Interesting Careers – Happiness Coach
By Paula Barnes
Shveitta Sethi Sharma – Happiness Coach

Shveitta Sethi Sharma is a Happiness coach and has spent almost half her life travelling around the world in search of an answer to “What is happiness?” This remarkable Woman sat down with the Women in charge team to discuss her interesting career path and passion for making a ‘happier’ world.

How did you become a Happiness Coach?
The whole idea came about as a lark over a breakfast meeting. I had just quit my job and was studying positive psychology and generally trying to understand the meaning of life/happiness. At the breakfast meeting (with media and banking people) I did not have any name cards, so when people asked me what I did, I said (in jest) I bottle happiness, study it and hopefully will one day be able to sell it.

I got many quizzical looks and a lot of interest. Everyone I met that day wanted to find out the secret of happiness. I received the maximum number of name cards of any day with every one asking me to email them once I had figured out the secret to happiness

Something that came about in jest suddenly sounded rather exciting and I decided to pursue the subject in its entirety. I started reading the various self help books available. I read a lot of material by Louise Hay , Esther and Jerry Hicks, Wayne Dawyer amongst many others, and then went on to read Martin Seligman’s and Tal Ben Shahar’s work on Positive Psychology followed by books on Epigenetics by Bruce Lipton and Candace Pert and tried to understand Quantum Physics by reading Greg Braden and Amit Goswami . Then I went on to read some philosophers and a whole lot of spiritual and religious text and attended various seminars, both scientific and spiritual. But the most useful resource turned out to be YouTube and Google. I pretty much found all that I was looking for in the theoretical field and then I started my practical data collection via interviews and Questionnaires.

As I read and researched, I came to the understanding that happiness was a self created and self fulfilling phenomenon. It was something we had a hundred percent control upon.
The next logical question therefore was, ‘If we had a hundred percent control on our happiness, was it possible to develop and exercise that control?

Even though we have a genetic bias towards our determinant state of happiness, I believe that Happiness is a skill and it can surely be developed with the proper exercises and some guidance.

What does a Happiness Coach do?

The job of a happiness coach is to guide one towards a more fulfilling and a positive life by offering the various tools available to raise the happiness set point. As with any other coach, is it a sports coach, a musical instrument coach, a parent or a teacher, the job of the happiness coach is to identify the current level of understanding of the subject and then identify ways of improving the same.

As one of my teacher “Matthieu Ricard” says “Happiness is life’s most important skill and often the most overlooked.

My current position as a Happiness coach therefore came about as a journey inwards into the self and the need to find out the real meaning of happiness for very personal reasons compounded by the immense interest shown by the people when I mentioned I was studying the meaning of happiness.

Did you need to study a certain course?
Yes there are courses that one can do to get a degree in ‘happiness’. It goes by the name of MAAP- Masters in Applied Positive Psychology offered by UPenn. But there is so much information available on line that if one truly wants to seek the knowledge for the sake of the knowledge and not the degree, it could be a lifelong endeavor.

I personally chose the path of knowledge and am constantly finding out more and more ways of increasing happiness.

What do you love about your job?
What I love about my job, actually it is not a job, it is a passion. A job is something one does in exchange of money. I have not yet been able to put a price on my passion, but have definitely received a lot in return. At times it has been a profuse thank you, a big hug, an amazing lunch, new friends or cheques in mail varying from 50 HKD to 8000 HKD. So I guess I can’t call it a job, but it is most definitely a calling, so I pretty much love every aspect of my calling. With every new person that I coach, I learn so much more.

What are some of the negatives?
The only negative, if you insist on my naming one would be that sometimes people who are going through a tough time may not seem to understand how it could be possible for someone to teach them how to be happy. They might then think you are trying to sell them into a new ideology which they do not agree with. On the other hand, sometimes if you do offer help, people might impose too much on your time and call you at any time of the night or day.

For those who would consider becoming a Happiness Couch what advice would you give them?For those wanting to become Happiness Coach, the number one thing I would say is Walk your walk and talk your talk. Become happy yourself and then you will automatically attract all that you need to become even more happier. I have met many coaches who preach, but do not follow. I do understand that a coach is not necessarily the best player on the team, but it sure helps to know the game. The more thorough one is in ones chosen subject the more successful one is. To quote Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Before embarking on coaching others become happy become happier yourself.


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This entry was posted on February 3, 2010 at 1:42 am and is filed under Business, Education, Empowering, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response