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The Tea Maker
Everyone I speak to wants to be happy in 2014, except me of course. That’s because I couldn’t be any happier than I was last year.
If I tried really, really hard I possibly could be, but who wants to expend all that energy trying to achieve the impossible? I mean, what is happiness anyway? If you can explain that, you’re probably halfway to becoming ecstatic. No, I’ll make do with being slightly less than pleased. I’m no expert but it seems to me that being happy is pretty simple. You STOP doing some things and START doing some other things.
10 things to STOP doing
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Stop buying stuff you don’t need
Look at all the shit you already have. You don’t need any more crap cluttering up your house, car and garden. Xmas is over so stop buying gifts for people until next Xmas. Forget about Easter and holiday gifts. Unless your child is between three and twelve, forget about birthdays too. Cancel teenage birthdays. Cancel all birthdays if you can get away with it but definitely cancel the teenage ones. But whatever you do, stop buying stuff. You will be happier as a result.
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Stop believing everything you read
If you believe all that shit, you’ll become very sad because you’ll think politicians are telling you the truth. You’ll think those moviestars look like that when they get out of bed in the morning. You’ll think your kid’s report card is a reflection of his teacher’s actual thoughts. It’s all fucking lies. Politicians are all lying bastards. Moviestars spend £millions on botox and make-up and half of them still look worse than you do. And teachers aren’t allowed to be negative about little Johnny, that’s why they say “his confidence is growing” rather than admit he’s a fucking sociopath.
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Stop eating stuff that’s bad for you
The problem here is that no one knows for sure what’s bad food and what’s good food. All we really know is that we shouldn’t eat too much horse meet from Eastern European countries when it says lamb on the packaging. And we shouldn’t eat too much sugar or salt and we should eat a certain type of fat but we can never remember if we should stay clear of saturated, unsaturated or poly-unsaturated fats. The only thing we know for sure about fat is that there’s none in vodka.
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Stop moaning without doing anything about it
If you’re going to moan about something, do something about it. Take action. It’s absolutely pointless dragging yourself away from your evening meal or your favourite television programme to answer the phone just to find out that some arsehole wants to sell you double glazed windows from Mr Larkin. Then you start shouting at the caller, then you complain to all your family and friends. Why not pick up the phone to Larkin Windows and give them shit? If you don’t like what’s happening to you, go right to the source of the problem and don’t give up until you’ve got some satisfaction.
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Stop trying to impress people who aren’t worth impressing
Nobody really cares if you have a new car, a new dress, a new hairdo or even a new baby. You’re not the first and no one is impressed. They might say they are, and they might even throw a few compliments in your direction but, deep down, they’re actually bored out of their skulls because they want you to stop prattling on about it and they can’t think of a nice way to tell you they don’t give a fuck.
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Stop saying yes when you want to say no
Why do you do this when you know it will make you UNhappy. Someone asks you if you’ll watch their little dog for the weekend and you say Yes! Someone asks if you could lend them a fiver and you say Yes! Someone asks you to cover for them at work so they can have an extended lunch break and you say Yes! Your kid asks for a laptop and you say Yes! Your wife decides to have sex for the first time in two months and, like a fucking idiot, you scream Yes! Tell them all to ‘Fuck off’. Tell them you’ve got better things to do with your time. But don’t turn down your wife’s offer of sex as this might be your best chance of a married life for another year or two. Just don’t scream. And remember to say thanks.
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Stop interrupting people
Interrupting people is very rude. You’re sending them a message that tells them that you’re not really listening to them and that what you want to say is much more important than what they are actually in the middle of saying. It probably is, but you shouldn’t be sending out those sorts of messages to people. If you want people to like you, listen to what they have to say, ask a few questions to make sure you understood them. They’ll love you for it. However, if they are boring bastards and you don’t give a toss if they like you or not, and if it will make you happy, interrupt them.
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Stop being scared
Some people are scared of their own shadow. They won’t take risks. Everything they do or could be doing to make themselves happy scares them. The honest truth is, you can’t be scared and happy at the same time unless you’re an adrenaline junkie, and they’re not really scared at all, just fucking mental. So it’s your choice. You can be sad or you can go see a shrink about your fears – unless you’re scared to go to a shrink, in which case I can’t help you.
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Stop tweeting shit
I… do… not… give… a… fuck… !
Someone sent me a tweet last week asking me how many characters she was allowed to tweet.
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Stop being a stranger
Stop emailing and phoning and tweeting. Go and visit people for a change. Visit your friends and relatives. Visit your granny. If she’s dead, visit her grave and take some flowers. Decide that 2014 will be the year that you’ll visit 10 people you didn’t meet up with in 2013. If your granny is still alive, start with her because you might regret it if you leave her until August.
10 things to START doing
Now that you’ve learned how to be a bit happier by STOPPING certain things, let’s look at how you can be even happier by STARTING to do things.
We’re not talking about running marathons here or going to the gym for three hours a day. Just go for a brisk half-hour walk twice a day. You’ll feel better, honest. And don’t tell me you already get enough exercise, add a little more to the mix because you’re exercise regime obviously isn’t upping your happiness levels or you wouldn’t be reading this.
Sleep helps our bodies to recover and helps it heal. It’s also good for our happiness. We’re more positive after a good night’s sleep and we tend to remember pleasant memories more than we do if our bodies are tired.But it’s not just about how long you sleep, it’s about how well you sleep. I can sleep for ten hours straight and still wake up grumpy. I can then have a bad day and piss off a lot of people – all because it wasn’t a good sleep, just a long one. Am I happy without my ‘good sleep’? Am I fuck!
The other option is to move closer to where you work or, better still, work from home. The point is, cut down on the time spent travelling to and from work.How many times in the course of a week do you find yourself travelling to work in busy traffic and feeling really happy? Exactly! It’s a nightmare, but we still do it almost every day. Is it any wonder that we get stressed out? Stress does not equal happy.
4. Start spending time with friends and family
This is one of the top five regrets of people who are dying, though I can’t imagine what insensitive bastard had the heart to ask them. With just a couple of breaths left, who needs to be reminded of their worst regret in life? Anyway, you can now avoid it by spending time in the company of friends and at least some of your family. Social time with the ones we love contributes vastly to our sense of happiness and wellbeing compared to time spent with those we are just thrown together with, or even work colleagues (especially the fuckers from HR.)
Fresh air boosts happiness levels so get out and grab your fair share. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is all it takes. If the weather is nice, even better. If it’s not so good, see it as an extra challenge. Getting out there will make you feel alive, boost productivity, lighten your mood,broaden your thinking and help to kick-start your creativity. Well, that’s what my postman says.
It seems that 100 hours a year helping others will make you feel great, fulfilled and much more happy. I can personally vouch for this because I have experience of this phenomenon that dates back twenty years. In the last two decades, I have helped absolutely nobody and I don’t feel any happier now than I did all those years ago. But my friend is completely different. He reckons that his community service orders from the courts total an average of 100 hours each year for the past three years and he feels really fucking happy that the sentence he’s now serving is a custodial one. So get out there, help others and be happy.
Research has shown that, if you practice smiling and think positive thoughts, it can actually alleviate pain. This is not my experience at 3am when I stub my toe on the bed post on the way to the loo. I have tried to practice smiling and positive thinking but I’ve just been lying to myself. It’s really just a toothy grimace accompanied by a high level shriek and an unnatural feeling of vengefulness towards a bed, which has occasionally come close to being hacked to pieces with a fucking axe. However…I believe that, in the right environment and under the right conditions, smiling and positive thinking might work as an analgesic. There again, I also believe that high doses of opioids and adjuvants can put a smile on your face.
8. Start planning the holiday of a lifetime
There are three tricks involved in this one. Firstly, do not consider costs. Just plan the best holiday ever. It can be anywhere in the world and can last as long as you wish. Secondly, don’t book the holiday and under no circumstances should you actually go on this planned trip of a lifetime. It will be far too expensive and will plunge you into massive debt and, therefore, into a deep, possibly irreversible state of depression. It’s all about having fun and the fun is in the planning of the trip, not the taking of the trip. It’s about having the dream, not living the dream. And thirdly, you must explain all of this to yourself (especially yourself) and your family before you even start, otherwise there could be a suicide or a murder in the house if you decide to leave the announcement too late.
According to Shawn Achor (who?), meditation can actually make you happier. Studies show that in the minutes right after meditating, we experience feelings of calm and contentment, as well as heightened awareness and empathy. Research even shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness. The fact that we can actually alter our brain structure through meditation is quite surprising to me. It’s reassuring to think that however I am feeling today isn’t permanent.
You’ll often hear people telling lies about me. One of them is that I’m an ungrateful sod but that’s not true. I may not show my gratitude in the way others do but I often sit and contemplate all the things that I should be truly grateful for. After spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day with my family, I was moved to listing all the things from 2013 that had brought me joy and happiness, the people who had impacted positively on my life, the places I’d travelled to and the memories and experiences I was fortunate enough to bring home with me. I thought about the words spoken during the Christmas meal, the looks on the children’s faces as they opened their gifts and everything else I could write down on my Be Grateful For list. I then tried to prioritise all my entries but it was no use. It’s difficult to arrange three quite different things into a priority order when you’re not especially overwhelmed with any of them, don’t you think? Once I’d made that decision, I felt much better, much happier.
Be happy!
The Tea Maker
PS: You can comment on this story by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll respond to your emails in next week’s column. We’ll never publish your email address.
