How do you get happy and stay happy? John Masterson has a few pointers to share
I wear a watch with big Roman numerals. I am a good time keeper, but I don’t need to know to the second what time it is. Digital watches always strike me as cheap, crass, useless and ugly. I remember the days when the weather forecast was a lot more inaccurate than the worst watch. I liked never being sure what the next day would bring. I used to think that Americans were obsessed with the weather on television until I noticed the important difference between their weather and ours: they got it right.
Sadly, we have caught up, and now to look at the internet last thing at night to see what is in store. Do this for a few days and watch what it does to your head. If sun is promised, I go to bed happy. If it says wind or cold, I couldn’t care less. But if rain is on the way, I go to bed miserable, wake up miserable and see little point in life until it has passed.
George Hook often begins his radio programme with “the happiness index” and whether it is going up or down. It always makes me wonder if there is any more to it than rain, or no rain.
There are times I feel like shouting at the radio and telling George that I feel bloody great and was happy that way until he made me think about it.
Then I think about whatever specifically was keeping my spirits up, and before long I am smiling and absent-minded again until I have to slam on the brakes to avoid becoming intimate with the car in front.
George does remind me of one thing: happiness is big business. We all feel we are entitled to more than our share of it. In a recent survey, 80 per cent of Americans said that they wake up happy; I always feel fairly good when I am in the US of A. Probably related to their happiness is that, in the same survey, 79 percent of people described themselves as optimistic.
Perhaps one key to my better-than-average happiness is that I avoid “glass half empty” people, I do my best to prune them from my life. These are the people who can see all the down sides of winning the Lotto, or going out with Julia Roberts, when I would prefer to become acquainted with the problems associated with such events in my own good time and in my own good way.
Show them a Ferrari and they will go on about the price of petrol.
Most of us think that winning the lottery would make us happy but, oddly, once you have enough money to be comfortable, having more does not have as much effect as people think.
Being removed from poverty does have a major effect. If the unemployed single man becomes the employed married man, you can rest assured his life will be rosier. Sadly, the rush of buying the car of your dreams wears off quickly. And it always impresses the wrong people. Buy a top-of-the-range car and the women that you want to impress don’t even notice. Just as the woman who spends an arm and a leg on fashion gets “ohs” and “ahsw from her female friends while the average male doesn’t even remember the colour. Benefits gained from retail therapy are fairly temporary.
Recently, I asked several people what were the things in life that made them really happy. Once they started to give the question real thought, they ended up identifying the very things that researchers across the world find. What makes most people most happy are other people — friends, children, parents, lovers, relations, even the people they work with.
Doing things and communicating with other people forms the social glue that keeps the smile on our faces and the spring in our step. Happiness is the hum of communication and conversation and of the ‘I must tell her about…’ moments. It comes from being with people with whom we share a kind of shorthand.
And if you find you cannot get on with your friends, lovers and acquaintances, then do the one thing guaranteed to bring you love, enjoyment, satisfaction and one-to-one communication of a high order: get a dog.
John Masterson is a doctor of psychology
First published in Nov 2006
Happiness is communication with other people – or with a dog
How do you get happy and stay happy? John Masterson has a few pointers to share
I wear a watch with big Roman numerals. I am a good time keeper, but I don’t need to know to the second what time it is. Digital watches always strike me as cheap, crass, useless and ugly. I remember the days when the weather forecast was a lot more inaccurate than the worst watch. I liked never being sure what the next day would bring. I used to think that Americans were obsessed with the weather on television until I noticed the important difference between their weather and ours: they got it right.
Sadly, we have caught up, and now to look at the internet last thing at night to see what is in store. Do this for a few days and watch what it does to your head. If sun is promised, I go to bed happy. If it says wind or cold, I couldn’t care less. But if rain is on the way, I go to bed miserable, wake up miserable and see little point in life until it has passed.
George Hook often begins his radio programme with “the happiness index” and whether it is going up or down. It always makes me wonder if there is any more to it than rain, or no rain.
There are times I feel like shouting at the radio and telling George that I feel bloody great and was happy that way until he made me think about it.
Then I think about whatever specifically was keeping my spirits up, and before long I am smiling and absent-minded again until I have to slam on the brakes to avoid becoming intimate with the car in front.
George does remind me of one thing: happiness is big business. We all feel we are entitled to more than our share of it. In a recent survey, 80 per cent of Americans said that they wake up happy; I always feel fairly good when I am in the US of A. Probably related to their happiness is that, in the same survey, 79 percent of people described themselves as optimistic.
Perhaps one key to my better-than-average happiness is that I avoid “glass half empty” people, I do my best to prune them from my life. These are the people who can see all the down sides of winning the Lotto, or going out with Julia Roberts, when I would prefer to become acquainted with the problems associated with such events in my own good time and in my own good way.
Show them a Ferrari and they will go on about the price of petrol.
Most of us think that winning the lottery would make us happy but, oddly, once you have enough money to be comfortable, having more does not have as much effect as people think.
Being removed from poverty does have a major effect. If the unemployed single man becomes the employed married man, you can rest assured his life will be rosier. Sadly, the rush of buying the car of your dreams wears off quickly. And it always impresses the wrong people. Buy a top-of-the-range car and the women that you want to impress don’t even notice. Just as the woman who spends an arm and a leg on fashion gets “ohs” and “ahsw from her female friends while the average male doesn’t even remember the colour. Benefits gained from retail therapy are fairly temporary.
Recently, I asked several people what were the things in life that made them really happy. Once they started to give the question real thought, they ended up identifying the very things that researchers across the world find. What makes most people most happy are other people — friends, children, parents, lovers, relations, even the people they work with.
Doing things and communicating with other people forms the social glue that keeps the smile on our faces and the spring in our step. Happiness is the hum of communication and conversation and of the ‘I must tell her about…’ moments. It comes from being with people with whom we share a kind of shorthand.
And if you find you cannot get on with your friends, lovers and acquaintances, then do the one thing guaranteed to bring you love, enjoyment, satisfaction and one-to-one communication of a high order: get a dog.
John Masterson is a doctor of psychology
First published in Nov 2006