Hi my name is Ahsan. I have gone on an eight-year self-discovery journey of overcoming severe depression, anxiety, insecurity and loneliness to became a happy, peaceful and more loving person. You can follow my journey here.
When I became depressed, I realized I had never been happy before and promised myself I would learn to be happy. I started with this intention of finding what makes me happy, I slowly evolved this intention into finding myself. While I believe finding yourself is a lifelong journey, there are a lot of lessons I have learned from personal experience I would love to share. I hope these lessons inspire others along their path towards being happier, more loving, and most importantly better people.
The biggest lessons are the importance of action with reflection. During my journey, I would try a lot of different activities, habits, and ways of being. Then, I would reflect on what worked and most importantly why it worked. I wanted a simpler way to reflect, doing it all with a journal was too much work. It led to me setting up different activities on my happiness website to allow people to record their actions and reflect on what works best for them. What started as a website for a course on happiness at work is being transformed into a website for people to reflect on what makes them thrive.
I had many interesting experiences along the journey. The best ones being:
- Went on a deep healing journey (Follow here)
- Attended numerous spiritual retreats deeply connecting with myself
- Graduated with a degree in neuroscience
- Built an app called The Habit Developer
- Built a website to make people happier (Details here)
- Read 100+ self-help/psychology books
- Ran a mile in 5 minutes (on a treadmill, still counts?)
- Learned how to surf and dive connecting with the ocean
- Spoke at Google with Dr. Raghunathan about happiness
- Went to a Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat
- Lived in a van in three different countries
- Traveled the world solo for two years
