One of the perks of writing The Happiness Experiment blog is being asked to review the latest books related to happiness and the science of positive psychology. Happy Money, published by One World Publications looks at the latest behavioural research on how and why we spend money. The authors of the book Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, argue that when we stop using our intuition when we reach for our wallet and instead apply the latest scientific findings to spend our hard earned money wisely, we are likely to get more happiness bangs for our bucks.

Elizabeth Dunn is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, Canada.

Michael Norton is an associate professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School.

Happy Money argues that rather than focusing on earning more, we should focus on spending differently in order to increase our wellbeing. The book focuses on 5 key principles of wise spending:

• Buy experiences
• Make it a treat
• Buy time
• Pay now, consume later
• Invest in others

Buy experiences

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did do.” Mark Twain

Buying material things such as our own home does not correlate with happiness. Studies in Germany have shown that overall life satisfaction did not increase when people moved to a new house superior to their previous one. On other hand, studies have demonstrated that when people spend money on leisure activities such as trips, going to the cinema, sporting events, gym memberships etc. they report greater life satisfaction. (See Happiness Experiment No 4: Buy less stuff) Research shows that experiences create more happiness than material goods because they are more likely to make us feel connected to others. Experiential purchases are more fun to talk about and and give us positive memories to look back on.  This explains why people are willing to pay money to sleep in Sweden’s cold Ice Hotel rather than a warm Travelodge as the experience will be more memorable.   Although buying experiences can innoculate us against “buyer’s remorse”, not all experiences are created equal. Some experiences are more likely to make us happy than others. You are likely to get the biggest bang for your buck if:

• The experience brings you together with other people, giving you sense of connection to others
• The experience makes a memorable story that you can retell for years to come
• The experience is connected closely to who you are and want to be
• The experience is unique and difficult to compare with other options

The authors offer us another lesson from the French, this time in the form of the verb se réjouir which means to derive pleasure in the present by anticipating something which will happen in the future.  If we pay now and consume later, contrary to our usual credit card fueled consume now, pay later habits, we get much more happiness for our money. This explains why a Dutch study of holidaymakers showed that they had a bigger happiness boost in the weeks before their holiday than in the weeks after. It also explains the surprising finding that in a study of students, people ranked Fridays higher than Sundays even although Sunday is a holiday because on Friday they still had the whole weekend of enjoyment and fun to look forward to.  Happy Money argues that the uncertainty of the future not only allows us to view it in a more positive light, but also keeps our attention focused on it. People looking towards the future are like astronauts looking at earth from space, attest the authors, and everything looks perfect from far away. Delaying consumption gives you the biggest happiness bang for your buck when:

• The delay gives you the opportunity to investigate exciting details about your future experience (e.g. checking out holiday details on TripAdvisor)
• Anticipating the purchase makes you drool, thereby increasing the pleasure of eventual consumption.
• When the consumption experience itself will be fairly fleeting.

Invest in others

In contrast to the other chapters, the final chapter of the book focuses on how spending money on others can increase your happiness even more than spending it on yourself, as long as you are willing to make yourself a little poorer to reap the benefits.  In a sample of over 600 Americans the average ratio of money spent on oneself versus other people was 10 to 1. However the amount of money which people spent on themselves had no relation to their overall happiness. What did predict their happiness was the amount of money they gave away.  The more they invested in others the happier they were.  The authors point out that even in countries with vastly different average incomes, such as Uganda and Canada, people in both countries reported feeling happier when they had spent money on others. In a Gallup poll between 2006-2008 across 136 countries interviewing more than 200,000 respondents, people in 120 out of 136 countries reported greater life satisfaction if they had donated to charity in the previous month. When does giving promote the most happiness?  Three strategies seem to work best: make it a choice, make a connection and make an impact.

The authors recommend using all 5 strategies rather than just picking one or two to focus on. Happy Money is a highly readable book peppered with lots of actionable examples you can try out to put these theories in to practice. I would definitely recommend taking a look.  The money I have already saved just by making cappucinos a treat has already the covered the cost of the book!  This is just one of the great pointers which Happy Money gives you to increase your happiness.  I intend to investigate more of them. If you would like to learn more about this subject, another book worth taking a look at is All The Money in the World by Laura Vanderkam. Affluenza by Oliver James is also interesting reading. Happy reading, happy spending.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 19th June 2013

Nelson Mandela

This week as I followed, with dread, the news that Nelson Mandela has been hospitalised with another ominous lung infection, sending family members scurrying to his bedside, the thought of his eventual and inevitable death filled me with a mixture of both deep sadness and the feeling that anything is possible with a sufficient amount of determination.  I struggle to believe that I will come across another public figure in my lifetime whose distinguised, exceptional life will touch and inspire me more than that of Nelson Mandela.  When Nelson Mandela ultimately dies (as we all must) I will remember him not just for his remarkable achievement in ending the abhorrence of the apartheid system, but also for the fact that he had a voice and he chose to use it, despite the personal sacrifice which this entailed of 27 years of hard labour emprisoned on Robbin Island. Nelson Mandela not only used his voice to speak out, but he also gave a voice to future generations whose hopes for a better future would have gone unheard and unheeded without Mandela’s courage to challenge his oppressors.  Few of us will reach the giddy heights of Nelson Mandela’s exceptional life, but this does not mean that our life does not matter.

This weekend I am participating in a Guardian Masterclass on blog writing led by The Gentle Author who pens the popular Spitalfields Life blog.   I have learned a great deal on the first day already but the two crucial lessons for me have been the following:  Every participant in the room was searching for their voice and has a need and a right to be heard. I was reminded again, as I mentioned in my recent post Daring Greatly With Art, that all creative expression is a courageous act.  In a country which enjoys freedom of expression, unlike the South Africa which Nelson Mandela grew up in, we still hesitate to use our voice, to speak our truth.  I was reminded throughout the day of the lyrics by singer/songwriter Emile Sandé’s song Read All About It:

You’ve got the words to change a nation
But you’re biting your tongue
You’ve spent a life time stuck in silence
Afraid you’ll say something wrong
If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?
So come on, come on
Come on, come on
You’ve got a heart as loud as lions
So why let your voice be tamed?
Baby we’re a little different
There’s no need to be ashamed
You’ve got the light to fight the shadows
So stop hiding it away
Come on, Come on

Emeli Sandé - Read All About It

The first lesson of the day was the importance of speaking our truth and to not be willing to let our voice be tamed through fear of what others might think of our creative efforts.  I believe that we are all here to serve and to leave the world a little better for our passing through and the second lesson for me was that although we do not all apsire to be the next Nelson Mandela our stories matter and we can still live a life less ordinary.  The stories written by the Gentle Author about everyday people in the Spitalfields area of London matter.  The blogs which participants will set up after this course matter.  The lives we chose to live matter. Mattering never stops mattering whatever your age. I hope that the participants on the course will sing their song before they go their graves and instead of living lives of quite desperation live lives of courage and truth.  I look forward to tomorrow’s lessons…………….

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 15th June 2013

This famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt was the inspiration behind the title of author and researcher Dr Brené Brown’s latest book Daring Greatly.  Daring Greatly encourages us to show up, to let ourselves be seen, to try even when we are not sure if we will succeed and to be willing to be vulnerable.  Based on 12 years of research, Dr Brown argues that it is by embracing our vulnerabilities and imperfections, by choosing to live wholeheartedly that we find the courage to fully engage in our lives. The risks and emotional exposure which we all experience daily are what it takes to be vulnerable and to dare greatly.  Dr Brown argues that vulnerability is not weakness, on the contrary it requires great courage. Instead of asking ourselves the question “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”, we should ask ourselves “What is worth doing even if I fail?”

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”  Brené Brown

In addition to writing The Happiness Experiment blog and running my translation business, I am also a mosaic artist and, with Brené Brown’s sound advice ringing in my ears, I recently decided to submit my work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition along with a printmaker friend Suman Gujral.   (Suman also had the courage to appear in The BBC Culture Show Programme about the Summer Exhibition which aired on television this week.) Over 12,000 artists courageously submit their work to this open competition every year and around 1000 works are selected for display in the exhibition.  Neither of us were selected.

In The BBC Culture Show Programme art critic Alastair Sooke asks what makes someone an artist and why do they do it? Where does the compulsion to create come from? For some the compulsion to create enables them to lose themselves in their creative pursuits, others are compelled to create just for the love of it and would do so regardless of physical surroundings or challenging personal circumstances. (Try Happiness Experiment No 11: Go with the flow.) Many participants in the Summer Exhibition have submitted work year after year in the hope of being selected.

Despite the fact that my work was not selected, I found participating in the competition a hugely inspiring and exciting experience. When handing in my creative efforts to The Royal Academy for scrutiny by this year’s emminent judging panel of experts, I was really touched by the sheer outpouring of creative activity coming from such a broad range of people.  I was impressed not only by the fact that so many people were attempting to express themselves creatively, but also by the fact that so many were willing to be judged for their efforts. Both the artists who were not selected for the exhibition and those who are fortunate enough to have their work on display from in the Summer Exhibition from 10th June – 18th August have to be willing to run the gauntlet of criticism.  Facing up to the critics and the potentially vitriolic reviews of the Summer Exhibition, such as the article recently published by art critic Brian Sewell in the Evening Standard, takes a special kind of courage and in my view that courage should be celebrated.

After watching the recent The BBC Culture Show Programme I have also been pondering the question of what art is for and why artists create? I used to think that art was the domain of the select few whose innate creative talent, honed over years of training and practice, allowed artists to create beautiful works of art for our pleasure and entertainment.  After recently taking a drawing class at the V&A Museum with Sketchout, I realised that great artists not only have outstanding creative and technical ability but above all they have the ability to really see. One of my tutors at The Hampstead School of Art recently told me that art is less about what the artist sees and more about what the artist enables others to see.

‘Una Tazza di Te’ by Anita Klein

I think the ability to make other people see is a wonderful definition of what art is about, and the truth of this definition became obvious to me when I visited the private view of Anita Klein’s new paintings at Eames Fine Art Gallery in Bermondsey St last night. As an established and highly respected painter and printmaker, Anita Klein has her own very unique style and voice. Although I was impressed by both the originality of Anita Klein’s beautiful paintings and prints and by her technical ability this is not the what resonated with me most.  It struck me last night when observing Anita Klein’s work that her art is both the perfect embodiment of someone who is willing to dare greatly and to be vulnerable. Her ability to help us see the possibility of happiness in life’s small moments, from enjoying the simple pleasure of a cup of tea to sharing a tender moment with loved ones, is a wonderful reminder of what life is really about.  The cost of Anita Klein’s paintings ranges from £900 to £9000 and I’m sure her exhibition, which runs from 13th-19th June, will be a success. On the one hand the cost of purchasing an original painting or print is not within everyone’s pocket but I would encourage you to visit the exhibition nevertheless.  On the other hand, the value of realising that happiness is within everyone’s grasp if only we chose to savour and appreciate what we already have is priceless. The ability to remind us of this fact is, in my opinion, the real talent of Anita Klein.

Would I apply to the  Royal Academy Summer Exhibition again having been rejected this year?  Absolutely! It is not the critic who counts.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 13th June 2013

I am thrilled to have just been offered a place to study for an MSc in Positive Psychology at The University of East London beginning in September.  My ongoing personal studies of the science of happiness literature, my participation in an excellent 10 week course in Positive Psychology at City University and my writing of The Happiness Experiment blog have all created a perfect storm in my life where I felt the need to learn more about this fascinating science. You could say that I have reached a happiness tipping point. It turns out I am not alone. This great article by Sunnie Toelle, published in The Huffington Post on 3rd June, investigates the fact that many other people seem to have reached a happiness tipping point too. The science of happiness is everywhere in the news and media at the moment as people become increasingly aware that economic success does not necessarily equate with a happy and fulfilled life. This article reviews whether the time has come for the science of happiness. Have we reached a happiness tipping point?  Read the article and decide for yourself.

The Happiness Tipping Point

After a few days of sunshine here in the UK people are looking markedly happier.  Does it only take a few rays of sunshine to lift our mood or is happiness more complicated than that.  The article below by Julian Baggini, which was published in The Guardian on 31st May, takes a look at the latest research findings:

Julian Baggini

Julian Baggini is a writer and founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine and his personal website is called www.Microphilosophy.net. His books include The Ego Trick (Granta), Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind (Granta), Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP) and, with Antonia Macaro, The Shrink and The Sage (Icon)

The secret to happiness? It’s complicated

After Marriage, money, S&M – a raft of studies into what makes us happy can’t agree, but we can still learn from this research.

‘Arguably the pursuit of happiness is always a mistake and we should just pursue what we value most.’ Photograph: Mango Productions/Corbis

The old saw that when it comes to news, misery sells, has never looked so dubious. Happiness is hitting the headlines everywhere. But every time, it seems the story is different.

So over recent days, the Mail has screamed in painful ecstasy that “S&M enthusiasts are ‘healthier and less neurotic’ than those with a tamer sex life”, while the Telegraph has reported more soberly that “Marriage makes people happier than six-figure salaries and religion”. USA Today has told us that, contrary to what you might have been told, increased wealth really does make you happier, while the Mail points to data suggesting well-educated high-earners suffer more stress.

Maybe the answer is just to move to Scandinavia where everyone is happy in social democratic heaven – except that the OECD now says Australia tops the league table of happiest nations.

What makes it more confusing is that each of these reports is based on apparently robust research, from Dutch academics (S&M), the Office for National Statistics (marriage and stress), the Brookings Institution(wealth) and the OECD (Australia).

The temptation is to dismiss the research completely. Happiness and wellbeing are just too nuanced and complex to be illuminated by the soulless data-crunching of arid academics. Who needs it when we all know what makes us happy? Except we don’t. Those same oft-ridiculed academics have shown that time and again people are very bad at knowing what will make them happier or more miserable, overestimating the impact of positives such as pay rises and promotions as well as negatives such as disability and chronic illness.

The pointy-heads have a point or two after all. Scratch the surface and you’ll find that it’s the superficial gloss put on the research that is contradictory, not the data itself. What the Dutch academics found, for example, was not that BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) makes people happy, but that people who choose that lifestyle tend to be less anxious and more outgoing and show no more signs of mental instability than the rest of us. That does not mean that people who are not into it would be happier if they were, and nor does it amount to an overall verdict that life is better for the whip-crackers.

The evidence on wealth is also less contradictory than it seems. First of all, it has been clear for some time that people’s overall reported life satisfaction does continue to rise, on average, with wealth. That is not the same as self-reported happiness but it’s arguably even more important. Second, the diminishing returns of greater wealth for happiness are largely due to the fact that, as you get richer, pay increases are proportionately less significant. So an extra £10k a year has more impact for someone earning £20k than it does for someone earning £100k, but looked at in another light it should be unsurprising that a 50% pay rise has more impact than a 10% one. When people on £100k a year do get a 50% rise, they are indeed generally made happier.

As for the stress issue, the idea that it is an undiluted bad is just false. There are stresses involved in high-powered work but the rewards are often very rich too, and not just financial.

The general problem is that comparing the research usually means comparing apples with oranges. How happy different kinds of people are is not the same as what causes people to be happy. Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing. Stress means something different if it is the result of rewarding work rather than struggling to keep the family out of debt. Isolation is awful if unwanted and blissful if sought out.

The good life is complicated and that’s why no one survey can capture more than a few aspects of it, and also why the present government’s attempts to measure the nation’s wellbeing is wrong-headed in its determination to quantify it. That does not mean we have nothing to learn from hard research. Politicians in particular should use it to inform their understanding of what really makes a difference to our lives.

Arguably the pursuit of happiness is always a mistake and we should just pursue what we value most. The mistake is only compounded if we base our own choices too much on what research says makes people tick.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 3rd June 2013

Andy Cope

1.  What prompted you to write your book “The Art of Being Brilliant” and who is it aimed at? What has been the response to your book?

‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ is basically all the best bits from my PhD research. I’’ve been studying ‘happiness’ and ‘flourishing’ (basically, I’’ve been seeking out happy people and bottling their secrets) and some simple principles were crying out to be shared. I’’m delighted to say that the response has been brilliant. ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ has reached a global audience and I’m working on book 2

2. What led you to undertaking studies in positive psychology?

I studies ‘Psychology’ at Uni. and it was interesting, but always about ill people. I learned about disorders, anxiety and depression. And then I came across the relatively new field of ‘Positive Psychology’ which was pitched at the opposite end of the spectrum. And, bizarre as it sounds, we’d never really studied happy people. And that piqued my interest. I noticed that too many people were in a default whinge/moan/pessimistic mindset. Why is that? And wouldn’t it be cool to find people who were different? And find out what they were doing?

So I did!

3. You are working on a PhD in “Happiness” – what topic specifically is your PhD looking at?

I’m looking at what I call ‘flourishing’. In a nut shell, I’ve been studying people who are happy and upbeat and (and this is important) whom other people are noticing are more happy and upbeat. In short, those who shine and who impact positively on those around them

And my research is targeted at those who are working in the public sector. I thought this would be particularly challenging, in times of re-structuring, low morale and budget cuts. Yet, some people remain happy and upbeat!

4. If you could change the world in any way you wanted what 3 things would you change?

Just 1 thing. I’d change education. There aren’t enough words in this article that allow me to do justice to the changes I’d make. Suffice to say, I’d pretty much tear up the current model and start again. We’re preparing children for a world that no longer exists!

5.  Who is the most inspiring person you have ever met and why?

Crikey! Good question!

I’ve been fortunate to meet a good selection of awesome people. I’d better go for my colleague and co-author, the fabulous Mr Andy Whittaker (cos he’ll probably read this!). He’s the nicest bloke on the planet and has really inspired me by proving that when you play to your strengths, anything’s possible

6.  How do you spread your message of happiness?

We have a really cool workshop called ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’. Plus various books and CDs. But the best way to spread the message is to take it into schools and train kids to deliver it across their community

7.  Tell me about your 2%ers event?

A ‘2%er’ is my shorthand way of describing the people I’ve been studying. It isn’t actually scientifically correct but is merely meant to imply that happy, positive, upbeat people are a minority group. 2%ers are people who are significantly happier than average

And we have gatherings of 2%ers. Basically we cram 400 happy people into a room and deliver some workshops for them. It gives me a chance to try out some new material on a friendly audience

8. I believe we should all do something every day to make us feel proud. (Cue Heather Small) What are you most proud of?

My family. The biggest results I’ve had with ‘positive psychology’ have been at home

9. What has been you greatest life lesson to date?

The biggest discovery of my PhD (and the most obvious!) is that 2%ers actively and consciously choose to be positive. I describe this as common sense but not common practice. I also describe it as simple but not easy (there’s a very important difference!)

10. Tell me about your involvement with schools and why you choose to work with them?

We delivered ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ in businesses for a number of years before we twigged that teachers and children need these messages too! So we re-jigged the content and we now deliver what we call our ‘embedded model’, where we take a year group through the messages and task them with designing their own curriculum that they take across school (and the wider community). Young people get such a hard time in the press and this is an attempt to redress the balance by getting teenagers to inspire their communities.

Quite simply, the earlier you can embed positivity and happiness in your life, the better your life chances

And we choose to deliver in schools because it’s absolutely the right thing to do! In fact our business model is set up in such a way that we charge quite hefty fees to deliver in businesses and we use the surplus to subsidise our work in schools.

11.  Is it easier to teach happiness to young people or adults? In other words can you teach old dogs new happiness tricks?

Our’s is an incredibly simple message. Adults get it. And younger children (age 9 to 12) get it

Teenagers are more of an issue. Quite often, we find that teens are already indoctrinated into negative mind-sets and some of them can be very difficult to work with. Invariably, these habits have been learned from home. Sadly, if you’re a British teenager, it’s not cool to be your best self. We are working hard to change this culture in the schools that invite us in.

12. Who or what is the greatest source of happiness in your life?

My children

13. Which 3 books would you take to a desert island?

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (Roal Dahl)

Success Intelligence (Robert Holden)

‘Spy Dog’ (by me…and I’d take this book along just to remind myself that I can write books)

14. Who is the happiest person you have ever met and what have you learned from him/her?

In 2005, I interviewed Britain’s happiest man. Not only did he put his happiness down to a conscious choice. He also made that choice after a terrible tragedy when many people would have given up on life. We hear so much about ‘post traumatic stress disorder’. This guy showed that adversity can make you stronger (which is called ‘post traumatic growth’, btw). You don’t have to dwell on bad stuff.

15. When was the last time you experienced an explosion of joy (controlled or otherwise)?

I was driving home from doing a talk. And the night sky was filled with stars. I pulled the car over, got out and gazed at the sky. I can’t never remember seeing so many stars! And that got me thinking that here am I, a flickering dot of life on a tiny rock in the solar system. How cool is that!

16. Can you remember the happiest moment of your life and what made you happy?

Sounds corny, but I reckon the happiest moment of my life was when my wife and newborn daughter came home from hospital. Sophie was premature so things were a bit dicey for a while. Getting my girls home was a huge relief and an immense source of happiness that has lasted 18 years.

17. Have you tried any of the Happiness Experiments? What was your experience?

We’re just recording a series where we experience a range of ‘happiness remedies’ and report back. So watch this space. We’re experimenting with meditation, getting drunk, being grateful, watching a funny film, walking in the countryside, doing random kindness, etc. It’s meant to be light-hearted reporting but with a serious message

18.  Do you have any Happiness Experiments of your own to recommend? 

I tend to give a ‘top tip’ that I found useful when re-training myself to be more positive. Wake up in the morning being really grateful that you haven’t got toothache. Genuinely appreciate it. It works really well on cold, dark winter mornings. Or, on a bigger scale, appreciate that your kidneys are working and your heart’s still beating. And get out of bed like you mean it! (I think this is a twist on the often-quoted ‘attitude of gratitude’)

19.  The aim of The Happiness Experiment blog is to show people ways to live a happier and more meaningful life.  What brings meaning to your life?

For me, meaning comes from having goals that connect with the world. So to continue to grow ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ and to get it embedded in the school curriculum, gives me a very strong sense of purpose and meaning. Because it means more and more young people will get to connect with being their best selves. That means I can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning and I have more energy than I’ve ever had in my life

20. If I were to ask you to think about “a life worth living”? What constitutes a life worth living for you?

One in which I feel loved. And one in which I feel I’m adding some value. I rather like this story from our book…

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 15th May 2013

Rare ‘floating rainbow’ brightens sunset skies – Image from The Daily Mail 

JOY

Joy drinks pure water. She has sat with the dying and attended many births. She denies nothing. She is in love with life, all of it, the sun and the rain and the rainbow. She rides horses at Half Moon Bay under the October moon. She climbs mountains. She sings in the hills. She jumps from the hot spring to the cold stream without hesitation.

Although Joy is spontaneous, she is immensely patient. She does not need to rush. She know there are obstacles on every path and that every moment is the perfect moment. She is not concerned with success or failure or how to make things permanent.

At times Joy is elusive – she seems to disappear even as we approach her.  I see her standing on a ridge covered with oak trees, and suddenly the distance between us feels enormous.  I am overwhelmed and wonder if the effort to reach her is worth it.  Yet she waits for us.  Her desire to walk with us is as great as our longing to accompany her.

This delightful description comes from a gem of a book, called The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler, which I recently discovered thanks to a recommendation by Brené Brown. 

This theme of joy was developed further in this interesting article below by Jo Confino which was published in The Guardian on 8th May 2013.  Joy should be with us in all aspects of our life, particularly at work as we spend so many of our waking hours engaged in some form of work activity. Focusing on our happiness at work rather than on the next salary increase or the promotion we are gaining might be a better way to bring more joy in to our working lives.

A healthy dose of joy could transform the corporate sector and put it on a more sustainable footing. Photograph: Tim Gainey/Alamy

Do you ever have the feeling that we spend our lives trying to learn the same lessons over and over again? We hope always to find answers but perhaps a better approach is to ask more profound questions.

I mention this because of a story told to me at a meeting of 300 CEOs and senior executives at the Brainstorm Green conference in Laguna Niguel, California.

It was not a story about energy efficiency, nor was it a story about how to convince your chief financial officer to invest in greener technology. Instead it was about a chief executive who did not know how to incorporate fun into his work.

It goes like this. The businessman was having an interview for a senior position and told the CEO he had three main criteria for taking any post: it had to have a purpose, it had to be fairly paid and it had to be fun.

The feedback he received was that the CEO was comfortable with the first two but just could not get his head around what the third one meant. Quite understandably, the gentleman in question did not take the job, and learnt a year later that the CEO had died at the age of 58.

Are we having fun?

And therein lies a question we could all do with asking; are we having fun and does it matter?

My own feeling is that the adrenaline of making money and beating the competition can seem fun for a while, but like any drug it wears off over time and then people need a bigger dose to try to recapture the original thrill. At its worst, this pattern can end in naked greed and disaster, as we have seen in the financial markets.

By contrast, the ability to have fun is a gift of nature that is like a perfect dynamo. It keeps replenishing itself and never diminishes in its intensity.

More than that, while competition for its own sake is always a great taker, joy is a generous giver and people find it infectious, as long as they are not threatened by it.

This is all obvious when we take a moment to stop and think, but in the hurly burly of life, we forget it. Go into a meeting that includes one person who is sour and negative and the energy of the meeting sinks like a soufflé taken out of the oven before its time. Go into the same meeting where someone is emanating the spirit of joy, and everyone benefits, with the result that space and possibilities open up.

Integrating a sense of joy

I have to say that the sustainability practitioners I meet who are taking the most risks and doing the most to transform their businesses are people who are able to integrate that sense of joy into their work. In fact it is the very feeling of joy that allows them to wake up every day with the knowledge of impending environmental and social catastrophe and still come to work with a cheerful demeanour.

I remember many, many years ago being shocked when an executive coach told me that business leaders become increasingly isolated and lonely as they move up the corporate ladder. No wonder they find it difficult to think deeply beyond shareholder value to the role of business in society. Because they feel trussed up in the straitjacket of their work lives, some love nothing more than bringing in outsiders who are able to inspire and challenge them in new ways.

I have written before about the power of epiphanies to create radical change, because those who experience them first hand are freed, even if only for a moment, from the constraints they falsely believed were holding them down like a ball and chain. Second best, however, is being in the company of people who are able to represent that.

At Brainstorm Green, a few people suggested I meet Jib Ellison, who helped to create the Blu Skye consultancy, which concentrates on systems change. He was a prime mover in Walmart’s journey towards being a more sustainable company. What I was told was not that Ellison had the sharpest mind or the greatest ideas, which may or may not be the case, but that CEOs enjoyed his company.

At its heart, joyous people help to create a feeling of trust. They tend to be better collaborators because they like nothing better than finding common solutions, and don’t feel they have to go into personal sacrifice to achieve them.

Collaboration and competition

There may be lots of people who dismiss what I am writing as naïve. In fact, several people have said to me in recent weeks that collaborating is all well and good, but competition is what really drives innovation and technological advances. But those critics are looking to mark a spot on a spectrum that we have already moved beyond.

Collaboration and competition can be happy bedfellows, if you feel comfortable with both. Those people who bring joy to their work do not see them as polar opposites.

A couple of years ago I attended a meeting at the Houses of Parliament between the Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh and a group of MPs, members of the House of Lords and others. One member of parliament said that political parties thrived on being competitive and in opposition and asked Thay, as he is known, about the Buddhist view of competition. Thay looked at him and asked the simplest of questions: “Does it make you happy?” The ensuing silence spoke volumes.

One of the more popular stories on the Guardian last year was about a palliative nurse who asked all those dying in her hospice what their greatest regrets were. The top five included: “I spent too much time in the office” and “I wish that I had let myself be happier,” which translated into the fact that they had pretended to be content “when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again”.

There was one, however, which particularly caught my eye because it had a certain subtlety, which made it all the more potent. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”.

One of the reasons society gets itself into a mess is because certain ideas or thoughts become so embedded in a culture that those who come along later feel they have no choice but to fit in, for fear of being marginalised.

So may I humbly suggest taking a small chunk out of your work day, sitting quietly and asking yourself a question; “How well am I doing at bringing more joy into my life?” Better now than on your deathbed.

This article by Jo Confino was published in Guardian Professional on 8th May 2013. 

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 10th May 2013

Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. She loves the sun and the wind and the night sky. She carries a silver bowl full of liquid moonlight.  She has a cat named Midnight with stars on his paws.

Many people mistrust Pleasure and even more misunderstand her. For a long time I could hardly stand to be in the same room with her. I went to sleep early to avoid her.  I thought she was a gossip and a flirt and she drank too much. In school we learned that she was dangerous and I was sure that she would distract me from my work.  I didn’t realise she could nurture me.

As I have changed, Pleasure has changed.  I have learned to value her friendship.

This delightful description comes from a gem of a book,  called The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler, which I recently discovered thanks to a recommendation by Brené Brown.  We often deny ourselves the small simple pleasures in life which could give us a quick happiness boost if we gave ourselves permission to have some fun on a regular basis.  This video clip by Gretchen Rubin is a great introduction to Happiness Experiment No 16: Find more ways to introduce small moments of pleasure in your life.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 9th May 2013

As the owner of an irrepressibly happy red setter called Loulou, I have always been convinced that animals can both experience and spread happiness but I did not give the matter any further thought until I read this article on The Smile Epidemic blog.  It makes interesting reading and also reminded me of the importance of connection which is what Happiness Experiment No 15 is all about.  Have a read of the article and decide whether you agree.

Christian the lion

Do animals experience happiness?

We know that humans can experience happiness and most of us have been lucky enough to understand that feeling first hand. It is commonly understood that there are three processes to experience emotion:

1. A physiological response to a certain stimulus
2. An outward expression of emotion and
3. An analysis of that emotion

Because this is our common scientific understanding of how one experiences emotion, we also gauge the experience of happiness by the same measure. This is where the debate comes in regarding an animals capability of experiencing emotion, and more specifically that of happiness.

There are research and test studies that demonstrate animals experience fear and mourning, so why not happiness too?
For instance, a graylag goose who has lost their partner demonstrates all the same symptoms of a young child in terms of experiencing grief, i.e: eyes sinking deep into their sockets, an overall drooping experience, literal head hanging, tears. Sea lion’s, dolphins, and elephants who’ve had to watch their children or partner being killed will cry and scream out for help, and will try to revive them afterward.

This similar process has been observed within different species in the moments before they have accepted that their friend, parent, child or spouse is deceased. It is after the realization that death has occurred, that the animals will move into the mourning process. According to John Bowlby (Developmental Psychologist), some animals will even take part in funeral rituals such as putting together shrines to pay tribute to the one they are missing, or burying the deceased animal (Ex. elephants, gorilla’s, wolves, and foxes).

Why do animals grieve and why do we see grief in different species of animals? It’s been suggested that grief reactions may allow for the reshuffling of status relationships or the filling the reproductive vacancy left by the deceased, or for fostering continuity of the group. Some theorize that perhaps mourning strengthens social bonds among the survivors who band together to pay their last respects. This may enhance group cohesion at a time when it’s likely to be weakened [Source: Psychology Today].

We also know that animals can experience fear, distress and pain. The most commonly observed instance of this is within our very own food industry. The raising of livestock to then utilize them as a source of food is a common environment in which animals are clearly experiencing fear, distress and pain throughout the process. So much, in fact, that the American Meat Institute (AMI) is implementing new procedures to render livestock brain dead before they are to be slaughtered to reduce the amount of distress and pain experienced. This reflects a rather humane view of our four-legged companions: that animals, like humans, can feel fear and pain. This is also obvious in the wild; after all, fear is a function of survival. The idea that animals can feel pain has also been proven through clinical tests, like teaching animals to fear their food supply through electric shocks, as Psychologist B.F. Skinner managed to do.

We understand and have observed animals experiencing emotions such as pain, fear, and grief; so with that in mind, it is likely that animals ought to be capable of experiencing happiness as well, right?. The main issue here comes in the distinction between fear and happiness.

Fear is an emotion that generally produces observable behavior. A field mouse will flee from the shadow of a hawk flying overhead, for example. Happiness, however, is much more subjective, and produces less distinctly discernable behavior. What’s more, there’s no reason for happiness to exist in the animal kingdom, since all necessary behavior is considered to serve as some form of survival mechanism.

But what, exactly is the problem? Anyone who’s been around a dog wagging its tail or a cat purring contentedly can attest that animals feel happiness. Not so fast, say detractors. They would contend that this concept is an example of anthropomorphizing. To put it simply, they say, animals aren’t people, so humans shouldn’t treat them as such.

Anthropomorphizing is the act of attributing human features or behaviours to that of animals, thereby often misinterpreting their reactions or behaviours for the emotion of happiness.

This may be true, however, one argument in support of animal happiness is the fact that animals appear to have neurological processes similar to that of humans. Laboratory drug trials using mice have shown that they respond to the same compounds that alleviate emotional instability like depression in humans [Source: Bekoff and Goodall]. What’s more, to test an antidepressant’s effectiveness, mice are actually made depressed through bullying from other mice. If a mouse can feel depressed, then is it out of the realm of possibility that it can feel happiness as well?

Happiness, from a strictly biological standpoint, is a form of pleasure. Why is pleasure so important biologically? We humans experience pleasure as a means of teaching us to repeat behaviors that will help ensure our survival and the survival of our species. Eating food can elicit feelings of contentment or other forms of pleasure by triggering the release of hormones like endorphins. So, humans learn to eat — which helps ensure survival — because it feels good. The same goes for ‘afternoon delight’ which helps ensures the survival of the species through reproduction.

Proponents of the animal happiness idea argue that this evolutionary mechanism should be present in any animal with a conscious mind [Source: Macmillan]. Since we have proven animals experience aversive emotions like fear; logic follows that they should also be able to experience pleasurable feelings like happiness.

Have you ever engaged with an animal, whether it be your pet, someone else’s, or an animal outdoors or in the wild? Have you witnessed their happiness, have you felt the warmth of the cuddles, the purring, the playfulness and seemingly happy nature of them?

So although we may not be able to prove that animals are experiencing happiness with strong scientific proof, there are some theories that support the argument that they do.

We happen to think that animals do experience genuine happiness and pleasure, and want to know what do you think? Do you believe that animals do in fact,  experience happiness?

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 8th May 2103