I can be a voice. I can use my voice. I can use my learnings to maybe help make a difference to somebody and then that somebody will, in turn, help make a difference in their own way and so on and so on and so on, so that one day we can live in a world that makes us proud to be here.
[Music] Welcome to Happiness for Humanity. I'm Rania Badreldin, the happiness consultant from Egypt. Join me and my guests for an hour of meaningful conversations for a happier world. [Music]
Welcome to the second first episode of this podcast, and I say second because early in October I had already recorded the first episode of the podcast I was going to launch called Rania's Happy Hour, but the state of the world took precedence, and my energy was redirected. Like so many of you, my thoughts and my emotions have been all over the place. One thing became clear to me. My voice and this podcast needed to change, because the only way to see the change we want is to be the change we want. And so I was inspired to focus on what I've always wanted to focus on, a happier world for everyone on this planet. A world that is just and compassionate. A world where people are happy and getting along with one another. A world that despite all our experiences, education, and intelligence we have yet to see.
My first, my previous first podcast episode was upbeat and excited, with a focus on how you the listener can achieve happiness. And that is still my focus because the only way for us all to be happy is for each one of us to be happy. The starting point though is to define what we mean by happiness, to agree on a sustainable definition, and to individually and collectively work towards it.
It's natural to feel helpless, frustrated, sad, angry and guilty, and many other emotions when we witness daily injustices and atrocities through our screens. If you're anything like me, you have been witnessing unimaginable suffering happening in Gaza over the past month and a half or more, on a daily basis, and um something needs to change. Unless we are agreeing that this is the world we want to live in, then something needs to change.
Many people have been asking, "What kind of what kind of world is this that we're living in? Where is our humanity? Well, it's here. It's inside us. Humanity is inside us. I still believe that. And it's at times like these when we feel that we're losing faith in our humanity, we feel that it's lost, that we need to look inside and find it, because humanity is alive in each and every one of us, even those who we think are on the wrong side of this, because everyone in the end is on a side based on what they have seen, heard and come to believe and that varies greatly.
The thing is though that when it comes to humanity there are no sides. There's only one. There's only one humanity and we are part of it, and we are that humanity.
So here is my new podcast Happiness for Humanity and what you can expect from this podcast are meaningful conversations for a happier world, a world that starts with you and your happiness and that includes how you can live your happiest life and at the same time contribute to a happier world. I started off this podcast or the idea of the podcast not wanting to talk about politics or religion, just happiness. But then I came to realize that that doesn't make any sense because politics affects our daily lives. Politics affects our happiness, individually and collectively, and so I found myself not really talking about politics but certainly talking about our humanity. And that's what I want to talk about.
When I talk about happiness, as a happiness consultant through years and years and years of working one-on-one with people or giving workshops or talks, I was always focused on individual happiness because I knew that when we tap into our inner truth, who we really are as people, that will inevitably spread around us. We will be more able to spread that around us, and so that's still important for me. At the same time, I really don't think there's a whole lot of time to waste. We need to be working in parallel. We need to be working towards what we really want from this world that we're living in and we need to start asking ourselves, "What do we want?", "Where do we want to live?" Do we want to live in a world with wars and weapons and genocide happening all around us or do we want to live in a world where we see love, peace, liberation, dignity for every single person on this planet, every person who is one with all of us?
And when I used to talk about things like that it always seemed very naive. It always seemed unrealistic. Well, maybe that's what we need. Maybe that's what we need right now because look where we are. And and we've been a certain way for the longest time, look where it's gotten us. Maybe we need to start thinking and doing differently so we can get different results. Maybe we need to start listening to one another, to really educating ourselves, to finding common ground.
So I've always wanted to see people happy and getting along and it's very clear to me that if we look all around us many people are unhappy and certainly there's a whole lot of people not getting along, to say the very least. And so this is what this podcast is for. Um I don't claim to be able to solve all the world's problems and I don't know if I can help, you know, the children who are currently being murdered, but here's what I do know. I can be a voice. I can use my voice. I can use my learnings to maybe help make a difference to somebody and then that somebody will, in turn, help make a difference in their own way and so on and so on and so on, so that one day we can live in a world that makes us proud to be. here.
So I think now is the time to work together. Now is the time to come together. It's always been the time to be honest but you know this is where we are now so let's start from here. And um yeah I don't want to live in a parallel reality anymore. I want to address the reality that is a reality for many people. I no longer want to talk about "you can have the life you want", you know, "you can manifest it through your mindset, through regulating your emotions, through letting go of limiting beliefs, through working towards your goals". All of that is true but I don't want to just talk about that because some people don't have that luxury right now.
So we need to take a step back and we need to talk about the prerequisites, the basic human rights, the basic needs for our fellow humans, whoever they are, wherever they are, whatever their backgrounds, whatever anything. Nothing nothing matters. No differences matter. What matters is that they're human beings. And so we need to talk about meeting those basic human needs so that we can all thrive, so that we can all manifest our dreams, live our best lives, right? Because we're all in it together. We're all here.
So I'm sorry that this podcast is not, you know, appearing to be very happy, but you know what, happiness isn't feeling good all the time. Happiness isn't just thinking about our individual happiness. Happiness is about coming together. Happiness is about daring to dream of a future that's bright for all of us.
So some people aren't able to dream of a bright future right now like Palestinians. Maybe we can do that for them. I just believe in humanity. I believe in every human being, um way beyond any labels, way beyond where they come from, what their religion is, what the color of their skin is, all of these things that somehow we continue to use in this day and age, and we cannot see past them. And we cannot see the child that's in there, the child that was born as love and with love. The child that certainly was not born wanting to kill another human being.
Uh, so I believe that we need to let go of all of these things that have been standing in the way of us tapping into our true humanity and start, first of all, getting still enough to find that inside us because it's there, and second of all getting well enough so that we can be and do better, and then third of all starting to use our human/humanitarian voice to help create a world that is more humanitarian.
So this is my invitation for you. I'll be having different guests on my podcast to talk about their perspectives on how individually and/or collectively we can work on happiness, because happiness is something we do all want actually. Science has shown that and we can see that in our day-to-day lives. We often hear people saying "Happy birthday", "Happy anniversary", "Happy New Year", happy this, happy that. It's clearly something we want so there's no no point in pretending that we don't want it. The question is how do we achieve it how do we get there individually and how do we get there collectively.
So politics I've learned, in order for it to reflect humanity, we as human beings need to start talking about politics, something that I've always avoided like the plague. But the thing is, I think one of the biggest mistakes we've made for the longest time really without realizing it is that we allowed other people to do politics while we just go on with our daily lives, right?
So we're busy with our daily lives and rightly so, there's so much to deal with without all of this stuff happening. There's just so much to deal with. And it can be hard. And it can bring us down. It can be overwhelming. So we're just managing our own daily lives and so yeah we left the politics to other people. But we left that unchecked for far too long. And look where we are now. Other people literally are taking/making life and death decisions. We can't afford that anymore, in my opinion, and while not everybody is going to get involved actively you know in politics and justice and talking about peace and liberation, I understand not everybody can get involved in that, some of us are just far too bogged down by whatever is going on in our daily lives, I understand that. But those of us who can, let's be part of that politics that we were never a part of, because we are the people, and there are some people in power who are not aligned with values that I believe in, they just aren't. And they're they're motivated by things that I don't believe should motivate us.
I don't want to live in a world motivated by greed, motivated by you know this this uh narrative of us and them, and if you're not with us you're against us. And this narrative of one group of people being superior to another group of people. Who says? How can anybody decide that? It's just nonsense. Nobody is superior.
So there's so much hypocrisy, there's so so many double standards. All I'm doing is inviting each individual person to slow down. Look inside. You will find the answers. You will work through these beliefs, these things that have been fed to you, and to me as well, that I have been working through as well, things that we have heard, statements about other people that we are supposed to just believe as truth. And they're just somebody else's version of truth. That's what they believe to be true, that doesn't mean it is true. So we need to start questioning. We need to start finding uh the light inside every person, um communicating through that light and with that light. And yeah if that sounds unrealistic now because we're far removed from it at the moment that's okay. Let's do it anyway because, you know what, if we had done that for the last hundred years, maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.
So happier people and a happier world is what I'm about. If you're interested in that, let's come together. Let's have the difficult conversations. Let's see each other as one. Let's see each other as humanity. And I think that's what makes us, that's what makes humanity so beautiful actually, that we are different in many ways but that we're also so similar in many ways. Let's talk about injustices. Let's work towards a vision of how we want the world to be. Let's see it, let's believe that it's possible and let's take actions towards that. So the same tools, and the same the same things that we will we do for ourselves to be better and do better and feel better, are the same things we can apply to all of us.
So I don't want to make this episode too long. This is just an introduction to why Happiness for Humanity, and um what this podcast is going to be about and what you can expect. So I invite you to join me and my guests to talk about all the things that matter to you as an individual and all the things that matter to us as societies, as an entire humanity.
[Music] Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Join me every other Thursday for a new one. Happiness for Humanity is available on YouTube and your favorite podcast platforms. If you've found this episode valuable, please share it. Let's come together for a happier world. [Music]