Why two weeks of holiday are less fun than one

When 20-yearold Rafa nadal lost the first five games of the 2006 French Open final, everyone assumed his opponent, the great Roger Federer, would saunter on to an emphatic victory.

everyone but nadal. even in the face of an embarrassing 0-5 deficit, his buoyant body language was not that of a man being thumped, but of a man doing the thumping.

energy and enthusiasm seemed to flood through him. And soon he turned the tables, taking the next three sets 6-1 6-4 7-6 to win his second Grand Slam title.

As U.S. university professors Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross explain in an agreeably accessible way, what nadal did that day was deploy a recognisable psychological tactic.

Tennis coaches have for years advised their charges to bounce up and down on the balls of their feet when things are going badly, in other words to adopt a winning posture, which in turn infiltrates the psyche.

And as in tennis, so in life. From nadal to Walt Disney’s seven dwarfs, whistling while they worked, it is plainly helpful to adopt a positive frame of mind in challenging circumstances.

At its most powerful, it can turn an adverse situation on its head.

The authors’ objective is to show how the application of basic psychological tenets can not only improve our lives but help us strive to become what they call ‘the wisest in the room’.

For example, most of our experiences are governed by what they are like at their most extreme moment and what they are like at the end. So, a wise person preparing for a day of challenging experiences — complicated dental surgery, filling in tax forms, visiting a seriously ill relative, or whatever — will always be sure to apply the socalled ‘peak-end’ rule, offsetting the most trying experience by ending the day with the least trying.

That applies to good experiences, too. The novelist Milan Kundera once said that ‘memory does not

make films, it makes photographs’.

Accordingly, if we’ve budgeted for a summer holiday but can’t decide between two weeks in an unremarkable apartment or a week in a villa by the beach, the authors’ advice is to take the shorter, more expensive, but more memorable option.

‘When you’re back at home or at work,’ they rationalise, ‘two pleasant but less memorable weeks won’t feel any different from one.’ Yet great holiday memories can be drawn on for a lifetime.

As for the extent of that holiday budget, they quote the journalist H.L. Mencken, whose definition of wealth was ‘any income that is at least 100 dollars more than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband’.

In simpler terms, we tend to measure ourselves materially against those around us. But the wisest in the room do not let this affect their happiness or sense of self-worth. And there is a straightforward equation: act like a happy person and it’s easier to be one.

That, of course, is easier written than done. And even if we try to act happy, our days can still be ruined by other people. The authors cite the late U.S. comedian George Carlin, who once asked his audience: ‘Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster is a maniac?’

I don’t suppose Carlin intended his words to be scrutinised even after his death by a pair of academics, but they reckon that in trying to make people laugh he hit on something serious, namely a metaphor for the way many of us see ourselves.

Since we all adjust our speed to the road conditions, anyone driving at a different speed must be getting it wrong. In other words, we see the world the way it really is; it’s others who are contrary or unpredictable.

But the wisest in the room don’t fall into this trap. They seek to understand diversity of opinion and behaviour, equipping them more thoroughly for life’s challenges.

I will try to remember that the next time some nutcase overtakes me at 70mph on a country road.

In the meantime, it’s worth taking to heart another useful observation about the way we drive, by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling. ‘Careful drivers give weight to care,’ he once said, ‘skilful drivers give weight to skill, and those who think that, whatever else they are not, they are polite, give weight to courtesy, and come out high on their own scale. This is the way every child has the best dog on the block.’

Or to put it slightly differently, there are ways in which we can all at least feel as if we’re above average. Maybe that is the real secret to boosting our self-esteem and feeling at one with the world.

Give up on being the wisest one in the room, and take satisfaction instead in being the funniest, or fittest, or the only one with a key to get out.