Founder's Story

"To inspire people to live a purpose and passion driven life and to find happiness from within"

- Mo Seetubtim -

Founder of The Happiness Planner

In order to be truly happy, whole, and fulfilled, we must become better at managing ourselves - our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. We must get better at dealing with conflicts and communicating our needs and frustrations. We can keep running away from people who trigger us, or, we can choose to look within and grow. At the end of the day, the relationships we have in our lives matter. And they don't get better unless we learn to deal with how we manage our emotions, our insecurities, our fears, and how we react and respond to unpleasant situations.

How do we get better at these? By being mindful. When we are mindful, we can see our thoughts and anxieties as separate from us; as something that we can manage and understand.

How do we manage them? By learning to see different ways of reframing our thoughts and perception because our thoughts affect how we feel.

How do we understand them? By asking ourselves the right questions and examining the root causes of how we behave, think, and feel, and how our beliefs were developed and formed.

In 2021, I'd like to encourage you not just to become more productive and achieve more goals, but also to be more understanding and to heal. And it all starts from within - from learning to understand who we are and manage the chaos that lies within.  

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 BACKSTORY

People often ask me what sparked my interest in personal development and how I got started with the idea for The Happiness Planner. Several years ago when I was just a young teenage girl who wanted to experience life to the fullest and explored all parts of me, I found myself struggling to grow up as an independent young girl because my mother and I are very different - I am very independent and liberal, however, my mother is very strict and conservative - the ultimate of a Tiger mom. Hence, we argued a lot. Luckily, my father helped me get through the emotional turmoil I had. Whenever I had an argument with my mother, I'd turn to him because he's the only one who understands.

He said,

"Your mom has been that way for over 40 years. It's almost impossible for her to change or to even understand your point of view. But you're only 14. You can learn to change your attitude and how you look at situations that are outside of your control. Whenever you feel upset and frustrated, remember that the only thing you can control is what you focus on and what you think about. See this as a opportunity to train and strengthen your mind." 

This was just one of the things he said to me which taught me to realize that I am in charge of my happiness because I am in charge of my attitude, of the way I think, of the way I look at things, and of my conscious and unconscious patterns. 

My father also introduced me to several self-help books. Some of my favorites are Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Magic of Thinking Big, Staying OK, and Rich Dad Poor Dad. Besides marketing and business, I also took psychology subjects like Developmental Psychology and Personality Psychology which got me hooked on human psychology even more. Whenever I read something, if it's not business, then it's motivational, self-help, and psychology books. Personal growth has become one of the things I highly value in my life that I feel like your life stops the minute you stop growing. 

My real desire to inspire people actually started when I was in my last year of high school. I went to a selective school so all of my friends were pretty smart. I asked them what they wanted to become when they graduate. Most of them had their minds set on careers that seem most decent and well-paid that they absolutely had no passion for. I felt very frustrated that the smartest kids in the country were never encouraged to find out what their true passion and purpose in life are and to turn that into a career. That moment really inspired me to one day inspire people to live a purpose and passion driven life and to find happiness from within. 

At that point, I still didn't really know how and didn't know where to begin other than sharing quotes and articles I like on my social media.

One night I caught up with a big blogger friend who gave me some words of encouragement that changed it all for me.

“If you have a deep desire to leave a message for the world, you must do it, because that’s the only thing that will live on when you die."

That was it. That was the start of my journey.

I decided to start an inspirational blog about modern life wisdom. Initially, it was just a place for me to keep inspirational words and quotes I came across. However, as the blog grew, my love for it grew. I started writing more and more. It got to a point where my posts were being shared on big publications and I started receiving emails from my readers telling me how inspiring my blog was to them. So I decided to ask my blog's readers when they subscribed to my newsletter,

"If I could write about one thing that makes your day, what should I write about?"

A lot of people replied and said they wanted to learn how they could become more positive and happier.

I thought that that was so interesting. There were a lot of books and articles out there about happiness and positive thinking, but people still needed help in that area -  something was missing. I started thinking hard and pondering upon the concept of happiness and true fulfillment. Changing our patterns is hard - be it emotional, mental, physical patterns. You cannot change something you've been doing for years overnight. You need to practice the new way of thinking, feeling, doing, or believing over and over until it goes into our subconscious mind and become a part of who we are.

That was it. That's when I gave birth to the idea of The Happiness Planner.

... I want to help people who are struggling learn to be positive and happy. I want to help people move on from the past and live in the present. I want to help people shift their focus and mindset from the negatives to the positives. I want to help people stop searching for validation from outside and start looking from within. I want to help people get rid of their limiting self-belief because the only thing that holds you back is you.

... I want to help people understand themselves better because everything you want and need in life is within you. You just need to listen to your intuition.

... I want to encourage people to follow their passion and dreams and become a life-long learner because you only live once and potential means nothing if you don't do anything with it. I want to inspire people to adopt a growth mindset because everything around us was made, created, and invented by someone - and you, too, have the power to change the future.

The business has been around for over 6 years now. I have seen the positive impact The Happiness Planner has made in people's life and it has inspired me to look deeper into the problem that I could help solve. My new vision is to now not only inspire adults, but also children.

I am a true believer that "if you give a boy a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you teach a boy to fish, you feed him for a lifetime". And I want to teach the boy to fish, in this case, to inspire and equip children with the right tools, mindset, attitude, and habits that can help them deal with life's problems, so that they can grow up to become happy and whole adults.