We have no right to be happy, at least not in my eyes. I spent a decade ‘studying’ happiness.
Reading, assimilating, collecting and curating knowledge about what people had written about happiness, because for some reason I feel I should be happier more of the time or all of the time. Until I realised that that was utter nonsense.
My favourite slide for teaching is the stickman slide, where one of the stick men has a box with happiness on it, and the other asks, “Where did you get that?” and the first person answers, I made it myself.
I think about that a lot, I present that a lot, I think most people who receive it in a presentation think I'm mental, but tonight I think back to the last couple of weeks, if you have encountered what most people would consider to be a normal Christmas in the United Kingdom. You've probably had quite a lot of time off, quite a lot of spare time, you've had the chance at the start of that time to achieve an extraordinary amount of things, to fill the time with anything you wanted, socialisation with friends, exercise if that's your thing, jigsaws, Lego, movies, eating, working, creating, whatever you wanted to do.
If you're like me, you probably did not even 10% of the things that you thought you might do and if you're even more like me, you probably give yourself a hard time about that and so in the middle of it, I was thinking that I wasn't getting enough done of any of those things, including Christmas movies or time with family or whatever it was that I thought were the things I had to do to make me happy or content and so in the middle, you feel like you're not getting it right, and then you get to the end.
I've written about the Peak end rule a million times and I won't do it again here, but as I sit on the Sunday to look back after a lovely, fantastic, brilliant two weeks of Christmas I realise that I'm not happy all the time, and nor should I be, but I am happy some of the time and in the rearview mirror on reflection, I am contented and I will not fall into the trap of Blue Monday tomorrow. I will not fall into a January where I'm sad because it's dark, or because I'm working or because it's hard.
I will start again tomorrow, massively enthused and massively excited about the possibilities of what can happen in the middle of this year, so that when I look back again, I'll feel the same.
Just as a little gift for you at the end of the Christmas holidays, here's a link to the original video for Blue Monday by New Order.
As a side note, it was never released as a single of 4 minutes; it was only a 12-inch single of 7 minutes long. It was utterly groundbreaking for its time, and it has stood the test of time. Although I'm not entirely sure what they're doing with that dog in the video.
If you're anything like the age that I am or with the cultural references that I am, you'll appreciate it.
Happy New Year.
Blog Post Number - 4399
Colin Campbell, Chris Barrow, and an intrepid group of dentists will be cycling across the plains of Tanzania from Kilimanjaro in early February 2026. If you would like to support the charity, Bridge to Aid, and this extraordinary challenge, please click here.Thank you for your generosity.
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