The Happiness Diary

True to my word, I am now back after 7 days.  Over the last 7 days I kept a happiness diary working out my moods throughout the day over a seven day period to see, as said in my last blog, if my mood changes throughout the day.  It does.

But not in the same way as the previous blog suggests. I have discovered alot about myself in the meantime.  Firstly, I am definitely a morning person. Never had any grumpiness in the morning. And the second thing, is that throughout the day, my mood is quite neutral. However, there are times of the day where my mood reaches extreme happiness and unhappiness and mapping those out is quite interesting.

Unhappy. Being late in the mornings. Having to scream and shout at a seven year old to get ready for school put me in a grump for 45 minutes. It was only when I got to work and managed to vent it out to work colleagues did my mood reach neutral.  Unhappy. Last minute change of plans and my presentation was moved forward 6 weeks. Left me in a grump for only 15 minutes until I talked myself into believing it would be achievable - but other things had to take second place.

You get the jist. Work, home, life, family, loved ones, friends all give me reasons to be unhappy, but as equally they also are the ones who lift me out of my grumpy moods.  My mood didn't fluctuate all that much during the day, but it was little things that came along that put me in grumps.  Its the human interactions that make both happy and unhappy. So now I know.  The key is to quickly realise when those unhappy moments come along and identify the people who will lift you out of them as quickly as possible. I certainly know who those people are, and they are all on emergency speed dial.

time for happiness

Reflect through your day. Surely your mood isn't constant throughout. Mine isn't. Depending on when you catch me, I can be over the moon (usually first thing in the morning) or ready to punch someone (usually around 9:30am, or by being at work for exactly 30 mins).  What I have recently been trying to monitor is whether there are particular parts of the day I feel unhappy, and whether I can channel into this to implement my happiness strategies to make my mood more balanced.

So I googled it.  And here I am with my scientific hat again, I found an absolutely brilliant study which does just that - monitors your happiness throughout the day. The study: look at blogs. Find blogs that are positive with positive words (like awesome, yay, lovely) and those with sad words (like lonely, cry, upset, sad) and look to see what time of day they were entered in.  Here are the average findings:










Lets start the graph when you first wake up, say 7-8am. Misery.  Then as the day moves on you get happier, slumping to an all time low at midday.  Infact, lunchtime is the most miserable time of the day for your average person. Why? Had enough of work already?  Feeling hungry so feeling snappy?  Moods then rise throughout the day, peaking in the evening (probably when the kids are asleep) with another peak at 3am (clubbing time?).  And that's the happiness cycle. I guess in this study you are biased based on the type of people blogging, but there is certainly a cycle of moods throughout your day.  I love this idea. For the next week, I am going to try and monitor my own happiness cycle and I'll share them with you here. Its only when I get to see my own cycle and when I am happiest/saddest that I am going to be able to tap into and realise when my low points are, and to enforce my happiness survival kit. See you in seven days!

slim your way happy

Ok, so a recap on the milestones I have set myself so far:

1) be me
2) can't change others
3) sleep 8 hours a night
4) leave the phone alone
5) spend more time outdoors
6) invest in exercise

When reading articles on people and society, and happiness one thing that really strikes me when reading on other peoples journey's are the same phrases that I seem to read over and over "I would definetely be happier if I was slimmer".  I have pondered over this a lot, and I cannot judge for others if being slimmer will make you happier, but I guess I can be true to myself and analyse myself.

The first thing I did when trying to analyse this was look back at pictures of myself to remember what it was like when I was a few stones lighter, I did have a romantic notion that I was so much happier then. But photograph upon photograph... I was barely smiling.. actually I would go as far as saying I looked miserable.  The photos also triggered memories, the emotions that ran through me were that of sorrow and pain. Was I really that unhappy?

So, for me, being slimmer did not make me happy, there was too much unhappiness around me.  If I am totally honest, food is a very central part of my life, I love cooking, entertaining around food, eating out. Who am i kidding, I can't live on celery and detox juice? Maybe that was why I was so miserable before because I wasn't being me.  My suspicions are that when you are unhappy, its usually a complex array of events and never one thing, but dieting and not caring about food does contribute to my unhappiness. So here I am, being me. I am far happier now than I have ever been, even though the demands of my every day life are immense, far more than in the past.  So be me Zahra. Forget the no carb malachy and enjoy food.

However, saying that, another realisation that i have is that some foods don't make me happy, they leave me feeling bloated and lethargic.  The classics are chocolates and cakes. For that split second as you put it into your mouth, you get this moment of happiness. However for hours after, I have a feeling of unhappiness. With activities that give you both happiness and unhappiness, you need to decide how much of each you get and if its worth it. For chocolates and cakes its 1 minute of happiness vs 180 minutes of unhappiness. So here is my next happiness project, cut the cakes. Not because I want to slim myself down, but they don't make me feel good at all.  I am not going to cut them out completely, but cut them down to only twice per week.