On How We Can Bring About World Peace By Being Happy

I've found that, in the couple of weeks since I resigned, my mood has got sunnier and sunnier. It's reminded me of how important it is to take stock and reconnect with the little things in life that make us happy. And I reckon, if we all think happy thoughts, we can bring about World Peace...

I've been enjoying my own enjoyment of life, and it's got me thinking of how often we rush through life with our heads down, intent on getting through this task so that we can get onto the next one. The heads down thing may be metaphorical, but, particularly at this time of year, it becomes a physical thing as well - as the dark takes over and the weather buffets us, you see people with their shoulders hunched and their heads down against the dark and the cold.

Your posture and your mood are very closely linked - if you nail on a smile, stand tall and look the world right in the eye (as Jim Reeves once said) you will start to feel better; if you hunch over, don't make eye contact and act depressed, you can very quickly make yourself feel that way - and I wonder whether the fact that many of us feel down in the winter has as much to do with the way we hold ourselves as it does to a lack of sunlight.

During one of my bouts of depression, someone once suggested to me that, at the end of each day, I should try recalling three things that had made me feel happy during that day. They didn't have to be big things and, in the midst of a bout of serious depression, "happy" might have been too strong a word to use, but recalling three good things each day was suggested as a useful tool to help me to start noticing the positives in my life. If I went a stage further and wrote them down, I'd also have something to look back on during the really bad times, to remind me that there were still some lights in the darkness.

At first it was almost impossible, but after a while I got into the rhythm and understood what they'd meant by "happy". Some examples from that time (written during a holiday in Finland) include:

• the utter peacefulness of being in a rowing boat alone in the middle of a lake
• a picture my son drew for me
• a phone call from my daughter
• birthday presents chosen with love and care
• a deer appearing through the trees and standing very still to observe us, before disappearing again
• watching the Naked Gun and enjoying my son's enjoyment of it
• coffee and cake with my husband in a cafe in Helsinki

None of these are big things, but they were points of light in a difficult time, and the memory of them still makes me feel warm and happy some years afterwards.

As often happens, when the immediate danger passes it can be all too easy to let your guard down, so once I was well again I stopped deliberately taking notice of what was making me happy, and if I did notice I didn't bother to write them down.

But this week a funny thing has happened. I'm feeling SO happy I wanted to record it in some way, and to share it with people because I don't think we do enough of that. Maybe it's something to do with being British - we tend to bond over shared complaints about the weather, or poor service in shops, or how late the bus is, but we don't tend to talk very much about the things we're enjoying - and one of the things I've noticed is that, when I try, people look at me as if I'm a bit odd...maybe I am a bit odd....but wouldn't the world be a nicer place if we were more willing to invite people to share in our everyday happinesses as well as our everyday disappointments? Or even instead of?

Which is why I've started Tweeting about my happies and why I'd like people to join in. I'm going to bust a gut to record my 3 #happies every day, and to encourage others to do the same - if this takes off, and #happies makes it into the top 10 memes, we'd be in a situation where thousands of people were all thinking happy thoughts every day, sharing them, and enjoying other people's happy thoughts too - and if that's not a recipe for World Peace I don't know what is!

So join in, tell all your friends, and see how long it is before all the world is sharing #happies...

Noticing

I have a bartering arrangement going with one of my clients - I get a one hour one-to-one yoga lesson in return for a one hour coaching session. Fair exchange is no robbery, and I'm more than happy to be receiving payment in kind instead of money (and if there are any massage therapists in and around Cheltenham who'd like some coaching in exchange for giving me a massage, please get in touch!)

I'm new to yoga - it's something I've been thinking about for a while and the right time seems to have arrived. During this week's session I became aware that there are some really strong links between the practices of yoga and coaching, and the one I want to talk about here is noticing.

We start each yoga lesson with my yoga teacher reminding me how to stand correctly. He does this starting from the toes up, and as he encourages me to get my body into alignment, he constantly tells me to notice things - notice how your feet are on the floor - notice where your weight is, is it even or is it to one side - notice whether your core is strong - notice how your head is held on your neck - notice whether there is tension in your shoulders. The more notice I take of my body, and how I'm inhabiting it, the more I become aware of when I'm not holding myself correctly. And the more I try to hold myself correctly, the more I become aware that, when I can get myself into something resembling the correct posture, the more it seems like my body is holding me, rather than the other way around. I know it will be a long slow process to get it right and keep it right because I've got a lot of years of bad posture to undo, but I can already understand the difference it will make to me if I keep on noticing.

Noticing is also key for me as a coach and in terms of my own personal development. As a coach, I spend my time focussing on my client, listening to what they do and don't say, and doing my best to take notice of the story behind the words. It's my job to then tell my client what I notice about what they've said, so that they can see things from another perspective. I think of it as being like a tour guide - I have the torch and I can shine lights into the corners of the clients mind so that they can get a clearer view of what's there.

When you listen to someone with you whole attention, and then repeat back to them what you heard, and what you noticed about what you heard, it can often sound to the client as if you've revealed a profound truth to them, but one so obvious that they can't believe they hadn't thought of it for themselves. Often a client will thank me for, in their words, making a really good suggestion. In reality, what I've done is to illuminate thoughts they've already had but not looked at closely enough to make sense of. In noticing those ideas and bringing them to my client's notice, I've ensured that the client can make full use of them.

Learning to notice what's going on in my own thinking has been just as useful and anyone can learn to do it. We all have an internal dialogue going on - and if someone inside your head is saying "what's she talking about? I haven't got an internal dialogue" - then I'm here to tell you that that was it, denying it's own existence! More often than not, we let that little voice chunter away all day every day. We probably think we don't take much notice of it, but actually it can form the basis of a lot of our actions, and colour our opinions on many things. When we jump to conclusions or make assumptions about things, it can often be because our internal dialogue has led us there. Becoming consciously aware of what's happening in that dialogue, and noticing the effect it's having on everything from our mood to our behaviour, is a really good way of starting to examine patterns of unhelpful behaviour in ourselves and in others and it's a crucial first step in learning to coach yourself.