Melody Jacob

Women’s Day is celebrated globally on 8 March every year in honour of their remarkable contribution to our society.The day also commemorates the inspiring role of women around the world to secure women’s rights and build more equitable societies. Women’s Day also remembers the voices of many women that go unheard and who continue to be dominated from securing their rights and realizing their full potential.

Woman – the power to create, nurture and transform! The word ‘woman’ conjures up the images of selfless love, care and affection. At the same time, women ignite the spirit of power andhope. Unfortunately, across the world, women had to fight for their independence and protection of rights. Since decades, women had struggled and are still fighting to express their right to speech, to vote, to equality, to education, to income and most importantly, to freedom.

International Women’s Day honors the women who have paved the path towards our progress and struggled to take ‘womanhood’ to a level where it is now. Unfortunately, at the same time, the day is a reminder of the discrimination and inequality that still continues to plague our society. This special day, dedicated to women around the world, is a celebration of the great success of women across all spheres of life as well as shaping the future.

There is a constant quest for happiness. Sometimes we are fed misinformation and terrible ideas that tell us that putting someone else’s happiness before our own is the right thing to do. For some of us, we are taught that our happiness comes in the form of servitude to parents, a spouse, children, jobs and the list goes on. We are often given misinformation based on another person’s personal experiences and preferences as it pertains to their happiness.

What we fail to ever hear is that happiness is different for everyone. The things that make you happy may not make someone else as fulfilled. Many of us spend significant amounts of our time chasing someone else’s vision of what happiness is. We think because we don’t have the same ideas or goals as others that we will be less happy than someone else

The problem with taking another individual’s idea of happiness is that you don’t give yourself time to try to figure out what will make you happy. Therefore causing yourself unnecessary mental turmoil over why you are not feeling as happy as you thought you would be once you mimicked the life of another individual. Often we tend to go with society and what the status quo tells us will make us happy, or the visions portrayed by someone else’s life, and we tend to make the assumption because they have a particular lifestyle they have attained true happiness. Assuming someone is happy, based solely on their looks is a big misconception and further inhibits our acquisition of true happiness. I will share with you eight ways to attain personal happiness.

1. Take care of yourself. If you are not performing at your greatest potential how can you be any good to anyone else? All of your needs must be met, and you should actively work on doing something for yourself every day. Stop putting what you want on the back burner for others. You should be the most important person to yourself.