Join the pack

Strand Three: Build a stronghold

Unit Two: Networks

 

Humans like getting together. Unlike the polar bear, we live our lives in the pack.

What is your pack?

It's the groups you are part of: your kin, your tribe and your clan.

The first of these groups is family, your kinship group. Here you are accepted without question. Whether you, or indeed the rest of the group, like it or not, you are definitely part of this group.

Then there are other groups you belong to based around sports, religion, hobbies, socialising, work, your neighbourhood and your children's friendships. To a greater or lesser extent you have to earn a place in these groups.

Your tribe is the people you mix with out of choice. These are friends and people you share leisure activities with. You get along best in a tribe if you dress the same, hold the same values, socialise in the same ways or play the same sports. People join or leave the tribe as things change in their lives. So its numbers change constantly and the centre of power changes too.

The clan is your work group. More organised and with an obvious structure, your clan expects you to pull your weight. Clans are proud of being distinct from others and are quite willing to wipe out neighbouring clans if things get tough. Rather than tartan identifying modern day clans it is the brand and the logo.

Your home is your first stronghold. Your second is made up of your kin, tribe and clan. These are your networks, literally your safety nets.

To be happy and resilient we need to build supportive networks. And if they overlap a bit and we can intertwine them at the edges then that makes them all the better and stronger. You might feel networks are all about getting a job or selling life insurance. You might feel networking is one of those unpleasant modern skills that you can afford to deride as sham and inauthentic.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Humans are animals that live in hierarchical groups, even if we also enjoy being alone or in a couple. To be happy we need to have a pack, a network, where we belong and we are known. We don't have to lead every group, but we need to recognise how we fit in and what the unwritten rules of membership are.

The first place to find the threads of a network is inside your family. Think about all your kin still alive. How many do you talk to, exchange news and gossip with, plot and plan with, give and accept help and advice from? You may interact like this with your partner and children, but beyond this circle how wide does your family network spread?

Have you given up contact with some relatives because you've moved away, geographically or socially? Leaving home and moving to a new area helps ensure that our offspring are strong and healthy because we meet and marry new people and enlarge the gene pool. But that doesn't mean we can't mix with our brothers, sisters, cousins and parents as well.

We might have gained a different view of life from meeting people from other backgrounds but it's important we don't lose our place in our first network: our family. We don't need to even like them very much. We just need to recognise that they are key to building our stronghold and therefore to improving our chances of happiness.

Do this exercise.

Think about each of your close relatives. Do you chat with them, remember their birthdays or meet up for family gatherings? If not, why not? What stops you? Can you change these feelings? Can you agree to disagree about life with them? Can you tell yourself a past injustice has now got to be overlooked? Are you jealous or envious of them? Or do you just feel they are boring (in other words, of no use to you)? Whatever is stopping you keeping in contact make every effort to get over it. Because this blood relative network is the one you will need if disaster ever strikes. Against all their better judgement and personal prejudices they will take you in, help you, forgive you, or whatever else you need. But only if you have kept in touch, only if they believe you are all enmeshed together in the same network.

If you have close relatives whom you rarely contact, decide to make the first move in the next week. It doesn't need to be anything important. It just needs to be 'rubbing up alongside' - asking for their news or how their children are doing. You might believe this sudden interest will backfire. The likelihood is that it will not. Because when you make someone a part of your network you become a part of theirs. And networks mean strength through security. You may feel the strength-giving is all on your side. It is not. You may not yet know how these people can be a positive influence on your life, perhaps you will never need to find out, but the potential is there.

Mentally map out this, your closest network, and identify where the weak links are. Then start knitting up these links. Just as fishermen constantly check over their nets to sew up the parts that have torn, so you need to check over your family network regularly to ensure it is as strong as it can be.

You will find that time spent doing this not only offers insurance for the future but, because it is so deeply embedded in the human psyche, you will feel happier just by mending the net. Sounds unlikely? You will be surprised!

Now do the same for your tribe: the people you hang out with. And then for your clan: the people in your company or industry.

Are you a strong part of these networks or do you prefer to stay on the side-lines, criticising? These are the people who will help you out as long as they feel you are a reliable part of their networks. They are your stronghold in times of difficulty. You may rarely need their help, but knowing you are not alone allows you to live a fuller,happier life, one where you can afford to take a few risks.

If you feel low sometime in the future, look again at your kin, your tribe and your clan. How well have you managed to strengthen them? Are there unrepaired rips? A few dropped stitches in knitting don't seem to matter much until you put the jumper on. Then, under pressure, those slipped stitches start to run right down the garment and very fast the whole thing unravels. Is that what's happened to you?

Smile! You’re on TV!

Strand Two: Catch the happiness bug

Unit Two: Smile!

When we have a photo taken we smile. Why? Because a photo is a lasting record of ourselves and we want to be remembered as a happy person, even if we're not.

But why such a universal wish to be recorded as happy?

Because happy people are fully alive and are valued as part of their group. Who would want to be recorded as anything less?

When we don't look happy we display the signs we noted in the first unit of this strand. Our arms are often crossed, protecting the soft areas of our body and vital organs (we are threatened, frightened). Our back, the part of our body that most effectively protects us, is rounded, offering the greatest area towards the world (we expect to be attacked). Our legs are probably held together or crossed hiding our genital area (sex, therefore procreation, is not what we want). Our neck is shortened as we pull our shoulders up and our head down (we are fearful of an unseen assailant from behind). Our voice is low, our gestures restrained and our eyes down to make us as inconspicuous as possible (we don't want to start any trouble because we don't think we'd win).

In the Stone Age anyone exhibiting this body language would have been seen as someone to steer clear of. After all, what could they offer the hunting group? The lame, the injured, the loser in the fight for supremacy - they are 'a drag'. They slow the pack down, they need help but are unlikely to be able to repay it, they are unreliable.

We've looked at the importance of standing tall, but think about all the other gestures that make people look happy, glad to be alive and valued by others.

And first among these is the smile.

Who smiles a lot? Celebs on chat shows. Use them to learn the art of looking happy.

Think of the male celebrity lounging on the sofa on the chat show. His arms are thrown wide across the back of the sofa and his legs may well be open wide too. (The fashion for young men to wear white socks with dark trousers highlights the position of the feet. Men who adopt this fashion seem more than usually keen to sprawl with wide open legs announcing their lack of fear, and the availability of their genitals, to the world.) Back to our celeb! His head is up, his eyes bright, he makes a lot of noise, using the full range of his voice including shouting and laughing. He's at the top. He's happy (or a great actor) and even though people may not like him they want to be near him. This man is signalling a strong determination to live. He's a champion and we can't help but be impressed.

Female celebrities will sit very straight (as only the young and strong can do without even trying), they will be less likely to throw their arms over the back of the sofa but they will lean across and touch the host or the person next to them on the sofa from time to time ('look at me, I'm not frightened of anyone'). Their legs will probably be tight together or crossed but they may well wear bright shoes (rather than white socks) and a short skirt to direct attention to a just-out-of-your-reach genital area. They will smile almost continuously and flash their eyes, as if exceptionally interested in the other people on the show. They will flutter lengthened eyelashes and break easily into laughter. These signals suggest youth, health and vitality - ideal mating stock! They are displaying a determination to live life to the full.

I am not suggesting all celebrities are happy. I suggest they are actors who know how to look happy. And so their body language is worth studying. You are unlikely to need to use all the elements of the celebrity act. They are vying for success in front of millions so can't afford to be too difficult to understand. Their messages are direct and clear. But notice how being, or acting, happy is key to their ambitions to draw people towards them and their music, books or films. They know that right-thinking people want to get close to happiness, to catch that bug.

So now that you know how to stand up straight, decide on what other body language you will use to give off an aura of happiness. Sit straight if you're a woman but reach out and touch people. Let your arms extend the space you take up if you're a guy. Whilst l find the bright socks and open legs lounge irritating (but then I'm more interested in lifetime provider than this body language advertises!), a man with the confidence to gesture enthusiastically, to throw an arm along the back of a sofa, to laugh loudly, announces a will to live that I always want to get close to.

Finally if you can only make one change this week make it this. Smile!

Make a conscious effort to start every conversation or comment with a brief smile. It doesn't need to be a broad smile just the faintest of twitches at the corners of your mouth and a slight raising of the top eyelid and pushing out the skin at the outside corners of your eyes. Humans are so adept at reading body language that this is all it takes for a person to know you are 'inwardly' smiling. And do the same at the end of every conversation or comment too.

If this sounds impossible in certain circumstances, it isn't. If you are going to say something negative (though you may want to rethink this is many cases) a slight smile puts both you and the other person in a different mood. A big grin signals aggression but a twitch of the facial muscles is positive. Try it. Try it often. Try it every time you speak.

I have watched in awe as a colleague has spoken up at meetings with strong unequivocal criticism then flashed a sudden momentary smile just as she finishes speaking. Her criticism is taken seriously and she gains kudos with her colleagues and boss rather than being side-lined as a trouble-maker as others making similar comments often are. I have learnt a lot from this happy and successful person.

I have also learnt a lot from watching colleagues who drop their eyes as they pass my desk so that it's almost impossible to smile at them. They never say 'good morning' when they come in to work. They just hang their coats up and get right down to it. Shyness? A wish to give full value and not waste company time? You can call it whatever you like but the fact remains these are not the people who tend to be successful, or happy.

So, the exercise today: smile - whatever the situation, whatever your mood. Smile and watch the world smile back. Corny but true!

Get into the rhythm

Strand one - really basic stuff.

Unit two.

Are you getting light directly onto your skin for at least 30 minutes every day? Good. Because now you can turn your attention to getting enough darkness too.

We try to defy our need for darkness because we want to extend the day to watch TV, read or party.

But if humans have lived their lives by the sun for thousands of years it seems likely that we've developed the need for downtime just as we have for uptime. Other growing things have no option but to accept daylight and darkness when they occur, so could we be impairing our health by messing around with these things?

With the advent of electric lighting we have been able to structure our 'day' around the requirements of our job or our pastimes rather than around the sun. Although firelight and candlelight had existed previously, these were expensive in terms of the resources available to most people and would have been used sparingly by the vast majority of humans. It is only in the last hundred years or so that most people have been liberated from the cycle of the earth's twenty-four hour spin and the regular rhythm of light and dark that this causes.

Sunrise is still important on a farm but most of us rise according to our alarm clocks. Sunset is still important if you are gardening but makes little difference if we are inside working at the computer.

Freed from the restrictions of dawn and dusk we increasingly live unpatterned lives. In fact for most of us office hours have become our dawn and dusk. But now even this is changing. We take flexitime. We work from home. Shop hours used to add structure to how we lived but now our local supermarket opens all night. Even TV schedules, which until just a year or two ago, governed how families organised their evenings and weekends, have become irrelevant. We can watch that favourite programme any time we want now.

It is unlikely that these changes in our lives have as little effect as we might like to believe. Doctors have understood for some time that the body works differently at different times of the twenty-four hour cycle. Some vitamins and drugs are now prescribed with a time attached because their effect varies according to the hour we take them. Or put another way, our bodies work differently according to where the sun is in the sky we live under.

Yet we start life very differently. We are trained from our earliest days to adapt our lives to day and night.

I have a friend who is paid large fees to travel round the world to the families of the rich. Her task? To get the newborn baby into a set routine of sleep as fast as possible. Most parents know this rhythm is vital.

Yet other mothers feel guilty about this. They wonder whose benefit it is for. Is it just so they won't be disturbed every night by the baby crying? But this guilt is misplaced. Not only is training a child to fit into the routines of the group essential to its long term happiness but making a distinction between day and night, play and sleep, may well be key to the child's mental and physical health.

One of the first aspects of our lives to suffer when we are anxious or depressed is our sleep. It is as if the power of the sun to control our daily routine is completely lost. We rise groggy and exhausted. We doze early evening. We lie awake most of the night then fall deeply asleep just as the alarm goes off.

We blame poor sleep on our worries.

As we lie awake in the early hours our mind trawls over all that is negative. We see our debts crushing us forever, our business worries impossible to resolve, our partner's behaviour heart-breaking. But as the dawn arrives our spirits rise. In the light we see that there is a way forward to becoming free of our debts, to restructuring our business, to living on after infidelity. We may not feel happy, but we are no longer in the depths of despair.

So perhaps we should blame our worries on poor sleep, not the other way around.

Nobody really knows why our minds wrestle with problems in preference to joys at this time of the night. But if your life is not happy you may well dread the thought of going to bed, knowing those hours of heart-ache lie ahead.

People turn to sleeping pills to get them through. But this programme is about using your own, very basic, very simple, innate abilities to solve as many of your difficulties as possible. In this way you develop confidence in yourself to control your life. Taking a pill reminds you that you can't cope. Feeling out of control makes it impossible to be happy. So work hard on the exercise that follows before resorting to medication, if you are troubled with sleeplessness.

Start the exercise by looking at your working week. Divide the average day into a pie chart. Now make another pie chart for Saturday and another for Sunday. Shade in the hours you need to be working, paid or otherwise. Then add other things that occur including appointments, leisure activities, even favourite TV programmes. Try to make the week look as regular as possible. Now mark out the 7 to 8 hours when you can be in bed. Make these the same time every night.

You now have your daily pattern.

You have a time when you retire and a time when you rise. Alter your activities to fit between these times. Don't alter these times to fit between your activities.

It's easy to cheat on routines when others, such as work or family, are not forcing us to stick to them. It's certainly a lot easier to let your life slide into chaos when you live alone or when you are unemployed. And chaos feels bad. We get depressed. And then our lives get even more chaotic. So treat yourself like a baby! Decide on your bedtime and stick to it.

Whether you feel tired or not, get into bed and out of bed at exactly the hours you have set. It does get easier. And the rewards are massive. Your body will start to wake naturally as the light reaches the level it has grown accustomed to expect on waking. And once your waking has adjusted to a regular time then your sleeping will adjust too. Your body will get used to a certain length of downtime and start to crave it just as much as it craves anything that gives it energy: sugar, starch, excitement.

Here are some tips to bear in mind.

Write down the time you intend to go to bed somewhere you will see it in the evening. (You might like to change these exact hours a little over the year, to allow for the change in the time of sunrise.) Do you often make a hot drink later on? Then put the time on a post-it note next to the kettle. Or set an alarm that will be heard above your music or the TV. It is the time you go to bed that is the most important to make into a habit, the morning will be reasonably easy as long as the time to go to bed is adhered to.

Make your bedroom a quiet, clear and calming space that you look forward to retiring to. Put clothes and other reminders of your waking hours away out of sight. Make sure the temperature is right. Open a window to keep fresh air circulating. Keep out street lights and noise as far as possible. But it is unlikely that early humans slept in pitch black caves. All animals need a small amount of information about their surroundings when they sleep, so as to sense danger. So I would suggest having a very dim source of light available all night. This might give an unconscious sense of security and make it easier to give way to deep sleep.

Remove the TV. The realism of the images will trick your mind into staying alert and influence your dreams with information that is irrelevant.

Some people find a book a help to getting off to sleep. But don't read anything that is too close to your own situation as it will prompt your brain to make parallels and keep you awake. Escapist adventure, romance or mysteries are good, especially if you tend to get involved in TV films and stay up late to watch the end. Looking forward to finding out what happens next in your book can encourage you to switch off the TV and get into bed. Or try something less exciting. I find history has me asleep in minutes! If you prefer to listen to your radio, keep the sound low.

Don't worry too much about having to fall asleep. If at first you find yourself reading for hours so be it. Just make sure you get into bed at the same time every night. Then put down your book and switch off the light five minutes earlier than the night before. You'll be surprised that once you give yourself permission to read, you relax more easily.

Avoid lie-ins at the weekend as they'll put your body clock out and probably leave you with a headache. Unless you have someone very gorgeous to share your morning with, make the effort to get out of bed on time and start moving around and doing things. Keep your routine going. Never, ever, allow yourself to fall back to sleep.

The vital thing is to ensure that you are never awake in the early hours of the morning, between about 2 and 5 am. The brain works in a very odd way between these hours. It is as if we have learnt, over thousands of years, never to be awake in the middle of the night, unless there is danger nearby. Then we become alert and wary very fast. So sleeping through these hours is important. Make the decision now to develop your daily routine. Get into the rhythm.

And the first step is to get to bed on time.

No excuses!