Can The Dalai Lama’s HAPPINESS SCHOOL stop you being a grumpyboots?
HAPPINESS, I ’ ve always thought, is seeing a rainbow on a stormy day, receiving an earlymorning snog from a sleepy partner or (joy of joys!) finding chocolate hidden in the fridge door during Sunday night telly — all of which give me a gorgeous warm glow.
Happiness, in my world, is (like the weather) unpredictable — more off the menu than on. Some days I’m happy, on others, I can be a total misery. Most mornings I start looking like an irritable pug. By noon I’ve usually managed to morph into a slightly more smiley person, but I could be seething inside.
In modern Britain this won’t do. According to experts, I’m not happy enough on a regular basis. Happiness, like mindfulness, yoga and spiralising your vegetables, is the hot new craze.
Gurus want us to think of happiness as a muscle we improve by exercise, and a skill we can learn and cultivate without resorting to indiscriminate shopping or another glass of wine.
A huge amount of money is being poured into evaluating the benefits of happiness. Experts say that being a grump is bad for our health, our careers and our relationships.
People are more productive at work and in their communities if they are happy and comfortable relating to each other. David Cameron is measuring the nation’s happiness — we are, apparently, slightly happier than a few years ago — although what he is doing with the data is anyone’s guess. If you live in Bolsover — the Derbyshire town has just been ranked one of the most miserable places in the country — you can hardly decamp to the smiley Orkneys.
We are regularly nagged (or ‘nudged’, in official parlance) by health watchdogs to eat five fruit and veg a day, exercise more and stop smoking and drinking to excess — and now, they have decided our well-being must include more happiness.
A whole industry has grown up of counsellors, facilitators and experts, running courses and websites. And last week the Dalai Lama endorsed the Action for Happiness movement, run by Mark Williamson, a former management consultant.
According to His Holiness, their eight-week course is a good way to create a better world, a place where we care more about each other and are at peace with ourselves. Participants can either take part in the mindfulness- based course — which emphasises living in the here and now — online or in group meetings nationwide.
During each two-hour session, participants debate topics such as What Matters In Life, Can We find Peace Of Mind?, Being Happier At Work or What Makes Great relationships. They then swap experiences and set goals for the week.
The idea of chatting with strangers exploring relationships makes me feel nervous. In spite of my shouty exterior and telly persona, I am a very shy person, ridiculed at school for my frilly teeth, flat chest and six-foot skeleton.
YOU may think I’m a curmudgeon — but that’s just the external packaging. My bluff exterior is a form of defence. Anyway, I’ve always been up for new experiences (eg appearing on I’m a Celebrity), and so I pitched up for an Action for Happiness session last week at a charity in East London, where a group of about 20 people were sitting in a semi- circle. Ages ranged from early 20s to 70s and there were slightly more women than men — is that because we’re more in touch with our emotions? (Only wondering, not being judgemental).
Action for Happiness started in the UK in 2011 — and the not-forprofit movement has attracted 55,000 members in 160 countries.
Mark has taken the course to private and public sector workers, international companies, schools and community organisations, supported by charities and staffed by volunteers. It’s free, although participants are encouraged to make a donation if they can. So what does learning how to be happy entail?
The evening starts with everyone introducing themselves. Then we spend five minutes on a mindfulness exercise, thinking about someone we might like or dislike and focusing on things we have in common. That’s a bit of a struggle for anyone (like me) deluded enough to believe they are unique, but I get the message. Instead of harping on about differences, let’s concentrate on similarities.
Then we try to send a positive message to someone telling them how much they mean to us, or telling them something good. I think I got the wrong end of the stick at this point — I thought we had to share a piece of good news so I wrote ‘my runner beans are fantastic this month’, and ‘I played tennis really well last week’. In retrospect, I can see these statements are a failure — because happiness is not all about me, is it? The course is about relating to others.
Then we write a list of people who matter most to us. I decided to be brutally honest, so I wrote ‘me’, followed by ‘my partner’, followed by ‘a few close friends’. We also watch an interminable video of a talk given by Brene Brown, ‘an expert in human con- nection’. The thrust of her chat (with a lot of annoying ‘here’s the thing’) seemed to be that, in order to achieve ‘authenticity’ and ‘connect’ with others, we have to make ourselves vulnerable. Digesting this, I have a chat with the young woman next to me, a trainee GP. We agree you’ve got to love yourself before you can love others.
The two unpaid volunteers running the meeting couldn’t be nicer, but their habit of thanking everyone for ‘sharing’ and saying ‘wonderful’ is starting to grate. The group chat is a bit of a struggle as it means you have to listen to everyone else and look positive, not bored or supercilious.
Next, some lessons in how to improve relationships — starting with ‘ really Listen To What People Are Saying’. I would get a C minus for this — when someone starts a sentence I have mentally fast-forwarded to the end, preparing a smart answer or rebuttal. WRONG! To be happy, we have to learn how to respond to other people’s good news — not just gloat about our own. Again, a big challenge for self-centred me.
Another lesson is ‘raise Issues Constructively’. I couldn’t agree more. In my world I just bark orders or moan. I must learn diplomacy and tact — is it too late at 68? The rest of the evening passes surprisingly quickly. I’ve really enjoyed the company of these strangers — which is a first. I heartily recommend the course if you’re feeling lonely or miserable. I emerge with a checklist of things to practise which includes:
Don’t say ‘I’m tired’ before anyone speaks.
Don’t look cross when I enter a room or meet people.
Say hello, before people say hello to me.
Phone Auntie Vi. (My lovely a unti e in Wales, who is housebound). After three days, I have failed at all of them, but I did apologise to someone I was rude to at work — although it was by text, which is not good enough, really.
I learnt one very i mportant fact. research proves that in a close relationship there’s a ratio of positive to negative remarks which indicate whether a couple will stay together. five nice comments to one sarky one mean it’s healthy. In unstable relationships the ratio is eight nice remarks to ten nasty ones.
Since I don’t want to spend my twilight years with a hot water bottle eating a meal for one in front of the telly, I had better work on being a nicer, more positive person.
Don’t hold your breath.