To save you flicking back through the pages of this book (yes, including electronic pages, yes, I know about e-books, thank you), here is my longlist again:
1. Differences Between Things
2. Bad Advice = Good
3. The Cancellation
4. NEAs
5. What if it IS my job?
6. The Positive in the Negative (Grudges)
7. The 65 Days (Eligible? Yes! Why not?)
Dear sidekick, I know you have no idea what any of these happiness clues means. Let me go through them one by one in brief, and then, once I’ve trimmed them down to a shortlist, I will provide fuller descriptions of the shortlisted items. Does that sound fair? (Say yes.)
1. Differences Between Things. This is my idea, which I think about a lot and still firmly believe in: that most people do not assess the differences between things in an accurate way, and that this failure of assessment leads to all kinds of problems. Happiness and well-being for all would be greatly increased if people thought more accurately about the differences between things.
2. Bad Advice = Good. Easier to guess, perhaps. This is my counter-intuitive theory: that bad advice is good for us because it stimulates our brain into disagreement, which then leads to us giving ourselves the good advice we didn’t get originally.
3. The Cancellation. This happiness hunch was inspired by a poem I wrote many years ago – one that remains one of my very favourites of all the poems I’ve ever written. Here it is:
The Cancellation
On the day of the cancellation
The librarian phoned at two.
My reading at Swillingcote Youth Club
Had regrettably fallen through.
The members of Swillingcote Youth Club
Had just done their GCSEs
And demanded a rave, not poems,
Before they began their degrees.
Since this happened at such short notice
They would still have to pay my fee.
I parked in the nearest lay-by
And let out a loud yippee.
The librarian put the phone down
And muttered, ‘Oh, thank the Lord!’
She was fed up of chaperoning
While the touring poet toured.
The girl from the local bookshop
Who’d been told to provide a stall
But who knew that the youth club members
Would buy no books at all
Expressed with a wild gyration
Her joy at a late reprieve,
And Andy, the youth club leader,
And the youth arts worker, Steve,
Both cheered as one does when granted
The gift of eternal life.
Each felt like God’s chosen person
As he skipped back home to his wife.
It occurred to me some time later
That such bliss, such immense content
Needn’t always be left to fortune,
Could in fact be a planned event.
What ballet or play or reading,
What movie creates a buzz
Or boosts the morale of the nation
As a cancellation does?
No play, is the simple answer.
No film that was ever shown.
I submit that the cancellation
Is an art form all of its own.
To give back to a frantic public
Some hours they were sure they’d lose
Might well be my new vocation.
I anticipate great reviews.
From now on, with verve and gusto,
I’ll agree to a month-long tour.
Call now if you’d like to book me
For three hundred pounds or more.
The hunch inspired by this poem is, very simply, that the more often we cancel things, and have things cancelled for us, the happier we are.
4. NEAs. This is my theory that, in order to be truly happy, we need to identify and adhere to at least twenty NEAs, which stands for No Effort Areas. These are exactly what they sound like: areas of life in which we, henceforth, intend to make no effort whatsoever.
5. What if it IS my job? This idea first occurred to me several years ago, and long before I heard, or heard of, Robin Sharma, but it has something in common with his ‘leader with no title’ theory. It’s the idea that, instead of thinking that someone else should take charge of making things better for us or for the world because it’s their job or duty to do so, we should treat everything important as if it is our job. No matter what our official role or agreed responsibilities, we can and should make everything our job and responsibility whenever we think we can make a positive difference. (This hunch works well in combination with the NEAs hunch: if we decide that ironing, cleaning out old crisp packets and chocolate-bar wrappers from the car, and remembering the birthdays of people we dislike are NEAs from now on, then we will have more free time to decide that some things are our job that aren’t, strictly speaking, our job. Those can then become BEAs or Big Effort Areas.)
6. The Positive in the Negative. This is my theory that sometimes it’s good to feel bad, especially … when we’re feeling bad! Instead of judging ourselves negatively for the understandable and natural anger or hurt we feel, we can get happier by embracing, welcoming and enjoying our harsher and less peaceful feelings.
7. The 65 Days (Eligible? Yes! Why not?). Hmm. Is The 65 Days eligible? Maybe not. It’s not even a theory, so it’s low on potential wisdom content. And it’s totally made-up. I think I’ll leave it out for the time being.
And:
8. Brooke Castillo. This is shorthand for ‘Agreeing with Brooke about every single thing and doing everything she advises and recommends’. This is the new item I’m adding to the longlist, to be transferred immediately to the shortlist.
It doesn’t take me long to whittle down the options. This is what I’m left with:
1. The Differences Between Things
2. The Positive in the Negative
3. Brooke Castillo
4. The 65 Days
Okay, now I’m getting somewhere. Would you like to know how I trimmed eight happiness hunches down to four, dear sidekick? First I decided that ‘What if it IS your job?’ was unnecessary because Item 3, ‘Brooke Castillo’, kind of covers it. She often talks about how, instead of getting frustrated by what others are not doing, or are doing badly, we should simply take responsibility and action and do it brilliantly ourselves.
Similarly, ‘Bad Advice is Good for You’, ‘The Cancellation’ and ‘NEAs’ can easily be incorporated into ‘The Positive in the Negative’ – make no effort? Yay! Cancel stuff ? Hurrah! Get terrible advice? Winning!
The 65 Days is nagging at the back of my mind and won’t go away. It still seems absurd to discuss it, however, because it’s not really even a thing. I’ll probably take it out later. Or we can all just ignore it. Like the testimony of apparently scatterbrained elderly folk and morose European maids in Agatha Christie novels, it is bound not to be important.
As for Item 1, The Differences Between Things …
Okay, let me tell you a story. I have a dog that I adore. He’s a Welsh Terrier and his name is Brewster. I also have many close friends, friendly acquaintances, relatives and work associates who visit my house regularly. Let’s say for the sake of argument that there are fifty such people in my life, because that’s a nice round number.
All of these fifty people, without exception, have never killed Brewster. However, one of them has repeatedly tried to cause his death, or, at the very least, has tried to risk his death, by deliberately leaving the front door open, knowing that he might run out into the street and get run over by a car, or just disappear and never be seen again.
We only got Brewster in January 2014. Before that date, this person – let’s call him Charles – never once left my front door open. As soon as Brewster arrived and front door security became vital, Charles suddenly started to leave the front door open regularly.
At first I wondered if he was simply becoming more forgetful, but then an entirely coincidental but highly convenient series of events occurred that provided unquestionable proof, and I was left in no doubt that Charles was taking every opportunity he could to leave my front door wide open in order to endanger my dog and, presumably, to try to create an event that would cause me, my husband and my children immense anguish.
Obviously, I took immediate precautions to ensure Brewster’s safety. What does any of this have to do with the differences between things? Well, here’s the thing: the difference between someone who has deliberately murdered a loyal and lovely dog and someone who hasn’t is immense. Vast. I hope we can all agree on that.
A handful of Charles’s and my mutual acquaintances know that Charles has tried to kill Brewster on several occasions. I have shared my proof with them, and, trust me, it’s high-qualify proof. It’s evidence that would make it impossible for any reasonable person to bring in a verdict of ‘Not guilty’.
Some of these mutual acquaintances believe me, some don’t, and some say they do but I suspect that, deep down, they don’t; they can’t bring themselves to believe that someone they’re so close to would try to engineer the death of the beloved pet of someone else they’re close to. They hate that idea, so they reject it. I totally understand that, and those non-believers are not relevant to our case study.
What’s interesting is the behaviour and attitudes of the people who do believe it. If Charles had whipped out a gun and shot Brewster dead in front of them, they would have stopped seeing him, stopped inviting him to their homes, stopped thinking of him as a guy they wanted as part of their close circle.
As things stand, they do none of those things, because they think to themselves, ‘Come on, there’s a huge difference between someone who’s murdered a dog and someone who hasn’t.’ That sounds so true. How could anyone argue with it? In some circumstances it would be true. In this case, it’s a negligently inaccurate assessment of the differences between things. Because, my friends, there is not a huge difference between someone who’s murdered a dog and someone who hasn’t when the person who hasn’t is someone who has repeatedly tried to do that very thing.
As I’ve told so many writers over the years, and will tell many more once Dream Author, my coaching programme for writers, gets underway: the difference between J. K. Rowling and a writer who has only so far written one much-rejected manuscript is not necessarily as massive as it at first seems. If the unpublished writer is absolutely determined to pursue her writing dreams no matter what, and will never, ever stop believing she can succeed, and takes action accordingly, then she is far more similar to J. K. Rowling than she is to another unpublished writer who isn’t sure if the effort and pain are worth it and is considering giving up on her writing dream.
Being able to measure and perceive, clearly, the differences between things is crucial if we want to increase our happiness and well-being. Also …
Does Brooke Castillo (who has two dogs that she adores, Rory and Rocket) honestly, seriously and for real think that I should unconditionally love someone who has tried to murder my dog?
Damn. I think the answer to that is yes. Villain compassion and all that. Other people’s actions are never the cause of our unhappiness. Even if they kill our dogs.
Really?
I have a problem here: a clash of shortlisted hunches. Brooke Castillo is clashing with The Differences Between Things. I definitely don’t think I’d be happier if I loved Charles the would-be dog-killer unconditionally – not unless I made myself considerably more foolish and reckless at the same time, and I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to treat people differently, and feel differently about them, based on their actions and what kind of people I think they are.
And yet when I think about Charles, I am not filled with warm, loving feelings. Does that mean that I’m less happy than I might be, and should try to change my thoughts?
I can’t solve this one alone. If you have an opinion about this, dear sidekick, please feel free to share it with me. To help us both reach a conclusion, I’m going to bring back the experts, because until we understand how our relationships with others affect our happiness, the mystery cannot be declared solved, or anywhere near solved.