Walking Into a Room Full of Strangers (and a Little Bit of Myself)
The Happiness Pathway: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding True Joy and Fulfilment is Charu’s first book, and from the moment she started speaking, it was clear this wasn’t going to be another feel-good title you skim once and forget. She was upfront about it, this book isn’t designed to be read cover to cover and shelved. It’s built to be revisited, again and again, as a kind of companion for wherever you are in your own journey.
What struck me most was her honesty about the content itself: the exercises inside aren’t new-age secrets or groundbreaking science. Journal. Go for a walk. Set boundaries. Say no to what doesn’t align with you. We’ve all heard this before. What Charu has done is turn the knowing into doing, a practical, step-by-step guide for actually applying the happiness advice we’ve all absorbed but rarely act on. As she put it on the night, “setting boundaries isn’t selfish — it’s an act of self-respect and a reflection of knowing your own worth.”
And here’s the twist she pointed out herself, laughing a little at the irony, the book isn’t really about chasing happiness at all. It’s about finding yourself. Which, considering the title, got a knowing laugh from the room.
Champagne, Gift Hampers, and a Pen Waiting to Be Used
The evening had all the markings of a proper Melbourne book launch, champagne and beer flowing, guests settled into chairs with gift hampers waiting at their feet, that low hum of anticipation before someone takes the mic. But what set this one apart was sitting in my lap: a small pamphlet and a pen.
Turns out, we weren’t just there to listen. We were there to do the work, a live, hands-on taste of exactly what the book asks of its readers.
The Exercise That Made the Whole Room Go Quiet
Charu opened by asking us to rate our happiness, our relationships, our self-belief, each out of ten, in ink, no hiding from it. From there, the prompts got more personal: describe your perfect day. Name your one-year goals. Your goals for just this coming week. It was such a simple format, but I felt the whole room shift into a different kind of attention. Nobody was scrolling their phone. Everybody was writing.
It was a clever move, honestly, not a gimmick, but a genuine preview of what the book itself promises to be: practical, reflective, and a little uncomfortable in the best way.
From Boardrooms to Breakthroughs: Charu's Real Story
The Honeymoon That Changed Everything
The most powerful part of the evening, by far, was when Charu got vulnerable about what actually led her here. She spoke openly about a traumatic divorce, and everything that came with it, losing friends, sitting with loneliness, and facing judgement that hit especially hard coming from a conservative Indian background where divorce still carries heavy taboo.
Then she told us about the pivot point: becoming paralysed on her honeymoon. A genuinely frightening, life-altering moment. It was in healing from that, physically and otherwise, that she made a decision to change the trajectory of her life.
That experience sent her deep into reading and studying psychology and neuroscience, chasing an understanding of why we feel what we feel, and how to move through it. Books like Ikigai, Atomic Habits, and The Body Keeps the Score became part of her own toolkit for navigating what came next, and eventually, the seeds of her own book. It took two to three years to write, with long stretches of writer’s block along the way. Nothing about it sounded easy, and she didn’t pretend otherwise.
The Question That Made Me Think About My Own Life
Someone in the audience asked Charu which celebrity inspires her most. I expected a name I’d recognise. Instead, she said her biggest inspirations have mostly been people in her own life, a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance who left a mark.
It’s such a simple answer, but it landed. Because when you actually think about who’s shaped you most, it’s rarely a celebrity, it’s the uncle who made it big against the odds, the self-made aunt everyone quietly admires, the teacher who believed in you before you believed in yourself, the boss who took a chance on you first. I found myself running through my own mental list while she spoke, which is exactly the kind of unplanned reflection this whole evening kept sneaking up on me with.
Why This Book Is for Every One of Us
Here’s the thing, everyone’s going through something. That’s not a cynical take, it’s just true. And underneath all of it, there’s a pretty universal thread: we all want to be happy, or at least a little more at peace with where we are. The Happiness Pathway isn’t selling a fantasy or a quick fix. It’s handing you the exercises to actually sit with your own life and start moving through it, one honest page at a time.
Finding My Own Happiness Pathway
I came to this launch to cover an event. I left having rated my own happiness out of ten on a scrap of paper, thinking about the people who’ve actually shaped my life, and holding a signed book I hadn’t planned on buying. If that’s what one evening with Charu Moorjani can do, I’m genuinely curious what the full book will bring.
Disclaimer: Glamorazzi representatives Ganish Kapur, Cherry Vuong and Marleen Campbell attended the book launch at QT Hotel Melbourne on 09/07/2026 invited by AA Collective.
