The Happy Workshop
An eight week journey to real, lasting happiness
Rivka Levy
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Published by Rivka Levy at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Rivka Levy
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Table of Contents
Introduction - Why do I need the Happy Workshop?
Week 3 - Catching conflicting priorities
Week 4 - Reflections of ourselves
Week 5 - Remembering that everyone is different
Week 7 - Stop beating yourself up
Simple habits that keep us happy
The real solution to every problem
Introduction - Why do I need the Happy Workshop?
When I was growing up, I was always told that there are two types of people: ‘happy-go-lucky’ types, and ‘serious-depressed’ types. Or to put it another way, the only people who could be really happy were the ones that didn’t really think about anything too much, and who certainly didn’t waste their time pondering ‘the meaning of life’ and other deep rubbish like that.
There was just one problem: I’m a ‘serious-depressed’ sort of person, who really, really wanted to be happy. So for quite a few years, I got very stuck trying to square that circle.
For a while, I became a workaholic, and I was kind of happy when I was frantically rushing to meet a ridiculous deadline, or rushing to pick my kids up from their daycare, or rushing to gulp down a sandwich for lunch so that I could get back to work - because I simply didn’t have time to think about the ‘big’ questions, like: ‘what’s it all for?’
But then, my business failed. Well, it didn’t so much fail as jumped off a very big cliff, and I went from earning five figures a month to less than the national wage. In the space of a few months, I had four very big challenges to my happiness:
I went from being financially comfortable, to losing my home because I couldn’t afford the mortgage repayments
I went from being a successful ‘high flier’ to being a depressed, unemployed, nervous wreck
The financial problems we were having put a lot of pressure on my marriage, and I started to have massive rows with my husband because of all the stress
As our debts mounted, we kept moving community every couple of years, in order to live more cheaply - which left me and my family with a sense of being permanently ‘dislocated’
All of a sudden, I couldn’t ‘work myself happy’; or ‘shop myself happy’; or ‘vacation myself happy’ - which is when I had a really amazing realization: even when I had my business, and my fat bank account, and my home, and my luxuries - even then, I hadn’t been really, genuinely happy.
All that was happening is that my life had been so full of distractions, I hadn’t noticed how miserable I was.
Once I realized that, I started searching for the path to real happiness. Not the temporary, fake ‘happy’ that we feel when we get a promotion, or a new car, or a new designer hand bag, or when our team ‘wins big’. I was after the real deal. I was after a ‘happy’ that would stay with me even if I didn’t have a lot of money; even if none of my dreams were coming true, even if I was going through an incredibly hard time.
My search for ‘real happy’ took me to massive seminars involving hundreds of participants; it took me to Neuro-Linguistic Programmers, who spent hours trying to get me to ‘visualise’ what my happy would look like; it took me through three shrinks, two countries, and one absolutely massive personal crisis.
But amazingly enough, in the end, I found it.
I didn’t find it in all the tapping and visualisation; I didn’t find it in all the ‘clever’ psychobabble or self-help books; I didn’t even find it on the therapist’s couch, although I spent a couple of years and a fortune of money to learn that it wasn’t really there, either.
In the end, I found it in the writings of a Rabbi who lived 200 years’ ago, and who made it his life’s work to teach people how to really be happy. I’d been through so many other things, that initially, I was very sceptical that Rabbi Nachman of Breslev’s teachings were going to be anything more than a band-aid, or a temporary solution that would wear off, or wear through, as quickly as all the other stuff had.
But it didn’t.
Five years’ on, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and not because my life is perfect. I still have so many things that are not exactly how I’d dreamed they’d be: I still have a massive overdraft and struggle to meet my mortgage payments; I still don’t have a job; I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes in a couple of years - but I’m happy, and most days, I wake up with a smile on my face.
Rabbi Nachman really knew the secret of happiness, and now, I want to share that secret with you.
This book is not a ‘theoretical discussion’ that sounds good on paper but just doesn’t work in practise. It’s a practical guide for real people who don’t have ‘perfect’ lives, but who still really want to be happy
If you follow the guidelines in the Happy Workshop, keep an open mind, and do the exercises to the best of your ability, I guarantee that at the end of eight weeks, you’ll feel happier and more content with life.
And the more you make the ‘Happy Workshop’ principles part of your life, the more you’ll see lasting, fundamental, positive changes in how you manage the ups and downs that all of us have to deal with.
It’s a great thing to be genuinely happy with your life. And thanks to Rabbi Nachman and the Happy Workshop, you’re about to take a quantum leap closer to attaining it.
Week 1 - Real Happy
A little while ago, my husband and I arranged a weekend away together, without the kids, at what was meant to be an ‘uplifting’ retreat in a gorgeous part of the country. The main speaker at the retreat was someone that my husband and I know and love, and we were really psyched up about how amazing the weekend was going to be.
It was going to be romantic time for us to catch up with each other.
We were going to recharge our spiritual batteries, from all the amazing lectures.
We were going to meet some amazing people who were on the same wavelength, and hopefully forge some new friendships.
Except, none of those things happened.
I got to the ‘romantic’ retreat only to find that my husband had been misinformed, and that everyone else had brought their kids with them. What’s more, the lecture hall (which was also doubling up as the canteen) had been arranged so that the women and the loud, screaming kids were on one side, and the men were on the other.
I didn’t know anyone else there, and it was really hard to break the ice because all the other women were busy feeding and entertaining their kids.
I couldn’t hear what the guest speaker was saying, as the noise from my side of the hall was deafening, and he speaks pretty quietly.
The food was nice enough, but I’d been seated next to a rather fat woman who was taking everything off the communal serving plates before they got to me. She wasn’t a big salad or rice fan, so that - and a bit of leftover gravy - is pretty much what I ate.
Yes, I could have gone looking for more food elsewhere, but I was already starting to feel a bit demoralised, and I just couldn’t be bothered making the effort. As the evening wore on, I was really starting to resent the fat lady, and her triple helpings of food.
The last straw was that I barely saw my husband all night. He was having a great time, making new friends, discussing deep ideas and listening to the lectures.
He was enjoying himself so much that I didn’t have the heart to interrupt him to come for a ‘romantic’ walk with his increasingly moody wife. So instead, I went to bed.
The next morning, I tried again - but it was another helping of the same noise, loneliness and social discomfort. So I gave up, and decided to go for my ‘romantic’ walk by myself, and to talk to my ‘Higher Power’ about it all.
(We’ll learn more about talking to our ‘Higher Power’ a bit later on…)
For the first time in ages, I was starting to feel really miserable, and I was trying to work out why, exactly. While I was walking and talking, I started to get some insight in to why I was feeling so down:
1. I had very inflated expectations of what the Retreat was going to be, and what it was going to do - and they hadn’t been met
2. I was being very judgemental of the other people at the Retreat - particularly the fat woman who took the double share of fish!
It took me a while to think it all through, but once I realized I’m not owed anything, and that it was my own judgements and expectations that were weighing me down so much, I felt much better.
I went back for the afternoon session, and this time, I actually got to hear every word of what the lecturer was saying, as they’d given the kids a different room to play in.
It was all about….happiness.
The lecturer was explaining that if a person didn’t have genuine happiness, they didn’t have anything. If they weren’t genuinely happy, even the good things they had in their life wouldn’t register with them.
They wouldn’t care that they had a roof over their heads, or that they could breathe, and see, and walk around unaided, or that they had people who loved them, or food on the table, or nice furniture, or a great job - none of it would even matter to a miserable person.
Until it disappeared.
Then, they’d realize what they’d had, and what they hadn’t appreciated - and they’d start to feel even more miserable.
At this point, a lot of the people in the room started to fidget, because we’d all just recognized ourselves. Someone raised their hand, and asked the question that we’d all been dying to ask:
How do we really get happy?
The answer was simple: appreciate what you have.
Appreciate that your body works, and that you don’t need to spend hours having kidney dialysis, or waiting for your name to come to the top of a very long lung-transplant list.
Appreciate that you have parents who love and care for you, even if they aren’t very good at showing it.
Appreciate every breath you take. There is no guarantee that you’ll be here tomorrow. Every single day we have is a privilege, a gift. We have to learn to appreciate these amazing privileges we have, because if we don’t recognize that the mere fact of being alive is a gift, we can never by truly happy.
We were all blown away. It was so quiet in the room, you could have heard a pin drop. For me, it was the first time in my life that I’d heard a proper answer to the question of ‘how can we really be happy?’
Every other answer I’d ever heard or read was conditional, like:
You’ll be happy if you exercise more
You’ll be happy if you eat better
You’ll be happy if you lose 50 pounds
You’ll be happy if make more than you’ll spend
You’ll be happy once you find Mr / Ms Right
You’ll be happy once you switch jobs
You’ll be happy once you start a family
You’ll be happy once you move apartment
But what if you just can’t find the time to jog for an hour a day? Or the diet just isn’t getting anywhere fast, even though you’ve stuck to it for months? Or you’ve dated everyone in the whole universe, and nothing every worked out?
Then what?
If you are like 99.9% of humanity, you get miserable.
But the answer I heard at the Retreat worked for everyone, and across all circumstances. The answer was not to change your circumstances - most of us would already be doing that, if we could.
The answer was to be happy with whatever your circumstances happen to be, and to look for all the good you already have in your life, however small.
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Happy Workshop Principle 1:
Don’t make your happiness depend on an external change in your circumstances. What if it never changes?
Instead, be happy with whatever your circumstances are, and look for all the good you already have in your life, however small.
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What????
How can I be happy, if my life isn’t going how I planned? How can I be happy if I’m out of work, or don’t have enough money to pay for a vacation, or I’m 43 and still single, or I’m 43 and having terrible fights with my spouse, or my kid is flunking out of school, or I hate my job, or I hate my neighbourhood but can’t afford to move….
All of this sounds like a fair argument, until we remember that if we could change these things, we would.
If you can change the circumstances that are making you miserable, go right ahead.
But if you can’t?
If even, despite your best efforts, you are still sliding into more debt at the end of the month; or still not married, or still not solving your ‘problem’, whatever your problem might be - are you going to be miserable for the rest of your life?
‘Happy’ doesn’t just happen to a person. You have to fight for ‘happy’. You have to commit to ‘happy’. You have to search for ‘happy’ in even the saddest places. Which brings us to our first set of Happy Workshop exercises:
[You’ll need a few sheets of paper at least as big as A4, plus coloured pens or coloured pencils for the exercises in this book.]
Before we start Exercise 1, take a few minutes to think about what makes you happy.
The answer is different for everyone, but the more you can try to capture your idea of ‘happy’, the easier it will be for you understand what is really going on in your subconscious mind, and what’s being triggered when you start to feel ‘un’happy.
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What makes us happy?
A good meal
Appreciation (from the boss, from our spouse)
A warm bed
A good book
Skiing a ‘Black’ run
Being at home
Being away
A smile from our child
Enough money (for what?)
A deep conversation with a friend
Being needed
Getting attention
These are just some ideas to get you started. Take your time, and try to put as many things on your list as you can. It will help you to refer back to it as you work your way through the rest of the Happy Workshop.
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Exercise 1: What makes us happy?
Write your name in the centre of your sheet of paper, and put a box or circle around it. Draw a line off called ‘happy’ and at the end of that line, list everything that makes you happy.
(Be honest - if watching a beautiful sunset doesn’t really make you happy, don’t put it on your list just because you think you should. By the same token, if you love to smoke, then make sure you put ‘smoking a cigarette’ down on your list, even though it’s not very politically correct.)
You can put things on your list that you already have, and that you don’t yet have, but that you think you would like.
When that’s done…
You can either stop here and mull over your happy list for a bit, or you can carry on to Exercise 2.
Before you do, take a few minutes to think about what makes you sad, or ‘un’happy.
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Exercise 2: What makes us sad?
If you have space on the same sheet of paper you used for Exercise 1, draw another line off from your ‘name box’ or ‘name circle’, and call it ‘sad’. Now, write down everything that makes you sad, or ‘un’happy.
(Again, be honest. If it makes you sad when you get angry with your child, write that down. If it makes you sad that you aren’t a millionaire, or that you aren’t 18 any more, or that you aren’t a pop star, put it down - the more things you capture on your list and the more honest you are, the easier it will be to reach ‘real happiness’ by the end of the Happy Workshop.)
If you want, you can stop here for now, and spend a bit of time letting Exercises 1 and 2 sink in before continuing.
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Exercise 3: The 'happy-making' things I already have
Go back to your ‘happy’ list from Exercise 1. Go through the list, and see how many of the things that you said make you happy, you already have. Put a star next to those things.
* Do you have clean air to breathe?
* Can you have a hot shower whenever you want?
* Did someone care enough about you to give you this book?
Start trying to think about the small things that make us happy, not just the ‘big’ things, like a lottery win or a luxury cruise. If your happy list only has ‘big’ things on it, go back and do it again, and try to include all the small happinesses you have every day, like central heating, or air conditioning, or a pair of comfortable shoes that don’t rub your heels, or a good friend, or a great cup of coffee.
The more you notice and recognize these ‘small happinesses’ the happier and more content you will feel.
(We’ll cover this in more detail a bit later on.)
The Happy Workshop Definition of ‘Real’ Happy
A drug addict will define ‘happy’ as their next hit. A womanizer will define ‘happy’ as their next sexual conquest. A chocoholic will define ‘happy’ as a KitKat or Snickers bar - but none of these definitions are ‘real’ happy.
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Happy Workshop Principle 2:
Real happy doesn’t come from externals. Real happy stays with you, even when things aren’t going your way.
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So many people, even when life is great, still aren’t happy, because they are constantly focusing on what they don’t have, or constantly worrying about what tomorrow will bring.
I was certainly that way, even when I was outwardly living a very successful life running my own communications business.
I had a great, interesting, well-paid, ‘prestigious’ job, ghostwriting speeches and articles for a bunch of Government ministers.
I had a great husband, who put up with my crazy deadlines and even brought me cups of tea when I was still bashing away at the keyboard in the wee hours.
I had two beautiful, healthy daughters, who I was so grateful to have in my life, as we’d been trying to have kids for a few years before they came along.
I had a nice house, that was very nicely renovated and furnished; I had quite a lot of ‘spare’ cash, and I could buy whatever clothes I wanted, whenever I wanted; I was thin! I was healthy! I had great hair!
But the smallest little setbacks still made me miserable.
If I felt I wasn’t getting enough appreciation from my boss, I could sulk and feel depressed for days. If my kid came home from the nursery with a note saying she had nits, I was devastated, and would go into panic mode trying to kill them off. If one of my houseplants died, I’d mope around for an hour and feel like life was really unfair, and that ‘bad things’ always happened to me.
I had happy moments, like when I won a particularly lucrative contract for work, or when I was on holiday or having a meal out, but with hindsight, I could never really enjoy those high spots, because I always had one eye looking out for the next curve ball.
I never ‘lived in the moment’, which meant that I missed a lot of chances to appreciate all the good that I had. Even in the middle of the expensive meal out, or the family trip to the seaside, I’d be worrying about meeting my clients’ deadlines the next day, or planning the next move to try to expand my business.
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Happy Workshop Principle 3:
Live in the moment. Don’t worry about tomorrow until you are there.
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Exercise 4: Top ten ‘happy’ priorities
Look at your happy list. Pick out the top 10 things that make you happy, and prioritise them from one to 10, one being the most important priority.
Once you have got your prioritised Top Ten list of things that make you happy, write it down on a separate piece of paper. Write next to each priority how much time you spend on it, on average, in a week.
(Guesstimates are fine, but again, be honest! If you write down ‘kids’ as your first priority and ‘gardening’ as priority number 8, don’t just assume you spend more time with your kids than with your cucumbers. Go through the last week, and write down the most accurate figures you can for how much time you are giving each priority on your list.)
We’ll finish this first week with some interesting questions, that you can mull over before you move on to Week 2:
Does your list of priorities accurately reflect the time you are spending on them?
If ‘no’, why not?
Are you spending enough time on your higher, ‘happy-making’ priorities, or is your time getting siphoned-off into lower priorities, or even, into things that aren’t on your priority list?
What can you do to spend more of your time doing the things that make you really happy.
Week 2 - Great Expectations
A few years’ ago, one of the big supermarket chains in the UK ran an advertising campaign to encourage consumers to ‘be more demanding’. The idea was that instead of settling for second rate service and slow delivery and less-than-perfect fruit, consumers should pay a bit more and be more demanding about what they were getting in return.
I often think about that ad, because it sums up a lot of our modern expectations about life - and it’s the perfect recipe for stress, disappointment and sadness.
Part of the problem is that everywhere we go, we are being told that things are 100% in human control, and it’s all down to us.
So when our train is late because of ‘leaves on the line’; or because someone pulled the emergency stop and it backed everything up for half an hour while the station police tried to sort it all out; or simply because the driver left a little later than he should have, and it’s been one of those days - instead of calmly and serenely accepting that life really isn’t in our control, and we are going to be late today, we get cross. We get furious. We get vengeful. We start to blame everything and everyone around us that things aren’t going 100% to plan - including ourselves.
“Why didn’t I wake up earlier?”
“Why did it take the kids so long to eat breakfast today?”
“Why couldn’t I have found a better parking spot?”
“Why was there so much traffic?”
“Why is the train service so poor?”
The list goes on and on.
When we start to ‘be more demanding’, and to demand that everything goes 100% how we’d like it to, we forget about a vital, crucial point: life is not in our control. Not even the relatively ‘small’ things like getting to work on time, or getting a perfectly ripe pear delivered to our front door. And if we can’t control the small things, we certainly can’t control the big things in life.
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Happy Workshop Principle 4:
We can’t control everything that happens to us, and neither can anyone else.
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Ego Attack…
Most of us don’t like to hear that our life isn’t 100% in our control. Most of us like to think that there are ‘rules’ for how life works, and that if we follow the rules, and work hard, and try, and try some more, sooner or later, we’ll get what we want, and life will go the way we want it to.
Everyone thinks like that until they discover the hard way that it’s simply not true.
I certainly used to think like that. When I was a high-flying businesswoman, I used to believe that all my success and financial security was down to my own hard work.
I used to work through the night to meet my clients’ (unreasonable…) deadlines; I used to go over things four and even five times before I sent them off, to make sure they were ‘perfect’; I used to have extremely high standards for my employees, and I wouldn’t tolerate even minor mistakes or imperfections.
Today, I cringe to think about how exacting, how mean, how arrogant I was with the people who were helping me in the business.
I was one, massive, ego on legs, and not only in the workplace.
If my kids took longer than five minutes to get ready to go out, I’d have a massive tantrum about how long they were making we wait. If my husband didn’t manage to pick out exactly the piece of jewellery I wanted for my birthday, I’d be terribly depressed and sulk for weeks. If a friend didn’t call me enough, or sympathise with me enough, or invite me round enough, I’d either be in the pit of despair about how unlikeable I was, or blaming them for not being very nice people.
I hated having to wait in line in the supermarket, or having to queue when I was picking up a sandwich for lunch - what a waste of my valuable time! I hated having to let people go in front of me when I was driving - clearly, whatever I had to do was far more important than whatever they were busy with. I hated having to give in, or having to do things someone else’s way, or having to take other people’s opinions or feelings into account.
In short, I was a horrible, spoilt, brat. I was terribly demanding. And I was also horribly, terribly miserable.
Negative emotions
This week, we are going to start to work on some of the negative emotions that are preventing us from being happy. All too often, we look at negative emotions in a very superficial way, and tell ourselves that we are miserable because we don’t have ‘x’, or because we don’t have ‘y’.
We’re not going to do that in the Happy Workshop. We’re going to dig deep, and start tracing our negative emotions back to their source. If this sounds like hard work - you’re right! It is. But there are no quick fixes when it comes to really finding true, lasting happiness.
If we don’t do the work, and if we don’t dig our negative emotions out at their roots, they will just pop again in a few weeks’ time, or in a few months’ time, except with a different name.
This happens all the time with people who are in therapy. They spend years and years talking about all the terrible things their parents did or didn’t do; all the expectations they had for life that were never fulfilled; all the ‘problems’ and ‘issues’ and ‘hardships’ they have - without ever getting to a place where they feel genuinely happy and fulfilled.
Why?
Because most therapy and nearly all therapists only deal with the symptoms, not the root cause.
Remember our Happy Workshop Principle number 2:
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Happy Workshop Principle 2:
Real happy doesn’t come from externals. Real happy stays with you, even when things aren’t going your way.
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With that in mind, let’s do some digging, and start to uncover what is really making you miserable.
How do we know when we really aren’t ‘happy’?
In the modern world, there is such a big stigma attached to being ‘sad’ that a lot of us go through life convinced we’re not ‘sad’. But feeling ‘sad’ isn’t the only clue that we aren’t feeling genuine happiness.
There are a whole bunch of other, more socially-acceptable, negative emotions that are a clear warning signal that we aren’t really happy.
Here’s a partial list, to get you started:
Fear
Anger
Worry
Stress - (a great one that a lot of people hide behind)
Hatred
Jealousy
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Exercise 5: Negative emotions
Take a sheet of paper, and write on the top: ‘My negative emotions’. Take a few minutes, and using the above list as a guide, try to write down whatever negative emotions you are currently experiencing in your life.
If you are having trouble capturing them, think back to the conversations you have with your close friends or family members, and write down your catchphrases.
Some people will talk a lot about how situation x is ‘stressing them out’ - which is a very common disguise for a negative emotion.
Someone else will talk about how they feel really angry; or frustrated; yet another person will talk about how they are ‘worrying about something’; someone else will say that ‘they hate when… [fill in the blank].’
Whenever you hear yourself saying a catch-phrase like: ‘I’m stressed’, what you are really saying is: ‘I’m unhappy’.
When you have finished your list, either get a new sheet of paper, or turn the paper over.
Now, pick your main ‘negative emotion’ and write down everything that you can think of that is currently ‘stressing you out’ or making you angry, or that you are worrying about.
Don’t hold anything back; remember, the more honest you can be in these mind map exercises, the easier it will be for you ultimately to work out what is really making you miserable, and how to really fix it.
When you’ve completed your list of triggers for negative emotions, rank them from 1 up, 1 being the thing that most stresses you out; or most worries you; or most makes you upset or sad.
You can either stop here for a bit to let the last exercise sink in, or continue.
Now, we are ready to introduce another key Happy Workshop principle:
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Happy Workshop Principle 5:
One of the key reasons we feel sad and depressed is because we have expectations that aren’t being met.
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Great expectations
From the time we are born, all of us are dealing with a whole bunch of expectations of how our life is going to be (usually, based on a Disney movie…). These expectations start very young, and they are present at every stage of our lives.
From the time ‘Junior’ is born, his parents are already comparing him to all the neighbours’ kids, to see whose baby is sitting up first; talking first; crawling first. If Junior isn’t sleeping through the night by three months, their stress levels are already starting to rise, and they are increasingly worried that they must be doing something ‘wrong’.
If Junior doesn’t sit up right on the six month mark, his parents start to panic that he has some sort of undiagnosed developmental problem; if Junior isn’t saying his first words by 12 months, the parents feel so guilty that they haven’t been reading Charles Dickens novels to him every night and buying the baby flashcards.
Then, we get to kindergarten stage, and the pressure, stress, blame and anxiety goes up a whole other level: Junior isn’t reading at the age of three! Which means Junior won’t get into a good primary school! Which means he won’t get into a good high school! Which means he won’t have good teachers and will flunk the subjects he needs to get into a good university! If Junior doesn’t have a ‘First’ from a prestigious university, no-one is even going to employ him as a tea boy in this competitive economy; he won’t make enough money to live on, he’ll never be a success, he’ll never move out or get married - and he’ll be a depressing, miserable failure for the rest of his life.
Junior is three years’ old.
But even if we have normal, healthy, minimal expectations for our children, we still have a massively long list of expectations about how our own lives should be:
All of us have expectations about:
How we should look (thin and beautiful);
How we should eat (healthy and nutritious; or sumptuous and gourmet)
Where we should live (a big, beautiful house in the ‘right’ neighbourhood)
Who we should spend the rest of our lives with, and when, and how (the ‘perfect wedding’…)
How many kids we should have, and how they should behave, and how we should feel about them
How our spouse should be (they should always give in to our every whim, and not expect us to change or do anything too much like hard work)
How our parents should be (they should pay for everything and always put us first, even after we’ve left home)
How our homes, schools, work places, neighbours and friends should be
How we should be (and if you are like most people, this list is the biggest, most onerous, and most depressing one of the lot)
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Exercise 6: The great expectation trap
Take a look at your ‘happy list’ mind map from Exercise 1 last week, and your list of ‘negative emotion’ triggers that you wrote down this week, in Exercise 5.
First, look at how many of the things that make you feel sad are because of an expectation that isn’t being met - and underline them.
Then, look at your ‘happy’ list from Exercise 1 - and underline everything that is based on an expectation being met.
When you are done, you can stop and pause for thought, or continue on to the next section.
The pursuit of happiness
One of the foundations of Western society is ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. The Founding Fathers built a whole country around those principles, and today, American culture is so pervasive that these principles have been firmly hardwired in to nearly every single one of us.
As a result, so many of us spend so much of our lives trying to ‘pursue’ happiness, as though it’s some sort of external thing you have to pin down and trap.
All the ads we see, and all the TV programs we are addicted to, and all the movies we watch all help to reinforce the idea that if we buy that brand of jeans, we’ll be happy; or if we drink that sort of cola, we’ll be happy; or if we look like that actor; and live in that neighbourhood, and have that many zeros in our bank balance, we’ll be happy.
But if that’s really true, why are so many of the world’s successful, rich, beautiful, famous people so miserable, messed-up and depressed? Why do so many of them have drink or drug addictions? Why do so many of them have such big problems staying married? Why do so many of them kill themselves, or live a lifestyle that’s almost a guarantee for them dying young?
If they are doing all the things that are meant to make us all happy, why are they still so miserable?
The answer is that real happiness is internal.
If you really want to be happy, you have to learn how to be happy with your lot in life.
So now, you may have a very good question to ask:
How can we be happy with our lot (ie, really happy) if we have a whole bunch of expectations that aren’t being met?
The answer is our Happy Workshop Principle 6:
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Happy Workshop Principle 6:
The fewer expectations we have, the happier we will be.
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We all have choices to make in life. We can choose to ‘be more demanding’, and have an ever-expanding list of things that we ‘expect’ from ourselves, from other people and from life generally.
But we have to realize that the more things we expect, the more likely it is that our expectations won’t all be met.
And when our expectations don’t get met, we feel miserable.
If we choose to expect less, we’re making it much easier for our expectations to be met, or even, to be exceeded - and that’s guaranteed to put a smile on anyone’s face.
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Exercise 7: Our underlying expectations
Go back over your ‘happy’ list from Exercise 1, and start to pull out the underlying expectations.
Take a new sheet of paper, and write down what you are really expecting from:
Your spouse?
Your kids?
Your parents and siblings?
Your friends?
Your acquaintances?
Your work?
Your boss?
Your education?
Yourself?
Tip: you can usually catch an expectation with the word ‘should’. Eg:
I should make my family eat healthy food
I should go to bed at a good time
My house should be tidier
My kids should behave better
My husband should give me more attention
My parents should offer to help more
I should be able to afford to go abroad on vacation at least twice a week
I should get a promotion
Etc etc etc
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Exercise 8: What happens when our expectations aren’t met?
Look at your list of expectations from Exercise 7. How do you feel when your expectations aren’t being met?
(Again, be as honest as you can - this list is for you, not anyone else! Don’t worry about writing things that will make you look good, or giving the ‘right’ answers. The more honest you are about how you really feel, the faster you’ll find a lasting solution to the issues that are really making you miserable.)
That’s it for this week. Over the next few days, try to catch the things you are expecting from yourself, the people in your life and your situations. Notice how you feel when things are ‘going your way’ and an expectation has been met, and how you feel when things aren’t going the way you’d like them to.
Week 3 - Catching conflicting priorities
When I was growing up in the Eighties, ‘Women’s Lib’ was really starting to hit the headlines in a big way. Every week, there’d be another story about ‘the first female this’, or ‘the first female that’ in the country. My teachers (usually the lady ones) would bring the newspaper clipping in, and there’d be an excited discussion about how ‘women could do anything they wanted to, these days’.
It all sounded so amazing, so perfect, so wonderful. But my mum wasn’t so convinced. My mum was working a full-time job because she had to, and was also trying to balance that with raising a large family of five kids.
“I think Women’s Lib is a con,” she told me. “All it means is that you get stuck working on top of having to do everything else that women still have to do to keep the home going.”
I think I was 12 when we had this conversation, so at the time it didn’t really register as one of the great truths of our time.
But when I hit 30, and I had two small kids and a hectic career running my own business - my mum’s words really came back to haunt me. Because whatever I tried to do to balance my home life and my job, I felt I was always caught in a Catch 22 situation.
All too often, I’d have some ridiculous deadline to meet, and it would clash with a birthday party I’d said they could go to; or with a promise I’d made to take them out for an ice-cream, or with a plan to take them to the park or do a picnic in the back garden.
And it didn’t just happen once or twice, it was happening all the time.
My kids were getting increasingly sullen, sulky and attention-seeking, because even when I made the decision to be ‘with them’ - I was only with them in body. My mind was off working through my latest speech or article, or I was preoccupied trying not to think about work, or to stress about it, and failing miserably.
I tried buying them tons of books and toys to keep them happy and keep my guilt-feelings at bay. I tried finding ‘educational’ activities they could do on the computer, or ‘educational’ videos (like Shrek…) for them to watch for an hour or two to buy myself more time to get whatever I was working on finished.
But deep down, I knew it was a cop-out. I also knew that sooner or later, something would have to give because I had two conflicting priorities in my life that simply couldn’t occupy the same space.
It took ages for me to choose between my job and my family. I literally spent years of my life pinging backwards and forwards between quitting and not quitting, torn between the money and status that my work was giving me and the fact that I was really not being the sort of mum I wanted to be for my kids, and the sort of wife I wanted to be for my husband.
In the end, the family won out, but until my conflicting priorities got resolved, I was terribly unhappy about it all. I spent a lot of my time in a very negative mindset, constantly:
Complaining
Feeling dissatisfied about my life
Trying to get things ‘back on track’, or ‘back in balance’
Expending a lot of effort to ‘fix’ a problem that there was no quick fix for
Blaming other people (especially my children, and occasionally my clients)
Blaming myself (that I couldn’t work faster, delegate more, sleep less)
Getting frustrated that whatever I tried to do, I always felt someone, somewhere was losing out.
Finding the root cause
For years and years, I was trying this ‘quick fix’ and that ‘quick fix’ to try and sort the problem out. I tried live-in help, live-out help, full-time daycare and part-time school. I tried flexi-working, part-time working, working from home, working for myself - but nothing really helped for very long, because I wasn’t dealing with the root cause of the problem.
The root cause of the problem is that I am a perfectionist, and that whatever I’m doing, I have to do it 100%.
For as long as I was working, even a little bit, even part-time, the job took over my life, and left me no ‘headspace’ for my family.
My kids were feeling increasingly neglected, and started to play up and ‘act out’ even when I was spending more time with them, because they could feel that I wasn’t really ‘with them’.
The same thing was also happening in my marriage. Yes, me and my husband would go out for expensive meals out, and we’d schedule ‘date nights’ and weekends away, but it was all a sticking plaster over a massively painful issue: my work was my main priority, and it was always winning out over my family commitments.
Until the conflict between my home and my job was properly addressed and resolved, I simply couldn’t be genuinely happy.
Until I faced up to the real problem, I was just going round and round in circles, trying to do the impossible and figure out new ways of making my two big conflicting priorities agree.
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Happy Workshop Principle 7:
We will only find genuine happiness once we figure out why we’re REALLY unhappy.
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Catching the real culprit
While I was in the middle of it all, it was very hard for me to admit what the real problem was that was making me unhappy, so instead, I tried to divert the blame onto other people, or places.
It was the school’s fault that my daughter was so difficult…
It was my client’s fault that I had to work through the night again instead of going out with my husband…
It was Maggie Thatcher, (the first British female Prime Minister), and all the expectations she’d set up for women and their careers!
Working out what was really at the bottom of it all was really hard, because honestly, I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t ready to face it or deal with it, which is why it literally took me years.
Most people have a vested interest in NOT catching the real culprit or ‘hot button issue’ that’s really making them unhappy. Why? Because trying to resolve two massively conflicting priorities often requires some big, and potentially very scary, changes to be made.
People are resistant to change, even the changes that are truly going to make them happy.
So before we start the next set of exercises, take a few minutes to have an honest conversation with yourself: do you really want to get to the bottom of why your life is so stressful, hectic and miserable? Or do you want a ‘quick fix’ that will make you feel good for about five minutes that you are ‘doing something useful’ - but really won’t change anything?
If you are still at the stage of wanting the ‘quick fix’, you can either do the next set of exercises anyway (but be aware that your vested interest is skewing the results) or skip them and come back when you’re ready to face the truth.
If you’re ready to get to the bottom of what’s really making you miserable, you can do it in a week, by going through the following mind map exercises.
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Exercise 9 - Catching our conflicting priorities
In Exercise 4, we asked you to make a list of things that make you happy, and to prioritise it, ranking the things in order of how important they are to you. We then asked you to go back and write next to each priority the amount of time you are really spending on it.
In Exercise 5, we asked you to make a list of the main things that are triggering your negative emotions, and making you feel unhappy, stressed, worried or anxious. We also asked you to rank your negative emotion triggers, with ‘1’ being the thing that most stresses you out etc, all the way down the list.
Now, in Exercise 9, we are going to use these two lists to try to catch your conflicting priorities, and get an accurate picture of what’s really making you unhappy.
Look at your ‘happy’ priorities:
Does the amount of time you are spending on each one accurately reflect its ranking? As a general rule, the more time you spend on something, the more important it is to you.
If the time you are spending on any ‘priority’ and the ranking you’ve given it don’t match up, that is a clue that your priority list is not a truthful reflection of your life. Remember, the more time you spend on something, the more of a real priority it is.
Take a different coloured pen, and star the priorities that don’t match up. This is where our work is going to begin today.
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Example:
I wrote down on my happy priorities list that my spouse is my main priority. I put my friends, as my third or even fourth priority. On an average day, I spend over an hour talking to my friends; calling them, SMSing them, Skyping them or even, popping round for a chat. I spend less than half an hour a day talking to my spouse (sitting watching TV next to them doesn’t count…)
Clearly, my priorities don’t add up. My real priority is my friends, not my spouse.
Once you’ve caught any ‘mismatched’ priorities, write them down on a new, separate piece of paper.
If you don’t have any ‘mismatched priorities’, lucky you! It means that your stated priorities are real, and accurately reflecting the way you live your life. You can skip Exercise 10, and go on to Exercise 11.
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Exercise 10 - Making our priorities ‘match up’
Most of us have at least one ‘mismatched priority’, where we’d really like to be spending more time on a particular thing, person or area, (or at least, that’s what we are telling ourselves.)
This next exercise is going to help us try to clarify what’s really going on, and is going to help us catch the ‘real culprit’ that’s really making us miserable.
Go back to your prioritised ‘happy’ list from Exercise 4. Rewrite your list according to the time you actually spend on each activity or item. Write your list in descending order, with the priority that’s taking the most time (on average) at the top.
Now, take a different coloured pen. Read through your list, and star the priorities you would like to change.
Once you’re done, take two other different coloured pens. If you would like to spend more time on a particular priority, write an ‘up’ arrow ? next to it. If you would like to spend less time on a particular priority, write a ‘down’ arrow ? next to it. If you are happy with the amount of time you are spending on a particular priority, don’t write anything next to it.
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Example
I wrote down ‘exercise’ as something that made me happy, and ranked it as number 3 on my happy list. However, I spend on average less than five minutes a day exercising. I really would like to spend more time in the gym working out, playing tennis or going for a walk, so I’m going to put a ? next to it.
I wrote down ‘work’ as something that made me happy, but I only ranked it as number 6. I currently spend 10 hours a day at work, on average. I’d like to spend less time in the office, and more time doing things that really make me happier. So I’m going to put a ? next to it.
When you are done, take a clean sheet of paper, and make two columns on it. Call column one: ‘Things I’d like to spend more time doing’. Call column two: ‘Things I’d like to spend less time doing’.
You will probably want to refer back to these exercises again in the future, so keep them in a safe place. In the meantime, start to think about how you can make more time for the gym, and spend less time at work.
Don’t worry! As the Happy Workbook continues, we will give you the tools to find real, lasting answers to solving these conflicting priorities. For now, it’s enough just to have an honest picture of your life, and to start to see what fundamental issues may be making you unhappy.
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Exercise 11 - What’s really making me miserable?
Go back to your ‘negative emotions’ triggers from Exercise 5, and make sure you have your prioritised list from Exercise 4 in front of you as well.
Now, we are going to try and catch some of the conflicting priorities that are causing us stress, anxiety and worry.
The easiest way to do this is to talk you through some examples:
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Example:
I have ‘a messy house’ as a number 4 on my ‘sad’ or ‘upset’ or ‘angry’ list. I have ‘happy, well-adjusted kids’ as a number 2 on my ‘happy’ list.
How often do I get angry with the kids, or upset and frustrated with them, because of all the mess they make?
Are ‘happy kids’ really a bigger priority to me than ‘clean house’? If yes, then I need to do some work to have my behaviour reflect what my real priority is.
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Example:
I have ‘financial security’ as a number 4 on my ‘happy’ list. I have ‘replacing my old kitchen’ as a number 6 on my list of things that are making me miserable. I’m planning to take out a big loan to renovate my kitchen, which I’m going to struggle to repay every month.
Is replacing my old kitchen really more important than having more financial peace of mind? Will going into more debt really make me happy, or will I just end up more stressed every month when I have to meet the repayments?
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Example:
I put ‘being with someone I love’ as number 1 on my ‘happy’ list. I put ‘being pressured to commit to a relationship’ as number 4 on my list of things that are stressing me out.
Which one is really more important to me? If I keep backing away from committing to a relationship, then how am I going to achieve my main goal of ‘being with someone I love’?
NB: The point is not to try and find answers or resolutions for these issues or conflicts. We’ll discuss that side of things more a bit later. For now, we’re just trying to catch the conflicts and contradictions that we all have in our lives, to build an accurate picture of what is really making us miserable.
You can stop there, if you want, and let it all sink in.
If you want more food for thought, here are a few questions that may help shed some light on finding some possible solutions to these issues and dilemmas in the future:
What are my limits, or boundaries? Are they reasonable?