Ordinary magic

That you only live once is, of course, a lie. You only die once. You live every single day.

But sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. There are times when the normal rough and tumble of life becomes a right kicking.

Resilience applies to hearts and minds as well as bones and skin. If you cut yourself, it scabs over, starts itching and when the scab falls off there’s a brand new piece of you underneath. You’ve grown some new skin.

Ditto if you break a leg; it hurts, but within a few weeks your bones have knitted back together, strong as before. Crikey, that’s clever.

Emotions work on the same principle. If you lose a loved one, boy does it hurt. Worse than a broken leg. Marriage break up? Ouch, that takes a while to scab over. But your emotional band aid system will eventually heal you.

So, here’s something that you might not be expecting from a book about happiness: being sad is an important part of being happy. Applied to the concept of SHINE, it’s okay to have your glow dimmed a bit, sometimes. Full wattage is not always possible. It’s ok to feel shit. A life of euphoric happiness would be bizarre. Lows are inevitable. Welcome them. Let an occasional bad day into your life, show it around, then show it the door.

Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life. To tear it out is not only impossible but destructive, because everything else unravels too. It’s part of life that has made you who you are. Nulling it with meds means you don’t learn from it. You don’t emerge stronger, and so next time strife attacks you (which it is sure to do) you’ll wilt.

When it comes to pain, you can run but you can’t hide. It’s not, ‘What happens’ but ‘What happens next?’ Sometimes there’s no alternative but to sit down and have a huge sob. Crying serves a purpose. It lets stuff out. It shows the world you’re hurt. And it’s the start of the repairing process. It’s messy! It’s your safety valve.

‘I play all my Country and Western music backwards – your lover returns, your dog comes back and you cease to be an alcoholic.’

Linda Smith

We all possess what’s called ‘ordinary magic’; time heals all ills, it’s true.

So here’s a new word for you: sisu, Finnish for the psychological strength that allows a person to overcome extraordinary challenges. Sisu is similar to what we might call perseverance, or the trendier concept of grit, it connotes both determination and bravery, a willingness to act even when the reward seems out of reach.

Sisu, ordinary magic, grit, bravery, resilience … it all points to developing a backbone instead of a wishbone.

There’s a certain boldness about being able to stare catastrophe in the face and flick your middle finger back at it. Here are a few ideas that will help with that middle finger salute.

SHINE #1: ‘Plot twist!’

You are a story teller. Not just you, all humans are. Stories are what link us to our ancestors and to those who don’t yet exist.

We have stories about everything. Your inner story is one of the great classics, although only in your own head. Here’s a dirty little secret – you can tell a different and better story. In fact, a change to your inner story is the fastest way to a better you.

Of course, in the story of your life, you are the central character. Everything is told in first person. You are well versed in your own story, telling it to yourself every day.

And don’t we just love a tragedy! If you’re not careful, problems loom large and they can dominate your backstory. They become well-rehearsed tales, magnified and re-lived every time you tell them. It’s astonishingly easy to become the victim. Bad things always happen to you, right?

But, of course, you’re the author. It’s your life and your story. You might not be able to change the events that have happened, but you can re-cast yourself as the hero. That changes how you view the past and, spookily, will affect how you approach the future.

Our first shiny strategy is therefore a bit tongue in cheek (but only a little bit) – it’s to change your language. In the same way that, in the 1980s, ‘problems’ became ‘challenges’, we’d like you to start saying, ‘Plot twist!’

So when something doesn’t go according to plan, it’s not a nightmare, crisis, challenge or problem, it’s merely a plot twist.

Shout it out. Rejoice! All good stories have a plot twist, an unexpected turn of events that nobody saw coming. Some books have several. Your life is a story. Plot twists are inevitable. They’re there to make things more interesting.

Our clincher? A good life is not a life without plot twists. A good life is a life with good plot twists. Therefore, if you want to graduate to the status of Happiness Grand Master, you have to start appreciating your plot twists. The turbulence, challenges, strains, sadness, disasters and faux pas. They’re inevitable. Smile and be grateful for them.

Plot twists! Woo Hoo. They exist because you’re alive.

SHINE #2: Live a full-ass life

Our second shiny strategy is a risky one.

Dostoyevsky’s words are true, but comforting: ‘Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.’ What he means is those who care the most are more likely to suffer the most. The ones at work who are off with stress (real stress, not the self-made fake stuff) are invariably the ones who care.

‘I hate my supervisor. Behind her desk it says “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps”. Mind you, she’s written it in her own shit.’

Alan Carr

The ones who can’t be bothered have inoculated themselves against real stress. If you don’t give a monkey’s about work, customers or your colleagues, you will survive the rough and tumble just fine. But your lack of caring also means you’re missing out on the really good stuff – passion, energy, purpose, drive, vigour – all the things that tally with that precious gift of being alive.

It’s as though there’s a botheredness spectrum. There’s an argument that you can, perhaps, care too much, a sort of ‘extreme botheredness’ that might end up destroying you. The best teachers, doctors, nurses, police and tax collectors suffer from this. If they can’t do their job properly, it pains them. Their passion flares up and their botheredness destroys them, like a microwaved jacket potato, from the inside out.

So, although it’s true that you can be too bothered, we’d argue it’s a much better place than the other end of the botheredness spectrum – the apathetic ‘don’t give a shit’ end is a dire place.

These are the un-dead. There’s a faint pulse as they go about their daily routine, slouching from meeting to meeting, grumbling in the corridors and moaning about the traffic without realizing they are the traffic. The problem with the grumble brigade is that it’s an easy habit to sink into.

Apathy doesn’t just seep in at work. It can leak into your life. You can chunter along, fuelled by low-level grumbling.

Thus, our top tip is don’t half-ass anything. Whatever you do, always use your full ass.

It takes effort to be your best self. Get bothered. The risk is that you end up caring too much and run the stress risk. On balance, we’re keen that you reposition yourself at the ‘give a damn’ end of the botheredness spectrum.

It’s a risk worth taking.

SHINE #3: Let it go

We’ve all been wronged, treated unfairly, dissed, dismissed, abused and upset. As someone once said to me, ‘I haven’t got time for any new wounds – my old wounds are still healing.’

It’s time to let it all go and move on because, guess what, the world has finished with your past if you have.

‘Life is very short, as there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.’

The Beatles

When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future. Inability to forgive means you are holding onto the past – you are punishing yourself! Forgiveness is, first and foremost, for your benefit. It means recognizing that you’ve already been hurt once. You need to let go from this form of mental self-harm.

For example, I once ran a course and a guy said, vehemently I might add, that there’s no way he could be happy because his dad had ruined his life. Summing his life story up, it seems that his dad walked out on his mum, leaving her to bring him and his brother up. His mum struggled and ended up depressed. He now looks after his mum. He’s an angry man, and it’s all his dad’s fault.

It’s not difficult to see exactly what he means. That’s a tough story and his dad walking out certainly triggered a dire train of events. It was a massive plot twist. But this was 30 years ago! And remember that each time you tell your story, you are re-living it in the present, so one of the most fruitful options is to learn to change your story. Change your story to one that says how you made the courageous choice to let go, forgive and learn from what happened and how the experience of adversity has made you a better and stronger person. In his case, he could choose to tell the story of how he gave up his job to look after his poorly mum. It’s your story, so why not be your own hero? It lets go of a bit of mental clutter and clears some space for happiness.

Carrying a grievance is like carrying a hand grenade that’s superglued to your hand. It keeps blowing up in your face. You may well have been hurt in a relationship or had a horrible boss, been bullied at school or been done for speeding twice in two days, but seething about it and carrying a grudge?

Ask yourself, who exactly are you hurting with that grudge?

Be kind to yourself. Let go. Forgiveness is for you, not them! If you want any more persuading, this should do it, the words of holocaust survivor Eva Kor: ‘I forgive the Nazis not because they deserve it but because I deserve it.’

Eva Kor, ladies and gentlemen. Amen.

SHINE #4: Shine-tinted specs

Everyone knows and understands déjà vu, that feeling of familiarity, an experience that has happened to you before. Very few know the opposite, vujà dé, which is when we see a familiar situation through new eyes.

Rose-tinted spectacles are sooooo last millennium. We’re offering you an upgrade to ‘shine-tinted’. Not only will they help with your vujà dé, they also allow you to illuminate wonderful experiences that most people miss.

First, the science bit. I’m not sure the missing link was the jump from monkeys to humans. I think that was a slow process of evolution where each generation painstakingly passed on a slightly bigger brain. This information processing power has then allowed us to hit the gas pedal of evolution, so while our old mates the Congolese Bonobo continue to swing through the trees, we’ve accelerated away, evolving into the kings of the swingers.

Natural selection put happiness at the back of the queue, which leaves humans with an evolutionary hangover. ‘Negativity bias’ is an unfortunate neurological adaptation that has kept our species alive and thriving but also keeps many of us in a constant state of irritation and stress.

Your attention is a bit like a 1980s vacuum cleaner. I remember my gran’s eyes lighting up as she showed me her new ‘hoover’ (this was PD – Pre-Dyson – when they were all called ‘hoovers’) that had a light on it. ‘So you can see into the corners,’ she said, her eyes lighting up brighter than her new head-lamped device.

Anyhow, your attention is like a combination of a spotlight and a vacuum cleaner. Whatever your attention is on is lit up and sucked into your brain.

If you don’t take charge of your experiences, your brain will do it on autopilot. Your brain cannot NOT do it! If left to itself, your brain will suck up all the negativity. It is tuned into danger, problems and deficiency, your antennae ever alert for bad stuff.

This links to memory. Think of your memory as a vast warehouse. The person in charge of retrieval (i.e. you) has to find a way of storing each memory. If you alphabeticized them, your recall of aardvarks would be superb but you’d forget what a zebra was. You, the memory keeper, invented a dual-recording system; firstly, we code them according to power, but – and this is the clever but unfortunate bit – bad ones are stored right at the front of the warehouse. That means really powerful bad memories are right there, at the door. Your most traumatic and painful experiences sting like a hot iron, branded indelibly into your emotions with a burning, ‘What an utter dick I am’ or ‘How terrible is my life’ motif.

The really fabulous stuff can only be accessed when you’ve clambered past the boxes and boxes and boxes of shit.

Hence, onto our tip. Look through shine-tinted specs and you’ll see past the rubbish. Your new vision will pick out the really good stuff that’s sometimes right under your nose. Once you’ve noticed it, suck it up, savour it and store it in an easy-to-remember place.

Please note, your shine-tinted glasses don’t mean you’re denying or resisting the bad, you’re merely acknowledging and savouring the good. You’re learning to be aware of the whole truth and nothing but the truth: that there is oodles of wonderful stuff out there and you’re going to damn well spot and savour it.

Plus, by taking in the good, you learn to feel a whole lot better, more vital, and are therefore better able to deal with the bad.

SHINE #5: Celebrate stuff that didn’t happen

An advanced version of tilting towards the good. Have you ever asked yourself, ‘What hasn’t happened that I didn’t want that I haven’t celebrated?’

Thought not!

Sadly, unless you’re a black belt happiness ninja, your mind doesn’t sit in traffic thinking how lucky you are to have a car. It curses the late meeting instead of rejoicing that you have a job. It tuts at the crumbs on the worktop instead of being grateful you’ve got (on the whole) wonderful children.

The opposite of savouring good experiences is to notice the many things that could have gone badly but didn’t. Hence, what hasn’t happened that you didn’t want that you haven’t celebrated?

I woke up and didn’t have toothache. I got to work without crashing my car. I haven’t got diabetes. My children aren’t poorly. I haven’t just stubbed my toe …

Of course, it’s hard to notice something that didn’t happen. But it’s helpful to switch your thinking to what I’m right this minute trademarking as ‘neo-Stoic’™, the definition of which I’m stating as, ‘Thinking about all the bad things that could have happened, but didn’t. And then celebrating the positive result.’

Have a go, it’s fabulous fun. In fact, it’s one of those mental muscles that gets stronger the more you exercise it. We’ll get you warmed up, and then you can write your own list of bad stuff that hasn’t happened that you haven’t celebrated.

Here are your starters … the accident you didn’t have, the power cut that never happened, the headache you didn’t suffer, the supermarket queue that wasn’t there, the lack of red traffic lights on the way home, the train that wasn’t delayed …

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SHINE #6 Scratch your itch

Next up, Japan. Via Scotland.

Gav quit his ‘proper job’ after attending a workshop called ‘Putting the Fun Back in the Staffroom’.

You can imagine the enthusiasm when we were all told we must attend this workshop. It would be more of the same patronising rubbish that we’d heard a million times before presented by someone who has never even done what we do. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

‘Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that … because what the world really needs is people who have come alive.’

Howard W. Thurman

I laughed, I learned, I was inspired, I was challenged and most of all, I was moved. Moved to change career.

‘If you hate your job,’ the speaker began, ‘I have some ground-breaking advice for you.’ I straightened up in my seat, listening for the sage advice. ‘Leave. Go away. Get a smile back on your face, let everyone else get on with what they love to do and go find something that makes you happy. Something that makes you come alive.’

I sat there, looking around me at my colleagues, thinking, ‘Wow, she should leave, her over there, she should go, he definitely needs to go.’ I sat there picking people off.

I had to stop myself. Today hadn’t been about them. It wasn’t about how they behave, how they act or the impact they have or don’t have. Today had been all about me and just me. How I choose to think, how I choose to feel, how I choose to act and behave. It was all about the impact I choose to have in the world. And that’s what this chapter is all about. You and all the choices that make you come alive.

‘If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to you mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.’

Frank Zappa

I handed in my notice the very next day.

I had to go home and tell my wife-to-be that I had quit my job. Was she angry or concerned? Nope, she was delighted! I had slowly been turning into one of THEM. ‘Them’ who come home every day and share with their nearest and dearest all that went wrong, could go wrong and nearly went wrong – the entire back-catalogue of their day’s lowlights exaggerated in excruciating detail.

My wife Ali is nothing like this. She comes home every single day and tells me something extraordinary. I am utterly convinced that every single day my wife – in her way – changes the world. In fact, I can remember when we first met 20 years ago in our first year at university. Ali came home from her first ever day of her first ever teaching placement. And as she stood there sharing her day with everyone, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Wow, who are you? You’ve just changed the world.’ I think Ali has Poppins’ blood.

I started out my career in the same way, but somewhere along the way I forgot my purpose, I lost my why.

‘Life doesn’t give us purpose. We give life purpose.’

The Flash

There are millions of people all across the world who wake up every morning before work with a feeling of dread in the pit of their stomachs, what Guy Browning calls ‘minor glumness’ which, if untreated, can manifest as ‘Irritable Bastard Syndrome’.

We all need that something special, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It’s the cape. What’s your cape? Think of the cape as your purpose, your why. You can survive without it, but with it you fly.

Many have the cape, some even put it on. The flying part? That’s the difficult bit.

The Japanese call it your ikigai. Andy calls it your energy transfusion.

Ikigai is pronounced ‘itchy-guy’. And we want you to scratch that itch. Your itchy-guy is your drive, your purpose, the reason you get up in the morning.

Your ikigai lies at the centre of those interconnecting circles. If you are lacking in one area, it is said you are missing out on your life’s potential. Not only that, but you are missing out on your chance to live a long and happy life.

The term ikigai is composed of two Japanese words: iki referring to life, and gai, which roughly means ‘the realization of what one expects and hopes for’.

It’s important to note that ikigai is not necessarily linked to one’s economic status or the present state of society. Even in difficult times when we may feel our shine is somewhat dimmed, but we have a goal in mind, we may feel ikigai. Behaviours that make us feel ikigai are not actions we are forced to take – these are free choices. Natural and spontaneous ones at that.

While ikigai is familiar to most Japanese, it’s a whole new way of thinking for most and it can take time. The Japanese believe it’s worth taking the time for.

When was the last time you took some time out to really think about your ikigai?

Take a moment to draw your own version of the overlapping circles of the ikigai symbol and consider the four initial questions. Bear in mind the questions and the answers can be overlapping, in some profound ways, and all four questions must be answered in order to develop a clear sense of one’s ikigai.

SHINE #7: Be Chris Tavare

You can become hyper-sensitive to what others say about you. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that end up upsetting you. To help you roll with the punches, here’s a super-cool analogy and wonderfully refreshing activity …

First, chill. Have you ever accidentally worded things rather badly and said something that, on reflection, might have sounded harsh? We have too! And others have done it to us. The result is that a misjudged comment has caused more upset than it was worth.

Next time someone says something that would normally cause you to bristle and react, let it go. Choose not to respond. Think of life like a cricket test match. For our foreign readers, cricket is the ultimate in civilization. It’s gloriously slow, bordering on tedious, with the players breaking for afternoon tea. The game itself involves a bowler throwing a rock-hard ball at a batter, whose job is to hit the ball and run as fast as they can. There are some nuances and technicalities, but that’s basically it.

The reason it’s so slow is that the batter doesn’t hit every single ball. Some balls are too fast, too slow, too wide or unplayable. So, more often than not the batter will let the ball go, and it sails through the wicket-keeper, who catches it and polishes it as the bowler saunters 100 yards back to their starting point. And off we go again …

That happens for five days and it usually ends in a draw.

Andy’s proper old, so he remembers an English batsman called Chris Tavare. In a game of slowness, Chris was the slowest. He somehow carved a career out of letting almost every single ball go through to the wicket-keeper. In the summer of 1981, I was glued to the TV as Chris took nearly seven hours to score a measly 35 runs in Madras. Ladies and gents, it was mesmerizing. Compelling. Achingly slow. A news report described his performance thus; ‘He began not to bat but to set, concrete drying under the sun.’

Anyhow, when you choose not to rise to a misjudged comment, think of yourself as letting that one go through to the wicket-keeper. To win the game, the batter doesn’t have to slog every ball, and to maintain your sanity and serenity, you don’t have to rise to every comment. Let it pass. Life’s too short. Stop trying to beat the hell out of everyone and everything.

Be Chris Tavare.

But sometimes criticism can really sting. And there are plenty of people who stand on the edges of life, throwing negativity around. Social media makes this ever so easy. Amazon reviews doubly so!

The trick is to ignore the criticism, unless it’s delivered by someone you truly respect and care for. And who cares for you too. In which case, the criticism will be well intended.

From now on, the only criticism that you will accept is that delivered by those you respect and/or those whose opinion you value. Think about that inner circle of people – there won’t be many. You should be able to write their names in the postage-stamp-sized box.

Next time someone says something bad, cruel or upsetting, check if their name is in the box. If not, you can ignore the comment because their opinion doesn’t count. If their name is in the box, act on their words. They care about you, so take measures to improve yourself.

SHINE #8: Plenty of the f-word

About time we had some poetry don’t you think? Here’s a little ditty by Piet Hein:

Makes sense. The road to wisdom is to mess up again and again, but gradually less so.

Which brings us to the f-word. Failure. Dirty, rotten, foul-mouthed, despicable failure.

‘Failure’, which is often harder to drop into a conversation than the phrase ‘donkey sodomy’. But we do need failure. Not failure the result: losing the business, losing the relationship, failing the interview. But failure the process: learning, improving, iterating, removing slack, becoming lean, becoming fighting-fit, installing effectiveness, getting really really good, broadening, widening, gaining wisdom, picking yourself up and smiling and trying once again. Yeah, that.

The whole process of succeeding requires lots and lots of the f-word. And we don’t like it: we want approval, we want love, we want accolades. But hang on a minute; no, you don’t. You really want to grow, you really want to discover who the heck you are, you really want to see just what your limits are. You want to start creating your personal best. If you want to shine, you will have to accept abject failure. Repeatedly. With tears at times. With jeers at others.

Failure, yes. But stay in the game.

The truth is simple: if we’re unwilling to fail, we’re unwilling to succeed.

SHINE #9: Get snuggly

Us Brits, we like to moan about our weather. It’s a bit of a hobby of ours. Personally, I love our seasons, especially summer. It’s my favourite day of the year.

So, because our weather’s a bit dodgy, we holiday in Greece and Florida, or buy a holiday home in sunny Spain.

The world happiness league tables suggest we might be missing a trick. At the time of writing, the UK is languishing at 17th in the international league table of happiness, casting our envious eyes north. The top five have all got weather that’s worse than ours. So what is it about the Scandis? How on earth can you be cold and happy?

The secret to happiness seems to be in embracing the snuggles. Here’s a raft of new words for you; we think you’ll notice a theme:

Mysa. [Swedish] To be engaged in a pleasant or comfortable activity; to be content or comfortable; to get cosy; to snuggle up.

Peiskos. [Norwegian] Lit. Fireplace coziness, sitting in front of a crackling fireplace enjoying the warmth.

Hygge. [Danish] Enjoying life’s simple pleasures. Coziness. Snuggliness.

All the above are more than words, they’re philosophies. The most famous is Denmark’s hygge. I love it because it’s primitive and basic, like me. You can’t buy the right atmosphere and sense of togetherness, and neither can you hurry it. Hygge is often associated with eating or drinking, but the more it counteracts consumption, the more hygge it becomes.

In fact, the more money and prestige is associated with something, the less hygge it is! How wonderful is that? Drinking tea is more hygge than drinking champers. Playing board games is more hygge than computer games. Hygge is easier to obtain in Blackpool than Mauritius. Homemade cake is more hygge than bought.

Hygge has sounds: crackling bonfires, silent snow, a child drawing or colouring in. Thunder is hygge (more so if you’re inside counting the seconds between the flash and the rumble). In the olden days we used to unplug the TV aerial if there was a storm, lest the lightning got conducted into the lounge. Sometimes the thrill would be ramped up by a full-blown powercut and we’d sit in candle-lit darkness, me dripping hot wax on my little sister. I’m telling you, life doesn’t get more hygge than that (admittedly, she might not agree).

Mysa, Peiskos, Hygge: learn from the happy Scandis. Snuggle into the snuggly moments.

SHINE #10: We Worry 4U™

Here’s a thought; Esquire magazine’s editor, ‘AJ’ Jacobs, was so busy that he needed a personal assistant. He offloaded all the mundane stuff to start with and, once they’d mastered that, his PA graduated to managing some assignments he didn’t fancy. One day, in a flash of enlightenment, AJ realized he was worrying about a big project he was working on, so he decided to outsource the worry.

Let me be clear, he didn’t hand over the project, just the fretting. He asked his assistant if she would worry about the project for him, thereby giving him extra time to focus on it in a positive way. She agreed. And every day when he started to ruminate, he’d remind himself that his PA was already on the case and he’d relax.¹

So here’s something no authors on the planet have ever offered their readership. For absolutely no fee whatsoever, we will take on your worry. Yep, the whole burden. Gav will take half and Andy the other. All you need to do is email us at [email protected] with a couple of lines about the shit you’d like us to worry about. You can be certain that we’ll then worry about it for you, leaving you free to skip along, unburdened and fret-free.

Gav’s offering an extra service called ‘over-thinking’ (his speciality) in which he’ll take your issues and ruminate on them. He’ll mull them over and over and over before coming to no final solution, just like you would do yourself. What a wonderful result! You can sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that Gav isn’t. He’s in his dressing gown, pacing up and down until 4am.²

Our #SHINE10, in all their glory

• 1.  Plot twist!
• 2.  Live a full-ass life.
• 3.  Let it go.
• 4.  Shine-tinted specs.
• 5.  Celebrate stuff that didn’t happen.
• 6.  Scratch your itch.
• 7.  Be Chris Tavare.
• 8.  Plenty of the f-word.
• 9.  Get snuggly.
• 10.  We Worry 4U™.

Andy’s just this minute decided to add an 11th, yes an 11th-hour one-liner that sums all the others up: Be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.

Weird, wonderful and cleverer than they look. Use them wisely.