Unfolding the map

Strand Four: Your journey

Unit One: Planning your route

A popular way of looking at your life is as a journey along a path. You walk along hoping you are going somewhere nice. Some people plan out their route in great detail, some people just take whichever turning looks good when they come to it. But the plans we make don't always take us where we had thought they would and if we turn right and left whenever a way looks better we can find ourselves back where we started.

If you are following the happiness programme you have decided to change direction. You are starting out on a new road. You know the old one and it didn't lead where you hoped. The scenery didn't even look very pleasant along the way. You can see that long road stretching onwards ahead of you, much the same, a few twists and turns perhaps but basically going in the same direction as you have been going for a while now.

The new road beckons. It isn't straight. In fact it begins to look a little scary with its steep hills, hairpin bends, and overhanging trees that make you bend double. But it looks interesting. You think that even if it is hard going you'll see things along the way you'd never have seen on the old road. But especially here at the start it is going to take a lot of concentration, determination and stamina to make progress.

But I make you one promise: the further you travel, the easier it gets.

Though there may be a few places where you're not sure which fork to take, or where there are signs off right and left along roads that look straighter and wider, I want you to know that if you stick on this road things get very much more pleasant and you will find a lot of the way very easy.

Just be aware that if you make up your mind now to take this new road, you will still constantly be tempted to branch off back to the old familiar road. Because the new road takes a bit more effort, that old road will always look easier, wider, flatter. It may look a bit boring or even unpleasant – like walking through a disused industrial area, perhaps – but compared to all the ups and downs, all the picking your way through brambles and getting your feet deep in mud, that old way will often look worth taking once more.

So get clear right now why you are taking this new road.

You didn't think the old road was taking you in the right direction. However easy it looked, you know it was pointless taking it because it was, quite simply, the wrong path.

You know where the old road goes, and you know you want to go somewhere better. So decide to try this new road now, and stick with this wise decision. Better to travel very slowly towards somewhere worthwhile than stride along a path taking you to the wrong place! Besides, once you get going, you'll see that walking up hills gives you a great view when you reach the top. And you'll feel full of enthusiasm to keep going to reach the next peak.

This is the fourth strand of the programme.

I have called it 'Your Journey' because here we will look at how to decide what your happiness goals are and how you might get diverted from attaining them. It will prompt you to think about where your life is going and where you want it to go and to map your route. It will help you decide if your direction needs changing from time to time. And it will help you avoid going round in circles. This strand is all about 'getting back on track' and seeing a purpose in your life and a future that looks good.

As in the other three strands, each unit gives you an exercise to do. Some will be easier and faster to complete than others. Some will need to be repeated again and again as you move forward and into different situations. Think of it as planning your route but needing to look back at the map from time to time, just to make sure you're still going in the right direction.

So, here's the first unit.

This is the point at which you are seriously committing to the longer haul. So give it some reflection.

First of all, what is your destination?

Well, given the name of this book: The Happiness Programme, I'm guessing your destination is happiness or a stronger sense of well-being.

But what does that mean? How will you know if you are going in the right direction and getting nearer to your goal? How will you measure the distance you have travelled?

You may think all you want is to feel a bit happier in general. But that leaves you without the possibility of using a map. Without a route, or a plan, that marks where you are starting from and where you want to finish, it's easy to wander off course and find yourself in the wrong place.

But these two points both take a bit of thinking about. After all, some days you may feel in a pretty good place and other days not. And the end? How can we possibly pinpoint an exact end to this journey? So to help get some rough idea of your start and finish points I suggest you do the following exercise.

Rather than thinking in general terms about what would make you happy I suggest you use a scale of 1 to 10 of how you rate your happiness on seven aspects of your life at present. This will give you a starting point for your journey.

Use 1 for 'deeply depressed' or 'very anxious' and 10 for 'over the moon' or 'blissfully contented'.

1. Stuff
   

How happy are you with the money you have and the house, car, items and services you can afford? Does a lack of money currently affect your happiness?

1. Health
   

Are you worried about your health, your weight, your smoking? Do you often feel out-of-sorts, exhausted and beaten before the day even begins?

1. Love
   

Do you crave love but find yourself saddened by being alone or with someone you don't love?

1. Friendship
   

Do you sit at home alone wishing you were out with friends? Do you see others enjoying being together and wonder why you are never part of the group? Or do you socialise with the wrong set of people because the people you'd like to know, you never get to meet?

1. Work
   

Does your work interest you, challenge you or bring you down?

1. Self-image
   

Does the image you carry of yourself, your body image and your sense of self-worth, make you happy or sad? Do you like yourself?

1. The 'real you'
   

Do you feel down because you under-achieve? Do you have ambitions that would make you happier if you achieved them? Are you proud of yourself? Do you feel the world knows or sees the 'real you'? Would more public recognition of your talents make you happy?

When you've got these seven numbers, circle any which are below 6. These are the areas you need to give special attention to and this programme will help you do this. Your goal should be to bring all these ratings up to at least 6 and some to around 8 or even 9.

Why not 10? Perfect happiness? Well, I'm not sure humans can cope with bliss full time! The moment of swooning in a lover's arms, or hearing you've passed your exam, or opening the front door to the beautiful home you'd always dreamed of owning, these are all moments of ecstasy and score the full 10. But they are moments. They would destroy you if you lived them long term. Look at the effects of pleasure-inducing drugs. Even winning the lottery would wreck most peoples' lives if that was all they had.

Straight tens seem to be dangerous and addictive. Like having an endless supply of chocolate and ending up hating the taste.

Until very recently getting enough of what we needed and wanted (and I believe these are ultimately the same) was tough for the vast majority of the population – it still is for much of the world. Happiness is the feeling of getting these things on occasion. If they are a constant they start to lose their ability to make us happy.

Money, lots of it, is so often cited as the thing that will change our lives for the better that I want to take a moment to look at the validity of this belief.

I have never been rich but, due to certain circumstances, I socialised with some extremely wealthy people at one stage in my life. This gave me the opportunity to assess how money related to happiness.

And I was shocked.

Were these fortunate men and women happy? No more than anyone else was. Just like me and you, they all still needed a six or more on every aspect of their lives. In fact, I would say they were often less happy than the average. They knew their money gave them the ability, in theory, to do whatever they wanted. But their private sense of self-worth was often surprisingly low. Because we equate wealth with being able to do anything, succeed at anything, many felt they were failures because this didn't happen. Added to this was the difficulty of making choices.

When you don't have much, making the right choice is not really very complicated. But imagine you had so much money that you could choose to do anything, travel anywhere, wear whatever you wanted, study whatever subject took your fancy, and pass over any opportunity because you knew it would always be available.

The very wealthy have so much choice in every area of their lives that they find it difficult to select just one thing. And they find it even more difficult to stick to that one thing, when they know everything else is out there for them to try too. They experience the same problems that a toddler does when given twenty Christmas presents at the same time. Things usually end in tears.

And, as they flip flop from one idea to the next, one home to the next, one relationship to the next, they are surprised that their projects don't always work out well. Indeed they harbour a sort of private shame that, even with everything, they can't always achieve what they hope.

Most of us point to lack of money, time or connections as the reasons we fail to do what we plan. Very rich people have all of these in abundance. So they feel they have no excuses for failing. And this makes anyone feel bad.

What about money and loneliness?

Well, the rich I met had no problem finding lovers and friends. Whilst you or I might wait years to bump into someone special, there is a whole army of people tracking the rich and planning carefully how to 'just happen to be there' at the right time. But a few years down the line that love can disappear, usually along with a large slice of their assets! If they avoid fortune hunters by mixing only with other very wealthy people, they find themselves in a sort of social prison. Instead of money giving them the freedom to do whatever they want, it actually restricts them.

So don't pin all your hopes on money, look at all seven aspects of your life carefully.

These seven aspects you have scored cover the main areas of our life and our thinking. They are what make us feel we are happy or sad. And just as we can get addicted to high scores so we can get addicted to low scores. This is depression.

Your aim should be to make measurable progress in areas where you are starting from a mid or low score so that you end your happiness journey on a score above the middle on all aspects. In some areas you may find you have pushed your score up to high.

Just as falling in love or winning a race can make our score hit 10 for a short while, so tragedies can make our score hit 1. We can't live lives perfectly free of tragedy. People we love get ill or die. Our business goes bust and we have to move out of our lovely home. But these tragedies should not leave our scores at 1 for more than a few months at most. The ability to push back up is called resilience. If you follow all the steps of the happiness programme I believe you will have learnt how to develop resilience. Not only will you generally feel happier, as shown by your improved scores, but if a tragedy comes along you will have the ability to recover faster.

Now do this second exercise.

Against each of the seven aspects write down something that you think would make a positive difference. It could be near or far. So you might write down '£100 a week more salary' or 'a penthouse in Manhattan'. These targets will help you to see what you feel is keeping you sad.

Is it really not having more money that's saddening or is it disappointing your family when they want things you can't afford to provide? Is it not having a home worth millions that depresses you or is it feeling you've under achieved compared to others? Is lack of a partner the real source of your sadness or is it that you miss having someone to share your hopes and plans with? Is it not getting your poems published that makes you sad or is it never hearing the words 'you're fantastic!'

This exercise might sound really simple, but it isn't. What you write here tells you where you are heading. It's important to get it right. You don't want to find yourself in a place that's no better than where you are now. So take some time over this. The thinking you put into deciding on your answers is all part of helping you develop the mind-set that will get you there.

If you were given only two minutes to answer the questions above, you would come up with the sort of ideas that popular novels and advertising put forward as things that make us all happy.

I want a beautiful new silver Mercedes (yes, I do actually!) and to be able to park it in front of a wonderful old country house (yes, roses too, I want roses in bloom by the door) and to step out of it looking slim and elegant (I want, for once in my life, to wear heels and a slim skirt) and I want friends and family to wave to me as I arrive (fun, interesting types) because they've been using the pool all day and feel great to be invited (I want to feel appreciated and in demand). None of us work so we're all relaxed and unstressed and cheerful (oh, how I want to feel less tired and have time to call my own).

But take a moment to think about this vision of heaven on earth. What is it about this picture that I find so appealing? What does it tell me about what I lack?

A Mercedes is a machine for getting you from one place to the next without getting wet. Why would I include this in my vision of happiness?

Status.

I have learnt that an expensive car gives the owner status. A Mercedes has become a sort of short-hand for success. So I seem to be telling myself that a lack of success, and public acknowledgement of my value, is making me feel bad. Would a Mercedes solve that? If I really think myself into that person getting out of the car, am I happy? Wouldn't I be happier if I were driving my Mercedes knowing that I had succeeded in building up my own business, or getting my novel published or discovering a cure for cancer? After all, a Mercedes gets dusty when you drive it even once, whereas those other badges of success can never be tarnished.

So perhaps I need to think a lot more about what I would count as real personal achievement. I have to think beyond symbols to actual successes that would make me happy to know I'd achieved. That might be getting my garden accepted for the Open Gardens Scheme or getting elected to the local council or some other thing that people don't put into 'happiness is' ads because they take a bit longer to explain. If I now think myself into the person being complimented on my wonderful garden by a visitor or the person thanking the community for being elected to speak on their behalf, isn't that 'me' the one who's happy?

In this way you will start to build a picture of the sort of happiness you are aiming at which may be very different from what you see in OK magazine. All the things I mention above would be great to have, but on their own they wouldn't allow me to achieve real happiness.

The rambling old house? I want to feel I have a real home where I am rooted and unlikely to move from. When I get home I want to feel happy that I'm back in my own space which looks welcoming, safe and beautiful. But the essentials of this vision I could get from a cottage with a tiny garden - as long as I'd planted the roses the year before. So perhaps the scale of what we want is less relevant than the essentials.

Slim and elegant in heels and a slim skirt? Let's be honest, I hate wearing heels. I like the idea but hate the fact. But I would feel happier if I were slimmer and fitter. So perhaps we need to clarify what it is about our visions of happiness that we could enjoy in reality, given our personality, stature and any other things we can't change about ourselves and our circumstances. I might set my happiness goal at losing ten pounds and taking part in a half marathon. If I think about it, finishing that race would make the real me a lot happier than wearing killer heels!

Friends and family to welcome me home? Yes, friends and family are certainly a key to my happiness. But would the sort of people who don't work but hang around pools drinking Martinis really be the folk I'd feel good hanging out with? I'd feel much happier chatting to someone involved in scientific research or the arts, if I'm honest. It isn't friends that will make me happier, it is having people I can turn to informally to hear about what's happening in areas of life I never get to see: people who make me think, make me glad to be alive and make me expand my horizons. What they look like is pretty much irrelevant when I come to think about it. So I might set my happiness goal at finding three interesting people that I get on easily with and meeting up with close family for supper every couple of weeks to catch up and keep in touch.

And no work? Sounds great - relaxed, unstressed and no longer tired at the end of the day. But what am I going to do with all that energy? The word 'boredom' suggests itself to me when I think through my image of perfect happiness.

A more sustainable vision of happiness might be one where I had a feeling of having done what I set out to do for the day and was able to relax guilt-free and satisfied, even if tired. It might include sleeping really soundly and stilling the inner conversations in my head that churn over the bad choices I blame myself for making. I might see happiness as having a full, interesting and worthwhile day, a good night's sleep to look forward to and the knowledge that I will leap out of bed early the next morning because I have so much I want to get done and so much energy to do it with.

I know these thought-through pictures do not have the same wow factor as the perfect world I first came up with. But the 'perfect' picture is just a string of well-used symbols and I have now put my own personality into the picture. By thinking through what really would constitute a happier me I have been able to set goals for the happiness programme but also get a bit clearer about why I am not too happy at present.

Done carefully this exercise has many benefits. It will help you set off on your journey in the right direction: the direction that suits you, your personality, your needs and your circumstances.

When you've got these lists made out, write them down in your diary. You should look at them at least once a week.

Change the scores when you feel ready to. Change the items if they seem less important or central to your happiness as you go along. This programme is about making major changes in your life so it is likely that some of these items may need to change too.

But always have something which seems to sum up clearly what you need to achieve in order to feel you have reached your goal. That will give direction to your journey. This is your map. If you decide to change direction a bit because you want to get to a slightly different place, this is just fine. But don't travel with no aim at all.