The seven secrets of happiness
A few years ago, I challenged the eminent psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare to conjure up the secrets of happiness; we treated the exercise as a game. Our conclusions form the basis of my new book.
It appears the secret to happiness is simple: there are seven rules and that’s it. Follow these and you will be happy. Admittedly, this is easier said than done. Living by the rules is not easy, as you will discover. If it were, people would have no problems being happy. You can’t pick and choose. If you are going to live by the rules, you have to live by all of them. But trust me, it will be worth it in the long run.
The challenge for life is to find something you enjoy doing, that will sustain you, distract you, and delight you, when all else fails.
On 20 June, Queen Elizabeth II attended Royal Ascot races and saw her own horse, Estimate, win the Ascot Gold Cup. It was the first time a horse owned by the monarch had won the race in its 207-year history.
‘To win the big one at Royal Ascot means so much to her,’ said the Queen’s grandson, Peter Phillips. ‘This is her passion and her life and she’s here every year and she strives to have winners.’
The photographs taken of the Queen at Royal Ascot as her horse won the Gold Cup showed a picture of pure happiness.
The other day, I happened to be with the singer Rod Stewart, when he was given a model train as a present. Model railways are Rod’s passion. To see his happy face light up with delight as he opened his present was positively heartwarming.
Building a model railway, breeding horses, singing in a choir, going to grand opera, playing bridge or golf or bowls or Scrabble, ballroom dancing, stamp collecting, cooking, gardening, studying Wittgenstein, spotting UFOs… it doesn’t matter what it is: cultivate a passion.
The research shows that people who are best protected against certain physical diseases – cancer and heart disease, for example – in addition to doing all the other things they should do, are likely to be part of a community of some kind, are likely to be socially involved.
I once asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘Will there be people in Heaven?’ He opened his eyes wide, looked directly at me and smiled happily. ‘Oh, yes. Heaven is community. A solitary human being is a contradiction.
‘In Africa, we say that a person is a person through other persons. That’s why God gave Adam that delectable creature, Eve.’ Think of the Garden of Eden and be a leaf on a tree.
Break the mirror: stop looking at yourself. Stop thinking about yourself – have done with narcissism and self-regard – avoid introspection.
A few years ago, I wrote an account of the life of the Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip does not like talking about himself. It is as simple as that. His youngest son, Prince Edward, summed it up when he said to me: ‘My father, plain and simply, is very modest about himself and doesn’t believe in talking about himself.
‘One of his best pieces of advice he gives to everybody is talk about everything else, don’t talk about yourself, nobody’s interested in you.’
Nobody’s interested in you. Get it?
This year, owing to pressure at work, at home, and in his head, my friend Andrew Marr suff ered a stroke. He calls it ‘a stroke of luck’. It forced him to stop and take stock. He claims it has changed him and his attitude to life. ‘I used to be so self-absorbed,’ he says. ‘My stroke’s made me a nicer – and happier – person.’ Self-awareness is good: self-regard is fatal. Break the mirror. Introspection is a killer.
This, for me, is the most challenging of the seven secrets. Instinctively, I do resist change. I am a conservative Conservative. On the whole I like things as they are. Or, better still, I like them as they were.
I know that the new technology is amazing, but, to be frank, I don’t want to learn another fl ipping password. And as for those machines in the supermarket… ‘Unidentified object in the bagging area’ Aaargh!
That said, I have done the research and seen the evidence and I accept that my instinct is wrong and that this rule is right.
As Dr Anthony Clare said: ‘Happy people are rarely sitting around. They are usually involved in some ongoing interchange with life.’ Don’t resist change. Go with it.
A recent study found an interesting link between time spent commuting and satisfaction with life. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who spent an hour or more on their journey to work were found to be signifi cantly less happy than those who did not commute.
In 2011 a study called Happy People Live Longer, reported that happy people live 14 per cent longer than unhappy people, increasing their longevity by seven-and-a-half to 10 years.
This finding accords precisely with the fi ndings in 2013 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and with research begun in Oxford, Ohio in the 1970s, among the local inhabitants then aged 50 and over.
Forty years on, in Oxford, Ohio, who has survived in good health? Those who had a positive outlook on their life and impending old age have lived, on average, 7.6 years longer than those who had the negative views.
Assess exactly how you spend your time and how it makes you feel. Audit your happiness and then, if you fancy living longer, do what you can actively to increase the happiness quotient in your life.
I can picture him clearly, but I can only remember one thing that he said to me. He said it to me so often I am not surprised it was something I could never forget. What he said was this: ‘Keep that Latin accurate.’ He said it whenever he spoke to me – without fail.
He said it in my report. Looking back now I think I understand the full import of Mr Stocks’s message. At school, I wasn’t that bad at Latin, but I wasn’t as good as I could have been because I did not concentrate.
After the prize-giving, tea was served in the school dining room and there, carved into the wood panelling above the fireplace, was the famous line from one of the Odes of Horace: ‘Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero’. It translates, more or less, as: ‘Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.’
When I visited the Queen of Denmark at her palace in Copenhagen, she said to me: ‘Being Queen involves a lot of repetition – the same ceremonies, the same functions, the same routine, every year. Sometimes you think: “Here we go again!”
‘But my parents taught me something useful that I have tried to pass on to my two boys. Whatever you are doing, be aware of it and stay involved.
‘For example, I have to listen to a lot of boring speeches, but I have discovered there is nothing so boring as not listening to a boring speech. You can disagree with the speech in your head. You can think: “He’s saying it very badly,” but don’t switch off . Somehow listen. It is much better that way. Stop thinking about what’s coming next, stop checking the mobile, and relish what’s happening now. Seize the day. For all you know, it’s the only one you’ve got.’
If you are feeling negative, simply say to yourself: ‘I am going to be positive,’ and that, in itself, can trigger a change in how you feel. That’s it. And it works. It really does, I’m happy to say.
Extracted from The 7 Secrets Of Happiness: An Optimist’s Journey, by Gyles Brandreth, published by Short Books, priced £7.99.
Gyles Brandreth is appearing in Looking For Happiness, on a national tour from October.
It appears the secret to happiness is simple: there are seven rules and that’s it. Follow these and you will be happy. Admittedly, this is easier said than done. Living by the rules is not easy, as you will discover. If it were, people would have no problems being happy. You can’t pick and choose. If you are going to live by the rules, you have to live by all of them. But trust me, it will be worth it in the long run.
1 CULTIVATE A PASSION
The challenge for a school is to find each child some kind of passion – something that will see them through the troughs.The challenge for life is to find something you enjoy doing, that will sustain you, distract you, and delight you, when all else fails.
On 20 June, Queen Elizabeth II attended Royal Ascot races and saw her own horse, Estimate, win the Ascot Gold Cup. It was the first time a horse owned by the monarch had won the race in its 207-year history.
‘To win the big one at Royal Ascot means so much to her,’ said the Queen’s grandson, Peter Phillips. ‘This is her passion and her life and she’s here every year and she strives to have winners.’
The photographs taken of the Queen at Royal Ascot as her horse won the Gold Cup showed a picture of pure happiness.
The other day, I happened to be with the singer Rod Stewart, when he was given a model train as a present. Model railways are Rod’s passion. To see his happy face light up with delight as he opened his present was positively heartwarming.
Building a model railway, breeding horses, singing in a choir, going to grand opera, playing bridge or golf or bowls or Scrabble, ballroom dancing, stamp collecting, cooking, gardening, studying Wittgenstein, spotting UFOs… it doesn’t matter what it is: cultivate a passion.
2 BE A LEAF ON A TREE
To thrive, you have to be both an individual – with a sense that you are unique and that you matter – and at the same time you need to be connected to a bigger organism: a family, a community, a company, a club. In short, you need to be part of something bigger than yourself.The research shows that people who are best protected against certain physical diseases – cancer and heart disease, for example – in addition to doing all the other things they should do, are likely to be part of a community of some kind, are likely to be socially involved.
I once asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘Will there be people in Heaven?’ He opened his eyes wide, looked directly at me and smiled happily. ‘Oh, yes. Heaven is community. A solitary human being is a contradiction.
‘In Africa, we say that a person is a person through other persons. That’s why God gave Adam that delectable creature, Eve.’ Think of the Garden of Eden and be a leaf on a tree.
3 BREAK THE MIRROR
It won’t bring you seven years bad luck. It will bring you years of longer life.Break the mirror: stop looking at yourself. Stop thinking about yourself – have done with narcissism and self-regard – avoid introspection.
A few years ago, I wrote an account of the life of the Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip does not like talking about himself. It is as simple as that. His youngest son, Prince Edward, summed it up when he said to me: ‘My father, plain and simply, is very modest about himself and doesn’t believe in talking about himself.
‘One of his best pieces of advice he gives to everybody is talk about everything else, don’t talk about yourself, nobody’s interested in you.’
Nobody’s interested in you. Get it?
This year, owing to pressure at work, at home, and in his head, my friend Andrew Marr suff ered a stroke. He calls it ‘a stroke of luck’. It forced him to stop and take stock. He claims it has changed him and his attitude to life. ‘I used to be so self-absorbed,’ he says. ‘My stroke’s made me a nicer – and happier – person.’ Self-awareness is good: self-regard is fatal. Break the mirror. Introspection is a killer.
4 DON’T RESIST CHANGE
People are wary of change, particularly when things are going reasonably well because they don’t want to rock the boat, but a little rocking can be good for you.This, for me, is the most challenging of the seven secrets. Instinctively, I do resist change. I am a conservative Conservative. On the whole I like things as they are. Or, better still, I like them as they were.
I know that the new technology is amazing, but, to be frank, I don’t want to learn another fl ipping password. And as for those machines in the supermarket… ‘Unidentified object in the bagging area’ Aaargh!
That said, I have done the research and seen the evidence and I accept that my instinct is wrong and that this rule is right.
As Dr Anthony Clare said: ‘Happy people are rarely sitting around. They are usually involved in some ongoing interchange with life.’ Don’t resist change. Go with it.
5 AUDIT YOUR HAPPINESS
How much of each day are you spending doing something that doesn’t make you happy? Check it out and if more than half of what you’re doing makes you unhappy, change it.A recent study found an interesting link between time spent commuting and satisfaction with life. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who spent an hour or more on their journey to work were found to be signifi cantly less happy than those who did not commute.
In 2011 a study called Happy People Live Longer, reported that happy people live 14 per cent longer than unhappy people, increasing their longevity by seven-and-a-half to 10 years.
This finding accords precisely with the fi ndings in 2013 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and with research begun in Oxford, Ohio in the 1970s, among the local inhabitants then aged 50 and over.
Forty years on, in Oxford, Ohio, who has survived in good health? Those who had a positive outlook on their life and impending old age have lived, on average, 7.6 years longer than those who had the negative views.
Assess exactly how you spend your time and how it makes you feel. Audit your happiness and then, if you fancy living longer, do what you can actively to increase the happiness quotient in your life.
6 LIVE IN THE MOMENT
The other day, I went back to my old prep school to give out the prizes. Before the prizegiving, drinks were served in the old headmaster’s study. That man’s name was Mr Stocks and when I was 10 he was 80.I can picture him clearly, but I can only remember one thing that he said to me. He said it to me so often I am not surprised it was something I could never forget. What he said was this: ‘Keep that Latin accurate.’ He said it whenever he spoke to me – without fail.
He said it in my report. Looking back now I think I understand the full import of Mr Stocks’s message. At school, I wasn’t that bad at Latin, but I wasn’t as good as I could have been because I did not concentrate.
After the prize-giving, tea was served in the school dining room and there, carved into the wood panelling above the fireplace, was the famous line from one of the Odes of Horace: ‘Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero’. It translates, more or less, as: ‘Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.’
When I visited the Queen of Denmark at her palace in Copenhagen, she said to me: ‘Being Queen involves a lot of repetition – the same ceremonies, the same functions, the same routine, every year. Sometimes you think: “Here we go again!”
‘But my parents taught me something useful that I have tried to pass on to my two boys. Whatever you are doing, be aware of it and stay involved.
‘For example, I have to listen to a lot of boring speeches, but I have discovered there is nothing so boring as not listening to a boring speech. You can disagree with the speech in your head. You can think: “He’s saying it very badly,” but don’t switch off . Somehow listen. It is much better that way. Stop thinking about what’s coming next, stop checking the mobile, and relish what’s happening now. Seize the day. For all you know, it’s the only one you’ve got.’
7 BE HAPPY
And, finally, if you want to be happy… Be Happy. Act it, play the part, put on a happy face. Start thinking diff erently. ‘Choose to be optimistic,’ says the Dalai Lama. ‘It feels better.’If you are feeling negative, simply say to yourself: ‘I am going to be positive,’ and that, in itself, can trigger a change in how you feel. That’s it. And it works. It really does, I’m happy to say.
Extracted from The 7 Secrets Of Happiness: An Optimist’s Journey, by Gyles Brandreth, published by Short Books, priced £7.99.
Gyles Brandreth is appearing in Looking For Happiness, on a national tour from October.