ourselves. It makes us want to be hypersensitive about our own emotional state. It tells us that just going through life without agonising over whether you are happy or not, means we’re not happy. A small low is a large emotional blow that needs immediate addressal.

The other trouble is — it tells us that attaining happiness is in doing less or having less because that gets you to have satisfaction. It tells us that it leaves us more time for our family, our children and our friends. It asks you to look inward. But I have found that happiness can be found not by looking inside, but by doing for others. Very few people actually tell you that.

I can’t make you happy, but I can make you happier. No mumbo jumbo. And it does not require you to leave your family or give up your professional life. It’s just based on the understanding of what we know about the nature of happiness.

There is no state of perpetual happiness. First, you need to accept and appreciate that sometimes life will be good, and sometimes it is bad. You can’t have one and not the other. And that acceptance changed my perspective and life. The acceptance that dissatisfaction is a function of being human, and that happiness when achieved is a fleeting state, should not be depressing. On the contrary recognising that happiness exists helps us appreciate it more when it arrives. We might want to take those short, sharp bursts of warmth and positivity and feel them constantly, but we can’t. It is the same with other emotions: boredom, dissatisfaction and sadness. None are constant.
Your sense of self-worth will not change over your life, but what you do with it can. The complicated ideas that happiness gurus give you — of losing ego and self and stuff like that — they are trying to change the wiring of your brain. Unless you are going to spend your life doing that there is no real use. Ample research that shows that our personalities are set by the time we’re 25 and our self-esteem does not change over our lifetime no matter what the learning. However, there is an easy way of being happy. What we call happiness often occurs subconsciously, when we are so engrossed in a hobby or an afternoon of reading, painting, or listening to music that we don’t notice time passing. Most of all, give to others. Not as CSR — but your time. Pick up a sick child or a dog and care for it. It will change your life.
Get your dopamine hit. Break big goals down into little pieces. Rather than only allowing your brains to celebrate when you’ve hit the finish line, create a series of little finish lines. Each time you do, you will get that dopamine hit. But don’t just feel good, reward yourself in a small way — watch a movie or get a great meal. Your brain starts telling you, ‘Life’s good.’ Create new goals before achieving the current one; that ensures a continual flow for experiencing dopamine.
SOT: Serotonin on Toast. A common antidote to feeling low is organised group activity — the culture brings experiences that facilitate serotonin release. Remember the bikers on Harleys — that’s what they’re doing. The same ride feels better when they do it in a group. Or a knitting group. The other remedy is reflecting on past significant achievements that allow the brain to re-live the experience. Our brain has trouble telling the difference between what’s real and imagined, so it produces serotonin in both cases. But remember to get off your chair and do something after that daydream.
Get your endorphins, like you get your vitamins. You do not have to be a distance runner or athlete or gym sort of guy to get them. Exercise in short bursts. Start by running 50m all out, then walk 50m, and finish by running 50m all out. Two minutes — that’s it! Research shows that intense workouts in shot bursts release endorphins that otherwise come after a 20-minute aerobic period. Short burst exercise has an added benefit — shorter telomeres — the ends of DNA show ageing repair in these short bursts. Other than exercise, laughter is the easiest way to induce endorphin release. Even the anticipation of laughter, for example, attending a comedy show (come for Barking Mad the next time we have one), increases levels of endorphins.
Remember oxytocin? It is good. Very good. But I don’t need to tell you how to get it.

Remember that the dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated. Warm memories reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had in the future. Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all. Among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content were the first ones to die. Happiness is like chocolate cake. You can’t have it all the time.

Stronger with RAKESH SHUKLA™ is a framework for developing unparalleled mental and physical toughness. It is based on Rakesh’s life, and has helped drive two ‘comebacks’.

Rakesh Shukla slept on railway platforms on his way to creating a world-leading technology company — TWB_, which is the choice of over 40 Fortune 500 tech customers worldwide including Microsoft, Boeing, Airbus, Intel, and others. However, at 43, he lost everything within a year. Alone and friendless, he spent the next five years repaying over INR 20 crore of debt and taxes, while building back his company and reputation, and creating and funding VOSD — world’s largest dog sanctuary and rescue.

Rakesh Shukla has suffered heart disease since he was seven years old, had had two heart attacks by the time he was 30, suffers from brain diseases, has broken his back and his kidneys are failing. Towards the end of this five-year period, Rakesh weighed 88 kg and very unfit. Today, at 48 years, he can lift well over 100 kg above his head, run a 10-minute mile, do 2,000 push-ups, and 250 pull-ups. He has never been to a gym, been on a diet, had a trainer, or taken any supplements.

Jun

The Myth of Happiness: If you’re a little unhappy a little dissatisfied, you are good where you are.

From when you’re very young you start getting the message — you should be happy. You are told that the purpose of life is to be happy! By the time you leave childhood you start telling you that. In adulthood, you start worrying because you’re not happy and start finding ways to be happy. And there is a whole lot of help that’s for sure. The trouble is – it helps them – it doesn’t help you.

We’ve been made to buy into the idea that happiness is something we achieve when everything in our life finally looks the way we’ve been thinking it should. When I buy that car I will be happy. When she says she loves me I will be happy. When I get that promotion I will be happy. But it never does happen like that. Entire religions have been constructed from this idea of happiness. The lure of happiness is so great and no unfathomable that it goes into the ‘next life’. If you live good you will be happy forever in Swarga, in Heaven or in Jannat. It is a far off carrot on a divine stick.

But here’s the rub — everlasting happiness is a myth that has been propagated on us for thousands of years. Because it is easy to sell and that’s because everyone wants to be happy. But the human state is not of some perpetual happiness even remotely. You can look at Gandhi, or Dr King or anyone else who did anything and ask yourself — they should have been happy! But were they happy? If they had a life full of strife and stress with moments of happiness, why should you be better?

That is what I talk about here, that happiness is opposite of what everyone has taught us. And the opposite of happiness is not necessarily unhappy — it’s just trying harder. Happiness is a state that exists for a while and that is the nature of being human and this is what I want you to see. First, let’s look at how humans perceive happiness. Then we’ll why they do. And last what can make us happier without the mumbo jumbo.

The Construction of Happiness

The construct that religions, pseudo-religions, new age guru’s give us is that happiness is something existential it state in which you exist, or not. It is an either or state, so you are either happy or you are unhappy. But happiness is circumstantial. Over a lifetime — the overachiever, the underachiever, the failure everyone is happy for about the same percentage of time of their lives. Contrasting that 99.9% of the life experience when you are not happy with that 0.01% when you are ‘happy’ may make it appear pointless and bleak. It’s not. It’s just the nature of being human. It is not pointless – because all human progress has really come from the point of being not happy. Even art, that one place that reflects self-expression more than ambition, has seen its pinnacle rising out of a deep state of being dissatisfied and unhappy.

Happiness in the future: The optimism bias

If you don’t agree with me that happiness is transient consider this: how many times have you said “Won’t it be great when… I get that promotion/ fall in love / go for that vacation…” It is because our brains have an ‘optimistic bias’ — which is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present. The brain overcomes the monotony of being unhappy by creating happiness in the future.

Happiness in the past: The Pollyanna Principle

On older person is likely to say “Wasn’t it great when… I got that promotion/ fell in love / went for that vacation…”. It shows we remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. The reason that the good-old-days seem so good is that we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.

Competition between states of happiness

We all know something that makes us happy, being with a loved one could make you happy. Being successful at work could make you happy. However, happiness isn’t complementary and sometimes may actually be in conflict. A satisfying life built on a successful career and a great relationship both are built over a long period of time. But having too much time with your loved one may compromise your professional success or vice versa. Committing yourself to either lead you to avoid other momentary pleasures – going to a party or a trip on the spur of the moment. Typically as happiness in one area of life increases, it’ll often decline in another. It’s impossible for us to simultaneously have all states of happiness!

Happiness creates dissonance

Everyone has their baseline happiness, everyone has triggers to go above it and to fall below it, but over a period of time, they fall back to this baseline. You think buying this bag, or shoes or that car will make you happy. In reality getting something like that is a happiness ‘hit’. It does feel happy for a few hours then you slide back to your natural state. Else everyone with a Louis Vuitton bag or a Porsche should be happy forever but they are not.

This is true not just for underachieving or distressed people. There is a lot of research that shows that making a lot of money or meeting a terrible accident actually does not significantly affect your long-term level of happiness. And there is a reason for it. The dissonance happiness creates (and the resulting unhappiness) is the way human brains start chasing the next thing. While we do not think of it like that, it is a survival skill. This ‘hit’ is what motivates us and gives us this quest of happiness.

The law of diminishing happiness

It is not only that we need a happiness ‘hit’, the same hit will not work again. If a car or a promotion made you happy for a day, the next time it will make you feel that for say half the time. This is the diminishing return on happiness, in which your attempts to have “more” will actually bring you less. But if it were not so, ambition and achievement would be a straight line and every year you would want to achieve the same as the year before. But no human system works like that. Each year you want to achieve more than the year before. As life progresses in terms of your own expectations you are going up the funnel not down it.

Unhappiness is an evolutionary trait

Unhappiness & some pessimism actually do us good and help us see the world more accurately. Evolutionary scientists believe that those of our ancestors who were very anxious, a little depressed & hypochondriac were the key to the success of human species. They were more alert for danger and disease, and more prepared for potential problems in life. We no longer value misery as a learning experience or seize on it as a time to re-evaluate. Instead, we try to mask it.

Humans did not evolve to be happy

Stress stresses people out! There is a reason we feel stress — no stress is technically called homoeostasis. This is when an organism is in balance, for instance, there is an ideal level of glucose in the bloodstream, enough oxygen supply and the body’s temperature is favourable. All systems are go. A stressor is anything in the outside world that knocks an animal out of homeostatic balance. For example in the case of an accident you are out of homeostatic balance and the stress response is what your body does to reestablish homoeostasis.

Except humans are more complex than other animals

For one, we can anticipate that something unfavourable is about to happen and can have a stress response prior to the event. This anticipation of unpleasant events is unhappiness, but unless it is chronic and it paralyses you, it helps you cope with the event. Distress, on the other hand, is when stress is so chronic you believe you are about to be knocked out of homeostatic balance, but actually, you are really not, but this belief continues paralysing you.
For another, this stress response is till homoeostasis can be achieved or the animal goes into shock or dies. So stress is about three minutes of screaming after which it’s either over with or you’re over with. That is why a deer panics when attacked by a tiger but if it escapes, in a few minutes will munch grass like nothing happened. Deer don’t have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. People are not like that. A human will see a tiger in every shadow the rest of his life. That’s what phobias are made of.

I will look at the happy hormones in a while, but for now, let’s look at stress hormones. Stress causes the release of adrenaline and cortisol. They prime us for a fight or flight response, they reach into our fat cells and liver and take out sugar and dump it in our blood streams. They simultaneously increase the heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. However, humans generate these responses in non-life threatening situations. We worry about our work, loans and loved ones and respond the same way. It allows us to achieve more, though at a physiological price.

A few decades ago psychologists started studying African Baboons to study stress. The reason baboons are such good models is that like people, they don’t have real stressors. Baboons work three hours a day for food and have no predators. They sleep 12 hours. So they have 9 waking hours every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other baboons. Surprisingly all the behavioural and physiological data including blood samples, tissue biopsies and electrocardiograms show that physiologically baboons feel stress the same way we do. They have elevated stress hormones and their immune responses and reproductive systems are compromised. Baboons like people are not being done in by predators and famines; they’re getting done in by each other.

Can you think your way through with happy thoughts and success?

In his book ‘If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?’ Prof. Raj Raghunathan of University of Texas McCombs School of Business writes that there doesn’t appear to be much correlation between academic success and career success, and there is an even smaller correlation between career success and what he calls life success or happiness.

You’d also expect that with superior IQs, greater drive, high critical thinking ability and a better work ethic the predominant thoughts of a person would be happy. His subjects expected 60-75 per cent their thoughts to be positive, but the result of 2 weeks of logged information was surprising — actually, 70 per cent thoughts were negative. These thoughts were predominantly (a) feeling inferior (b) lack of love and connectivity with others, and (c) lack of control over themselves and other people! Overall the greater the career success, the more unhappy, out of shape, harried and distracted the subjects were.

One of the regular paths to being happy frequently told to us as improving our self-image. Which should be true, because if our self-worth improves our happiness should too. Except that it’s not true. Not because happiness does not go up with self-worth, but for the most part self-worth does not change over a lifetime!

In his book ‘Self-esteem: The Costs and Causes of Low Self-worth’ Nicholas Emler examines what is self-esteem and what causes low self-esteem. His research studied ways to address low self-esteem since it is seen to be the cause of unhappiness, personal and social ills, crime, drug addiction, educational failure and suicide. His study concluded however that self-esteem is not only difficult to gauge it is almost impossible to be modified through interventions. Most notably, this study recognises high self-esteem does not necessarily have only positive outcomes professionally and personally.

A 1922 study in the UK of 1,200 children well into their adult life found that those who were most happy in childhood died earlier in adult life than those who were less cheerful. In adult life, the happy children turned out to be more likely to drink, smoke and take risks, possibly because their happy world view made the dangers of those choices appear smaller. The conclusion of the study was “The long-term effects of cheerfulness are complex, and seem not entirely positive.”

The biology of ‘happy’ hormones

Dopamine

Dopamine motivates us to take action toward goals and gives us a surge of reinforcing pleasure when achieving them. Procrastination, self-doubt, and lack of enthusiasm are linked with low levels of dopamine. Studies on rats showed those with low levels of dopamine always opted for an easy option and less food; those with higher levels exerted the effort needed to receive twice the amount of food.

Serotonin

Oxytocin

Endorphins

Endorphins are released in response to pain and stress and help to alleviate anxiety and depression. The “runners high” during and after a vigorous run are a result of endorphins. It is an analgesic and a sedative similar to morphine and diminishes our perception of pain.

You can’t be perpetually happy, but you can be happier!

So we can’t be happier? We can be, but not necessarily through the happiness industry. The whole industry is dedicated to teaching us how to be happy. It’s almost as though we must have a duty to be happy. The trouble is this — the happiness industry wants us to fixate neurotically on ourselves. It makes us want to be hypersensitive about our own emotional state. It tells us that just going through life without agonising over whether you are happy or not, means we’re not happy. A small low is a large emotional blow that needs immediate addressal.

The other trouble is this — it tells us attaining happiness is doing less and having less because that gets you to have satisfaction. It tells us that it leaves us more time for our family, our children and our friends. It asks you to look inward. But I have found, happiness can be found not by looking inside, but by doing for others. Very few people actually tell you that.

There is no state of perpetual happiness. First, you need to accept and appreciate that sometimes life will be good, and sometimes it is bad. You can’t have one and not the other. And that acceptance changed my perspective and life. The acceptance that dissatisfaction is a function of being human, and that happiness, when achieved, is a fleeting state should not be depressing. On the contrary recognising that happiness exists helps us appreciate it more when it arrives. We might want to take those short, sharp bursts of warmth and positivity and feel them constantly, but we can’t. It is the same with other emotions: boredom, dissatisfaction and sadness. None are constant.
Your sense of self-worth will not change over your life, but what you do with it can. The complicated ideas that happiness guru’s give you — of losing ego and self and stuff like that — they are trying you change the wiring of your brain. Unless you are going to spend your life doing that there is no real use. There is ample research that shows that our personalities are set by the time we’re 25 and our self-esteem does not change over our lifetime no matter what the learning. However, there is an easy way of being happy. What we call happiness often occurs unselfconsciously, when we are so engrossed in a hobby or an afternoon of reading, painting, listening to music that we don’t notice time passing. Most of all give to others. Not as CSR — but your time. Pick up a sick child or a dog and care for it. It will change your life.
Get your Dopamine hit. Break big goals down into little pieces. Rather than only allowing your brains to celebrate when you’ve hit the finish line, create a series of little finish lines. Each time you do, you will get that dopamine hit. But don’t just feel good, reward yourself in a small way — watch a movie or get a great meal. Your brain starts telling you ‘Life’s good’. Create new goals before achieving the current one, that ensures a continual flow for experiencing dopamine.
SOT: Serotonin on Toast. A common antidote to feeling low is organised group activity — the culture brings experiences that facilitate serotonin release. Remember the bikers on Harleys – that’s what they’re doing. The same ride feels better when they do it in a group. Or a knitting group. The other remedy is reflecting on past significant achievements that allow the brain to re-live the experience. Our brain has trouble telling the difference between what’s real and imagined, so it produces serotonin in both cases. But remember to get off your chair and do something after that daydream.
Get your endorphins, like you get your vitamins. You do not have to be a distance runner or athlete or gym sort of guy to get them. Exercise in short bursts. Start with running 50mts all out. Then walking 50mts. Then running 50mts all out. 2 minutes — that’s it! There is ample research that shows it is intense interval workout that actually releases the endorphins, that otherwise comes after a 20-minute aerobic period. Short burst exercise has an added benefit — shorter telomeres — the ends of DNA’s that show the actual ageing repair in these short bursts. Other than exercise laughter is the easiest ways to induce endorphin release. Even the anticipation of laughter, e.g., attending a comedy show (come to Barking Mad the next time we have one), increases levels of endorphins.
Remember Oxytocin? It is good. Very good. But I don’t need to tell you how to get it.

Remember that the dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated. Warm memories reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had in the future. Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all. Among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content were the 1st ones to die. Happiness is like chocolate cake. You can’t have it all the time, Rakesh Shukla

Jun

The path to Shiva was paved with dogs

“What are you looking so far up the mountains. You are the only man this time of the day, 20km either way” the voice said. “I don’t know, but I haven’t found”, I replied. “You’re on the road for a month. And you’ve done this many times before” the voice said, “Do you not understand that I am here? You don’t have to look?”

I smiled. Alone in a small tent in the middle of a moonless night which itself was in the middle of a vast snowfield up at 13,050ft. No phones. Only a bicycle colder than the 6ft of snow it stood against. But I was home. I felt a warm glow down my throat. It couldn’t be the alcohol because I never violated the rule of not drinking on the road. It must be that I’d found what I wasn’t looking for.

10 years passed with many conversations, him and me, as friends. With no real meaning. One day I said “I want more. I’m not happy”. He said, “what do you want now?” “I don’t know,” I said, “but I want more love”. “OK”, he said, “you can have all of it, you can be my son, if you can be their father”, he pointed to a small dog looking at me from the corner of my house. Kavya looked at me waiting for an answer.

The Son of the Son of God is a Dog I rakeshshukla.com

I never again went to meet him at a temple or anywhere. The son of God. Now I was fearless, and it gets to your head. The situation turned, as it always does. I fell from a cliff, hit every rock on the way, and it was a long long way down. I lay bloodied and dying and I cried, bitterly but under my breath. “What do you cry about? The pain?” he appeared. “I’d never cry of pain”, it was a rebuke, “I’m your son”, I shouted back. He smiled, “Do you not understand I do not take care of any one thing. I can’t take care of you. I make the rules to run the

universe, and then I can only watch because touching it would violate the condition of having the rules in the first place”. I gasped, “so you didn’t leave me?”. “I’ll never love you less as long as you take care of your children”, he said.

I picked myself up and got to the first one that needed me. The son of the son of God was a Dog. Rakesh Shukla

(I wrote this on Shivaratri Feb 2017 and is an actual 1st person account. Through my darkest hour I could never stop nor forget that I do God’s work. And they are my children)

Jun

The Son of the Son of God, is a Dog

The Son of the Son of God is a Dog I rakeshshukla.com

I picked myself up and got to the first one that needed me. The son of the son of God was a Dog. Rakesh Shukla

(I wrote this on Shivaratri Feb 2017 and is an actual 1st person account. Through my darkest hour I could never stop nor forget that I do God’s work. And they are my children)

Jun

The Experience of Dying Teaches you to Live Well

Rakesh Shukla explains how he conquered the fear of death, to live a better life

A few weeks ago, I discovered a growth/tumour on my lowest right rib. Painful to touch. I was having a haircut when I first felt it. I finished the haircut then called a friend who is a doctor. He put me onto his friend, an onco-surgeon. When I reached there they were surprised when I introduced myself as the patient. The test would return in a day and the damn thing was benign so that was a good thing. What wasn’t was that it was growing and hurting more day by day.

But that one day and night forced me to think of many things. Of living with cancer. Surviving. Or not. Of death and dying. But for the longest time, these seemed as operational problems, not scary ones. For a little scared boy, how did I get here?

Tryst with death in childhood

My childhood was spent in hospitals. I had rheumatic heart disease very early in childhood. Survived a heart attack early in my life. Have suffered brain disease and arthritis for years. I live with two blocked carotids. I’ve broken my back and some days, it just gives way. None of those things is near dying though. That is when you know you have a few seconds, and only a few, and then the lights will be out.

I was not just sick, I was a very scared child. I was scared of pretty much everything. Including dogs. But I remember hating this feeling, and wanting to be brave. My parents wanted to shelter me to the point that none of my ‘conditions’ would be spoken about. The constant living with needles and incisions gave me a tremendous capacity for pain. And to prove myself a man, I’ve done some extreme things, but that’s a story for another time.

The days and nights at home, in hospital wards, in ICUs, in ICCUs and neuro-surgery, I remember thinking what would it be like to die. Not what happens after when you die, but the moments leading up to when you do. Does your whole life flash in front of you? Are you scared shitless? Do you have regrets of unfinished business? Do you feel sorry for yourself that it was worthless? Are you brave and you smile because it was a good fight?

I have seen people die. Some I loved. I have seen the fear in some eyes, acceptance in others. I have retrieved bodies from autopsies. I’ve cremated them. I remember never feeling emotional about it but saw it with a detachment. I also know nothing in life is the same as till when it happens to you. If you live long enough and dangerously enough, and most of all if like Siddhartha/Herman Hesse said, “Find truth your own way,” you face the moment of death and knowing who you are.

Cliff-hanger

The first time was I was about 5 or 6. In Shimla, we lived on the top of a hill called Craigdhu and there was a small field where we would play. On the far side was a wall, and the other side of the wall a few hundred feet down there was a sliver of a road, beyond which the hillside continued. We all knew not to cross the wall.

Each time someone hit the tennis ball we played cricket with, and it went over to the other side, the game was over. Those times were not like today — you had a ball you made it last a year. So on one day, the ball went over and the game was over. But I decided to climb the wall and I could see the ball about 15-20 feet below. My friend Shekhar Kapoor aka Dimpu kept telling me not to, but I decided to cross the wall. It was the only time he left my side.

After the first few feet, it was a steep downward slope covered with dry pine leaves. And I slipped. My head was clouded by panic the first few seconds then it became very quiet. I remember not screaming because there was no one to help. I remember seeing the road I was going to fall on and death rushing towards me.

I remember telling myself to try and hold on to something. I spread my arms and caught the first clump I hit and held on for dear life. And I stay still for a while. But there was the job of climbing back up. When I finally reached the wall it was getting dark and people including my father were calling my name. I never told anyone what happened. I developed the habit of standing at the edge of heights. It helps control the fear and the thrill is still indescribable.

You don’t think about it then but you know the feeling and impression it leaves you with. I learnt that it is OK to be scared but it’s essential that you don’t panic and that most of all when chips are down you are left by yourself. And you can never give up — I was lucky I had not fallen but I still had to climb back up.

Overcoming fear of drowning

The second time came about 20 years later. I was about 15km upstream of the Ganges, at Rishikesh, and I fell off the raft just as it hit a rapid. As I got sucked in and the water closed over me it was sheer panic. When I came back up, it must’ve been a few seconds but it felt like minutes. Everything then was in ultra slo-mo.

I realised my helmet was gone and my watch was going to come off! I clasped the watch with my other hand. And I screamed as much as I could — but you can’t — I took in more water and realised that to survive this I need to focus, steer and not hit any rocks with my head. I saw the rafts recede at a distance as I raced ahead. I was picked up about a kilometre downstream in an eddy. The next year I returned, and before we came to the same rapid I jumped off the raft myself. I had to learn to control the fear of drowning.

A narrow escape

The third time was about two years after the second. I was cycling alone from Manali to Leh. As I crossed the steep hairpin sections between Palchan and Marchi, I was being covered by Star TV’s crew for a travel program because they couldn’t understand this loony man was going up alone, when the few cycling crews were coming down. The anchor asked me why I was going there. I said I don’t know really, but because it’s there, and because I needed to find myself.

This was at the end ofApril-early May and Rohtang was closed. When I reached the checkpoint past Marhi the army man allowed this loony man on a bike, a bunch of Israelis on Enfields and a lone American on foot. I got caught in a snowstorm as I was about to reach the top, and would not climb down to Koksar in the night so I had spent the night in a tent on a snow-covered field at the top of Rohtang La.

After the uphill of the last few days, I was making great progress coming into Keylong from Koksar and I was just short of the confluence of Chandra and Bhaga. So as I went steeply downhill en route the next destination, I saw one stone, the first one, fall in front of me. It was like a hailstorm of small grit-sized stones. I looked up — rock slide.

I could have turned back and gone about 50 feet up to a clearing but it was a steep 50 feet and it could be too late. Or I could go downhill about 300 feet, but miss braking on the steep twisty path and go down into the river before being hit by a boulder. Or both. I went downhill. By the time I cleared that section and stopped to turn back I could see the road covered with rocks the size of tennis balls and small cars. I had discovered Shiva. But that is also the story for another time.

Tiny creature, severe implications

The fourth time was 10 years after that. I was in the boondocks in Kerala. It was late evening and Helen and I were the only guests in this ancient and luxurious lakeside home. A large ant bit my toe. First, I started coughing, like a dry cough. A few minutes later, I started feeling itchy and was breathing heavily.

I realised suddenly that it was an anaphylactic shock. I would not die not from the allergy or anything, else but from chocking. The nearest hospital was in Alappuzha if we could make it. There was no Google Maps at that time and I knew I did not have the 30-40 minutes. I told Helen to empty every antihistamine tablet on the bed (which I carry for my numerous allergies including to dog dander). Then I had to take them one at a time but I could hardly swallow by now. I must’ve taken 15, forcing in one at a time. Then I lay down to force myself to breathe even as there was a melee around me. In a half-hour, it was like it never happened but for the thick rash that covered my body.

Build a well-lived life

Are there any lessons in facing death? One is, it’s nothing to be scared of. No matter how you look at it, it’s a change of state. I worry every day about my hundreds of children but I also know about the hundreds who wait for me when I go across.

I have learnt that some qualities I love the most in people — such as character, valour, controlling fear, being calm and collected — I had none of them to begin with. But they all can be acquired. I learnt that I do not have the fear of dying that I have seen in the eyes of so many; in the very last seconds, I do not have the dissonance of having been worthless. Unfortunately, it has shown me the other side of me that I am not proud of. The great impatience I feel for those who do not try to control fear or pain. It has caused me the loss of many folks I otherwise valued.

If you have made a real contribution to the world, you can smile when the lights go out. If you haven’t, now is the right time to start. The experience of dying, most of all, teaches you to live well.

Jun

The experience of dying well, most of all teaches you, to live well.

A few weeks I discovered a growth/tumour on my lowest right rib. Painful to touch. I was having a haircut when I first felt it. I finished the haircut then called a Dr friend of mine. He put me onto an onco-surgeon friend of his. When I reached there they were surprised when I introduced myself as the patient. The test would return in a day and the damn thing is benign. That’s a good thing. It’s growing and hurting more which is not a good thing. But that one day & night forces you to think of many things. Of living with cancer. Surviving. Or not. Of death and dying. But for the longest time these are operational problems, not scary ones. For a little scared boy, how did I get here?

My childhood was spent in hospitals. I’ve had rheumatic heart disease very early in childhood. Survived a heart attack early in my life. Have suffered brain disease and arthritis for years. I live with 2 blocked carotids. I’ve broken my back and some days, it just gives way. None of those things is near dying though. That is when you know you have a few seconds, and only a few, and then the lights will be out.

I was not just sick, I was a very scared child. I was scared of pretty much everything. Including dogs. But I remember hating it. Wanting to be brave. My parents wanted to shelter me to the point that none of my ‘conditions’ would be spoken about. The constant living with needles and incisions gave me a tremendous capacity for pain. And to prove myself a man I’ve done some extreme things, but that’s a story for another time (you can see more here). The days and nights at home, in hospital wards, in ICUs, in ICCUs and neuro-surgery I remember thinking what would it be like to die. Not what happens after when you die, but the moments leading to when you do. Does your whole life flash in front of you? Are you scared shitless? Do you have regrets of unfinished business? Do you feel sorry for yourself that it was worthless? Are you brave and you smile because it was a good fight?

I have seen people die. Some I loved. I have seen the fear in some eyes, acceptance in others. I have retrieved bodies from autopsies. I’ve cremated them. I remember never feeling emotional about it but saw it with a detachment. I also know nothing in life is the same as till when it happens to you. If you live long enough and dangerously enough, and most of all if like Siddhartha/Herman Hesse said ‘find truth your own way’ you face the moment of dying, and knowing who you are.

The first time the moment I was about 5 or 6. In Simla we lived on the top of a hill called Craigdhu and there was a small play field. On the far side was a wall, and the other side of the wall a few hundred feet down there was a sliver of a road, beyond which the hillside continued. We all knew not to cross the wall. Each time someone hit the tennis-cricket ball went over the other side the side the game was over. Those times were not like today – you had a ball you made it last a year. This one day the ball went over and the game was over. But I decided to climb the wall and I could see the ball about 15-20 down. My friend Shekhar Kapoor aka Dimpu kept telling me not to, but I decided to cross the wall. It was the only time he left my side. After the first few feet, it was a steep downward slope covered with dry pine leaves. And I slipped. My head was clouded by panic the first few seconds then it became very quite. I remember not screaming because there was not one to help. And I remember seeing the road I was going to fall on and die rushing towards me. And I remember telling myself try and hold onto something. I spread my arms and caught the first clump I hit and held on for dear life. And I stay still for a while. But there was the job of climbing back up. When I finally reached the wall it was getting dark and there were people including my father calling my name. I never told anyone what happened. I developed the habit of standing at the end of heights. it helps control the fear and the thrill is still indescribable.

Rakesh Shukla & Shekhar Kapoor aka Dimpu, Simla 1977-78

You don’t think about it then but you know the feeling and impression it leaves with you with. I learnt that it is OK to be scared but it’s essential that you don’t panic and that most of all when chips are down you are left by yourself. And you can never give up. Because I was lucky I had not fallen but I still had to climb back up.

The second time came about 2o yrs later. I was about 15km upstream of Rishikesh on the Ganges and I fell off the raft just as it hit a rapid. As I got sucked in and the water closed over me it was sheer panic. When I came back up, it must’ve been a few seconds but it felt like minutes. Everything then is in ultra slo-mo. I realised my helmet was gone and my watch was going to come off! I clasped the watch with my other hand. And I screamed as much as I could – but you can’t – I took in more water and realised to survive this I need to focus, steer and not hit any rocks with my head. I saw the rafts recede in a distance as I raced ahead. I was picked up about a km downstream in an eddy. The next year I returned. And before we came to same rapid I jumped off the raft by myself. I had to learn to control the fear of drowning.

The third time was about 2 yrs after the second. I was on my bicycle cycling alone from Manali to Leh. The steep hairpin sections between Palchan and Marchi had been covered by a Star TV crew for a travel program because they couldn’t understand this loony man going up alone, when the few cycling crews were coming down. The anchor asked me why are you doing this – going there. I said I don’t know really, but because it’s there. And because I need to find myself. This was end April-early May & Rohtang was closed. When I reached the checkpoint past Marhi the army man allowed this loony man on a bike, a bunch of Isreali’s on Enfields and a lone American on foot. I got caught in a snowstorm as I was about to reach the top, and would not climb down to Koksar in the night so I had spent the night in a tent on a snow field on top of Rohtang La. After the uphill of the last few days, I was making great progress coming into Keylong from Koksar and I was just short of the confluence of Chandra & Bhaga and going steeply downhill when I saw the first stone fall in front of me. There was like a hailstorm of small grit size stones. I looked up – rock slide. I could turn back and go about 50 feet up to clear but it was a steep 50 feet and it may be too late. Or I could go downhill about 300ft, but and miss braking on the steep twisty and go down into the river before being hit by a boulder. Or both. I went downhill. By the time I cleared that section and stopped to turn back I could see the road covered with rocks the size of tennis balls and small cars. I had discovered Shiva. But that is also the story for another time.

Koksar to Keylong. The art of dying is in living well - Rakesh Shukla

Koksar to Keylong on a mountain bike. 1998.

The fourth time was 10 yrs later after that. I was in the boondocks in Kerala. It was late evening and Helen and I was the only guests in this ancient lakeside luxurious home. When a large ant bit my toe. First I started coughing a dry cough. A few minutes later I started being itchy and breathing heavily. I realised suddenly this is what an anaphylactic shock. I will die not from the allergy or anything, else but from chocking. The nearest hospital was in Allapuzha if we could make it. There was no Google Maps that time and I knew I did not have the 30-40 minutes. I told Helen to empty every antihistamine tablet on the bed (which I carry for my numerous allergies including to dog dander 🙂 ). Then I had to take them one at a time because I could hardly swallow by now. I must’ve taken 15 forcing one at a time. Then I lay down to force myself to breathe even as there was a melee around me. In a half hour, it was like it never happened but for the thick rash that covered my body.

I have learnt that those qualities that that love the most in people character, valour, control of fear, being collected, I had none of them, to begin with. But they all can be acquired. I learnt that I do not have the fear of dying that I have seen in the eyes of so many and in the very last seconds, I do not have the dissonance of having been worthless. Unfortunately, it has shown me is the other side of me I am not proud of. The great impatience I feel for those who do not try to control fear or pain. It has caused me the loss of many folks I otherwise valued.

If you made a real contribution to the world you can smile when the lights go out. If you didn’t, now’s the right time to start. The experience of dying well, most of all teaches you, to live well. Rakesh Shukla

Jun

The TEDx talk of Rakesh Shukla – When in a Corner, Fight like a Dog – April 8, 2017

The Talk:

Rakesh Shukla created a successful professional life, with a great education and a never say die attitude. He created TWB_ the multimillion dollar company, that allowed him to create VOSD, the worlds’ largest citywide rescue. However, life throws challenges when you least expect them. But 3yrs ago with attacks from outside, sabotage from within and betrayal from those he held dearest, he became absolutely bankrupt. His company was left with the same 1 employee it started with – him. For someone who could afford to buy 2 dozen cars now feeding himself became a challenge, but one that was made much more complicated by the fact that he had 750 dogs that live with him who needed to be taken care of. This is a story of love that inspires to overcome. Of getting back on your feet when you have nothing left to hold on to. And of the lessons that Rakesh learnt. The talk can be seen here.

Venue, Time and Audience

Venue: ICT, Mumbai
Date: 8 April 2017
Time: 1800-1818hrs
Audience: TEDx ICT invitees

Rakesh Shukla. Founder CEO TWB_ and Founder VOSD at TEDx ICT Mumbai

Jun

ANZ IT, Bangalore – Creating success in the face of insurmountable odds – July 4, 2017

The Talk:

Rakesh Shukla is the inspirational speaker at ANZ Bangalore as part of their TPEC Inspirational speaker series. Rakesh’s talk will be on ‘Creating Success in the face of Insurmountable Odds’ and will focus on the set of managing yourself in the face of professional and personal setbacks, the qualities that one needs to have to come out of real catastrophic setbacks and journey.

A large number of employees at every level look at relatively small disappointments at work mainly related to expectations from them, work interactions with colleagues and management, the pace of growth and promotions (or lack thereof) as life-changing setbacks and make very significant personal and professional decisions based on them. The talks seek to give a perspective on what ‘really bad’ really means, and what does it take to come out of it.

Venue, Time and Audience

Venue: ANZ IT, Bangalore
Date: 4 July 2017
Time: 1030-1230hrs
Audience: ANZ employees

Earlier at ANZ Bangalore (2014)

This is the 2nd time Rakesh Shukla is addressing ANZ. The earlier talk was for a limited audience about awareness on stray dogs way back in 2014.

Rakesh Shukla @ ANZ Bangalore or VOSD in 2014

Jun

Fight Like a Dog: TEDx Talk by Rakesh Shukla

Read the unaltered text of the talk by Rakesh Shukla at TEDxICT, Mumbai 2017

(Edit note: 17 April ’17. This accompanying video is illustrative. The official TEDx video will be available here when released. There was no teleprompter so the actual spoken word will vary.)

Living with 750, I learnt to fight like a dog to survive

A few days ago, I received an invitation to speak at ICT Mumbai. After all, I am the dog-man (I like it much better than the unoriginal and ‘punny’ dog-father, and it reflects the reality of being half man, half dog better). 25 years ago I was very active on the circuit of technology and engineering. It may be surprising to those who don’t know me from then — but there was a (then) fairly niche space in mathematics called Fuzzy Set Theory. Reading it for years as a graduate student, I had found what I thought were some new insights and I wrote half a dozen papers on that — which led to many awards and talks around the country, and publication in an international peer-referenced journal.

I was always a proud man and never asked my father for money throughout my education. I’ve painted and sold custom t-shirts to dozens of hostel-mates, I’ve taught software engineering to my engineering batchmates, I’ve later taught fellow students in the B-school I went to. Anything that I could do that could earn me something. But it was never nearly enough.

It was also the first time I traveled across India myself — Chennai, Manipal, Delhi, and Mumbai. Since I couldn’t really afford the travel, I mostly traveled ticketless, sleeping on a newspaper between berths if I was lucky, and between toilet doors if I was not, on overnight trains.

Once I had a couple of such events in Mumbai. There was a week or so between them and it did not make sense to go all the way to Mumbai and come back. I decided to live on the then VT platform (the same place that was later the venue of the Mumbai attacks). It was the cheapest place to stay — I’d buy a platform ticket for two bucks for the day, and the toilets even then were relatively clean.

I haven’t left Bangalore in four years. I don’t leave Bangalore because of my babies, and turn down any travel plans. And ICT did not ring any bells… Till I looked it up. Matunga seemed familiar! I then realised this was the then UDCT (University Department of Chemical Technology), and a venue for an IEEE talk. The place along with VJTI that I had travelled to all that time ago.

And I smiled for it is indeed a small world. And here I am.

I’m Rakesh Shukla, and I founded a technology company called TWB that works with the world’s top names in technology the biggest companies from software to silicon, electronics, aerospace and defense. Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, Harman Kardon, Beechcraft, Cessna are all TWB customers. But that isn’t why I’m standing here in front of you. In fact, the last hundred-odd interviews I’ve given to the national and international press are about something else entirely — about my first love for stray dogs. Four years ago, the first TV documentary said ‘The dog-father of 150 dogs’ now it is ‘The dog-father of 750 dogs’.

But what I am talking about is not the journey of starting VOSD and what VOSD does, but it is the story of love and inspiration. I have also lived to see that love that is noun has little meaning but the love that is a verb moves mountains.

I founded TWB 10 years ago, and I founded VOSD five years ago. I think of myself as highly intelligent but more than that I’m highly motivated and hardworking. I’ve worked at great places before becoming an entrepreneur. If I have a failing, it is my inability to take advice easily. In fact, it is my legendary impatience that led to the creation of VOSD in the first place. I had grown tired of begging NGOs to help dogs in need, and then following up with them for updates, and more often than not, losing the dog due to incompetence. So I built VOSD, ground up, to be very, very different. Because there’s no blueprint for this kind of system, we had to create our own:

So I built VOSD, ground up, to be very, very different. Because there’s no blueprint for this kind of system, we had to create our own:

We are both ‘No-kill’ AND ‘No-refusal’ — any rescue will tell you that these are opposite sides of the same problem. We keep the dog for life. We do not deny any dog any help or treatment, no matter how sophisticated, expensive or long term. We do not euthanise a dog due to lack of space, or money, or complication of treatment, or any restriction like that. Ever.
We made the world’s first large-scale management system to integrate GPS data, photo storage, digitise all tests and diagnostics, capture and track all prescriptions and match them against treatment. Essentially track a dog through every treatment through to its eventual release and report every step on mail, SMS and mobile app to the person who reported the dog.
We made the world’s first rescue app that allowed someone to just download this app and report the dog in sufficient detail. It integrates with the management system.
We set up the first blood bank for dogs.
We run the world’s largest legal, data and analysis website on stray dogs.

In the next two years, VOSD was already a one-of-a-kind rescue service, free to all who needed it. Dogs were picked up quickly and sensitively. No expense was spared, and no dog was put down due to costs or lack of space. A sophisticated CRM provided real-time updates to the person who reported the dog. We were rescuing 10 to 15 dogs a day, and fighting for every single dog. My dogs had artificial tendons, aggressive treatment of cancers, distemper, and parvovirus. We didn’t take a rupee from the government, and were privately funded. We had our own facilities, a trauma shelter in the middle of the city, and a 3.5-acre farm on the outskirts. 30 full time employees. A fleet of 10 vehicles. We were bristling with technology. We were managed as well as the best-run hospitals. Nothing like what India had ever seen.

But it not just the hard things that make us different, it is the small things that set us apart. One of the many things that make VOSD what it is, is that all dogs are rescued or caught by hand. I have never, and I never allow anyone to use anything — even a lasso or a net to catch a dog. They have to be picked up with bare hands. And with never anything more than a blanket or a towel. That one decision defines VOSD and me.

But did you know ‘stray dogs’ is a business and it is run by a mafia? The same organisations run the government-funded Animal Birth Control programs across cities. I know because I was a member of the AWBI, and the largest legal and investigative data on these organisations across India is on my website vosd.in. My investigations closed half a dozen rogue NGOs. I certainly have not been a popular ‘animal welfare’ person by any stretch of imagination. An NGO called AWS that had been the bane of Mumbai dogs and it could not be closed despite years of reporting of malpractice was closed in Bangalore.

Threats had been made many times in different ways. One of the ‘shelters’ run by Animal Rights Fund (ARF) closed by my investigation had threatened with doing bad things to ‘my children and family’. A scanned copy of that page is still there on our website. Sarvodaya Sevabhavi Sanstha lead by Vinay Moray was the other. It came to a point that I started keeping gunmen for my personal security carrying licensed weapons. But the threats were not empty and neither could they be averted with weapons.

The first attacks were on me. The second wave of attacks were on TWB and the third were on VOSD itself.

It began three years ago with a police complaint. Then another. And another. My dogs were poisoned in two different incidents both times we made FIRs both times we knew it was the same people connected with the same NGOs. A rescue vehicle and its crew were attacked in broad daylight. Civil cases started piling up in different courts also by the same NGOs led by Sarvodaya ARF and people propped up by them.

But the biggest one was yet to come and it was not aimed at VOSD — but at the foundation of VOSD — it was aimed at TWB and me. Three years ago, almost to the day, the first criminal complaint was registered against me. Then the same complaint in other police station. Not allowed by law especially because I had taken preventive bail. But you can’t fight people who will spend any amount of resources. The day that complaint was made our servers had a massive a Denial-of-Service attack so we could not ‘publish’ anything for a week.

On a Saturday I was arrested by plainclothes policemen who entered my home without a warrant. My wife had to throw my clothes out of the window to let me dress. The press was co-opted and it made front page news for the next two days. Copies of the FIR and these reports were sent to all our top clients — the world’s leading technology MNCs.

Three years ago, I was standing in a police station across the table from the complainant whom I had never met before in my life or spoken to. She had charged me with attempting to outrage her modesty and much else. She told the Inspector standing in the room, “Tell him to close down VOSD and I’ll take back the complaint.” I refused point blank. Even though the matter is sub judice, the said charge is not in the charge sheet so I can talk about it.

From the community of ‘dog lovers’ poring over newspapers and sitting on social media, there was not one tweet, not one post. And as I focused on the legal battle over the next three months, I had no idea of the storm to hit. For three months, no deliveries happened to my customers. The sales team did not bring home a single customer win. Marketing did not discover a single customer lead. Overnight, we went into not just negative cashflow but I was now liable for millions of dollars in breach of contracts. Like VOSD, TWB was also made on my own. It never had any debt and there was not one paisa of VC funding.

Even as I went to banks to fund these three months of negative cashflow, I realised I had nothing left to service any debt with. Essentially, in three months, a company that had the biggest technology brands as customers with several hundred employees was bled dry, and left with zero revenue and millions of dollars in debt and liability.

The VOSD and TWB Admin and Purchase were common, and together, they over-invoiced to the tune of Rs 5-10 lakh per month, for three months straight. A vet placed a single large order earning a 30% commission and left the day it arrived.

If you know the Indian business system, there is no real bankruptcy protection or a winding down procedure. 10 years ago, I was in a place where I could (and did) buy a Mercedes-Benz on a charge card on a whim — and 20 other cars. And watches. And other such stuff. Before the three months were out, banks had closed my accounts and suspended my credit cards. Now I didn’t have food but I still had 400 babies to care for.

I sold three houses, liquidated all three TWB offices, and sold all the cars and bikes including 4 VOSD ambulances but kept 6 of the largest VOSD vans and trucks. Sold the watches, jewellery, everything I could to keep my babies fed and healthy.

Throughout this time, if there’s one message that the lawyers and the cops and family have routinely delivered to me, it is this: “Close down VOSD, and this goes away.” But that would never happen. Ever.

We’ve all been told how success brings friends but you are alone in your adversity. There’s nothing truer. You are totally and truly alone. The friends from far and wide, the ones that knew never bothered even calling me – I know because I could ask for money, help, something. I remember when the Maggi controversy broke, it didn’t make a difference to me because Maggi was Rs 30 a packet and we’d already shifted to a Nepalese brand called Wai-Wai that was Rs 10 a packet. My wife and I would share sometimes.

At work, I was still fighting and put on my best suits for meetings, trying to salvage what I could, but one day, my last pair of shoes came apart at the sole, in a customer office. When the storm hit three years ago, I had to dig down deep just to stay alive. Everything I brought to the table, I learnt from not some great book of wisdom but from the dogs in front of me. And these are the lessons I share with you:

When the storm hit three years ago, I had to dig down deep just to stay alive. Everything I brought to the table, I learnt from not some great book of wisdom but from the dogs in front of me. And these are the lessons I share with you:

Leadership: There is little to do but to forge ahead. Just like dogs do. In packs they quickly develop a hierarchy. When driven out of a pack by a social, environment or a human challenge, they seek new territories to establish an order. But they are great judges of leadership as well. They look for that in their own and in people. I attribute my own success in managing even the dogs with the worst reputations to that. They know I am fair and that I get their allegiance not being harsh but being the provider.
Calmness in adversity: If you see a dog being hit or injured, it yelps and cries the second it happens. Then it becomes quiet. I see it dozens of times a day. They get a look in their eyes that has detachment, but hope.
Hunker down: What you can’t change and during the time you can’t change it, you hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Dogs do that as they weigh their chances.
You keep fighting alone: It’s an important lesson from a dog. When they are hurt or grieving or in adverse circumstances, they do not have the type of help people have. There is no one coming with a cheque or with an ambulance. A dog knows that. And still preserves his incredible will to live. They are grateful for company and help, but their default status in injury and disease is being alone.
Tenacity: Most driven and successful people are tenacious, but look at my dogs. I have a dog who escaped from our Trauma Center, with one leg in a cast, by jumping a seven-foot-high fence and walking 15 kilometers through the middle of the city to reach its lane where we found him the next day. Still wagging his tail.
Courage: We have a dog that had been tied to a railway track with a metal chain and his legs got cut even as he tried to avoid the train. The chain got cut as well and he kept going without two front paws, with his companion who did not leave him through the ordeal.
No self-pity: Dogs don’t feel pity for themselves. They don’t blame others. Of course they don’t have the same sense of self as us but even then, living with them as I do, I’ve never seen the attitude that something has happened and they are in a corner that they don’t want to fight out of. You can’t just look inwards — you have to look out. Corners can only be fought out of, they don’t disappear.
Problem-solving: Dogs are ace problem solvers. I have dogs that can’t be kept in an enclosure because they want to leave — and go to the nearby village and kill chicken! They will test the fence meticulously. In that enclosure, the fence is to the ceiling and they will find any gap even at that height. When even that access was blocked they would test the ground and eventually found a weak area in the floor and eventually dug a tunnel under the fence to the other side!
Pain threshold: Dogs have a tremendous pain threshold even though studies clearly show that they feel pain, and on a scale same as we do. I’ve just given you a couple of examples. A dog will live with and through indescribable pain 5% of which is unbearable for a person. If a dog lives through the pain and does not catch an infection, he will not just survive but will thrive.
Trust: No matter how much a dog has been abused or is nervous, his wanting to trust never completely goes away. A person who has gone through similar circumstances would perhaps behave very differently. Eventually there were a few remarkable people who came through for me, whom I could trust. They were all new!
Delayed gratification: That’s the single biggest trait of achievers. They have the ability to go through years of toil without commensurate return because they can delay gratification. Funnily, dogs show the same traits. A healthy dog will share it is food with its family, especially offspring. In a non-competitive environment, a dog will eat the best pieces of food last. I have seen dogs when even nearly starving, they will eat only a small part of the meal and bury the rest for later. And that’s great advice to hold you through many years of uncertainty.
Playing the hand that you’re dealt: A dog doesn’t complain. If they are missing two legs or are completely blind and completely deaf they will adjust to it so well that unless I told you, you would never know. A lot of dogs are abandoned because the owners have not known for years that they were deaf or blind.
Grief does not paralyse them: Dogs have a capacity for love unlike any other but they know when to move on. I see that with mothers that have lost pups or pups that have lost mothers. Beyond a point, they move on.

Today, I still don’t have a credit card or a car, but VOSD is still standing. In the last two years of limited rescue, I’ve still added 350-odd dogs — aggressive dogs, handicapped dogs, military dogs… I only take dogs with no future. But I’ve kept working, developing on the lessons from these dogs.

We have a much-loved franchise of standup comedy called Barking Mad and for live music called Howling Mad that draws the best talent at the finest venues.
We run the largest and the most successful bake sales as Monster Bake in India.
I run VOSD for People, which provides medical and educational help for villagers around the Sanctuary. We’ve taught 2,500 children for free, and are in the process of establishing our own school. This month, we’re distributing 1,500 sarees for women on the Kannada New Year.
In the past few weeks, we launched a series of dog care products called VOSD Dog Care.
We’re in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign called #PatriotDogs that is being supported by the likes of Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, Boman Irani, Rahul Dravid, Nana Patekar and Soha Ali Khan and many more. And as far as my company goes, the customers have started returning.
I have serviced direct debt to lenders in millions of dollars.
TWB opened an office in the US last quarter and we have a new US-based CEO.

But I believe the biggest success is that almost no one around me knows just how bad these three years have been except perhaps two people who stood with me in my life and work and home. I have firmly believed that winners have challenges and losers have alibis. Before today, I wouldn’t let anyone know the real depth of the problem because ultimately it is each dog to himself. I talk about it for the first time because I know I might have lost two legs like that dog on the train tracks but I survived.

Interestingly now, in the last three months BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Times of India, The Hindu and any number of publications in India, Asia, Europe, South America and the US have written of this miracle of having 750 dogs and the place I have created. But the real miracle is that I have done that with my back to the wall and with almost nothing in my hands. Or in my pocket. If I must measure my life by something, then that would be it.

To the few people who cared to ask me how I was in this time, and there were very few, I would always say, ‘I’m a dog, I’m licking my wounds, I’ll be back.’ While the media calls me the dog-father, I really am a Dog-Man. And for those who say I fought like a lion, I say no — it was like a dog.

About success, I know now it is not the multiple houses, and cars and watches and visas I though it did. It is having the means and the opportunity to spend each day doing what you love.

Thank you.

Jun

Fight like a Dog: The TEDx talk of Rakesh Shukla

(Edit note: 17 April ’17. This is the unaltered text of the TEDx talk of Rakesh Shukla at TEDx ICT Mumbai 2017. This accompanying video is illustrative. The official TEDx video will be available here when released. There was no teleprompter so the actual spoken word will vary.)

Living with 750, I learnt to fight like a dog to survive

A few days ago, I received an invitation to speak at ICT Mumbau. After all, I am the dog-man (I like it much better than the unoriginal and punny dog-father, and it reflects the reality of being half man, half dog better). 25 years ago I was very active on the circuit of technology and engineering. It may be surprising to those who don’t know me from then – but there was a (then) fairly niche space in mathematics called Fuzzy Set Theory. Reading it for years as a graduate student, I had found what I thought were some new insights and I wrote half a dozen papers on that – which led to many awards and talks around the country, and publication in an international peer-referenced journal.

It was also the first time I traveled across India myself – Chennai, Manipal, Delhi, Mumbai. Since I couldn’t really afford the travel, I mostly traveled ticketless, sleeping on a newspaper between berths if I was lucky, and between toilet doors if I was not, on overnight trains.

I haven’t left Bangalore in 4 yrs. I don’t leave Bangalore because of my babies, and turn down any travel plans. And ICT did not ring any bells… Till I looked it up. Matunga seemed familiar! I then realised this was the then UDCT (University Department of Chemical Technology), and a venue for an IEEE talk. The place along with VJTI that I had travelled to all that time ago.

And I smiled for it is indeed a small world. And here I am.

I’m Rakesh Shukla, and I founded a technology company called TWB that works with the world’s top names in technology the biggest companies from software to silicon, electronics, aerospace and defense. Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, Harman Kardon, Beechcraft, Cessna are all TWB customers. But that isn’t why I’m standing here in front of you. In fact, the last hundred-odd interviews I’ve given to the national and international press are about something else entirely — about my first love for stray dogs. 4 years ago, the first TV documentary said ‘The dog-father of 150 dogs’ now it is ‘The dog-father of 750 dogs’.Read More

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Happiness in the past: The Pollyanna principle

Competition between states of happiness

Happiness creates dissonance

The law of diminishing happiness

Unhappiness is an evolutionary trait

Humans did not evolve to be happy

Can you think your way through with happy thoughts and success?

The biology of ‘happy’ hormones

You can’t be perpetually happy, but you can be happier!

The Construction of Happiness

Happiness in the future: The optimism bias

Happiness in the past: The Pollyanna Principle

Competition between states of happiness

Happiness creates dissonance

The law of diminishing happiness

Unhappiness is an evolutionary trait

Humans did not evolve to be happy

Can you think your way through with happy thoughts and success?

The biology of ‘happy’ hormones

Dopamine

Serotonin

Oxytocin

Endorphins

You can’t be perpetually happy, but you can be happier!

Rakesh Shukla explains how he conquered the fear of death, to live a better life

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The Talk:

Venue, Time and Audience

The Talk:

Venue, Time and Audience

Earlier at ANZ Bangalore (2014)

Read the unaltered text of the talk by Rakesh Shukla at TEDxICT, Mumbai 2017

Living with 750, I learnt to fight like a dog to survive

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