January 4th, 2010

If you are anything like me, you may be feeling a bit bombarded with advice and ideas about how to make the changes you want to make at the beginning of a new year and a new decade.

Personally, I think that any time is a good time to start making changes and I don’t think we need a New Year to help us to do that. In fact, it can often be counter-productive to think in terms of ‘resolutions’: I will do this or I should do that… It tends to put off into the future what we can begin right this minute.

However, every year, at this time of year, my phone starts to ring constantly with people who want to work with me to make some changes. It is a very popular time of year to think about stopping smoking or finally giving yourself the opportunity to have the weight and shape and health and energy that you want to have, for example.

And, of course, I am delighted to help people to make these sorts of changes in their lives.

But I also have to say – and to some people this may even sound surprising or counter-intuitive coming from someone who actually makes their living in the field of personal development – that I am always even more delighted when I can help people to fully realise how wonderful they already are.

You know, this New Year, the only thing I really want to say to anyone out there who is perhaps feeling a little of the ‘back to work’ blues, a little of those ‘It’s New Year and my life still sucks’ or ‘I am just so sick of being me’ kind of feelings, is this.

You are already the most perfect, wonderful, amazing, beautiful, powerful you.

Yes, perhaps you just haven’t quite realised it yet… but, really, you are.

Being happier in 2010 isn’t about losing a few pounds, eating healthier, getting a better job or finding the right relationship. All those things can be important, that’s true, but they are not really what happiness is about.

In fact, happiness isn’t really about anything.

Think about those times when you said to yourself, ‘I will be so much happier when I do this, get that, find this, achieve that…’ and then you did just that, got just that, achieved just that… and the happiness lasted for precisely five minutes or, possibly, a couple of weeks, before you were already thinking about the next thing you needed to do.

Happiness isn’t something that happens because of this or that. Happiness just is.

Happiness can be a way of looking, of being, of noticing, of appreciating. Some people even maintain that happiness is a skill, a discipline that can be learned, a choice that can be made, moment by moment. But happiness doesn’t happen because of anything particular out there in the world.

Once you’ve met your basic needs for food and clothing and shelter – and I think it is important to remember that most of the people in this world haven’t been able to do that yet – happiness doesn’t happen because you have better clothing, a bigger house, more food. Watch any chat show or flick through the pages of any glossy celeb magazine to have that confirmed for you.

It’s also interesting to me that, years ago, when I started doing the work I do, I worked in London, with people who had arrived in the UK with nothing at all in the way of any of those things we might consider essential for happiness, and I met many people who, despite this, were very happy people. They didn’t have their health, their families, money or a home but some of them would tell me – time and again – that they already had happiness. And at the time, I found this hard to get my head around. I thought they were just putting a brave face on things.

But, you know, now I can understand what they were telling me. It was something very powerful.

Because if we can be happy without certain things we thought were essential for happiness (and that doesn’t mean, either, that I think we should give up any of those things in order to be happy); if we can be happy even when we don’t get what we thought we wanted, or when bad stuff happens; if we can accept that we are not happy because of anything, really, what then?

Well, what about this? My own personal development, experiment in living, or whatever you might call it over the last few years has brought me to this conclusion:

We are happiness.

I am leaving a little white space around those words because I think they need to breathe a little. Believe me, I know – I really know – that it can take some time, some space, some breath, some love for yourself, some willingness to let go of all kinds of other stuff to fully embrace the idea that you are happiness.

So what if you were to live 2010 from that starting point, from the idea that you are happiness in this world?

I would like to say, once again, a huge thank you to all the wonderful people in 2009 who showed me what happiness really is and can be; who taught me about the happiness I already am and how to appreciate it and live it. I know that I have so much more to learn in 2010 – and how exciting that is.

And I’d like to send out my warmest wishes and much love to you all for everything that you already are this New Year. At risk of sounding mushy or sentimental – oh, what the heck, I am going to be all mushy and sentimental – you are all already a part of my happiness. Thank you.

Tags: happiness, new year
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December 5th, 2008

It’s Friday, a time when many of us in our various workplaces have a more relaxed smile on our faces as we contemplate the weekend to come.

When I worked in an office, I loved that Friday-night feeling of the weekend stretching ahead of me. I once had a fantastic boss who would get us together last thing on a Friday afternoon to share a glass of wine and congratulate ourselves on a great week of work. He understood that it’s as important to celebrate your achievements this week as it is to make a list of ‘to do’s’ for next week. He also knew that happiness ‘rubs off’.

There would always be a special atmosphere in the office on Friday afternoons as people chatted, told funny stories about their week, shared their worst moments and relived their best moments. I always went away feeling energised by my colleagues and ready to work hard alongside them the next week (clever boss!).

Today, this article on BBC News online reports on a Harvard-led study of 5,000 adults published in the British Medical Journal that shows that happiness really is infectious.

The article reports:

‘The researchers used data on adults who took part in the US
Framingham Heart Study – set up to look at the risks leading to future
heart disease – between 1971 and 2003.

Participants were asked to identify their relatives, close
friends, place of residence, and place of work and were followed up
every two to four years.

They were also asked whether they agreed with statements on whether
they enjoyed life, felt hopeful about the future, were happy and felt
they were just as good as other people.

It was found that live-in partners who become happy increased the
likelihood of their partner being happy by 8% and similar effects were
found for siblings living close by (14%) and neighbours (34%).

The relationship between people’s happiness levels seemed to
extend up to three degrees of separation – to the friend of a friend of
a friend.’

The analysis also showed that close physical proximity was important for the spread of happiness.

A person was 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less
than half a mile away becomes happy – an effect that declined with
greater distance.

Study leader Professor Nicholas Christakis said the results suggest
clusters of happiness occur because happiness spreads and not just
because of a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.

“Most important from our perspective is the recognition that
people are embedded in social networks and that the health and
wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others.”

Professor Andrew Steptoe, a psychology expert from University
College London, said: “It makes intuitive sense that if people around
you are happy that might have an impact on your own happiness.

“What’s a bit more surprising is that it’s not just the people
who you closely come into contact with but people a step removed as
well.”

The article also reports that the study found that ‘the mood of work colleagues did not have an effect.’ This is curious as my subjective experience is that the mood in my old office was very sensitive to our invividual experiences – perhaps because many of us became friends as well as colleagues. Of course, office morale is dependent on many other factors too – such as the health of the company as a whole, working environment, salary and reward  – but I know that one of the single most powerful influences on my own happiness at work was the well-being and attitude of my colleagues around me.

This is what I now call the ‘hypnotic effect’ that those we care about or admire have on our own well-being. But perhaps this isn’t just about people we know and care about. I am sure you can remember a time when you came off the phone feeling really good about the positive, friendly and helpful person with whom you just had a conversation.

There is a more detailed commentary on the study and the social network analysis methodology that it used at the BMJ’s web site here.

Peter Sainsbury, director of Population Health at the BMJ concludes: ‘Fowler and Christakis have produced valuable, exciting, and reasonably robust results that will stimulate new and productive lines of enquiry in happiness studies. However, we must not expect all the details of their findings to be confirmed in subsequent work. Don’t drop your unhappy friends yet.’

This Friday, what better way might there be to experiment with these findings than to spread a little happiness around? Why don’t you turn around to the person nearest to you and give them your biggest and warmest smile? Then see what happens. Go on, I double-dare you.

Tags: happiness, well-being
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