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.

Runner happy

I haven't stuck to my twice weekly blogging - I will make excuses for myself, I have been overloaded. But I am back (thanks Grace for getting on my back) and been researching more on happiness.  After the outdoor revelation of my last blog I started to look into leisure activities and their effect on happiness.

I stumbled on a really cool study actually where 4 leisure activities were looked into in detail and their effect on happiness.The study was conducted by the Oxford Happiness Project a few years back and they looked to see if sport/exercise, church, music or watching tv made people happy.  Their conclusions were yes, all these activities make you happy, however only one activity made you SIGNIFICANTLY happier - sports/exercise.  The least was the tv.

I guess this came no surprise to me personally. However if you want to achieve happiness in the fastest possible way, exercise is the way forward. Its no secret that my exercise passion is running. However my running comes with much controversy as its associated with a very low level of support, particularly from those people closest to me.  So what happens when there is something that makes you happy, but doing it makes others so unhappy? Should to be selfish and think of your own happiness pursuits, or address those who are closest to you too. Because surely if the people around you are miserable that will push you into misery too.  Its a difficult one, and as with many things in life, its not an easy situation to tackle.  Personally if I see something making someone happy - thats all I really care about, regardless of my personal reservations, but we don't all tick the same.

I am quite selfish, my happiness and wellbeing is paramount. I'm going to keep running until my legs give in for good.

13.9

Its been a while since I last blogged. My aim was to blog twice a week and thats slipping. I  need to make time for this, I pledge to do more to make sure I blog twice a week. My happiness is paramount.

Thanks to all the people forwarding articles, quotes and links my way on happiness, keep them coming. Its inspirational to read what people say about happiness, however it can become overwhelming. What struck me is that everyone has something to say on happiness, and there is even advice on the NHS on how to be happier. Not quite sure if you were depressed whether you would want to read that... I found it patronising at best.

However, I did come across a very interesting study by the University of Sussex and London School of Economics that I thought I could resonate with. In this study, 22,000 people were given an app to download on their phones called mappiness. Not only do I love the name... the users then had to input their happiness levels and the GPS on the phone would locate where they were when they registered they were happy.  Users were happiest when they were outdoors, most popular destinations were costal areas, national parks, mountainous regions, farms and woodlands.I found that really interesting, and if I am honest with myself, I do find myself heading outdoors when I am agitated.  Another study I found by Osaka University was about the kind of weather makes us happy. It turns out its not warm sunshine that gets those smiles on our faces, but a temperature of 13.9 degrees centigrade.  Sunshine, rain, wind, humidity all  had insignifcant effects on  happiness, but the temperature did, and 13.9 is that magic number.

So its 20 minutes a day of being outdoors that makes us happy, and check for forecast because at exactly 13.9 degrees - its going to be a great day!!

Work Happy

Its been I while. I know. There are some topics on this blog that are going to be difficult to tackle, and I have been churning on how best to deliver these.  But for today, I am going to delve into parenting, or more importantly working parenting.

I have been critisised heavily over the years. "why bother having children if you're leaving them in childcare all day".  I honestly don't know how to answer these questions, and I find myself mulling over it again and again.  Then I get angry at myself for not have had a good answer for it, but I am always taken by surprise when its asked.  Yes, I am a working mother. I work full time and my child has been in the trusty hands of childcare since she was one.  I actually think that this has had a positive impact on her. Nursery taught her to fight for herself, to become independent, to play, to not watch tv all day, to eat healthily... all lessons that I think that will benefit her as an adult.  More importantly though, I also believe it has a positive impact on me.

I was reading on the net about working parents, and was shocked to find an article stating that 88% of working parents suffer from health problems, and are as follows:


 

It made me think carefully about how happy I am as a working parent. Afterall, 43% of working parents feel depressed, and 64% extreme fatigue.  I might feel stressed or under pressure during the mornings or evenings, but never what I would call extreme fatigue. I still am able to see friends, enjoy hobbies, tidy up.  Does being a working parent make me unhappy and was I wrong to pursue my education and career?

I've had many conversations about this. I see so many high flying women pack it all up for their families as the "kids need me".  These are personal choices, I can't tell you what is right or not.  But by thinking and contemplating.. no, I did the right thing. The positive impact my work has on my life makes me happy. The value I feel from my colleagues at work, the sense of achievement and the fact that I am investing in my childs future (i.e. being able to pay for their university fees) makes me think I am doing the right thing. Having been there on one year of maternity leave - I am pretty sure that staying at home would make me miserable.

I can do more at home. I know that currently I value the time I spend with my child and I feel we spend quality time together. We cook together, we eat together and spend lots of time chatting.  But from my daughters happiness checklist, she wants to play more, so I pledge to do that. Her happiness is also important to me. So here's my pledge, play more together. Even if its 15 minutes, I need to find the quality time to do what she wants to do. Every evening after dinner, we will spend time together where she chooses what we are to do.  I know whats coming up: hours of loom bands.

Visions

If I am entirely honest with myself, my quest for self realisation and content started way before reading "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. Over the last 3/4 years as new years comes around, I always found myself reflecting and actually thinking "this year certainly was worse than that before, next year must get better". But it never did. Pressure, stress, demands all seemed to increase from work and home year on year and I felt totally out of control of my life. I needed to take control back.

It was perfect timing when I was introduced to the concept of a vision board.  I was told it was simple: flick though pages of a magazine, cut out pictures you like the look of. Some may have meaning or purpose, some might not, they just caught your eye. Then stick them beside your bed so you see them everyday. I am always skeptical of such ideas because there was no logic to this as I was cutting and sticking like I was back at primary school, but I had total faith in the person who told me about this. This was December 2013.

I would like to share my vision board with you 10 months in.

There are pictures I purposely put in there. The two women running. I wanted to get well enough to run again. The scientist - to remind myself why it was I became a scientist, I want to stay in the lab and my vision was to work on that this year and to try and steer away from management. But the rest I just liked the look of. The pictures of the sunhat, frogs, woman swooning in black and white are all pictures of unexpected things that occured in my life this year that I can directly relate to these pictures. But because I had them in my vision, I felt totally in control of these unexpected events, they did not take me by surprise, nor did they phase me.  And taking control of my life once again undeniably makes me happy.  Being able to set yourself a task for over a long period of time, or to be able to make sense of the nonsense gave me a sense of control like I never felt. And I didn't feel overwhelmed or over stressed, because I had the vision. And it wasn't the board that changed my life. I just made some very far fetched connections between my life events and these pictures which made me feel like its all part of the plan.  This gave me great happiness and satisfaction and was indeed the start of my happiness project that evolved into this blog.

I still have 2 months to go before my vision board ends, so I could still make sense of some of the other pictures. Or maybe I won't, but I am not disappointed, it was a valuable experience and I can't wait until December to do it again. But this time I will have a Ferrari slap bang in the centre!

Reflections

I thought,  before I embark on my next happiness endevour, to reflect on my happiness project so far.  So, almost a month in, am I happier? 

The happiness project has certainly got me thinking about being happy more. And being more self aware is making me happier. So far, I have implemented only a few simple tasks, sleep, phone and my two golden rules, be me and you can't change others.  In addition, having my blog is always on my mind. It forces me to regulate my thoughts into some logical reasoning for my happiness project and this is constantly on my mind. So being AWARE of your happiness does make me happier.

I want to thank all the people who are reading my blog and the overwhelming positive feedback about it. The answer is, YES do your own, its a liberating experience, particularly for those who always like to have their voices heard (you know who you are!!).  And this is making me happier too.

I don't talk about my happiness project to my daughter anymore. I do talk to my friends, who ask, about it.  So although she doesn't want to hear about my happiness project, she is getting a gentle trickle of happiness talk. I was cleaning out my seven year olds bedroom (with help from her of course) two nights ago. At her bedside is her diary and I as I was tidying, she saw it picked it up and started writing in it. I asked her "whats that?". She said its her happiness checklist, and she showed it to me. I wanted to share it with you:

She has made her checklist of things that make her happy, and possibly even things that make me happy (like being sansebel - sensible), and honestly, this bought tears to me eyes. So even though I couldn't preach the happiness project to my daughter, she actually has picked up on the positivity in our household and has formulated her own happiness checklist. Come to think of it, our household has been far calmer and happier over the last month. So this is the proof. If you want to change people, change yourself.

phone-happy

I have lots of ideas for my happiness project, but the ideas are swimming around in my head and it was difficult for me to decide on what to write. It all came to a crunch when a very good friend of mine gave me an article in a magazine about happiness and all of a sudden it all became clear.....

So listen up, this is the happiness checklist according to Professor Happiness himself, Paul Dolan:

1) Don't spend on consumer items, spend on experiences. Money never brings people the satisfaction they imagine.

2) Know when to give up on a relationship. Tell them its over and there is no prospect of your ever going out with them again.

3) Surround yourself with people who bring you joy. Social contact makes us happy.

4) Never, ever make facebook your homepage.

5)Volunteer. A structured form of social contact based around being nice makes us happiest of all.

6) Minimise distractions. Multitasking makes you less productive.

7) Become a neophile, a lover of new activities.

I would add another 20 things to this list, but its a good start point and actually there is one that i want to focus on that kind of relates to my last post - number 6: Minimise distractions.

So how is my sleep going from my last blog. Badly. I am shattered. 7 hours are just not enough, and to be honest the last 2 days I have been sleeping 8 hours a night. I started to reflect upon the 4 hours that were proposed by highly effective people. Did they have a nap at lunch? Do they have a full on life with kids to care for, housework to do?  And what is the long term effect of so little sleep? So I decided to go back to my first golden rule, be me. I am going back to 8 hours of sleep.  When I am less tired, I am certainly happier.

And the phone? That is not going well either. I am having phone withdrawal symptoms. I feel some void in the night when I can't fiddle with my phone. But I have actually come to realise that my phone is point number 6, the biggest distraction in my life.  Given that I was so reluctant to get a smartphone because I am NOT a neophile, now I have had one for a few years, I am obsessed with it. Not good. So for the nights: Phone - you are still banished to the outer realms of my living room.

My phone is a distraction both in day and night. Although we have strict rules at home about phones at dinner time (a total no no), I do find myself leaping at its beckon call everytime it beeps. Really, do I need to know ever single email as it arrives? Or facebook like?  I am a slave to my phone. The distraction it induces prevents me from doing other things. So, new rule. At work, the phone is staying in the bag. Work colleagues, you are not testament to this. If you need to contact me between 9am-5pm, use my good old fashioned office phone!!

Sleeping your way to happiness

Its been a week since my last blog. I've been on my summer holidays and I did manage to switch off from work and home... however I did have a lot of time to think about my happiness project, and what aspects I should tackle first.  So here I am back blogging on happiness, and its now time to implement some simple changes that should make me happier.  So the first issue is sleep, and I have taken it upon myself to read what others feel about sleep and happiness.

There is no doubt that a lack of sleep makes you more irritable, lethargic and unhappy.  Ask any new parents. However, upon my investigation into sleep, particularly of influential and substantial people in society, I was surprised what i found. Did you know that Napoleon, Margaret Thatcher and Florence Nightingale only ever slept 4 hours a night?  And if we sway towards people I might have a bit more respect for, scientists, this is what I find:



Really?  4 hours... So I started to delve more into the concept of sleep. Does it really help us recover from the days activities? Well apparently, sleep only saves 50 Kcal - which is about the same as an apple, that is not really the reason we need sleep.  But reading on... sleep does play a big part in brain development, being able to think flexibly, speak clearer, remember and recall things. So it is needed.

 However, reading on, there appears to be a fine line between too little and too much sleep. Because over sleeping also leads to lethargy and depression. Its a delicate balance you have to find.

I started this blog thinking that to be happier, I need to sleep more. However I am ending this blog thinking that is not more sleep I need, its probably less sleep I need, but good quality sleep. Because if I slept more, I would have less time to do all the stuff I need to do. Nope, its not more sleep I need, its less.

I get about 7-8 hours of sleep a night. I do know that the last thing I do before bed is fiddle with my phone, and the first thing I do when I wake up is fiddle with my phone. Beeping phones in the middle of the night must be effecting the quality of my sleep. So task 1 for happiness - leave the phone downstairs before going to bed.  The lights and sounds its generating are certain to effect my sleep.  And second task - lets see if I can survive on only 7 hours of sleep a day (1 hour less) and still be alert and happy.  So I need to make sure before bed that I have a comfy bed to sleep in, the window is slightly ajar to get some fresh air in and the door of the bedroom is closed to prevent interruptions. I will let you know how I get on :0)

Knowing when to stop

Right, fairy Zahra is back to spread the words of happiness once again.  Now that I have come to two realisations, a) be me, and b) I am doing this alone, I thought that now is the time to start making of list of things to start implementing to make me happier.  Surely, filling your life with things you know make you happy will make you happy.  And ofcourse peoples personal happiness check lists differ.  Seeing friends and loved ones more, spending more time together in a relationship, spending more or even less time with the kids, taking up a new sport, activity, hobby... list is endless.

Indeed this endless list is the thing that got me thinking, at what point does the happiness project become a burden?  Like everything in my life, it can be described by my favourite graph, A Michaelis Menten curve ( you science geeks know JUST what I am talking about). For the non scientists, here it is:

         

There must be a point, which is an arbitary unit and different for each individual that the happiness activities you are implementing start to make you unhappy simply because you have taken on too much. If I am  honest, I have seen it all too much around me where people "burn out" from doing so much, similar to a little enzyme chomping away at a molecule (thats what Michaelis Menten is all about). Unless something changes in your environment, like your support network, your job, your family situation, or for the little enzyme, the temperature, the amount of enzyme, the buffer its in (the environment) you will get to a point where you can add all the happiness activities you want, you will fail to be happier. This is Vmax - the maximum happiness you can possibly get. Then even after that you might find that you are starting to get unhappy... or if you were an enzyme... you will start to denature.

So, the key here is identifying your Vmax.  That is the challenge. And so that is when listening to feedback is vital (my line manager will be so thrilled to hear this).  You have to listen to those around you, particularly those who have your best interests at heart when they are telling you to slow it down. In addition, you have to be quite intune with your own body and start to realise when enough is enough. I think I am probably close to Vmax, which is why the changes I am about to implement are not going to be drastic. Where on the Michaelis Menten Curve are YOU?

Flu-Spreading the Happiness

Before I start writing about my next happiness adventure, I thought I would first reflect.

Ok, so I started the blog, am I happier?  Well certainly I have been overwhelmed by the comments and support from everyone.. but is that happier?  It has been quite exciting writing a blog and checking on how many people have clicked on my page, and I guess that adrenaline rush does make me a bit happier... so yes.. I'd say that writing this has made me that little bit happier.

So after realising that my first happiness rule was to just be me, I started to think that this happiness project might be quite nice to implement on my poor unsuspecting 7 year old. Actually, she is not unsuspecting. The happiness adventure started several months back with an innocent question "mummy, what are you reading?". And so my description of the happiness project started.

I then thought it would be great if we could do this together, the two of us. Lets just make a list of all things that make us happy and lets just do it. Oh how Naive Am I.  My 7 year old just looked at me and said "mum, you're weird". I cannot dispute that.  So I thought the best thing to do is to subtly start to ask random happiness questions, but the problem with modern 7 year olds... they are actually smarter than us.

So here I am at the end of August. Any mention of the word "happiness project" and my 7 year old shoots daggers at me with her eyes. The word "happiness" is now banned (by her) in the house and I am not allowed to talk about it.  So, this brings me onto my second realisation - this is a journey that you have to do alone. You can't make people (and your loved ones) buy into your happiness. You cannot infect the happiness by sneezing on them. You have to accept that only you can change yourself. And there is a strong strong chance that the people around you may not even respond to the happier and more positive you. You will have to learn to live with that disappointment. So I am going solo, its my happiness project and now my ONLY outlet is this blog.  Only time will tell whether my personal adventure might have an impact on those around me.