Did you manage to get outside for at least half an hour every day since you read the first unit of The Happiness Programme? Easy when it's sunny, but quite a problem when it's raining, isn't it. But stick rigorously to the half hour rule. You'll be surprised that soon you will crave direct daylight in much the same way you crave water on a hot day. In both cases your body is telling you what you need to function successfully.
Now I want to introduce you to the second strand of the programme: Catch the happiness bug.
In the eight units of this strand I will be asking you to look at ways you unconsciously put up barriers to getting 'infected' by happiness.
Here's the first unit.
Open yourself physically to happiness.
Think of catching the happiness bug like catching the common cold.
We know that cold germs are present all the time and all around us. We're on a bus and the person next to us sneezes. Millions of germs rush into the air and nothing we can do can stop us inhaling them. The last person to use the 6th floor button inside the lift had a bad cold and had touched his nose before pushing the button. Moments later we push that button and the germs make contact with our body.
We've caught colds this way before so we know how easy it is. But having a cold makes us feel bad so naturally we learn by our mistakes and we do whatever we can to protect ourselves from getting infected. We don't stand around too long in the cold, we use an umbrella in the rain so we don't have to sit in wet clothes at work, we try to eat nutritious food, we take an early night if we're feeling exhausted.
But our very best defence is simple. Stay well away from anyone who looks like they have a cold.
We don't share tissues, teacups, or toothbrushes. We stand further away when they speak to us. We turn aside if they cough or sneeze.
But now imagine you actually want to catch a cold. Naturally the best way is simply to do the reverse of these things. You get close to people with a cold, you might touch their hand or kiss their cheek when you greet them and you feel great to sit next to them on the bus or use the lift with them. You hang around in thin clothes even when the weather is cold and you delight in wearing damp jeans all day at the office after getting caught in the rain on your way in.
And that's really what you have to do to catch the happiness bug. Some people have it. Get close to them. Don't disinfect your life of happiness. Don't put up barriers to happiness. Delight in the fact that it radiates off people who have it and do everything you can to catch it from them.
This second strand of the programme is all about things you might be doing to immunise yourself or protect yourself from happiness. It's about how to change your behaviour so that you relish happiness, seek it out, love to get near to it, breathe it in from happy people and finally catch the bug.
Just like a cold happiness is everywhere and it's easy to catch unless you try hard not to.
But first you have to recognise the signs.
We can tell when someone has a cold because they sniff, sneeze, cough, and talk in a different voice if their throat is inflamed. And you can tell if someone is happy. They hold themselves differently, their facial expressions are different and their movements are different from those of unhappy people.
Try this. Sit somewhere busy like a cafe. Watch people as they enter, stand around, queue, choose a seat, check their phone or chat. Which of them is happy? How do you know?
A guy smiles sheepishly at a girl who's just entered. He's happy to see her. She kisses him briefly and her eyes are bright as she pulls away. She's happy to be close to him. A man chuckles at a phone message. He's happy. Three girls enter with lots of noise, speaking loudly to each other, giggling, arm in arm. They are happy to be together. These are clear signs.
But there are other signs we notice too. Look again at the girl with her boyfriend. Her back is straight, her arms are loose.
Look at him. He's looking straight into her eyes, his face is straight on to hers and his chin is level or slightly raised.
Look at the man with the phone. He knows he was chuckling out loud but he shows no embarrassment, he's put his phone away now and is smiling at the girl serving coffee as if nothing has happened.
Look at the three girls. They are touching each other's arms and one grabs her friend's hand as she goes to get money out of her purse to pay for their coffees. They are physically at ease and stand very close to each other. They are also taking up a lot of space as they move their arms around gesticulating, and they're making a lot of noise too. They are definitely announcing their presence to everyone in the cafe. 'Look at us, look at us! We're at the top of our game!'
Now study those who look unhappy. Notice their posture, facial expressions and the space they take up. They often try to make themselves smaller, even invisible. They fold their arms tight across themselves, their keep their heads lowered, try not to catch anyone's eye, they speak quietly or not at all, they instinctively gravitate towards a side or corner table, burying themselves silently in a book or gazing out of the window.
There are many other more subtle signs we notice about strangers that tell us about their level of happiness in general, or at least at that moment. Sometimes a few degrees one way or the other of the angle someone holds their head can tell you if they are depressed or just thoughtful. Where they look can suggest anxiety or just pensiveness. Facial colour can indicate the flush of excitement when getting good news or the pallor of disappointment and boredom. It is these tiny variations that actors study and copy when they train in a new part. Animals instinctively understand these signs and so do humans. 'I'm fine,' we say when we greet our colleagues each day, but the way we stand may be giving out a very different story.
Do this exercise. Sit somewhere you are likely to see strangers: a library or a coffee shop for example. Then, without taking much time to study them, see how easy you find it to answer 'yes', 'perhaps' or 'no' for the following statements:
I feel I could trust this person
I would be happy to sit next to this person at a dinner party/wedding
I would like to be part of this person's circle of friends
If this person had the qualifications and experience I would definitely interview them for a job.
Then see how easy it is to agree with the following judgements (for the same strangers or different ones):
This person is confident
This person is/will be an achiever
This person is happy/happier than me
By doing this you should realise how much we judge people by appearances. Not just clothes but every aspect of their body language and the way they interact with others and the space around them. And we don't just judge what they earn or do for a living or their age. We make huge judgements about how they feel, how they operate and how useful they would be in our networks.
Once you've looked at strangers, go on to the second part of the exercise. Apply what you learned to yourself.
Stand in front of a full length mirror. Close your eyes and relax. Visualise yourself standing in the queue at the coffee shop or waiting by the information desk in the library (wherever you carried out the first exercise). Now try to remember a real occasion when you were waiting, not too long ago. Were you in a rush, were you bored, what were you thinking about? Try to get right back into that moment. Let your body act out that moment too. Think about your arms, hands, posture, head. If you had a bag how were you holding it, loosely, clutching it in front of you or swinging it by your side? Were you leaning on the counter, tapping your foot, looking around for spare seats? Visualise yourself waiting in the coffee shop or library just the way you were on that occasion.
Now open your eyes slowly and look at yourself. Don't straighten up or re-arrange your features. Try to keep true to how you were at that time when you were waiting. Do you look happy? Do you look defensive, annoyed, worried, exhausted, bored or any of the other unhappy moods?
If you saw you in that queue would you want to know you? Think back to the statements you scored strangers on. Score yourself. Not on what you know about yourself, your values, your history but on what a stranger sees, someone who is not especially interested in you. Judge yourself only on external appearance and make no excuses. Don't say to yourself that you normally look different but that the time you were visualising was unusual. Just accept what you see in the mirror with as much detachment as you can. How do you rate?
Now straighten up. Really straight.
You might find you have to push your shoulders back a lot further than seems natural. Check by standing sideways that you really are straight. From your stomach pull yourself up to be as tall as you can without looking forced. Hold your head absolutely level. Feel the big space between your shoulders and your chin as your neck pulls up. Relax your arms and hands and leave them loosely by your side. Relax your facial muscles so that there is no shadow of a frown. Feel your scalp relax too. Stand with your feet slightly apart.
Now take in the proud-to-be-alive you. This is the you people should be seeing every day. This is the you that scores highly on all the positive judgements in the exercise above. This is the you who does not put happy people off. This is the you who looks like one of that group already.
So memorise the way you look now and the position of your body. Mentally and physically store how your muscles feel when you stand and look like this. Remember how your face feels when it is not frowning or yawing or looking bored. Because this is the you who can be happy. And this is the you who will attract other happy people into your world.
To catch the happiness bug you need to lay yourself open to it. That means getting close to happy people. But happy people will not want to get close to you if they read your body language as negative. So, look for happy people, sit near them, talk to them, shake their hands or touch their arm whenever is appropriate. Look them straight in the eyes. And stand or sit the way happy people do. Make sure your eyes are direct and alive. Keep your head up and your arms uncrossed. Practise positive happy body language and posture hundreds of times a day.
Being approachable, positive and not afraid to take up space is not only about interacting with happy people. You are teaching your brain to consider yourself happy. It's odd but true. If you 'pretend' to be happy well enough, you will actually start to feel happier.
But you have to be convincing and you have to be reliable. It's no good sitting straight and putting your arms out before you on the desk when you are talking to colleagues at work then sitting slumped on the sofa, your arms crossed and your legs twined around each other as you watch the TV in the evening. Like a good actor, you have to monitor your body minute by minute, adjusting continually. This will take a long time to become second nature. The older you are, the more entrenched are your 'natural' gestures and posture. So older people will take longer to change. In fact you may need to keep reminding yourself for years. But don't give up. It does get easier. And it has very positive benefits.
Because not looking happy is dangerous.
An animal in the wild that slinks away, cowering, says 'I am defeated'.
Is this what people see when they look at you? Rounded shoulders, arms protecting your soft centre, back against a hostile world, head held low, eyes downcast? Humans use exactly the same body language as many animals. In animals we see it, as they do, clear as day. In ourselves we make up stories for why these rules don't apply to us. But they do. A defeated animal is not happy, in fact it is probably near death. The signals you give out tell everyone about your sense of self-worth, your life force, your happiness. They even tell you about these things! So step one on this part of your happiness programme journey is to look the part, however much you have to act.
Because if you look like a loser you are one. And losers are not happy people.
Later, after finishing this programme, if you get a day when you're feeling low, think for a moment what your posture is at that very moment. Have you got out of the habit of 'looking' happy? Straighten up immediately and relax your limbs. Hold up your head, push down your shoulders and remember how the happy you stands. It should improve your mood straight away.
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