Three good things

Following on from yesterday's blog.

Three good things that I enjoyed yesterday:

Running with and talking to a friend.

Meeting with my book group.

Cuddling the Puppy in the middle of the night. I woke up and had problems going back to sleep, so ended up going downstairs to get a drink and had a cuddle with the puppy. She made me feel much better!


Three good things that happened today:

I met a friend's new puppy. An eight week old Springer spaniel. So sweet! And so tiny compared my puppy who seems enormous now.

Watching our puppy chasing leaves in the wind when I walked her this afternoon.

Having a long talk about serious stuff with my daughter.

Celibrating the Ordinary and Counting your Blessings

After writing a couple of days ago about an inspiring day out in London, I have been thinking about something I heard in the news earlier this week. Researchers from the Happiness Institute in Copenhagen split a group of daily Facebook users into two groups, and asked one to abstain from using Facebook for a week. At the end of the week the group that had stopped using Facebook reported less stressed, less lonely and more sociable.  One of the reasons for this may be related to something that consistently appears in investigations into happiness - that comparing ourselves to others can cause dissatisfaction if we perceive other people to have better, more exciting or more affluent lives than ourselves.

Personally, I enjoy using Facebook, although I don't look at it every day,  but I am aware of times when someone else's post can make you feel a bit left out, or more dissatisfied with your own life. I am also aware through having teenagers of my own and observing their friends, that today's teens seem to be more stressed, pressured and struggling to cope than I feel my contemporaries were at their age. I have wondered if part of the reason is that in today's world, where we are encouraged to think there are endless possibilities, that everyone can be famous and successful if you just try hard enough, that the flipside of this is that if you haven't achieved something amazing, you feel like you should have done so - after all, look online and everyone else seems to be having a better time than us.

So instead of writing about our great days out (as I did a couple of days ago!), maybe we should make more time to celebrate the ordinary in our lives, as some people already do on Facebook. A friend of mine takes stunning photos and regularly posts pictures of the countryside around her home in Yorkshire which always make me feel uplifted. And although we might get fed up with another funny cat video, they do at least bring a smile to our face if we have the time to stop and look.

Another suggestion that I have come across to feel more positive is similar to the old advice of counting your blessings.  The suggestion is that every night, you should think about three things that you feel grateful for, or write them down in a 'gratitude diary'. They don't have to be big or complicated, just small moments of something good. There is experimental evidence that people who have done this for a number of weeks have noticed an effect on their outlook which often lasts beyond the time frame of the experiment.

So, as I've been writing this, I've realised that I'm setting myself up for another challenge. To try out what I've suggested, and find three things to be grateful for every day. For the next week I will try and post every day to get myself into the habit. If anyone reading this would like to comment on their things to be grateful for, please leave a comment, it would be great to hear from you.


So I'll kick off with three things to be grateful for from yesterday.

Helping my son with his homework. He was grumpy to start with but I was able to help him when he was stuck, and it felt really rewarding by the end.

Walking the dog on a beautiful autumn day.

That my family are safe and well. I can't help thinking of the terrible news from Paris over the last few days, and what makes me feel particularly sad is the young people killed in the concert listening to the Eagles of Death Metal. My youngest son loves music including pop punk and metal, and loves it when his Dad takes him to gigs. In a few weeks time they are going to a similar concert in a small venue in London. My heart goes out to those in Paris and to mothers who have lost their children.

Books for inspiration - The Happiness Project

I love reading about other people's experiences when they have made changes in their lives and about what happened as a consequence, and as part of my blog I thought I would revisit the books that have interested and inspired me. The first one to get a mention has to be the one that inspired this blog - 'The Happiness Project' by Gretchen Rubin.

In March this year I read an interview with Gretchen Rubin in The Sunday Times Magazine entitled 'Meet Gretchen Rubin, the Happiness Bully' in which In the interviewer talked to Gretchen about  her first book 'The Happiness project'. My interest piqued, I ordered the book from the library and set down to read.

In 'The Happiness Project', Gretchen writes about her quest to test of the theories of what makes us happier, taken from  positive psychology, science, philosophy and other sources or wisdom and applying them to her own life. Each month she focused on a different area and set herself challenges and resolutions that she would try to uphold.  She then examines how the changes she made affected her life and her perception of how happy she felt.

It's an interesting book to read, as Gretchen writes in an engaging and open style. She is also honest about the things that don't go according to plan, and you get a sense of a real person behind the book, rather than some idealized perfect lifestyle. She recognizes that her own needs and desires are unique to herself and that things that others might enjoy, such as socializing at parties, might not be what makes her happy - in her case she has a preference for curling up with a good book.

She covers a number of topics that research into positive psychology shows to be important for happiness including; our relationships with others, the need to exercise,  the need to find value and meaning in what we do, and to challenge ourselves. 

I enjoyed reading the book. It's not a scientific discussion of the theories of positive psychology (there are other better books on that), but rather an anecdotal and thought provoking account of her personal story, and others that share their thoughts on her blog. One of the values of hearing other people's stories is that it can inspire you to take action yourself, and when I read about her challenge to herself to start a blog, I thought 'I could do that too.' The joy of a blog is that there's very little to stop you getting started, once you have decided to be a blogger. You can set yourself a challenge to start then just get on with it! So  I have to say 'Thankyou' to Gretchen for being part of the inspiration behind my blogging about my own project of embracing the changes in my life.