never in the office when you ‘pop by’. Or the friend or sibling who is so wrapped up in themselves that after an hour or so in their company you really begin to wonder whether all you are is some sort of audience.
Then there are the corporations, companies and government bodies that determine the structure in which we live, and rarely does a day go by when I haven’t got to deal with some browbeaten call centre representative from an organisation that actually doesn’t give two figs about whatever my plight might be. You might be forgiven for wondering if these organisations are run by people whose entire aim in life is to make as much money as possible, by any means, but without bringing the slightest bit of joy to anyone involved in the process. Having worked for a number of such organisations I can divulge that this is indeed the case.
Shortly after writing the first edition of this book, I started running How to Do Everything and Be Happy workshops.3 They’re a lot of fun, and because they’re mainly attended by Brits, one of the most popular elements of the course seems to be when I give the group the opportunity to suggest what would make their ‘External Forces’ list. Here’s just a sample of some of the more popular culprits:
My job (see General Unhappiness Reason Number 1)
Call centres
Idiot drivers
Parking (or lack of)
Taxes
Mondays
My ex
My hormones
Rubbish TV
People who walk in front of me very, very slowly
Lateness (mine or other people’s)
Not getting enough sleep
Pre-recorded call centre messages – ‘We’re experiencing a high volume of calls at the moment’ – no you’re not! This is the same volume of calls you’ve had for the past ten years!
The road works we’ve had outside my building for the past ten weeks!
Unfairness
Bags of lettuce (why isn’t it possible to buy a bloody lettuce any more?!)
‘If your call is about something trivial, press 1. If your call is related to something else trivial, press 2. If your call is related to a trivial matter not related to the first two trivial matters press 3. If your call …’
Clients who yell at me when there’s nothing I can do about it
The UK winter (being dark at 4pm)
Friends letting me down or losing touch with friends
Family not ‘understanding’ me or saying something that makes me feel low
‘Did you know you can check your balance on our website?’ Yes, I did! Put me through to a real person!
Having a fat day, or bad hair day
Being broke (worrying about money)
Stressing about ‘my life’
Family or friends being sick or ill, i.e. worrying about them
Not having enough time with my family
Not having a holiday
Being stuck in the house
Fines, e.g. bank fees, parking tickets, etc
Having to go to the doctor
Paying for a coffee then finding that it’s rubbish (same goes for a sub-standard meal, or bad service)
The news
Thinking about climate change
Littering
Other people’s children
Walking past homeless people
Boredom
Mess, that I have to clean up
Procrastination (makes me guilty, then consequently blue)
Doubtless you’ll have your own items. The question is – what can you do about it? How can you reduce the power these things have over you?
Stop right there!
That way lies madness.
After Kate died one of the first things I did on my ‘quest to find happiness’ was to compile a list very similar to the one above, and then work through it, tackling each item head on with a view to eliminating my unhappiness. I even invented a misery rating so that I could re-sort it and go after the big hitters first.
I soon discovered two things:
Firstly, it didn’t matter how hard I worked, I just never seemed to make a big enough dent in that damn list. I was forever adding new items! I felt like a guy in a leaky rowing boat – going nowhere fast whilst desperately trying to get rid of the water that won’t stop coming in.
Secondly, pretty soon the list itself became something I hated. I ended up calling it my ‘Ugh List’, because that’s how it made me feel: Ugh! Every moment I spent focusing on the list was more time involved with things that made me unhappy. (We’ll be coming back to how the mind deals with focus later in the book, so keep that thought at the back of your mind.)
I’m pleased to report however that the Ugh List did teach me one, very valuable, lesson:
THE ABSENCE OF UNHAPPINESS
IS NOT HAPPINESS
The more I worked on the list the more I came to realise that even if I managed to eliminate all my Ugh items there was a very real chance that I still wouldn’t be happy. Happiness, it seems, just doesn’t work that way.
Whilst it might be mildly interesting to list the reasons for your unhappiness (and quite seductive too – there’s a part of us that wants to do that), I’ve come to suspect that the true cause of unhappiness might actually be the absence of happiness.
Which is very good news.
Because it turns out, happiness isn’t all that difficult to find.
Doing Something About It
Let’s recap.
The top three reasons for General Unhappiness (according to me anyway) are:
Lousy work/life balance
Where the things you have to do dominate your life, and the things you’d like to do just aren’t meaty enough, or you
