What have you got to lose.

Recently I came across some thoughts on 5 things you can do to make you happier. They struck me as sensible small things we could all do without turning our lives upside down and so unlike a lot of self help advice might actually work. So here they are.


Accept unhappiness, this one seems a little odd but the point is happiness is not achieved by the avoidance of unpleasantness. This is there can be no light without dark type of thinking to be happy you need to have a contrast and also an acceptance that not everything in the world is pleasant. A trivial example but not confronting the neighbour about his tree may avoid a difficult conversation but you will be stuck with the tree.

Share real time with family and friends, the research shows that the more time you spend with the people you care about the happier you will be. These should be real face to face interactions without distractions, eg watching TV with the family is good but better is no TV. Emailing friends is ok but no substitute for a sit down conversation over coffee. Arrange a face to face conversation with someone you care about today.

Do some exercise. Well apart from all the other benefits 20mins of moderate exercise 3 times a week will make you feel happier. The good news is a walk with the dog will do it and if you don’t have a dog become a volunteer walker for the SPCA and if you hate dogs (well you should try and get over that cause you are missing out) you can always walk yourself or better yet a walk with someone you care about. In other words you don’t have to turn into a multisport nut just a little bit will do it.

Do more of less. We have a tendency to cram a lot into our lives and then be busy running from one thing to the next. Instead pick out the activities you really like and spend more quality time focused on the activities that bring you the most joy. We have all met someone who is passionate about something and it seems to consume their lives and when you talk to them about whatever it is you can see them light up. Well you don’t need to be that obsessed but you can see the joy a focus on some things you love could bring you rather than trying to do a little of everything.

Keep a gratitude journal. At the end of the day note down in a journal the good things that happened in the day. Just a few notes not an essay. Eg had coffee with Jim, heard a great song on the radio, my boss said thanks for a job well done. So for some bosses that last one might be a stretch but you get the idea, you don’t have to write much and the items don’t need to be big. I reckon even the worst days should be able to yield three.

That was the list, all of them are small ideas and achievable so give it a go what have you got to lose.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Stu’s comment on one of my earlier entries posed a question "what is comfort?" which in the context of the blog I chose to reinterpreted into What is happiness? My quick answer was “you get to choose” eg whatever you want it to be, which on the face of it looks either flippant or designed to be clever (in the negative use of the word) It was neither and so I thought I would expand on that thought.


Albert Camus (pronounced Kamay) 1913-1960 was a French Philosopher who among his credits was a Noble Laureate in Literature. So he is contemporary (as these things go most famous philosophers are long since dead) and clearly no dummy. He is mostly associated with a theory in Philosophy known as Absurd. As I understand it (I have no formal philosophical training) in a search for the meaning of life there are various ways you can go, one is to look for an external meaning most commonly god. Alternatively you can look for an internal meaning a Platonic view of living a good life as dictated by universal laws (not from god but more from nature) Or you could decide that life has no meaning and is an “Absurd” enterprise.

Faced with the dilemma of a meaningless life most philosophers end up abandoning the idea and arrive back at God or Reason. Camus did not but embraced the idea of a meaningless life and focused on what the logical conclusion would be. Is it suicide for example in the face of futility? Camus uses The Myth of Sisyphus to explore this idea.

Sisyphus was a Greek King who managed to capture and imprison death so that humans would no longer die. The gods freed death and to punish Sisyphus they granted him immortality but he was condemned to roll a rock to the top of a hill only to see it roll down to the bottom again over and over again. Among other ideas explored by Camus he posed the question “what does Sisyphus think on his walk down the hill?” You see in his “free” time of walking down to resume his labours he has two (significant) possible thoughts. The negative option of reflecting on the futility of the task and the doomed existence that is now his lot. Or he can choose to think about a job well done on reaching the top and look forward to the challenge of achieving the outcome again.

The fact that the task is immediately undone as soon as it is completed does not make the task any less worthy. As soon as we are born our life starts to run out with each passing day getting shorter and shorter but this does not negate the value of life.

A lot of life can seem like rock rolling and our attitude to that will be an important part of our happiness with our lot. Even if you do not subscribe to an “absurd” view of life the active choosing to see your rock rolling as a job well done and not a hopeless exercise in never ending futility can’t really hurt now can it. So you choose, choose happiness.

Money can't buy you love..

The Teachers negotiations with government are back in the news with another impasse in negotiations and more threatened strike action.

This is not peculiar to them right now and it seems to be a period of discontent among workers at the moment with teachers, doctors and nurses among others either having been on strike or threatening to strike. The claim is always the same we are either underpaid or our working conditions are unacceptable. (Which is the same thing dressed up differently)

A big part of this discontent seems to revolve around the current pay levels not delivering the level of lifestyle that these groups believe themselves entitled to.

So firstly some facts, the groups I mentioned are paid around $50k per annum (as a wide sweeping generalisation with some paid quite a bit more and a few being paid a small amount less) So how does place you in the NZ scheme of things? Quite well as it turns out, referring to the IRD for the most recent stats I could find http://www.ird.govt.nz/aboutir/external-stats/income-distribution-income-bands this puts them in the top 20% of income earners in NZ. So it is impossible to argue that they are poorly paid relative to others.

So assuming for a moment that you pay packet dictates your lifestyle then the alternative explanation is that they think they should be higher up than the to 20% and real life is failing to meet their expectations and this is leading to unhappiness as manifested by their demands.

So what we have is an external item (your pay packet) and the agency that pays you (in this case mostly the government) controlling your happiness levels.

I think this happens to a lot of us and it is a major source of dissatisfaction in our lives. It is a comparative happiness at work, we judge ourselves by those around us and if we come up short we tend to be unhappy. The important part of that phrase is “those around us” so for example if we lived in Cuba where cars are hard to get and we had one when none of our neighbours did then I suspect we would be happy about that. However in NZ we almost have a car each (2.7M in 2007) so having any old car doesn’t make a lot of us happy, having a “good” car does and again it depends who you are what that means, for some it is a tricked out Subaru WRX for others it is the latest Mercedes.

But in all cases we are judging our worth and associated happiness by the people around us. Now if you happen to be at the top of your local tree then this will work fine for you but most of us never are and in fact as soon as we are we tend to move trees and start comparing ourselves to a “higher” group.

Now based on my limited knowledge of the world’s religions and philosophical musings I have never encountered a system that suggests fulfilment comes from external sources, all of them to the best of my knowledge tend to suggest we look to ourselves and our inner person for fulfilment and happiness. This is often expressed in spiritual terms within religion and in “moral codes” in more secular writings but the message is the same, happiness comes from within.

This makes sense to me as the world, the people in it, the weather, even my dog are only within limited control by me but presumably I do control me. So I can look to my employer to deliver happiness to me (via a bigger pay packet or whatever) or I can look to my motivations and be content that being in the top 20% isn’t that bad.

So I have heard it said that “Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you a better class of misery” and I think that is true in the way it was intended to be read and also the way I would suggest you read it. No external source can make you happy for long.