Life is full of ups and downs. Nice things occur on most days, and some not so nice things. Earlier today for example it was tipping down with rain and after much grumbling and moaning about how rubbishy the summer had been, I probably wasn’t on my best form when I then tried to tackle a complex spreadsheet – predictably I ended up frazzled and irritated. On the other hand my onions and leeks are getting bigger by the day, the sun is now shining and tomorrow afternoon I’ll be snorkelling off South Beach with some fellow members of the Studland Seagrass & Seahorse Study Group. Can’t be bad!
A couple of years ago I was studying for my psychology degree with the Open University. The course director for our Social Psychology course was Richard Stevens, who presented the TV programme Making Slough Happy. Richard gave us a list of ten Happiness Tools which I still have by my desk. A couple of them I have already covered in previous postings (see Growing Pains and Smile at a Stranger). But the one I wanted to introduce today is our final look at how our attitude to things in the past can affect our overall happiness levels (remember our Happiness Formula H = S + C + V).
It was number two on Richard’s list of Happiness Tools and is called Count Your Blessings. This involves, at the end of each day, reflecting on at least five things that you are grateful for. Now Tim & I were looking at this at the beginning of August and we decided to run Count Your Blessings as an experiment. In the process I have to confess that we have kind of tweaked it a bit. What we have been doing last thing at night is writing down at least five things that have made us happy during the day… and then we read our list out to each other.
Some nights the list flows effortlessly; other nights the items are more challenging to identify. Last night for example I got stuck after finding two ‘happy things’ and was feeling really disgruntled about the whole experiment. Then I read out my two to Tim, and he mentioned some more things that had happened that I’d forgotten about and so my list started to grow.
It is truly infectious, so give it a go and see what effect it has on you. For me it’s meant going to sleep with some final thoughts that are rich in positive emotions, the effects of which have been relaxing and strangely peaceful. Have I been sleeping better? Well I have certainly been sleeping more soundly and finding it harder to wake up in the mornings… although that could be the new blackout curtains!
