10 Steps To Happiness For Mothers

Submitted by tonyplant on June 28, 2006 - 14:37.

Happy mothers tend to have happy children but with the frenetic pace of combining parenthood with working and other activities means that many parents are neglecting their own well-being. The Daily Mail has an article about an interesting experiment to increase mothers' happiness.

Online support group, Netmums, ran the experiment. They encouraged mothers to follow an adapted version of the Happiness Manifesto that was popularised during the Making Slough Happy series. The women completed questionnaires to assess their baseline level of happiness before participating in the experiment.

On a scale of 1 to 100, the average score was 52. But after following the happiness principles for four weeks, the average score rose to 64 - a rise of over 10 per cent in just 28 days.

Of course, this is not even vaguely a scientific experiment; it is just data collection. However, it is a nice report and it serves to promote the idea that happiness is not mysterious, it can sometimes be a lot simpler than it seems to be. It does again provoke the question, if we had a Happiness Boot Camp, what would it look like?

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Happiness Boot Camp: What Would It Look Like?

Submitted by tonyplant on March 13, 2006 - 21:29.

A while ago, I gave a sad and sorry account of a dinner table conversation at which I was mauled for my supper.

Listening to the people around me it seems as if happiness is even less worthy of serious consideration than David Icke’s theories on world government. I was surrounded by people who believe in the virtues of cosmetic surgery as a means of enhancing quality of life and defying our genetic heritage. Yet, when it comes to happiness, the overwhelming consensus was that either one is born happy, or one isn’t and there is nothing that can be done to alter that.

So, it was entertaining to watch the BBC test out what seemed to be a blend of scientific opinion and home-remedies in Get Smarter In A Week. The tips range from drinking water and eating wholefoods to showering with your eyes closed and practising Sudoko or crosswords. The test group of volunteers who tried the regime before the TV group showed an improvement of up to 40 per cent better than in the initial assessment. There was no assessment of the placebo effect or the Pygmalion effect (so-called for the improvement that occurs from having an interest taken in you). But a lot of it sounded like good advice of the sort that couldn't do anybody any harm and might do some people a lot of good.

In the post programme interviews, a lot of the candidates were very positive about the benefits of following the recommendations. A number of them commented on how much it had taught them about themselves and their own strengths. It seemed like one of the biggest shifts in behaviour was that the subjects agreed to devote time to themselves, to cultivating their own well-being. So, often, spending time on ourselves seems like selfishness yet it is absolutely necessary if we are to meet our own needs and responsibilities, and to contribute successfully to our relationships with others.

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Is Television The Thief of Time and Happiness?

Submitted by tonyplant on January 2, 2006 - 17:12.

For most of my life I have practised happiness less than I’ve practised the piano, and the piano averages out at around three minutes per week. Like most of us, I know the activities that make a significant contribution to both my immediate and longer-term happiness, but I used to think that it was frivolous/selfish to devote any time or resources to them. I have, of course, never applied this sort of critical thinking to the time I used to spend watching television. I’m sure there’s some vague provision in the Magna Carta that establishes a man’s right to veg out in front of the TV while normal household chaos rages around him.

 

When I was growing up, there were programmes that gamely exhorted us to adopt more creative behaviours. Indeed, one show in the series Why Don’t You Turn Off Your Television Set and Do Something Less Boring? featured my brother and his friends swinging on branches round a local pond (you made your own entertainment in those days). But those were cosy admonitions that didn’t threaten us with cognitive dissolution or the wrecking of our health. However, a recurrent theme in the BBC’s recent Honey, We’re Killing the Kids is that notwithstanding the debate over the impact of advertising on children, excessive T.V. watching is a remarkable power for harm. And there seems to be a proliferation of websites full of jeremiads against television watching and its impact on our lives: sites like Turn Off Your T.V. and Limit T.V..

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