“Each individual is master of his or her destiny: it is up to each person to create the causes of happiness”

The 14th Dalai Lama

20th March is International Day of Happiness

What a pity we need special days and coffee table books with images of smiling faces to nudge us into a happiness mindset. People are making money from the fact that we have such busy bodies and busy minds as to make us preoccupied by our time-pooredness (making words up now!) And that doesn’t even count the millions that Hallmark can make selling cards marking 20th March as a day of difference. My daughters are already cynical about Valentines Day, so I’m looking forward to the conversation at the dinner table tonight when I tell them that they were supposed to be really content today; “Roar, grr, but I’ve got no money for petrol, eyeliner, that skirt on ASOS!!!”

Happiness seems to be a hot topic at the moment. I attended a conference where guest speaker Martin Seligman, the Guru of the happiness movement, explained that governments are doing research into who is happiest, and where they live, in order to work out what their city/neighbourhood needs to do something to make life more Ticketieboo. They are getting the information from Facebook, of course! Apparently the repeated use of certain words (particularly the growly, unspeakable but regularly spoken expletives) adds up to cranky, and others like of course “Lo…ve”, “Yay…y” are dead give aways of merry little souls. I seem to remember some cities in England, probably Coventry or Slough-no offence, but hey-needed a makeover because whatever it was that some really jolly cities possessed, maybe bicycle lanes, or lots of daffodils on the roundabouts, these grumpy cities simply must be lacking, so let’s go and build a lake and plonk some ducks in there.

I simply subscribe to the dance in the kitchen brand of mood enhancement (that great song from Despicable Me is working wonders the world over), although I have also heard that Mindfulness works pretty well, and there’s a great article on that by Joshua Lutz in Time magazine about rewiring your brain to think Happy. Meanwhile, I did once hear that smiling is contagious, plus laughter therapy is known to massage a breaking heart. One other word from Seligman was to say that altruism, that’s doing something nice like helping a little old lady across the road even if she doesn’t want to go, does you good. So today, just maybe I’ll go into the supermarket and sing Happy at the top of my voice while getting the tricky jar of pickle off the top shelf for a little granny. Hopefully she’ll join in the dance 🙂