Having goals and purpose means sorting out what you value most in life and pursuing a life that enables you to live according to those values. It usually means having aims and ambitions that will give you a sense of purpose and enjoyment in life. Having goals and purpose in your life often makes it easier to focus on what you want and keeps you on a positive path. Having a goal doesn’t necessarily mean that you decide that you want to be a concert pianist and your whole life becomes directed to that one aim (although it could).
What are your values?
How do we know what we believe and what we want from life? We often find it difficult to articulate what our values are. We live from day to day, often not really thinking or questioning what we are doing until we are faced with a crisis. It is when things go wrong – a relationship breakdown, being made redundant, an accident, or a natural catastrophe – that we suddenly question what our life is really about and begin to examine what we want from life.
Terminal illness or the death of someone close seems to inspire people to think about, often for the first time, what really matters in life. The book One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life became a surprise best seller for Americans Kerry and Chris Shook when it was published in 2008, when they asked the question: ‘If you only have one month to live, what would you change?’ Similarly, a popular blog written by Patti Digh (37days. typepad.com) after her stepfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer posed the question: ‘What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?’
Addressing these questions doesn’t mean living every day ‘as if it were your last’ but it does mean that instead of letting disasters rule your life, you could look at them differently and treat them as a chance to change course – to re-evaluate and consider a different way of being.
Moral legacy
In her book Intimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us How to Live, Marie De Hennezel, a French psychologist, describes how she works with the terminally ill in Paris. She helps them to confront their fears and to live their final days in serenity and peace. Most of them are poor and feel that they have failed their families, as they have very few valuables to leave them. She encourages them to realise that they are bequeathing something more valuable than material possessions: the wisdom of their lives. When asked how they wanted to be remembered, they said, ‘As someone who has led a loving, giving and moral life’, ‘Someone who was happy and fun-loving’, and ‘Someone who was a good grandparent’ or ‘A loving wife’.
Most of us would like to be remembered for the way that we lived, rather than because of the things that we have acquired during our lives. Leading an authentic life means knowing what your values are and being true to them.
Values
Dr Martin Seligman, an American psychologist, coined the phrase ‘learned helplessness’, highlighting how some people who are ground down by seemingly insoluble problems become literally helpless: they become more passive, more anxious, slower to learn, and sad. Seligman realised that it was possible to change this kind of outlook. Nurturing our inner strengths and social intelligence helps to make people more resilient and develop a more positive outlook on life.
Seligman raised millions of dollars to fund his research and involved 150 scientists across the world. The research also included studying works ranging from Confucius to Aristotle. The principle behind the thinking was that previously psychologists had studied only what made people unhappy and negative about life; instead, Dr Seligman and his colleagues were studying what made people happy and have a positive outlook.
They recognised the six core virtues that positive people (throughout history and in different cultures) have in common. These virtues were further subdivided into 24 strengths, which can be useful when examining your own set of beliefs and values.
Which of the following virtues do you think are important to you? Which do you think are the ones that others would use to describe you?
- Wisdom and knowledge: this includes having a love of learning; being open-minded; having perspective; valuing curiosity; being creative.
- Humanity: this means having social intelligence; love and kindness.
- Justice: this includes a sense of fairness; the importance of citizenship, social responsibility, leadership, loyalty and teamwork.
- Temperance: this means being able to forgive; having mercy, humility and modesty; self-control and prudence.
- Transcendence: this includes gratitude, hope, humour, spirituality and the appreciation of beauty.
- Courage: this means being brave; having persistence, integrity and vitality.
Dr Seligman’s books are well worth a read to gain a deep understanding of authentic happiness. I’d also recommend a visit to his website (www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu) where you can take the ‘optimism test’, the ‘work-life questionnaire’ or try the ‘compassionate love scale’.
What do you enjoy?
The UK Office for National Statistics has created a ‘wellbeing’ index as a part of the Government’s Integrated Household Survey to gauge the nation’s happiness (www.ons.gov.uk/wellbeing). Typical responses when asked ‘What makes you happy?’ were simple things like the smell of fresh coffee, a walk in the park, and a plunge in a swimming pool. The replies to the question ‘What things in life matter most to you?’ included having the freedom to do as you choose and having a park at the end of your street. Creating a ‘gross domestic happiness scale’ for the whole country is an interesting exercise, but it is also useful if it makes you stop and think about what proportion of your life you spend doing things that you value and enjoy.
How many hours each week do you think you spend doing things that you really enjoy? Think of the people whose company you enjoy the most – how many hours a week do you spend with them? If you feel that you are spending more time doing things you don’t want to do – with people you don’t want to be with – it may be time to examine your priorities.
Can you remember the dreams and ambitions that you had as a child? Ask most children under the age of 11 and they will have a very clear idea of their future. Ask them what they want to be and they know: they are not inhibited by the job prospects, how long the training will take or what it will cost or whether they will be able to do it. Their dreams and desires may change from year to year, but their conviction that they can become an astronaut, or a lawyer or a pop star is not diminished by any sense of fear or doubt about their abilities and talents.
Give yourself some time to do the next exercise and allow your imagination and your sense of self-belief to become as strong and free as when you were a child.
- Recollect what has previously given you purpose.
What made you feel fulfilled in the past? What gave you the most pleasure when you were younger?
Write a list of the things that you used to enjoy:
What lessons did you enjoy the most at school? Art classes?
Singing in a choir? Being in the school play? Playing team sports? Tennis?
Swimming? Gymnastics? IT? Learning a foreign language? English?
What about out of school? Listening to music? Dancing? Writing poetry?
Photography? Growing things? Cooking? Reading? Playing the guitar?
Which of these do you still do? Which ones could you do?
Which ones would you like to do? Why don’t you do them?
- Next, think of the present.
What do you enjoy doing?
What can you do? What is satisfying in your life at the moment? What makes you feel good about yourself?
Make a list of the activities that you do now, that you enjoy (and that probably have nothing to do with your paid work).
- In the future.
What would you like to do?
You need to have time to let yourself think and to let your imagination wander. It is useful to discuss this with other people as their ideas might spark some of your own.
The American psychologist, Professor Abraham Maslow, made a study in the 1950s of successful and fulfilled people. His conclusion was that this was the natural state for all humans and that we could all be effective and fully accomplished in this way. He presented his ‘hierarchy of needs’ as a triangle, with our basic human needs, food and water, at the bottom. Next came shelter, safety and clothing. And above that the social needs of belonging to a group.
The next tier is our desire for self-esteem. When this need is satisfied, and we no longer need to prove ourselves to others, then we can progress to the top of the triangle – what Professor Maslow called ‘self-actualisation’. This is the need for meaning and purpose in life: our work, our activities and our existence are in line with our declared values and ethics. It includes the need to do things for other people: to be altruistic and caring. According to Professor Maslow, this is the highest state that humans can achieve and it is possible for us all to achieve it.
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Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw |
Dreams, hopes, goals and ambitions
Having first considered your own values and beliefs, it is useful to look at the things that you enjoy doing and to see how these fit together when making goals that are personally significant for you. Remember that working towards goals is one of the main ways to create a feeling of optimism and purpose. Some of your goals will change as time goes by and some you may never achieve, but you certainly have more chance of achieving something and leading a more purposeful and positive life if you have a clearer idea of what you would like to accomplish.
Now make a list of all the things that you have ever dreamed that you would like to do with your life. Some of them may be small and quite quickly achievable, whereas others might be lifelong plans. Imagine looking back in 20 years at what you have done with your life. Where would you like to be? What would you like to have achieved? Which relationships do you hope have endured? What new relationships do you hope to have formed?
If you find that your list includes your hopes and ambitions for your children or partner, then have a separate one for them. Try to think of 10 to 20 things that you would like for yourself.
Some ideas
Here are some ideas that other people have shared with me:
Let your imagination run free – forget how much it would cost or how long it would take. You don’t have to share your dreams with anyone else; there is no one to impress. Forget about failing; forget about what you think you ‘should’ do with your life and think about what would make you feel good about yourself.
Keep looking back at the values that you listed as being important to you. No one can stop you having dreams and if you don’t dream, how can you know what you want?
Keep the list ongoing: add other things as you think of them (put the date at the top of your list and again next to any new ideas). You may have a whole set of different goals in 20 years’ time. Many of your wishes will have a clear end goal (such as ‘pass my driving test’) but some things (such as ‘maintain a good relationship with my parents’) might not have an end date. It’s not like shopping, where you just buy something you want and that’s it.
Next, choose a few things from your list and put an estimated deadline next to each item. Be realistic about how long it will take to get to where you want to be. (I still have my list from 20 years ago.) Now, take a cool look at your list and decide which ones are the most realistic at this point in your life. For example, ‘live in Paris’ might not be possible at the moment, but may be something you could do at another stage of your career.
Ask yourself, ‘If I achieve nothing else in the next few months except this . . .’, what would it be? This is going to be your first goal, but you can repeat this technique, over time, with every item on your list. This is your life and you only live once. Make sure you have no regrets.
Let’s imagine that you have chosen: ‘learn to play the piano’ from your list:
Goal
Ask yourself: What is my goal? ‘Learn to play the piano’ is too vague. Do you want to be able to perform to the public, or get to Grade 8 exam level, or play well enough for your family to be able to sing carols as you play at Christmas? Clarifying what you want is important for your sense of achievement.
Strengths and achievements
Now analyse the strengths that you already have that will enable you to achieve your goal. Think of something that you have learned to do, for the first time, as an adult and how tenacious you were. It may be that you had piano lessons when you were younger, or perhaps you can already play another musical instrument. As an adult, you have more control over your time – you won’t be told when you should practise. Remember – you are doing this for yourself – and that in itself is a strength.
You will probably find it very easy to think of reasons why you can’t fulfil this dream. The main challenge for adults is often that they don’t have the time. It may be that you don’t have a piano – or room for one. The cost of lessons may put you off. Annoying the neighbours when you practise might be another barrier.
Solutions
Finding solutions to problems requires positive thinking. If you believe that it is possible, then you will find a way round the obstacles in your path. For example, you may know someone with a piano who would allow you to use it (think of something that you could do in return). You could think of a way to earn some extra money for the lessons, or to buy a piano (keep the money as a separate fund). You could buy a digital piano – which has earphones – to solve the noise problem. Finding the time usually means cutting out something else. Perhaps you could limit the television or time on the computer.
Next step
Now you need a plan of action. There will be different ways of achieving your goal and you need to find out what the options are. Do some research to find out how much second-hand pianos cost. Don’t forget to look on websites such as Freecycle (www.uk.freecycle.org) – on this site there are also adverts offering, for example, to exchange Italian lessons for piano lessons. You could look at the small ads in your local newspaper or newsagents for casual work, such as babysitting or leaflet distribution, for a quick way to earn the money you need.
Now
Once you have made an action plan make the first step immediately – before you have time to procrastinate. This could be looking on useful websites or buying your local paper to see what there is available in your area. If you are aiming to earn extra money, give yourself an amount and a date to aim for.
Make sure that you don’t take on too much all at once. Aim to have one major long-term goal that you keep working towards and then perhaps two or three smaller goals over the next three months. Don’t forget to check how you are getting on and that you are actively doing something. Set a date – perhaps a month ahead – to see what you have achieved and what you need to do next. Ask yourself, ‘What is it most important for me to achieve next?’
Prioritise your chosen activity; the reason you haven’t achieved it already is because you have allowed other things to get in the way. It is very easy to slip back into your old ways and just let life pass you by in a passive and hopeless manner. If you find yourself stuck at any stage of your plan, ask yourself, ‘Am I going to give up this dream?’ It may be that it’s not the right time. Only you can decide what you want to do with your life.
Writing down your dreams and goals is usually the last exercise I ask my students to do at the end of any personal development course. This is to ensure that students leave with a sense of purpose and that they have a plan for what they would like to do next. In one class, as everyone was busy writing and concentrating, I noticed that Lorraine, who had four children, had taken herself off to a corner of the room and had her back to everyone. I asked her if she was okay and when she turned round I realised that she had tears streaming down her face.
When Lorraine had composed herself, she showed me her sheet of paper. It was completely blank. Finally, she said, ‘I have no idea what I want. I seem to have spent my life trying to please other people and it means I think of myself as a wife and a mother. I can’t think of anything that I would like to do just for me.’
Lorraine asked the rest of the class if they would share their goals to give her some ideas. Each person chose three and read them out. Lorraine listened carefully and then finally started writing. The five things she wrote are contained in the list of suggestions I gave earlier. The last one was: ‘learn to play the piano’. And I know that she achieved this dream, because three years later she invited me to hear her play in the local community centre.
Visualisation
Another technique that positive thinkers use to achieve their goals is creative visualisation. This means that you imagine as realistically as possible what it would be like to achieve your goal. It is used in sport, for example, by someone taking a shot at the goal, or someone trying to hit a hole-in-one in golf, or perhaps the last stretch of the road when running a marathon.
You can use it to keep yourself going when your motivation begins to falter. Imagine yourself collecting your degree, ordering a meal in fluent Spanish, playing your guitar on stage. Don’t just visualise it – use all your senses: hear the noise of the audience clapping, smell the food in the restaurant, feel the strings of the guitar on your fingers.
It may take some practice, but it works for lots of people – so it’s worth trying if it helps you to achieve your goals in life.
Living in the moment
Living in the moment means being so engaged with what you are doing in the present nothing else can crowd your mind. Being involved in some of the activities on your list will keep you challenged and absorbed so that it becomes impossible to think in a negative way.
Having goals, dreams and ambitions gives you purpose in life and this, in turn, makes you feel positive about yourself. It is important, though, to realise that it is not the achieving of the goals that makes you feel happy – it is the working towards them. To do this, you have to make sure that you let go of bad memories of past attempts or they will continue to hold you back.
Some of the goals on your list will have been there for some time; you may have been hoping to achieve them for years. If you focus on what has gone wrong in the past, then you will sabotage your dreams for the future. By ‘living in the moment’, you acknowledge your negative feelings and accept that they are part of the human experience. It is not about having an empty mind, or suppressing your feelings; our minds generate thoughts constantly and as soon as you decide not to think about something, you will think about it. It is about recognising that what has already happened is not going to stop you enjoying life now.
‘Flow’
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced: cheek-sent-me-high-ee), professor of psychology, proposed the term ‘flow’ for this state of ‘living in the moment’ or total absorption. The thesis of his book of the same title is that the best way to achieve happiness is by creating the mental state of ‘flow’.
Once you are engaged in such an activity, your perception of time changes (it seems to have passed quickly); discomfort goes unnoticed (so you don’t realise you have backache or a stiff neck until later); and negative thoughts just don’t enter your mind.
Flow is characterised by nine different elements:
- Clear goals at each step of the way
- Immediate feedback: knowing that you are doing it properly
- A balance between challenge and skills: if it is too difficult it will lead to anxiety and if too easy it will cause boredom
- The merging of action and awareness
- No distractions
- No fear of failure
- No feeling of self-consciousness
- Sense of time is distorted
- It is done for its own sake (such as playing a musical instrument)
You can go through your own list and see which ones match the criteria for being ‘flow’ activities. Csikszentmihalyi defines happiness as having an active sense of accomplishment and improvement, whereas pleasure is the satisfaction of basic biological desires or static contentment. So the state of happiness would be at the top of Maslow’s triangle, and the best way to achieve it would be through ‘flow’ (whereas pleasure would be included within physical needs).
This is not to say that we don’t need pleasure, but it can be short-lived and, it is argued, mindless. In other words, ‘flow’ requires more mental energy and effort but is, ultimately, more rewarding and leads to increased skill and challenge because the activities are more complex.
Csikszentmihalyi claims that flow means that all the brain’s available inputs are occupied with one activity. This means, of course, that it is impossible for negative and chaotic thoughts to come charging into your head.
He says that the mind ‘with nothing to do, begins to follow random patterns, usually stopping to consider something painful or disturbing. Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations.’
So the mind with nothing to do becomes a mind full of negativity, whereas a mind in a state of flow is so engaged there is no room for undesirable thoughts. The more flow activities that you have in your life, the more rewarding and happy your life will be.
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Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working. Albert Giacometti |
Are you doing a job you enjoy?
The more hours of the day that you spend in ‘flow’ activities, the easier it is then to be a positive person. The ideal would be to find someway of making a living doing something that not only engrosses and absorbs you, but also gives you room to grow and progress. Does your present vocation meet these criteria? Can you think of an occupation that you would enjoy that would keep you captivated yet challenged? For me, it is teaching – but this may not be your idea of the perfect job. According to the annual Happiness Index compiled by the City & Guilds Qualifications Board the happiest workers are blue-collar workers. Of those the happiest are beauticians and hairdressers, who gave as their reason the fact that they had an interest in what they do for a living and said that they believed this was the most important factor for on-the-job happiness. Teachers were ranked sixth – equal with accountants and marketing and public relations. You can check your own occupation at www.cityandguilds.com.
Another survey of 3,000 adults, conducted by the national training provider, Lifetime, revealed 48 per cent of UK workers regularly feel unhappy in their jobs. Two-thirds of those questioned said that their job ‘paid the bills’ and provided little joy in their lives; 61 per cent said that, if they had a magic wand, they would wish for a new career. Twice as many office workers said they were unhappy compared with those who had more active jobs; two-thirds of those polled said that they believed they would only be truly content at work if they were self-employed (www.lifetimehf.co.uk).
Of course, it is difficult to find, or even train for, another job during times of economic recession. Job security is a high priority – 70 per cent of those who said they were unhappy added that they would hesitate to make a career change – and someone has to pay the bills. But if you are unhappy at work and spend eight hours a day, five days a week there, it is a large proportion of waking life to spend doing something that doesn’t suit you.
If you do decide that your work makes you miserable and that you need to do something about it – don’t resign – that’s not positive thinking. You need a plan of escape to make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of negative helplessness: ‘There’s nothing I can do; there are no jobs.’
Use the steps in this chapter to help you to draw up an action plan. It may be a long-term plan, involving saving money in order to retrain, but you will feel more positive by working towards a goal rather than just accepting that these are the cards that fate has dealt you.
Deciding to make the best of the job that you have can also be a positive decision. You have to focus on what you are good at and be determined to do something about the areas that are not satisfactory. Again you need a plan. Ask for help and advice. As soon as you face a challenge and decide to do something about the things that aren’t going well, you will feel a sense of being in charge of your own destiny – instead of allowing other people to pull the strings.
Remember, being positive doesn’t mean putting a smile on your face and letting people walk all over you; it means taking responsibility for your own life and leading it according to your values and beliefs. Don’t be afraid of what other people think – people may not like it when you stand up for yourself – but that’s their problem, not yours.
What else can you do that you enjoy?
Whatever your job, to feel more positive it’s a good idea to deliberately introduce to your life activities that stimulate and interest you – at least three hours a week – but probably more if you are unhappy at work. The word ‘hobby’ has become old-fashioned but most hobbies fit the bill. They are chosen from a genuine interest and have nothing to do with work or payment. Choose a range of activities that are both creative and challenging – this does not mean that you will be in a constant state of excitement – rather that you will be absorbed, calm and content.
When Jan’s daughters left home she decided that she wanted to reduce her hours as a social worker and to spend more time fulfilling some personal ambitions and dreams. She had played the clarinet for two years when she was at secondary school and decided that she would like to take it up again. She had individual lessons and then saw a card in the local library about an amateur band that was being formed.
She joined the band and now – ten years later – plays in four different music ensembles, having also taken up the alto and tenor saxophones. She says, ‘I love playing in the bands and have made many new friends by learning to play – although that hadn’t been my intention.’
For many years, Jan has been fascinated by textiles and has been making small pictures and cards at home. Last year, she enrolled with the Open College of the Arts (www.oca-uk.com) to study textiles as a correspondence course. She has a tutor and is given assignments which she posts off and then receives feedback and suggestions.
Jan plans to retire in a few years; she had plans to do a landscape gardening course, but has decided she may just enjoy using her own creative ideas to transform her large garden into a place of wonder and tranquillity.
Hobbies
The mental health charity MIND suggests that, from their research, the most effective activities for feeling positive are: listening to music, gardening, writing, painting and drawing, drama, writing and reading poetry, crafts, walking, needlework or knitting and dancing. Add to these playing sport, playing a musical instrument, singing and reading, and you should find enough to keep you in the ‘flow’ and banish negativity from your life.
You may already see the difference between the kind of activities that make you feel fulfilled and happy and those that simply bring pleasure. Delayed gratification is often needed for a feeling of positivity and long-term happiness. In other words, you have to put some effort into it – like studying for a degree, or gardening. Whereas pleasurable activities are usually immediately gratifying and tend to be ones where we are entertained (watching television) – rather than doing the entertaining (acting); where we are passive or have things done to us (being on a fairground ride) – rather than being active (playing a sport); where we are the receivers of creativity (shopping) – rather than doing the creating ourselves (cooking). Some activities (like sex) can, of course, be either. Or both. The happiest people manage to combine both pleasure and ‘flow’ activities in their lives.
Watching television, apart from exceptional programmes, tends to be just a pleasurable way of relaxing and distracting your brain from thinking or worrying. According to Csikszentmihalyi, people score a low level of happiness while watching television (whereas reading gets high marks). It can be quite hypnotic once you start watching and, if you now feel inspired to take up other activities, just get into the habit of recording everything you want to watch. It makes you think about what is worth your time and also means that you watch what you want to watch, when you want to.
Reading
Researchers at Oxford University have been researching the effects of hobbies on over 17,000 men and women who were born in 1970. They were asked, at the age of 16, which activities they did in their spare time for pleasure (they included sport, cooking, going to concerts, reading and socialising). Their answers were then checked against the jobs that they were doing 17 years later. They discovered that they were significantly more likely to be in a managerial or professional role if they had listed reading for pleasure (at 16), compared with those who had not mentioned it at all.
Reading can, of course, mean different things to different people. Reading magazines and light fiction can be pleasure, whereas more challenging fiction and non-fiction will engross you and make you think and thus fit the definition of ‘flow’. If you have got out of the habit of reading because you ‘haven’t got the time’, try some of the books recommended on the website www.goodreads.com and post some of your own suggestions.
Research by the National Literacy Trust, in December 2010, showed that three in ten children live in households without a single book. They found that these children were two-and-a-half times more likely not to reach the expected reading level for their age. Their research indicated that these children had lower levels of attainment and negative attitudes to reading in any form – this included sending emails and engaging with social networking sites.
In my experience of teaching English (and also running school libraries), reading fiction helps develop emotional intelligence as it allows children to live experiences in their imagination. Children who don’t read often become adults who don’t read – but it’s never too late to develop the habit.
Most libraries have their catalogue available on their website, although browsing the shelves will lead to new discoveries. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like what you have chosen – take them back and get some more – it’s free. If you already own lots of books that you’ll never read again try the website www.GreenMetropolis.com which allows you to sell your books online for nothing (and 5p from every sale goes to the Woodland Trust). If you are not already a reader there’s a whole world of pleasure out there in books just waiting for you.
Does shopping count?
It’s fun to have pleasurable activities in your life, but it is not the same as feeling positive and happy. Shopping, for example, gives a lot of people pleasure. But, often, the pleasure is short-lived and comes at a price. A study of more than 3,000 women, conducted for the Clothes Show Live in 2010, revealed that women devote more than 598 hours a year to hunting for the latest clothes and accessories and spend more than £1,000 a year. The producer of the show, Maryam Hamizadeh, said, ‘Over their lifetime, women spend the same amount of time shopping as they do at secondary school.’
In her book To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out The World? Lucy Siegle writes that the average woman buys half her body weight in clothes every year and has four times as many clothes in her wardrobe as she would have had in 1980. She says that most women have at least 22 garments in their wardrobes that they have never worn.
Another survey by the PromoCodes website (www.promocodes.co.uk) found that two-thirds of the women they surveyed regret spending the money as soon as they get home; nearly a quarter said that they panic and break into a sweat when they realise how much they have spent. Women justified their purchases by saying: ‘It was in the sale’ or ‘I needed cheering up’ or ‘I deserved to treat myself.’ Most of the women said that they made excuses to make themselves feel better as they knew that they couldn’t really afford it.
This is because the rush of pleasure that people get from making the purchase (dopamine) lasts for only about 90 seconds and in order to get the same feeling again there has to be another purchase. And then another. The result? Arriving home with purchases that you never intended to make and which you know that you can’t afford. This is why you see celebrities laden down with designer bags after mammoth shopping sprees: they enjoy the dopamine rush, but as soon as it disappears they have to keep on repeating the process. Often these garments are never worn; before they are even unpacked, the pleasure of buying them is over and forgotten.
It is what Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’. In plainer language, it is buying things for the sake of it. It is fashionable to talk about ‘decluttering’ and to feel virtuous when you have had a clear out of unwanted items. Of course, the way to feel like this all the time is to not buy so much in the first place. Celebrities might be role models for how to spend money – but they are not usually role models for how to live your life.
The Kindness Offensive
Part of living a fulfilling and satisfying life is to feel that you are making a difference to the lives of other people. This is one way of dealing with the feeling of frustration at the injustices in the world that are mentioned in the next chapter. Instead of feeling helpless when things go wrong and disasters happen far-away you can feel more positive about yourself by regularly making a difference on a local scale.
The ‘Kindness Offensive’ is a project which was formed by three young men (Benny Crane, David Goodfellow, James Hunter) in 2008, with the aim of ‘having fun doing good’. They began by asking people what they could do for them and then begged favours from large companies. The project has spread (you can see some of their activities and talks on YouTube – such as ‘NSPCC Kindness Offensive’ and ‘Kindness Offensive Toy Run’) and in December 2010 they performed the world’s largest ever ‘Random Act of Kindness’ by giving away food to 50,000 people, a toy for every child in hospital over Christmas, and warm clothes and sleeping bags to the homeless.
Volunteer
Other people have realised the way to make a difference is to volunteer to give your services to an organisation with which you feel an affinity. If you feel strongly about educational standards, become a school governor or volunteer at your local school. Raising money or volunteering for a charity that is close to your heart helps you to feel positive and be a useful member of society. Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, has seen a 12 per cent increase in volunteers in a year (17 per cent among those under 25). A visit to your local volunteer centre would show you the kind of work available and they would help you to match your skills and talents to the needs of the charities in your area (or try www.volunteering.org.uk).
Even the rich and famous can realise that there is more to life than just making money: Victoria Beckham takes her eldest son with her to do charity work in Kentucky, telling Hello magazine (20 November 2009), ‘Brooklyn . . . appreciates he has a blessed life and wants to understand and help those who have less than himself.’ Trevor Sorbie has created a charity, ‘My New Hair’, which helps to design wigs for people who have lost their hair through cancer. Henning Mankell, Swedish author of the ‘Wallander’ books, works for six months of the year in Africa, where he does a lot of charity work including a project called Memory Books – which helps parents dying from Aids to record something of their lives to pass on to their children.
The charity Plan, which works with disadvantaged families and children in various poor areas of the world, asked seven established authors (including Kathy Lette, Joanne Harris and Deborah Moggach) to visit the places where Plan was working. The authors lived with the families and then wrote about their experiences, in whatever way they wished, and the stories were compiled into a book. All proceeds from the book, Because I am a Girl, go to the charity to fund further work.
Saving lives
In his book The Life You Can Save, the philosopher Peter Singer argues that to live in a country with plenty of food while others starve is morally wrong; that if we can prevent people from suffering without sacrificing anything of significance then why not do it. He poses the question of whether we would jump into a shallow, muddy pond to save a child’s life. In the process, we know we would ruin our clothes and our shoes. We would all disregard this to save the child’s life; in other words, we would prevent a child’s death at a financial cost to ourselves. And yet, according to UNICEF, more than 10 million children die before their fifth birthday every year.
Giving money
In fact, of course, many of us already do give money: whenever there is a crisis or Red Nose Day, our consciousness is raised and we contribute with cash or our services. The Charities Aid Foundation estimates that the British public donated £10.6 billion to charity in 2010, giving more aid than ever to overseas disasters and breaking the record set in 2005 for the Indian Ocean tsunami. In the first 11 months of the year Save the Children spent £96.5 million on emergencies. The umbrella organisation, the Disasters Emergency Committee, allocated £106 million to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti and £64 million after the floods in Pakistan.
The Sunday Times Giving List for 2010 showed the 100 most generous philanthropists in Britain gave away £2.5 billion. There is a growing movement of philanthropy among the rich – people like Sigrid Rausing (heir to the Tetra Pak millions) who gives away £20 million a year to human rights causes. Whereas only 20 years ago 75 per cent of this country’s wealthiest people had inherited their wealth, now 75 per cent of the richest are entrepreneurs who have generated their own wealth. It seems as if many of them, particularly those from modest backgrounds, wish to pay back some of their good fortune.
Toby Ord, an academic at Oxford University, pledged a third of his income to charity in 2009 and has guaranteed to give away ten per cent every year for the rest of his life. He and his partner, Bernadette Young, have set up a charity, Giving What We Can, encouraging others to do the same and have so far raised £13 million in pledges. Toby has calculated that with this money 29,000 premature deaths will be prevented (Daily Mail, 6 December 2010).
Brian Burnie left school at 15 to start work as a grocery delivery boy and ended up with a series of successful businesses. What makes Brian’s rags-to-riches story different is that he has spent most of his working life raising and giving money to charities. Along with his wife and three children, he has hosted a lunch for 5,000 war veterans, barbecues for Tyneside Leukaemia, tea parties for Help the Aged, and lunches for Cancer Research. ‘I’ve always loved making money. But I’d never spend it; I like giving it away too much. But it’s easy writing cheques – you’ve got to get off your jacket and do something.’
In 2010, at the age of 66, he sold the family home, Doxford Hall – for £16 million – and auctioned most of the family’s belongings, using the proceeds to start a charity, Daft as a Brush, which will provide a free bus service to take cancer sufferers to hospital. ‘As my mother said: “You can only sleep in one bed at a time and only drive one car, and other people are in terrible need”’ (Daily Mail, 6 November 2010).
Small acts of kindness
The natural response when you hear that people have suffered misfortune is to want to give, or to want to help – or, in other words, to be kind. During the heavy snow in the winter of 2010, people reacted as they always do in an emergency and helped each other out. There were stories in the newspapers of complete strangers clearing snow to help a bride receive her wedding dress; of a farmer who used his tractor to drive midwives to and from hospital; of a Methodist church hall in South Yorkshire that put up drivers who had been stuck all night in their cars.
According to a study of 34 countries by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2011), Britain is near the top of a ‘kindness’ league table (but behind America, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand). People were asked about their ‘pro-social behaviour’: if they had given money to a charity or helped a stranger or volunteered in the previous month. The report ‘Society at a Glance’ suggests that Britons are more willing to help others, more generous and kinder than most other developed countries in the world (www.oecd.org).
The media directs our attention towards contributing money to humanitarian aid. But we can also use this altruism in our everyday lives. It is, of course, wonderful if you can spare the time or the money to give to good causes. But you don’t have to wait for a disaster or extreme weather conditions to exercise kindness. Being kind on a more personal level can have just as much impact on individual lives. If you aim to do small acts of kindness every day, it doesn’t stop you still giving when disasters happen. But it will make you feel as if you are doing something good with your life in a more enduring way.
When you feel positive about yourself, then you are much more likely to be kind and generous towards other people. Being kind to other people in small ways is always appreciated and rarely forgotten: a small gift when someone has had bad news; doing a favour for someone at work; offering to help out with a friend’s decorating; mowing your elderly neighbour’s lawn; or doing the chores for your flatmate when it’s not your turn.
Positive people are aware of other people’s needs and feelings. Remember: it costs you nothing to give a compliment, but if it is genuine it can make someone’s day. Similarly, it shows generosity to praise someone’s work or to thank them for work well done. And doing so improves relationships and creates good humour. We often have impulses to do good deeds, but fail to carry them out. Next time a kind thought crosses your mind, why not do something about it? What harm can it do?
In this way, a prevailing mood of selfishness, or meanness, at home or at work, can be changed into a general feeling of helpfulness and generosity. Acts of kindness spread outwards and permeate the atmosphere and it takes only one person to begin the process. Being considerate and kind to others in your daily life is one way to alleviate that hopeless feeling that you sometimes get when you hear the news. Making kindness routine rather than an occasional gesture is the way to make you feel more positive about yourself and your relationship with the rest of the world.
Action for Happiness
This is a new movement for social change pioneered by Richard Layard, Geoff Mulgan and Anthony Seldon. They believe that if we want to be happier then we must prioritise the things that really matter in life – including the happiness of other people. Those who join the organisation (which has no religious, commercial or political affiliations) pledge to produce more happiness and less misery. Take a look at their website www.actionforhappiness.org, which identifies 50 practical actions that people can take in their lives which would contribute to building better relationships and communities.
What’s stopping you?
If you’ve just read this chapter and perhaps made a list of things that you would like to do, don’t stop there. It is often fear of failure that stops people embarking on an unknown path. It may be that you feel that other people could do what you want to do in a better way. So what? It may be that you think you wouldn’t be able to do it very well – you never know until you try. You may think that the reward at the end isn’t worth the effort. Remember, however, that you are doing this for yourself and that you will enjoy the process if it is something that you really want to do.
- Having aims gives you purpose and direction in life
- Working towards a goal is more important than attaining it
- A goal helps you to achieve focus and develop a positive attitude
- You have to define what you value and enjoy
- Purpose doesn’t mean being selfish – your goals can be to help others
- Your ambitions need to be fexible and may change over time
- Purpose means finding activities that you take pleasure in and that absorb you
- Purpose means planning for the future and a positive life
- Small acts of kindness can make all the difference – it is your way of making the world a better place