A Gleeful special edition: 39 Secrets of Adulthood and Stuff

Taking inspiration (as I often do) from Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project and her Secrets of Adulthood, here's some stuff I've learned about life, love and happiness during my 39 years. They won't necessarily resonate with you, but they work for me. Feel free to share your own in the comments or blog it and link me.

1. It's easier to be happy if you can find pleasure in simple, relatively mundane things. They are everywhere, every day, if you look for them. LOOK FOR THEM! Life's major happy-making events are comparatively few and far between.

2. Look up. You never know what you will see.

3. Life is short, but there's no need to rush. There is a need to take your time  - to explore, savour, seek, question, think, take notice, be grateful, love.

4. Looking at your world through the lense of a camera is a great way to notice the little details. It makes you really see things. Living behind the lens of your camera....not so much. Sometimes you should just put the bloody thing away and be in the moment.

5. Walking a lot is a great way to increase your connection with your world. You notice things you'd never see in a car or on a train and you can take the time to stop.

6. Being able to enjoy your own company is priceless. Being able to rely on yourself is ace. Having people you can rely on is the best.

7. Cynicism is easy and boring. Letting your inner child out to play is way more fun. It's cool. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Your inner child (not baby!)

8. Perfection is also boring. Flaws add character. Imperfection is perfection.

9.  There is beauty in ugliness.

10. Related: ambiguity is everywhere. Learn to embrace it.

11. If it won't matter in six months, six weeks or six days, then it doesn't matter now. Let it go.

12. Give without any expectation of return.

13. Kindness rocks.

14. Sometimes things that are worth having in your life do come easily. That doesn't mean you will treasure them any less.

15. Do what makes you happy. Coolness is overrated. Cool schmool.

16. You're probably stronger, braver and more resilient than you think - you never really know until you're tested.

17. Sometimes things that suck can still be kind of awesome.

18. Sometimes you can't even lead a horse to water, let alone make it drink. Accept it.  

19. Always have a creative project and a book on the go.

20. A quote: "Every man makes his own summer" - Robertson Davies. And every (wo)man makes their own winter too.

21. Almost never say never.

23. Connect. Connect. Connect. And connect.

24. From my Mum - you catch more flies with honey.

25. From my Dad - half a piece of toast is better than none at all.

26. From Fleetwood Mac: You can go your own way.

27. Be an adventurer.

28. Be a tourist in your own town. There is always something new to discover.

29. There doesn't always have to be a point. No, wait - fun is as good a point as any.

30.  Punctuation matters. Well, it does if being understood matters to you.

31. Less actually is more. Simplicity is the real spice of life.

32. Decluttering your living space removes psychic clutter.

33. No, you don't really need that thing (unless it's oxygen, food, a cuddle or a toy robot). 

34. Women who say they could never be with a man who has a hairy back (or whatever) don't understand love. Love is big. Love eats hairy backs for breakfast. Raaaaar!

35. A gym is the best place to appreciate all the weird and wonderful shapes we humans come in. You're less weird and more wonderful than you think.

36. You will be happier if you stop reading women's magazines.

37.  Go to the library (one for my real librarian friends). Libraries are ace. Find something to replace your women's magazine.

38.  Play. Be silly. From C.S.Lewis: "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up".

39. Finally, even though you've probably seen it on my sidebar, I'm finishing with my favourite quote, from George Bernard Shaw. This helped inspire Gleeful and has become my mantra. If you take away only one thing from this post, take this:

"Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can also be delightful."

 Life can be so f**king delightful it makes you cry (and use rude words).

I knew it!

One of the ideas underpinning this blog is that it's easier to be happy if are able to enjoy the simple joys of daily life, rather than needing major, life-changing events to buoy you. They don't happen that often, but life's little pleasures are everywhere, every day, if you look.

And guess what? It's true! Science says so!

On the weekend I was reading a very interesting paper by a trio of American academics on the relationship between money and happiness (via The Happiness Project). They argue that money can indeed by happiness, but we just don't spend it right, which explains why wealthy people aren't that much happier than the rest of us.  

One of their principles for spending money to increase happiness is to buy many small pleasures instead of a few larger ones.

If we inevitably adapt to the greatest delights that money can buy, then it may be better to indulge in a variety of frequent, small pleasures—double lattes, uptown pedicures, and high thread-count socks— rather than pouring money into large purchases, such as sports cars, dream vacations, and front-row concert tickets. This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with large purchases. But as long as money is limited by its failure to grow on trees, we may be better off devoting our finite financial resources to purchasing frequent doses of lovely things rather than infrequent doses of lovelier things. Indeed, across many different domains, happiness is more strongly associated with the frequency than the intensity of people’s positive affective experiences (Diener, Sandvik, & Pavot, 1991).

And later on... 

The happiness provided by frequent small pleasures helps make sense of the modest correlation between money and happiness. In a study of Belgian adults, individuals who had a strong capacity to savor the mundane joys of daily life were happier than those who did not (Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides, and Mikolajczak, 2010).

Interestingly, wealthy people suck at appreciating mundane pleasures. (Yay for having an average income, eh? If I were rich, this blog wouldn't exist!)

This capacity to savor, however, was reduced among wealthy individuals. Indeed, the positive impact of wealth on happiness was significantly undercut by the negative impact of wealth on savoring. Quoidbach et al (2010) argue that wealth promises access to peak experiences, which in turn undermine the ability to savor small pleasures (see also Parducci, 1995). Indeed, when participants are exposed to photographs of money (thereby priming the construct of wealth) they spend significantly less time eating a piece of chocolate and exhibit less pleasure while doing it. In short, not only are the small pleasures of daily life an important source of happiness, but unfettered access to peak experiences may actually be counterproductive.

The happiness boffins also urge people to spend their money on experiences, rather than material goods, to improve their happiness, which is another conclusion that I've reached in recent years.

Their other principles are: 

• Use your money to benefit others rather than yourself  (have I not waxed gleeful lyrical about how good it is giving money to charity?);
• Eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance; 
• Delay consumption; 
• Consider how peripheral features of your purchases may affect your day-to-day life;
• Beware of comparison shopping; and
• Pay close attention to the happiness of others.

(Yes, you might recall that I'm not actually that happy lately, but happiness is not necessarily something over which you have complete control. I'm sure I would be even more unhappy if I lost the ability to savour the mundane pleasures of life.)

Speaking of The Happiness Project...

Did you read my post from yesterday? And did you click on the link to The Happiness Project above? Did you see it? The William James quote? What uncanny timing, eh?!  

Also...

I really love baby beetroot.