UnLtd Blogs - happiness

Start Thinking About Your New Year's Resolutions

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:05:16 +0000

It is easy to come up with the same-old, same-old flagellating New Year's Resolutions. Bypass all those pious intentions to go to the gym, follow a seaweed diet and learn a new language.

You form resolutions because you want to make yourself a better person or because you believe that the end state of these resolutions (being fitter or thinner) will make you happy. Stop setting yourself up for failure, head straight for the main goal of making yourself happier.

Decide right now, that you will count your blessings and cultivate gratitude for what is in your life, not what might be in your life if only...Instead of those gruelling fitness tests, examine your character strengths and virtues (take the tests at Authentic Happiness) and decided how you can use them more regularly. You can investigate whether you can enjoy your pleasures rather than take them sadly.

There are many benefits to enjoying your pleasures, appreciation and counting blessings and cultivating your personal strengths. The first three can take as little as a minute at a time. The last needs more planning and reminders to use your strengths but it is equally pleasurable.

'Tis the season for tension and re-hashing old scores

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:38:24 +0000

There are lots of kill-joy stories circulating about elderly people being upbraided for asking about the switching-on of the Christmas Lights rather than Winter Lights. And stories about singing services being cancelled for being insufficiently multi-denominational. In the US, some groups have brought successful law suits against towns whose public displays are reportedly too secular. In contrast to these stories, the Guardian has a thoughtful piece that suggests that many of these Grinch stories have little or no basis in fact: The phoney war on Christmas.

Rather than the usual, “the personal is the political”, it seems as if the personal experience is spreading to the political. If your family’s version of holiday spirit has usually been interpreted rather too literally (and liberally), leading to family tension and the annual re-hashing of old scores, then this is your kind of public holiday season. And, by and large, no alcohol has been required, just plain mean-spiritedness.

A friend works for a dictionary publishers and is the go-to person in many circles for linguistic niceties. She and her siblings now have their own families and gather together at her mother’s on set-piece days. A while ago, her mother was watching a reality programme and asked her, “What’s a dysfunctional family?”. In an admirable economy of words, my friend replied, “You know the way we all get on Boxing Day”; her mother nodded, “Well, dysfunctional families are like that the whole year round”.

Answering "How are you?": counting blessings

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:18:36 +0000

Apparently, in Latin, you can ask a question that anticipates the answer. So, you use some grammatical forms if you expect the answer ‘No’, and others (presumably), if you expect the answer ‘Yes’. It sounds like an ancient form of mind-games and casts a new light on the art of conversation. But so often, our conversations can be formulaic, and this is especially true when it comes to social comments.

When I worked in Loughborough I was initially taken aback when the response to my polite enquiry, “How are you?”, was met with, “Fair to middling”. I was so accustomed to, “Fine”, that I didn’t know if the correct social action was to overlook it, or to enquire further and run the risk of learning more about IBS or the agonies of an enlarged prostate than I cared to know.

Throughout the UK there are local customs that dictate the answer to the question “How are you?”. I came across an item on blessings and the tricky task of navigating the appropriate answer to this question.

When someone asks me: How are you? 99% of the time I will answer “fine”. In Hebrew, you say, beseder, literally, in order, ok. It’s, “thanks for asking but I don’t need any special consideration right now, I’m ready to proceed”.

You Tube's Contribution To Well-being

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:44:06 +0000

Rachel on Sisyphus' Ledge has a discussion going about Hugh Laurie in the comments of her post, Just a note. I had to echo the House, MD/Laurie support and call attention to the many excellent clips of both Fry & Laurie and House on You Tube.

You Tube lots of montages of clips from the various series of House set to music. There are some superb angsty pieces that Frank Zappa might have had in mind when he made his, �It�s like listening to Weber at 4 am on a foggy November morning� (such as 4 a.m.). However, because Rachel recently commented that she enjoyed the smiles on the pictures that I posted from a recent Happystance event, I�m going with a couple of recommendations for smiley, blithe montages: Shoop Shoop Song and Smile.

I've previously enthused about blogging as a creative outlet. I think that facilities like You Tube and affordable software are providing even more creative and entertainment opportunities for people: both as creators and consumers.

Happiness Adjusted Age Relative To Chronological Age?

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:50:29 +0000

There are several age-adjusted health scales used to horrify or shame us about our lifestyle choices and health. Real Age claims to calculate the biological age of your body, based on how well you maintain it. HeartAge can be used to tell a 42-year-old man that after a cardiovascular risk-adjustment, he has the heart of a 70-year-old man. There are anxiety and depression scores and quality of life scores. I'd like to propose an risk-adjusted happiness and resilience score for age. Imagine hearing, "You have the body of a 23-year-old but your lifestyle choices and general grumpiness gives you the Mind-Body score of 58-year old".

HeartAge is a novel use of the Framingham Heart Score: it has been reported in Patients' Perceptions of Cholesterol, Cardiovascular Disease Risk, and Risk Communication Strategies. A series of focus groups compared three strategies for communicating cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Participants saw three visual displays that represented the CVD risk for a 42-year-old man with a Framingham Heart Score that predicted a 25% probability for a CVD event within the next 10 years. A crowd chart showed 100 stick figures with 25 of them shaded to indicate the proportion predicted to have a CVD event over the next 10- years: this was contrasted with a similar chart for a same-aged man with no risk factors (1 figure shaded). Similarly, this same information was compared and contrasted in a simple bar graph. The HeartAge was also presented as a chart. But this time, a horizontal bar chart represented age. The first bar depicted the chronological age (42 years);

the second bar showed how this individual compared with the average age of a same-sex person in the Framingham Heart Study having the same 10-year probability of experiencing a CHD event. For the demonstration case, the 42-year-old had the same risk as a 70-year-old.

Analysis of the participants' reactions and responses revealed that the standard visual representations that show statistical probabilities of risk are confusing and uninspiring. However, a strategy that provides a cardiovascular risk-adjusted age calculation was

evaluated as clear, memorable, relevant, and potentially capable of motivating people to make healthful changes.

The BODE index is gaining in popularity for assessing people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). BODE is a combination of physical and physiological indices and measurements: it can be used in conjunction with quality of life questionnaires to present a full picture of a patient's health and well-being.

Music, Sounds of Nature, Sounds of Happiness

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:54:28 +0000

One of my quick fix suggestions for mood-lifts is that people with MP3 players should put together a mood lifting playlist - pieces that always make your feet tap or get you moving. With the growing sophistication of mobile phones and MP3 players, I advise people to put together a slideshow of images that make them smile, give them a fond memory etc. When I ran a session for young carers recently, the photo of the young cottontail rabbit was very popular with the girls. There are lots of photographs available for download from Flickr and it can be mood-lifting just to look through them.

The Telegraph carries a piece about the Lake District Tourist Board who are doing their best to inspire us now that we are slumped in the end of year doldrums. They are offering a hotline and MP3 downloads of soothing sounds, ranging from the fresh air blowing across England's highest mountain, to a reading of Wordsworth's Daffodils or Cumberland sausage sizzling in a pan.

Eric Robson, of Cumbria Tourism, the organisation behind the telephone line, said: �Many people dread the clocks going back but our Lake District Escape Line will inspire them to think more positively about winter and get outdoors.�

Have a flick through the download files and see if there's something that suits you. For me, the only inexplicable omission, is the sound of contentment that accompanies eating that fine dish, guaranteed to contribute to any tourist's gruntlement, the Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding, along with the sound of someone scraping the pattern of the bowl-despite what their mummies told them-and the gentle swish of a tummy-rub.

Oliver James Rubbishes CBT and Happiness

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:37:44 +0000

I like the work of Oliver James: he is an interesting speaker and an engaging writer. I've been aware for some time that he is not in favour of Layard's enthusiasm for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and he usually makes his viewpoint in a cogent manner.

Not today. Today, Oliver James has contributed a piece to the Daily Mail: Therapy on the NHS? What a crazy waste of �600 million! He starts off with the headline figure that depression and anxiety cost the �17 billion per year and then moves on to deride Layard's proposed �600 million investment in expanding the provision of CBT on the NHS.

It's an infuriating piece. James makes several sideswipes about the efficacy of CBT.

CBT is a form of mental hygiene. However filthy the kitchen floor of your mind, CBT soon covers it with a thin veneer of positive polish. But shiny surfaces tend not to last.

According to James

The CBT patient is taught a story to tell themselves, a relentlessly positive one. If the therapist is skilled, the patient becomes able to ignore many of their true feelings.

When tested at the end of the treatment, like a well-coached pupil taking an exam, they often regurgitate the positive story.

I thought that one aspect of CBT might be the examination of whether negative thoughts and feelings are grounded in unrealistic beliefs. Is it possible that these negative thoughts and feelings are false rather than true?

Why Kindness And Good Manners Matter

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:51:56 +0000

AADT offers an interesting overview of Daniel Goleman's book on the neuroscience of Social Intelligence. Advances in imaging technology reveal the objective reality of instinct that man of us have that

the daily interactions we have with others, particularly those whom we care about, affect us far beyond the surface responses we experience after every independent stimuli or conversation.

Imaging studies show that

agreement brings about similar chemical responses in the brains of all involved, rejection spurs activity in the same area of the brain that regulates physical pain.

In a recent article, Goleman writes that:

When you realize that trivial interactions can affect a person's physiology, somehow you have to take them more seriously.

Most of us know that we can influence others through our mood and vice versa. There is some general understanding that we can influence the healing or well-being of others. Do we need clinical proof that there is good reason to be kind, well-mannered and considerate to each other?

Click on the photograph to be taken to Flickr.

Is It Depression or Bleak Life Circumstances?

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:40:25 +0000

Have you come across the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)? Pfizer is terribly proud of the PHQ-9 and claims that it is an

easy to use patient questionnaire [which] is a self-administered version of the PRIME-MD diagnostic instrument for common mental disorders.

I'm met a number of carers who have been put through the PHQ-9. By anecdotal report, the lowest score to date is 20 (severe depression). Oddly enough, lots of carers have trouble falling/staying asleep, particularly if they are listening out for sounds of illness or an indication that someone is up and wandering (e.g., someone with Alzheimer's Disease). Some carers lose their appetite with anxiety and others overeat for comfort. A number are in such distressed financial straits if they've given up work to care for someone that it's not unusual for them to feel like they're failures and face a future that is so bleak that they don't want it. These questions would catch a lot of carers and their everyday circumstances.

Is it hopelessly naive to say that the PHQ-9 is describing a state of mind that would disappear in many of the affected carers if they had appropriate resources and their future didn't look quite so bleak? The GPs who administer the PHQ-9 are familiar with the circumstances of carers: do they administer anti-depressants or offer talking therapy (good luck with that waiting list), or do they look at the score and decide that it is not really indicative of depression?

The Biology of Emotional Healing

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:06:28 +0000

I've previously written that moods and emotions are contagious. There is an interesting piece on this notion in the New York Times, Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing. (If the NYT bugs you for a log in, then follow the instructions at Bug Me Not.)Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with rich personal networks � who are married, have close family and friends, are active in social and religious groups � recover more quickly from disease and live longer. But now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people�s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data.It's a light, readable discussion that mentions mirror neurons as an explanation for emotional contagion, which expresses "the tendency of one person to catch the feelings of another, particularly if strongly expressed".

There's also a discussion of Cacioppo's work. He makes that interesting argument that the

emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity. This radically expands the scope of biology and neuroscience from focusing on a single body or brain to looking at the interplay between two at a time. In short, my hostility bumps up your blood pressure, your nurturing love lowers mine. Potentially, we are each other�s biological enemies or allies.

This is a fascinating way of understanding all of our relationships and particularly the very strong relationship between carers and those for whom they care.

Being a Murder Victim v. Winning The Lottery: Calculating Happiness

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 10:26:02 +0000

I was intrigued to come across a ready-reckoner for calculating the size that a US lottery jackpot needs to be before it is worth the investment of a one dollar ticket. The values need to be adjusted to account for UK jackpots and the greater price of a UK ticket. It's a pretty sobering read to drill down into what the return has to be to justify the expenditure of a dollar.

...for a $1.00 ticket, the amount of the grand prize had to be at least equal to the odds for winning it. In the case of the Powerball lottery, that means the grand prize has to be at least worth $120,526,660 to make the value of the benefit worth the $1.00 cost of the risk.

According to this source, the jackpot has to be more than 120 million dollars to justify buying a 1 dollar ticket. So, very roughly (using all my fingers and toes), that means we need a jackpot of around 102 million pounds to make it worth the financial risk of investing 1 pound. Of course, this doesn't take different population sizes into account, it's just a straight conversion at the exchange rate of 1.40 dollars to the pound.

I have previously quoted the figure (I read it in a news summary) that we are 14x more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery. And I have used that as an argument that we are theory poor if our sole response to "What would make you happy?" is "Winning the lottery".

Happiness and The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:40:54 +0000

Polly Toynbee has written a piece asking "why have we never had it so good". She argues that:

There has never been a better time to be alive in Britain than today, no generation more blessed, never such opportunity for so many. And things are getting better all the time, horizons widening, education spreading, everyone living longer, healthier, safer lives.

However, it doesn’t seem as if all of these "[u]nimaginable luxuries and choices" have increased our happiness levels: it is also not clear that the opportunities and benefits that she describes with such approbation are available to all. Many people are involuntary participants in the postcode lottery that governs whether or not you are eligible for a variety of procedures on the NHS (e.g., cardiac catheter ablations). And the increase in foreign travel and holidays is limited: the number of British people who did not take a holiday over the course of a year has remained stable at 41 per cent over the last three decades.

Brad DeLong has posted an extensive and interesting review of Ben Friedman's thought-provoking The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.

FEAR, And The Fear Of Terrorism

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:47:27 +0000

It’s a cliche in positive psychology that FEAR is an acronym: depending on your preference it is either False Experience Appearing Real or False Experience Accepted as Real.

Happiness teacher and writer Robert Holden says that a lot of his work consists of showing people that they are already happy. When working with people it is not unusual to discover that if people look through their present circumstances, there is much for which they are grateful, and much that contributes to a sense of happiness.

Participants in my Happystance workshops can be initially reluctant to join in some of the group exercises: they frequently say that they can not visualise and have no power of imagination. Yet, in my experience, most of those people are experts at being frightened by something that hasn’t happened yet. They are afraid of something that may happen in the future: they can imagine this event of set of circumstances in full technicolour gore, and may even be capable of experiencing some of the accompanying emotions in advance.

“They need to do better than what is going on to make a dent in the fear that is affecting a million people.”- ANDY APAID, a businessman in Port-au-Prince, on the United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti.

I read the above quotation some time ago in the New York Times. And I had it in mind when I met a few people this morning who all reported themselves as unhappy. After we had worked together for a while it became apparent that none of them was unhappy because of their current circumstances. The unhappiness lay in their expectation of future unhappiness, and they brought that emotion into their present, although it doesn’t belong there, and there is no guarantee that a future event will occur that will justify their present emotional state. It is well established that negative emotions have an adverse impact on people’s immune systems and can undermine their health and wellbeing. Fear of an adverse event in the future can undermine an individual’s ability to cope with it.

NHS Squeeze: Will It Mean More Work And Fewer Resources For Carers?

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:41:12 +0000

I came across the following in Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millennium, by the 14th Dalai Lama. It is an interesting description of the ethics of caring for ourselves and others and the authenticity of happiness that is grounded in qualities such as love, compassion, patience and tolerance.

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.

Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace -- anxiety, doubt, disappointment -- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.

Happy Danes and Miserable Brits?

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:51:31 +0000

A researcher has put together a map of happiness in the world. The map shows that Denmark is the No. 1 destination. Health levels, prosperity and education were the strongest determinants of happiness. Money might not guarantee happiness, but it does make a significant contribution when it is spend on healthcare and education. It probably comes as no surprise that Zimbabwe and Burundi come bottom: oddly enough, the USA is placed at 23 and UK at 41 out of 178 countries.

The researcher makes some interesting comments about why countries appear in the places that they do. He remarks that Asia showed up poorly despite the strong sense of family and collective identity. However, I would speculate that questions that emphasise subjective wellbeing are not culturally appropriate in several countries. Although there is some mention of lower levels of happiness in countries with large population, the examples cited seem to relate more to high population density than large populations (they may overlap but are not necessarily synonymous).

Of course, according to a recent item in The Guardian, happiness is over-rated. Happiness does seem to be a red-rag that precludes discussion of the benefits that it confers. Apart from novels and philosophical/religious speculations about the spiritual ennoblement that suffering gives us, where did we develop the idea that lessons in how to develop our mental and physical fortitude would reduce us to the blandly chipper, annoying others with our mindless cheer and groundless optimism? We can't eradicate sadness or adversity: they are a natural part of life's rhythms. But, for some people, it does seem as if we can do something about our ability to cope with such circumstances.