JEREMY CORBETT

JEREMY’S FOUND A ROUTE TO HAPPINESS AND JUST THINKS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Ibelieve one of the secrets to extending happiness is making an effort to record it when it happens. Later, when you need a boost, you can access that memory and gain some residual second-hand happiness.

I locked some in only recently. Currently, our bedtime routine involves a huge amount of reading. When I say ‘huge amount’, I mean more than I want at that time of night. Usually,

I’ve just got home from work and am hot, tired and hungry, and find it hard to slow down. But I need to. My darling wife has wrangled the children for the last four hours and she is done.

So I’ve developed a way of tricking myself into engaging and enjoying. I give my wife the kiss that signals the changing of the guard, she heads off with a skip in her step, then I get the kids to turn on the fan and simply jump into our bed between them.

(Yes, they sleep in our bed. Initially.)

Lying down changes the whole process. Did you know there’s a little man or woman in your head whose sole job is to tell the rest of your body what your current physical orientation is? All day, they’re yelling out, “Standing!”, “Sitting!” and “Walking slowly, swaying and banging into things!” And when they yell, “Lying down!”, they do so with a smile because invariably the rest of the body lets out a little cheer knowing it’s all in for a bit of a break.

In the outside world, you experience an immediate improvement in your mood. Once prone and cool, my tolerance for reading is virtually limitless, “Read away!” I say, “The more the merrier!”

The kids wriggle and laugh, and right there is a little spike in happiness I always try to register and record. Because I’m in lyingdown mode and in no hurry to move, I get more involved in the stories. My favourite thing to do at the moment is a post-reading analysis, where I critically assess facts in the story.

“Tell me this: Cinderella’s carriage, dress and horses all change back – why does one glass slipper not?!” Apparently, it’s magic.

Then the elder reads to us about the latest heroine in Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, I rest my hand on her knee and the younger moves in for a cuddle.

‘I could hear the little painter person in my brain slapping colours on the canvas’

Lying there two nights ago, I had a real moment. A content spouse taking a well-earned break and my two daughters calm, happy and cuddly

– I froze time and really soaked it in, told myself this would likely be a phase we would move out of far too soon and urged myself to take a mental snapshot. I could hear the little painter person in my brain slapping colours on the canvas to etch the memory forever.

Even as I retell the moment, I’m experiencing happiness, and I think it’s entirely possible that you are too. Either that or you’re rolling your eyes at what a soft, emotional, crybaby I’ve turned into. Which also makes me happy.