Who said life was fair?

Strand One: Really basic stuff

Unit Three: It's not fair

One of the expressions we use, to others or to ourselves, when we are considering why we feel bad is 'It's not fair.'

So you're heartbroken your boyfriend has left you: 'I could have gone off with his best mate, he was always after me and he was gorgeous too, but, no, I was engaged to Sean and I stuck with him. Even when Sean got drunk and threw up over the sofa, I stuck with him. Even when his job moved I left my job and moved with him. Then the first time some girl in his office comes on to him he's off like a shot. It's not fair.' Why is it that this phrase so often accompanies our unhappiest moments?

To answer this I believe we have to look back to our childhood.

One of the tasks for parents is to get their child to fit into the group. Whilst enjoying our child's independence and individuality, we know that they have to learn to be part of a family, a group of friends, a school and ultimately many other groups as they grow older.

Groups get together because they share a common goal which might be easier to achieve together than separately, whether that is avoiding loneliness, making money or saving the planet. They hold together because they have rules which members uphold, even if they don't always agree with them. So a political party will hold together while certain members agree to disagree over aspects of policy but will fall apart when enough members feel the need to disagree openly and demand radical changes.

When a child is born a new group comes into existence: the family. The goals of a family are ultimately to provide the next generation with the means of survival though they might also include avoiding loneliness, creating support for the parents' old age and ensuring the passing on of not only genes but influence, values and/or assets. All families have rules. It's the parents' right to make these rules and decide how they will enforce them.

'Don't jump on the sofa with your shoes on,' is the rule in Adam's home. But today he wants to jump on the sofa straightaway. He knows the rule. He considers whether the pain of his mother's annoyance/withdrawal of her love/loss of his right to have a friend to play outweighs the joy of jumping on the sofa. Decides it doesn't and reluctantly removes his shoes.

But a moment later his brother comes in. He jumps onto the sofa to play. He is wearing his shoes. Their mother comes in. 'Mum. Look. John's on the sofa with his shoes on,' says Adam, full of self-righteousness. But their mother is in a hurry: 'Oh never mind. Come on you two we're going to the park.'

Adam is hurt. Why does the rule not apply? Why did he not get praised and his brother told off? In the past he's learnt the hard way that verbal rules from his mother are binding contracts. But that suddenly seems not to be the case.

Adam loves to have his father hug him. When Adam gets good grades at school he's noticed that his father is really happy and if Adam puts his arms around his father then his Dad will hug him back. It's a moment of sheer delight for Adam. So he usually works hard at school to make sure he gets as many of those hugs as he can. One day he comes home with a note from the teacher saying that he's been given an award for making progress in Maths. He presents the note to his father and waits shyly for the hug. 'Good lad, Adam. Now see if you can pull up your grades in English too. OK. I've got to rush. I've got a meeting in half an hour.' And his father leaves.

Adam is bewildered. Where was the hug? He'd worked especially hard to get a hug. He goes off to his room feeling down.

Adam is learning that people let you down by not giving you what they promise. It's not fair. And it is confusing and saddening. It makes you want to give up putting any effort in at all.

Most groups are not as clear about rules as a family is.

A personal relationship has unspoken rules, lots of them. We make them on the basis of our own family's rules in general. So we might have a rule which says: 'If one of us tries hard at something, making a good dinner for example, then they deserve to be thanked, praised and/or hugged.' But the other person may have a rule which says: 'Both of us should do our best to please the other person without expecting special treatment because that shows we respect each other as adults.'

When a specially good dinner is served and not even a thank you is forthcoming one partner is left feeling 'It's not fair. What's the point of this relationship if we don't live by the rules.' We've learnt that people let you down over rules from time to time. We know that makes us feel bad. Here it is happening again. Except that the rules were never explicit or agreed upon. And unlike in a family, in a relationship of equals neither partner has the right to set whatever rules he or she wants.

If you are feeling let down by a partner, a friend or a colleague and this is making you sad it is time to realise that fairness is just a concept used by parents to get their children to conform. Many groups we join spell out the rules but many do not.

Some religious groups spell out the rules in relationships but most of us form this special group of two without ever seeing the need to spell out every last rule of behaviour. Fair for you is not fair for the other person. Yet it really hurts when you feel you have been treated unfairly. This is because it hurt so much when you were very young. But you're not young now. Time to grow up. Time to unlearn the pain of childhood disappointment and learn to speak up about what you want (your rules). You'll have to be ready to compromise with your partner's or colleague's rules of course.

But perhaps you'd rather just leave it all unsaid. For important things, be open about what you want. If, on reflection, these things sound too trivial to discuss, then let go of your rules. It's the only way you will stop telling yourself that life is so unfair. Unless you are in the army or a child or under contract, the rules are rarely spelled out. So there is no fair or unfair.

So the woman in our first example will only feel better when she tells herself: 'I believed we both agreed on a rule of sticking by each other through thick and thin and being faithful whatever the temptations. But obviously that was my rule and he didn't have the same one. He must have had a rule that we should stick by each other unless the temptation was so great we felt we couldn't resist. Do I think he has enough other good qualities to discuss the difference in our rules in the hope of repairing our relationship? Or is faithfulness, whatever the temptation, such an important rule to me that it shouldn't need discussing? Perhaps a man without a rule of absolute faithfulness could never make me happy, because he must have learnt very different values when he was young. If that is the case then we'll probably see most things differently, especially if we ever have children to make rules for.' It's no longer a case of her going over and over the unfairness, getting more and more upset, just as she did when she was a child. It's a case of making a decision. It's about growing up and taking control of her life. She has to decide whether it's worth trying to get Sean to agree on a faithfulness rule – even if this is a compromise.

Lots of couples stay together despite unfaithfulness. That's because, on balance, it's better to be together than apart. It might be for security, money, or for the sake of the children. If compromising on her rule is unthinkable, she needs to take action. As young children we are bound to our parents because we need them to feed, clothe, house and protect us. So we do nothing and we suffer when 'it's not fair'. This is usually not the case with a partner today. We can take action. We don't need to suffer in silence.

I'm not saying that giving up a relationship you had high hopes for is easy. It will make you sad. But you need to build resilience to make sure that sadness does not just go on and on eating away at your happiness. When you were a child, alone in your room, thinking about an injustice you felt that dreadful sense of being unable to control your life. When family rules are broken we wonder what there is in life that we can rely on. But then something happens to take our minds off this. TV, a friend calling round, teatime, homework. The hurt might stay there inside like a mental scar but we move on. When we are older we hold onto the hurt for longer. It takes a new romance or something equally important to get us to leave go of the pain unless we accept that we have to take control, make a decision and move on, wiser.

'It's not fair' is an echo of childhood where rules were spelled out. But you're not a child. You have to accept that fairness is not something that is easy to demand in adult relationships.

Your exercise. Think about a situation that you tend to replay in your mind which you feel is unfair. Put into words the rules you feel have been broken. Ask yourself if these rules have ever been spelled out. Are they your own rules or are they the rules that everyone involved agrees to? If they are just your own rules decide how important they are.

Then make a decision to act.

Spell out the rules and tell the other person involved that you want them to agree to these rules too. You will have to be willing to discuss this and possibly compromise. They might say no to your rules. Perhaps they can't see the point of your rules, they like their own rules and don't intend to change. So is it time to move on? Or is it time to change? Is it time to let go of your rules and adapt? Either way you have taken control of your life. Now, instead of feeling 'it's so unfair' you can think, 'I want my rules even if it means that now I live alone,' or 'I would prefer my rules, but I've decided to compromise because what really matters is being with my partner.'

Your inner dialogue around fairness might be about a relationship, a friendship, something shared in the family, how you are paid at work or even the service you get from your garage. Whatever it is about it is important to be really clear about what rules are being broken. Then to decide whether to let the rules go because it will cost you too much to insist upon them, or to discuss the rules with the person that's breaking them. Only in this way do you stop churning this sense of injustice around your head and actually do something to change the situation.

Take the associated emotion away from the facts. Be clear what the underlying disagreement is. Then take action. You will find you feel a sense of release from negative, damaging feelings. You will be happier.

Do this exercise every time you begin to obsess about the injustice of a situation. Refuse to feel bad. Take control. Make a decision. Take action. Feel healthy and free of stressful emotion.

Ouch! That hurts!

Strand Four: Your journey

Unit Two: Two ways of seeing the road ahead

 

Take a moment to think about how you got where you are now. Are you where you'd like to be, in terms of happiness? If not, why not?

Do you find yourself saying things like 'My partner left me, that's why I'm unhappy' or 'My company made me redundant, that's why I'm depressed.'? Do you see life as a series of good and bad, lucky and unlucky, events that happen to you?

I believe most of us go through life feeling we are simply walking along minding our own business when suddenly someone or something ambushes us. And, thud, there we are licking our wounds, hardly able to get up off the ground. But this presupposes that other people plan our downfall. I think this is rarely the case. After all, they also feel they are just walking along minding their own business.

The reality is that we all walk our own road, nobody walks it for us. What one person sees as heart-breaking another shrugs off as experience. Some people are devastated by events, others are not. We make from events our own story. The story is not written for us in advance. We write the story of our lives. We decide to let events depress us or make us angry. And we decide to let events teach us a lesson or roll off us like water off a duck's back.

Are you thinking, 'I certainly didn't decide to let my life be sad. This bad feeling I have was never a choice I made.'

But I believe it must be. It is our brain's interaction with the outside world that gives us ideas about life. My brain is different from your brain, just a little. So my world is different from yours too. The same event will be felt differently by each of us. Even if the same things happen to us our stories, the stories we tell ourselves and others to explain what reality or life is, those stories will be different stories. We make our world, our world does not make us. We make our happiness and our sadness. These things are not lurking around ready to pounce on us.

Your life is your own journey. You will tell yourself it is unbearable or heavenly. It is what you say it is. It has no reality beyond your own brain.

Which is all very well in theory. But why are we not all totally happy all the time? Who would choose unhappiness?

Unhappiness is a form of pain. All pain is a warning. It says in no uncertain terms: 'Stop doing that.' If we ignore the pain we feel when a knife nicks our thumb we might cut right through our thumb making our life, and survival, all the more difficult from then on. So most of us are pretty good at doing exactly what physical pain tells us to do, and fast.

Mental pain: depression, sadness, anguish, exists for the same reason. It says 'Stop doing that.' But it would seem that we are not so good at following orders when it comes to our mental life. Quite often we keep right on doing the same thing until, metaphorically, we cut our thumb off. Not only does that hurt a great deal but it leaves us impaired. We seem to think that if we just put a brave face on things they'll get better. So instead of changing our behaviour, doing things differently, we sometimes hope we'll get away with it. Something will stop that knife cutting through our thumb even if we do not stop it. Or somehow the pain will just go away if we ignore it.

We choose to interpret certain events as happy to encourage ourselves to do more of them. And we choose to interpret other events as unhappy to encourage ourselves to change course. So sometimes choosing unhappy is the right thing to do. It is going to stop us incapacitating ourselves. The problems only start when we don't listen to the warning and carry on doing the thing that we are being told to stop (telling ourselves to stop), the thing causing the pain.

A healthy reaction to sadness or anxiety is to locate where it is coming from and change our behaviour fast. This might mean thinking about things from a different point of view, finding out more about why something has happened, or quite simply putting it out of our mind. But it always means change. If we don't change, the pain just goes on and on and may permanently affect our happiness.

Taking the decision to try a new road, take a new direction, do something differently, is a good start.

Try this exercise: Is there someone who is making you unhappy? A partner or former partner? Your boss? Your teenage son? Think about what it is that is causing you pain. As an example, let's imagine that your wife has left you. You go over and over her words as she stormed out of the door that last morning. And every time you think about those moments you feel deeply depressed. 'You are utterly selfish. I make a lovely home, make sure the kids are healthy and happy, invite friends to supper so we have a social life. And what do I get in return? Nothing. You come home late without ringing me, spend the weekend playing golf and forget I even exist. Well, from now on I don't. You can do your own bloody cooking and cleaning. You're worthless. I'm wasting my life on you. Goodbye and good riddance!'

You feel the criticism is so unjustified. You spend hours at work so she and the children can have a nice home, holidays. Playing golf on Sunday is the only time off you get. Is it too much to ask to have a few hours of pleasure? Does she really think you are worthless after all you've done?

Put a chair directly across from where you are sitting. Imagine your wife on that chair saying those words as she gets up to leave.

Now go and sit on that chair yourself. Imagine you are your wife. Sit like your wife sits. Get right into the part.

Now look across at the chair you've vacated and see your husband (you) sitting opposite. But instead of getting up and leaving, bring out more of why you want the relationship to stop. What sort of a man do you see sitting there opposite you? What do you like and what do you not like about him? Get right into your wife's mind. See yourself as she sees you. Now carry on speaking where she left off. Take her part. See things from her perspective. What is really annoying her? Where does she feel the unfairness lies? Why does she see you as worthless? What did she hope you would be when she married you? What would need to happen for her to find you worth something after all? Keep speaking. Say everything you think she might say. Don't wonder if what she's saying is true or fair. Just say what she sees as true.

Now come and sit back in your own chair and take on your own character again. You have taken heed of the pain you felt and you've stopped thinking things through from your own perspective, you've thought about things from hers too. You've stopped doing what you were doing and you've started doing something different. This exercise should help you to feel less depressed, less out of control. It might even have opened your eyes to how you might change other behaviours. If you believe you are worthy of her what is she not seeing? How can you show her what she hasn't noticed? Could your marriage be saved? What would you need to do or say?

Now you are thinking of this unhappy event as an opportunity not a disaster. An opportunity suggests that you have some control over a situation, a chance of some sort of successful outcome. It is difficult to be depressed when you see hope for a better future. Some of your pain is going away. Don't waste what you've learnt. Get in touch with her. Check whether you are clearer about what she feels. If you think there are things she isn't seeing that make you worthy let her know about them. If things go badly it might mean doing the exercise again as new things happen. But it is one way of disrupting the hold of unhappiness over you and taking control of your life. See life through different eyes.

You can do the same exercise in any situation. You've been made redundant after all the work you've put in over the years. You just can't get over the injustice. You feel as if someone has just judged you and you came out as worth nothing. See the interview through the eyes of your boss. How does he feel about making you redundant? Why is he doing it? What does the company have to weigh up? What other choices does it have? Why doesn't it take them? Does your boss agree with decisions that have been made higher up? How will he feel when he goes home tonight? What value can he see in you that he feels unable to talk about because it might undermine what he has to do? How would he advise you go about finding another job? What does he think you do best?

Is he right? Are you better than he realises? Why are your talents hidden? How can you show people what you can do in the future so this doesn't happen again, unjustly? If you think your boss feels bad about what he has to tell you (and it's almost certain that he does) what can he do to help you and make himself feel less bad? Does he have any connections he can use on your behalf? How can you ask him to give you this help? And so on.

Again, you are changing viewpoints in order to see the same events through different eyes. Now you can start to see you may not have been judged of little value. You can see that asking for help is not a gesture of desperation or weakness but a way of helping both of you to get over the bad feelings this event has left you with. You can see how you might start taking control rather than getting angry or getting more deeply depressed.

To change your way of thinking it is important to literally change your position and sit on the other seat and to feel yourself in the body of the other person by taking on their body language, their gestures, their characteristic way of sitting and speaking. I don't believe simply thinking things through has anything like the same power to change your perspective.

If you do this exercise as suggested you will have taken the first steps down a very new road. It is a road that is very likely to lead you towards where you want to go: happiness. Remember this exercise when people seem unfair or cruel for no reason. It's you who give them these names. Sit in their chair and see how they see their actions. It will allow you to take control of your life and your emotions. You will have heeded the warning your mental pain is making and stopped looking at things in a way that is not only useless but is probably dangerous to your long term mental health.

Get up, cross the room and give it a go!

 

 

 

 

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!

 

 

 

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.

Home is where the heart heals

 

The third strand of The Happiness Programme is about building a stronghold.

You can't be out there achieving, being confident, glowing with happiness full-time. Sometimes you have to retreat to a safe place and build up your energy stores ready to take on the outside world again. Sleep forces us to do this on a daily basis and it's one reason why sleep is vital to humans. But sometimes sleep just isn't enough. Things come along in your life which knock you for six. And this is when you need a stronghold.

There are basically three types of stronghold: the cave or den, the pack and the champion.

This is the first unit of this strand. In this unit I'm going to ask you to think about the first of these strongholds: your cave, or den.

What is a den for children or a cave for early man?

It is basically a place to hide. Just as an animal will run away when endangered and retreat to a safe place when a threat comes along that it calculates it cannot deal with head on, so humans need to do the same thing. Today humans call this the home. It might be a bedsit, it might be a palace. Size is irrelevant. It is safety that counts. It has to be a place where we can literally close the door on the outside world and yes, hide, inside.

Children from an early age, and certainly by their teens, demonstrate the need of a den. Signs on their bedroom door along the lines of 'Keep out' mean just that, however amusing they are. This instinctive need of a hiding place where they can recuperate is clear. Rows break out if they feel someone has been into their den uninvited. Parents despair of children who disappear for hours or days at a time into their private space. But the stresses on humans moving from childhood to adulthood are massive and sometimes hiding out is the only option to retain sanity and, ultimately, happiness.

Home-making used to be lauded in the fifties but now we need two incomes to support a mortgage it's seen as something that just happens naturally. But women know that this is not the case.

Making a home which fulfils the needs of a family should not be regarded as of minor importance. It is a mainstay of confident, achieving and happy people. A house people hate to come back to at the end of the day, a house echoing with rows and sarcastic comments, a house that allows all and any to wander in and out of it, such houses are not homes.

A home is a refuge. Everyone living there should feel they are at peace, even if that means giving everyone their own room and accepting that they may not want to mix much. Peace means compromises have to be agreed about noise. Safety means it must be a place where everyone can truly physically relax in the knowledge that the outside world cannot force its way in.

That means personal jibes about threats and failures outside the home must be silenced. No harping on about your child's poor school grades, your partner's failure to get promotions at work, your brother's lack of friends. These are dangers in the outside world. You come home to shut them out. Complaining about them brings them into the house and that destroys the point of a home as a refuge from a dangerous and threatening world.

What is useful, however, is acknowledging the home as more than an individual space (unless you live alone, of course!).

Whilst everyone needs as much private time and space as can be given them, they can also benefit from being part of a group. So plotting and planning are excellent home-making activities. Couples and families should regroup in the safety of their home to plan strategy. Ambitions should be discussed. Future plans announced. Ways of dealing with external threats talked through. This aspect of the den is highly valuable.

Speech allows humans to plot, plan and co-operate with a subtlety quite beyond animals (as far as we know). Nowhere is this more essential than in the home. That is why dreams, hopes and aspirations, however far-fetched they might sound, should never be stamped on. A major role of the home is to provide a space where strategy can be trialled. How will each individual achieve the goals they have set themselves? Do others in the home have experience to share that can warn against pitfalls or push the individual on even further in the right direction?

Criticism or laughter at another's hopes simply allows the baying horde from outside to invade the den. If children are open to the threats of the outside world even while they are inside their own home they will find happiness difficult to achieve. If partners feel unfree to express their aspirations, their relationship will be vulnerable. Staying together under the same roof will seriously threaten the happiness of both partners.

Parents need to provide a safe refuge and planning HQ for their children. And couples need to provide a place of peace and free expression for each other. This is what home-making is. And home-making is a major component of developing the ability to be happy.

So what if you live alone as so many people do?

Well you only need to look at the massive market in online partner-finding to know that instinctively most humans know they are stronger in a group. But if you live alone you must make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

First you must be aware that the den, your home, is just as vital to your happiness as it is to a family's. Spend time making your home welcoming (to you) rather than seeing it as a place to flop between work and meeting friends. Spend time there, relax there. It is not a changing room or a hostel. It is your home. You cannot plot and plan as a couple can but you can think through your strategies for dealing with dangers outside and work through ideas for how to achieve your private goals.

Your inner dialogue has to be your 'group'. Not ideal but sufficient.

Close the door, look around you at a space you like, unwind for as long as it takes, sip a drink and think through your encounters with the outside world. What hopes do you have? What constructive plans can you develop to make your hopes a reality? It might be a quieter evening or weekend than you dream of but compared with a family home you have far more time and peace for rational thought. Compared with being part of a couple you have absolute freedom to make your own choices and concentrate on making yourself happy without regard for how this might impact the choices and happiness of your partner. Not ideal but it has its compensations.

The exercise based on this unit is to look around your home and see if it welcomes you and your family when you come in. Is it somewhere all of you love to get back to? Is it a real den – a place to hide out, regroup and gather one's strength? Is it a safe place? Do you enjoy spending time there? Do your family actually like being at home?

If you answer 'no', or 'not sure', to any of these questions, then now is the time to start making some small changes.

Think carefully about what each member of your family needs from the home. And plan how you can offer this. You don't need to spend lots of money. Just clear up, organise, perhaps redecorate or put flowers out, find spaces for everyone's gadgets and places where every member of the family feels they have the right to shut everyone else out and relax in the way they want to.

Once you understand the purpose of the home, it is easier to set rules which let each family member get the most from it. It also becomes more obvious why annoying things like clearing up and cleaning are vital.

Your home, whether it's just for you alone, or for you and a partner, or for you and a family, has to fulfil the basic purpose of a den or cave. It has to be safe from the outside world. It has to be a place ideas and hopes can be discussed without ridicule. It has to be warm and comfortable. It has to be easy on the eye.

A house that makes you sigh with resignation as you step through the front door is not a home. Is it the overflowing washing basket that depresses you? Or that untidy pile of bills? Or the unfinished DIY project in the sitting room? Or the knowledge that you can't express yourself openly because your partner or your children will treat you with scorn? Or the feeling that everyone treats the place like a hotel?

So take a good look at this space you call home. Does it fulfil its purpose in aiding everyone's ability to develop resilience to the knocks life brings? If not, start to sort it out at once. Do something every day to improve its effect on the mental health of those who live there. Set out some rules for yourself and your family. Explain why those rules are important. Explain what you want your home to become – a safe, warm and welcoming environment where everyone is free to dream and plan.

Listen to what your partner and your family need for this to become reality. Their needs might be different from yours. You'll all need to agree on compromises. Accept that privacy is not about hating others, it's about recuperation. Allow your family to shut themselves away for as long as they need to. Tell them you will need time alone too. You might be surprised that once people know they have the absolute right to be alone, they feel more able to join in.

The home is where the heart is – yes, it is! So keep it warm, safe, attractive and calm.

Get down, stand up, get dirty

 

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 6^th 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.

 

 

 

 

 

A really simple way to start

The Happiness Programme is organised across four strands:

1. Really basic stuff
   
2. Catch the happiness bug
   
3. Build a stronghold
   
4. Enjoy the journey
   

Each strand has eight units, each exploring one aspect of improving your happiness and finishing with an exercise to do. You'll probably want to skip some of the exercises. But I urge you to do each one. If you don't want to do an exercise immediately, come back to it later. Give yourself those few minutes of thinking about yourself that each exercise demands. It won't be wasted time.

Here's the first unit of strand one.

Go outside

Most of us spend most of our lives indoors.

In the time scale of human existence this is a very recent change in our lifestyle. Whilst we must have built or found shelters early on, in our hunter-gatherer days, it is unlikely these were where we spent most of the day.

How would we have got food and water? We must have had to go outside to find it. And that probably took a lot of time. Whether we were on the lookout for berries and roots or we were tracking down animals or fish to kill, it must all have taken up most of our waking hours. Then, tired or frightened, we would have retreated back to our shelter to sleep. Cooking, eating and childbirth may have been mainly indoor activities. But otherwise I imagine humans led an outdoor existence.

With farming and the domestication of animals the indoor and outdoor worlds blurred. Farmers stored produce indoors and they often slept above the animals. There was a lot more reason to spend time indoors. Storage vessels could be crafted indoors, coverings could be woven indoors. We no longer had to walk all day to find enough berries to keep us alive. We farmed most of what we needed then stored it indoors.

Then more recently, with formal education, came the notion of keeping children inside for hours at a time, most of the year. It was no longer the norm to have a gaggle of trainees out learning to hunt or pick or farm with their parents.

Nowadays most of us work indoors. We still need to spend much of our waking day on activities that will allow us to survive but these activities are best done in offices, schools, hospitals and factories. Then we travel home inside a car or bus or train, get as close to our house as we can, and get inside for the rest of the evening.

For thousands upon thousands of years humans have lived outside for the greater part of their lives. We are a product of that lifestyle. It seems likely that our sudden change to being indoors will have repercussions. I believe a lack of being outdoors may influence our mood and sense of well-being.

Instinctively many of us seek the outdoors, whether hanging around a pool or trekking across hillsides, when we go on holiday. Especially, we are drawn to sunshine. Of course warmth is very comforting. But I think our search for sunshine goes further than that. I think being outside on a sunny day makes us feel good. It puts a smile on our faces. Not for any special reason. Just because we feel good in our skin. Because we feel happy.

Not all early people lived in climates where there was a lot of sunshine. Some lived in places like Britain where it must have been miserably cold quite a bit of the time. But I bet they felt happier when the spring came.

So the first step is simple. Get outside.

Get light, and if possible sunshine, on your skin especially your face and hands (which would have been the places least likely to have been covered against the cold in prehistory.)

You will have to reschedule your day. You should aim to get outside for at least half an hour every day, longer at weekends and much longer when the weather is good.

As the first step don't worry about where outside you are. Just get out. Go for a walk in the street outside the office every lunchtime. Or walk the dog before work. Sit outside to eat your sandwiches even if you have to wear a coat. Get off the bus a few stops early or just sit in the park either before or after work whenever there is more light.

The main thing is to get as much light on you as possible. See light as a nutrient. Think of it as essential to your health in the same way as you regard water. When you need water your body tells you through a sensation of thirst. But your body doesn't seem to have devised a way of letting you know you need light yet. The change to an indoor lifestyle is far too recent for that. So you have to be aware that you might need more daylight without your body giving you any signal.

Actually we might be getting a signal but just not reading it properly yet. That signal might be depression.

So, start by thinking through how you will get outside more during the daylight. Make a definite commitment right now to this first important step. On a sunny day that might sound simple. But it's very easy to go for days without getting more than a few minutes of sunlight on your skin during bad weather.

Once you value light you will start to look for opportunities to get outside more often. This is your mind working healthily. If light is vital to well-being then getting as much of it as you can is a survival skill, just like earning more money or eating enough food.

Note down in your diary how long you are outside in the daylight each day. Try to increase the amount but at least ensure you get outside for thirty minutes. Later on, when you've completed the happiness project, there might be days when you feel lower than normal. On such days look back at your happiness project diary and notice how much time you were spending outdoors. Ask yourself if you have started to shorten this time. If you have then that's the first thing to tackle to get you back on track.

So. Simple isn't it? Make sure you get enough light every day. That's the first exercise. It certainly helped me feel better one winter. It should make you feel good too.

Push the bell and come on in

Getting started, or perhaps not, on the happiness programme

You know that feeling, when you find yourself standing at the threshold of somewhere new. Your finger is just about to push the bell. You know that means you'll walk inside soon and in some small way your life will be different. Whether it's starting a new job or meeting new people or studying something different, you know that if you press the bell you will change. So, just in that moment, you feel uneasy. Do you need this? Is it worth the effort? Should you just turn round and go home? Change can be tiring. And it's not always good.

Well, you can leave now. Because you're right to feel uneasy. Things will change.

It could be that you default to mild unhappiness because that's where you feel comfortable. That's where you feel at home.

Sounds a crazy thing to say?

Perhaps a state of anxiety or depression is your own special nest. It's the place you can return to from a frightening world, the place you know well, where you don't have to try, don't have to put on a mask, don't have to give one impression but feel a fraud because inside you are not that person. Back in your comfy sad nest you can truly relax. You feel as if you are back in Mummy's arms, home, safe, in a world where everything is familiar, where you are welcomed. You are unhappy. It's what you grew up with, it's what you know.

We all pick up a notion of what is acceptable or normal from our mother, father and siblings. Perhaps you picked up unhappiness. Perhaps being a bit down was just the way it was at home. Or perhaps showing happiness was frowned upon. Perhaps smiling broadly and saying 'I feel really good today' was never something that happened in your house.

Think back. How often did your father laugh?

Not laugh at you for doing something silly or incompetent. This laugh is common among parents, especially when friends are around. It says, 'Ha ha isn't she a funny little thing...compared with me, my friends, who am thoroughly grown up, competent, in control of myself and others'. Not laugh at his colleagues or boss at work because they had done something that would fail. No. How often did he laugh from sheer happiness? That laugh we see on TV advertising where all's right with the world. That unconditional open laugh that delights in something good that's happening.

How often did your mother laugh? That big relaxed open-faced mirth that would not be hidden? Not laugh at herself when she'd done something she felt showed her as foolish. But just laugh because life was good and she couldn't help but show it.

Think back. Picture your father when you were ten years old. What is his expression? Worry, a frown, uneasy, condescending, approving, proud? Is he laughing?

Think back. Picture your mother when you were ten years old. What is her expression? Worry, a frown, uneasy, tired, in a hurry, reprimanding, proud? Is she laughing?

It is not as though smiles and laughs are unknown at home. It's just that very often they carry a message which is different from happiness.

Take smiling, that half-way house to laughter. We learn that you get a smile if you say 'please', get good test results or help out at home. The smile is not a sign of happiness, it's more a sort of code for approval. In fact even when parents say, 'that makes me happy', it's often more a form of teaching, giving you approval for doing the right thing. Teaching is a big part of parenting and displaying the outward signs of happiness is a useful tool. But if a smile is always linked to learning a lesson or doing well on a task then we learn that happiness is just what happens to people when other people do what they want.

And it's common for us all to use laughter to cover up unpleasant feelings in company (and even in private, in our own inner conversations). We 'laugh off' disappointment and failure so that people around us, or even we ourselves, will not feel our pain. As children we see through this. Laughter becomes a signal of lack of achievement. We learn to distrust laughter.

And we use laughter to judge others when we feel they are 'getting above themselves' (heaven forbid!) This laughter is a sort of aggression. When we hear a parent laughing in this situation we do not hear happiness, we hear disappointment, envy, jealousy, irritation and anger.

In contrast, note how much worry we experience at home. Parents illustrate through frowns that life is a serious business. They are tired, frustrated, rushed off their feet, unsure of the future, struggling to cope with the bills. They might not spell all of these things out but the worry of it all pervades the home. Worry is fine. Perhaps even worry is expected of a person who takes their responsibilities seriously and does the right thing by the family. So we learn to look and feel just a bit worried. To be more open about the negative than the positive. Being happy is frivolous. It's unthinking. It's OK for children but you need to grow out of it.

Well we all want to grow up and have the power our parents have. So, no surprise if most of us start to adopt a general demeanour of worry and keep happiness concealed or just for when we 'let ourselves go' at parties with teenage friends, when we're in love, on a funfair ride, splashing around in a pool in the sunshine.

Happiness becomes a foreign thing. Worry, anxiety or mild depression becomes the thing we know, even aspire to. It becomes comfortable. It feels like home. It feels right. It feels good. It is the adult way.

So. Think for a moment. Do you really want to be happy? Well, yes of course you do. But be prepared for a struggle with yourself over making it a normal part of your life. Unhappiness is possibly a deeply-rooted habit which, like all habits, will take a lot of effort to change.

We tend to think of happiness as the most natural thing in the world. But we've come a long way from the directness implied by that word 'natural'. Laughter indicates aggression or a sense of failure. A smile means approval. The outward signals of happiness have become corrupted. Little wonder if we find simple happiness hard to feel.

Start to break the unhappiness habit.

Acknowledge your parents did the best they could (after all, where did they learn their parenting skills?) And if you are a parent, work hard to show direct simple happiness through smiling and laughter whenever you can. Don't ration it or save it up for the weekend or the holidays. Show it every day you feel it. Let moments of your own happiness radiate out to everyone around you even if these moments are rare right now. Be a smiley mum or a jolly dad.

Expect life to be good to you. Stop that frown in its tracks. Make frowning foreign, odd, uncomfortable. Whenever you can, pause, take stock. Are you frowning, looking anxious, feeling rushed off your feet? Stop. Really, what's the rush? Or are you frowning because life is serious, the bills are mounting up, the country's run by idiots? Stop. There will always be bills and politicians will always make mistakes.

Here's the very first exercise of this programme. Do it before you even start reading the rest of the book.

Relax and think about the things that make you smile.

The sun is shining. This coffee tastes good. Simple, straightforward things. Things that bring an unsophisticated childish delight.

Now, smile.

It's OK to find life pleasant. It's cool to laugh. Even at work.

So, before you begin this programme, wave goodbye to Mummy and Daddy.

Now press that doorbell and come on in!