Pursuit of happiness | Life and style | The Guardian

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I am sitting across a table from my sister-in-law, outside a small Italian restaurant, reading her a letter. As experiences go, it's toe-curling. I am telling her everything I'm grateful to her for. It's like a bad episode of Oprah. Surely us Brits aren't built for this stuff? But according to Action for Happiness, little things like this can really improve our lives. The movement, founded by LSE professor Richard Layard and Dr Anthony Seldon, aims to create positive social change, and comes as the government prepares to publish findings this autumn on its proposed happiness index. The movement's core idea is that we should all try to create more happiness. Or, to paraphrase the Dalai Lama, happiness doesn't just happen to you, you have to work at it. To this end, a list has been drawn up of 50 activities, from getting to know neighbours to unplugging from technology, that can make positive changes to our lives. But can they work? I spent a week finding out … Being kind According to the organisation, doing kind things for others strengthens our connection with them and builds trust – particularly with strangers – leading to happier communities. The acts can be large or small, but must be beyond the things you do regularly. This is not hard. To my surprise, I am not overly kind. I'm polite, I'm friendly, I hold open doors, but my natural reserve prevents me from, say, mowing a neighbour's lawn. So I step it up, offering to let someone queue-jump (he refuses), and trying to help a pair of lost tourists ("Nein danke, we're fine"). Finally – yes! – a couple struggles off a bus with a wheelchair and bag of shopping. I take a bag, give the woman my arm, and walk her to the wheelchair. I feel like Mother Teresa. Give thanks Next I must write down, every night, three things I'm grateful for. This, apparently, helps us to feel happier, healthier and more fulfilled – and less materialistic. It turns out that I am a natural, scribbling down teenage things such as "amazing swim!", "gorgeous day!", "James McAvoy!". After a particularly bad day it makes me feel instantly more upbeat. "This action helps us to reframe our perceptions of how our day is going," says Action for Happiness's director, Mark Williamson. "It's not about ignoring bad things, but asking, did anything good happen today? You can usually find something." Being mindful Meanwhile, I am trying to meditate. Boy, this is hard. I chose it for its supposed power to transform, through teaching us mindfulness – living in the present rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future – which in turn can make you more robust. The meditation website, Headspace, instructs me to sit for 10 minutes each morning, focusing on my breath, observing my thoughts. At first, turning my mind away from work, worries, my to-do list and breakfast, is impossible. "Everyone experiences this at first," Headspace's founder, Andy Puddicombe, reassures me. "People think you have to somehow switch off, but actually meditation is more about switching on, developing awareness. So don't let a wandering mind put you off." And, sure enough, as the week progresses, I start to look forward to it. It gives me a calm but ready-for-anything feeling that's rather novel. I even try it when swimming. With a bit of extra effort, entire lengths go by unnoticed, and afterwards I feel not just physically exercised, but more clear-headed. Write a letter Another suggestion is that you should thank the people you're grateful to, and that the best way to do this is by writing a letter, then reading it to them. My letter-reading day is looming. I've chosen my sister-in-law for several reasons but mainly because, although life is easier if you get on with your in-laws, there's no compunction to like, let alone love, them. But I do – she is like a sister, and I've never told her that. According to Williamson, this will make us both happier, and has a knock-on effect – if we know others have valued something we've done, we are more likely to do it again. In fact, all happiness can be contagious. Research from the US suggests it can affect not just us, but our friends, their friends and even their friends. Reading the letter makes me cringe. I do it quickly and perfunctorily. My sister-in-law stares into her lap so she doesn't meet my eye. I'd put a few weak jokes in there to diffuse the awkwardness. But afterwards she looks like she might cry. She tells me she is deeply touched, had no idea how much she means to me, and feels the same. Better still, the rest of the night is spent discussing previously taboo subjects: a long-forgotten bust-up; how neither of us are exactly how we appear; what my mum says about me behind my back. It's refreshing to air feelings in a positive context, rather than after a fight, and I come away not only understanding her better but glowing with something indefinable – the sensation, perhaps, that I've done something really nice.

Of course this is hopelessly trite and prescriptive, but it got me thinking. Anyway, the result is Happiness for Sociopaths, my own helpful little guide. I'm adding to it as I think og things, but contributions are always welcome.

1. Have a wank in an aeroplane bathroom. It's like joining the mile high club but you can do it without the tedious presence of other people.

2. Leave a letter at the post office in an unintelligibly addressed envelope. It should read "$1m in a blue bag by the bins on the corner of XXXXXXXXXX street, or the kid gets it".

3. Next time your neighbour's abusing his wife, knock on the door wearing a dressing gown and ask if he'd mind beating her more quietly as you have an early shift tomorrow.

4. When babysitting the neighbour's kids, tell them that hamsters are the product of a coupling between dog and cat (or whatever pets they already have).

5. Spend a happy half hour in W. H. Smith's slipping obscene photographs between the pages of innocent-looking novels.

6. Whenever unsolicited callers come to the door, explain that you'd invite them in but in fact you're just robbing the place.

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Addressing the remote possibility that anyone cares about what Richard Layard actually proposed, his series of three lectures in 2003 on the subject of happiness, subsequently expanded into a book, are here:

one, two and three.

Of course some of us, like Eeyore, don't seek happiness. We just want confirmation that it is right to feel angry, miserable and neglected.

What could be wrong with that?

Well okay, I'm starting with the last one since I'm an old snaggle-toothed libertarian, and that's what interests me most.

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Not long ago I was asked to speak at a seminar in the Treasury and to answer the following question, “What difference would it make if we really tried to make people happier?”

Danger, Will Robinson!

Usually when a government starts asking that it means that it's about to make a lot of people very unhappy indeed.

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Most of the research points to 7 main factors, which I have listed here in no particular order (Figure 1). They are income, work, private life, community, health, freedom, and a philosophy of life. We discussed the significant but limited impact of income yesterday, and today I want to compare the effect of other factors with that of income.

Well that is fascinating. It also corresponds closely with my own research into hot, sweaty jungle sex. According to academic and institutional data, there are several main factors that lead to absolutely fucking minblowing coitus: duration, repetation, sustainability, attraction, willingness to do anal, novelty and little scary looking plastic toys that buzz and jump around. Clearly if we are to maximise the sexual and psychological health of the nation, all citizens should be obliged to improve themselves in these domains.

Yours affectionately,

Dolmancé

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It is not surprising that Europeans want to keep their own way of doing things, especially when Continentals north of the Mediterranean have achieved US hourly productivity without US levels of insecurity.

This seems a tad disingenuous. Sure, hourly productivity is better in France than in the US, but yearly productivity is far worse. In part this is because they choose to work fewer hours p/a, but it's also partly because all of the low productivity workers are on the dole.

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There is also the question of the pace of work. In order to improve performance, workers are under increasing pressure to achieve targets. This is leading to increased stress. For example in 1996 the Eurobarometer survey asked employed people in every country whether in the last 5 years there had been a “significant increase in the stress involved in your job”. Nearly 50% said Yes, it had increased, and under 10% said it had diminished. Figures for Britain were similar to the European average.7

Did it also ask whether they'd been promoted to a post with more responsibility during that time?

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Civil servants gaily reorganise every public service, oblivious of how each reorganisation destroys a major channel of personal security and trust. I believe we have a lot to learn from “old Europe”, where the value of stability is better understood.

As someone who's done time in the French civil service, to this I can only say:

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!! !!!!!!!

Ooh. Christ, my hernia. But seriously. Homeboy's out of his mind.

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Even already, after only 50 years of research, many people are helped by Prozac to “feel themselves” rather than some sub-standard person that they only half recognise. As drug research advances, it would be surprising if more and more people could not be helped to be what they feel is the real them.

Well I dare say, but then everyone feels better about themselves when they're completely fucking baked. You could give them crack and get the same results.

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2. Producers matter as much as consumers. They should be incentivated more by professional norms and not by ever more financial incentives.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, and not just because one of the words is made up. I presume that it's made clear in the other two.

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3. We should not promote the search for status, and we should limit dysfunctional advertising.

Dysfunctional advertising? That's like... adverts that don't work? Or adverts for really fucked up stuff like unicorn tail buttplugs? Yeah. Sure. Limit that shit.

I don't really think there's much point in promoting the search for status either. People just do it anyway.

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6. Security at home and in the community will be reduced if there is too much geographical mobility.

Well, I haven't really got any academic objections to this (except that going wherever the hell you like is a basic right), it just reminded me of the League of Gentlemen, which was funny.

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Obviously people are happier if they are able to appreciate what they have, whatever it is; and if they do not always compare themselves with others; and if they can school their own moods.

I have gonorrhea. Want some?

Well, okay, so people are happier if they appreciate what they've got, but... You know... So what? Mountains are taller the higher up they go.

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People find comfort from within, in all sorts of ways, but these generally include some system of relying for help on the deep positive part of yourself, rather than on the scheming ego.

Me: "Hellooooooooooo?! Deep positive part? Are you in there?!"
Scheming Ego: "Nope. Just me, as usual."

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But no research has sorted out how far belief causes happiness or how far happiness encourages belief, and in any case no one should believe if it goes against their reason.

Why not? You've already got them living their whole lives hopped up on Prozac in a trailer park in Smegma, Nebraska, why not give them God as well?

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More important, the pursuit of individual self-interest is not a good formula for personal happiness.

Worked for me.

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Students who took introductory economics became less honest, while astronomy students became more honest, and the difference was significant.

Really? Now I know where to offload all the fake banknotes I get. Now I'm glad I read this.

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As time passes, economics teaching is seeping increasingly into our culture.

I think that anyone who's tried to explain the difference between national debt and household debt to a drunk in a bar might doubt that, but you could be right.

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I want to suggest that the right concept is the old Enlightenment one of the greatest happiness. The good society is the one where people are happiest. And the right action is the one which produces the greatest happiness.

Which would be great if you could guarantee that your actions would always have the desired outcome, but you can't, especially on the scale of a whole country. The Soviets thought that they were going to make everyone happy, and look how that turned out.

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This is not a currently fashionable view among philosophers. But they do not offer any alternative overarching theory which would help us to resolve our moral dilemmas.

42.

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If the critics offered a convincing alternative ideology for public and private morality, we could argue about which was better.

Sure they have. The equilibrium of social groups acting out of rational self-interest. It might not be perfect but very few people wind up being re-educated in Siberian gulags.

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2. We also want our relatives to be happy,

Not in my family.

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Natural selection will punish those who cannot cooperate with others, and who instead seek only their short-run gain.

As a matter of fact, it won't. A population of cooperators can support a small number of cheaters without collapsing - the mechanism even exists among some sorts of bacteria.

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In the lingo of geneticists Tit-for-Tat is an evolutionary stable strategy which will see off personality types who operate differently. 24

As they move on to new hunting grounds.

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Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains.

... and if you happen to be in government, be exceedingly careful that your bumbling good intentions don't fuck everything up for everybody.

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I mean, sure, most people will be happier if they don't get fired, have lovely kids, find religion and are perpetually out of their tree on Prozac. But it won't work for everyone, and I doubt whether government could or should try to make it.

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And one more for the alternative list:

"Want to play rape?"
"No."
"That's the spirit!"

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