In Tal Ben-Shahar’s inspirational and insightful book ‘Happier’ he repeatedly turns to a strategy known as ‘happiness boosters’.
In the book he explores the essence of happiness from a psychologist’s point of view and summarises the course that he presents at Harvard which, at the time of writing the book, became the most over subscribed course at the University after the first few years of ridicule.
While it’s clear from everything I have read on the subject (and I have read a lot, much to my wife’s disillusionment) happiness is ethereal, personal and uncategorisable but Tal Ben-Shahar is cleverer than me and understands it better than I do. He knows that it’s possible for us to inject small bubbles of happiness into our life deliberately to push us in the right direction. These are the undulations that lead to waves that turn the oil tank around, but here’s the funny thing about happiness boosters – when your mood drops and you descend into the worst place, happiness boosters don’t seem appealing and you tend to avoid them.
Simple examples in my life are: audio books, the cinema and dog walks in different places. When I’m at my best these things fall into place and tumble over each other, it feels so easy. When I’m at my worst none of them happen. I’ve tried to extol the virtues of audio books to other people, both in general conversation and when I have the privilege to speak to others professionally but often people look at me as though I am ‘a bit nuts’. I think it’s because I have gained so much contentment and inspiration and happiness and insight from the good books that I’ve read and been able to jettison part way through the ones which I bought which were rubbish.
Your happiness boosters are your own and you definitely have some. I identify mine through a diary that I write to myself which no one else gets to read which I reflect back to whenever I need to see what I was doing when things were good and to see where the pattern is when things are less good. For those of you who get pleasure out of listening to books - a couple of tips and bubbles of happiness:
- Matthew Syed’s new book ‘The Greatest’ is a collection of his writings for the Times and other publications. I’ve only recently started it but it’s clear that it will be extraordinary and is read beautifully.
- If you are an Audible subscriber, you can get the new and recently released full works of Sherlock Holmes read by Stephen Fry and priced £69.99 for one audible credit (£7)
Boost away!
Blog Post Number: 1219
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