Hail Mary

‘A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.’

Roald Dahl

When I (Gav) was 18 years old, I left home and went to uni, where I spent four years training to become a primary schoolteacher.

My first ever placement was in a primary school in the north of Scotland. I arrived fresh-faced, eager and early on my first day. I remember feeling a heady concoction of terror and excitement. Shaken and stirred, I spotted a woman standing at the door, someone I’d describe as a proper scary wee woman. This was the headteacher, my new boss. Gulp!

I tried to look confident but, hey, I was 18 and three-quarters. She stopped me and asked, ‘Are you our student, son?’

Of course being called ‘son’ on your first day makes you feel very grown up. ‘Yes’, I replied through a false smile.

‘Male?’ she pondered, her observation skills honed to ninja level. ‘Right, before you go in, do not forget the first rule of teaching, son.’

I thought, ‘This is perfect, I’m not even through the door and am already about to learn something. And not any old rule, the headteacher’s first rule of teaching. Sock it to me scary wee lady.’

The headteacher looked at me very seriously and said, ‘Don’t smile ‘til Christmas!’

I stood for a moment and thought this must be a joke. Surely no one would ever encourage another person – especially one who’s new and enthusiastic – not to smile for the next four months. I checked her face for any signs of humour. I did a double-check for the lowest form, sarcasm. There were none.

I’ve subsequently found that ‘Don’t smile ‘til Christmas’ is a well-used piece of advice for newbies in education, and not just north of the border. Just as I was trying to get my head around this pearler, she turned and walked away, wafting her hand down the corridor. ‘Staffroom son, second door on the right.’

Whoosh, I was excited again. The staffroom! I had never been in an actual staffroom before. As a child we were never allowed in the staffroom. I’d stood outside a few and remember walking past as the cigarette smoke poured out from underneath the door, but actually venturing into one? This was new territory. I was about to step into grown-up land.

I stood in front of the second door on the right, the ‘salle de professeur’, as it said on the sign (it was a very cosmopolitan school), and composed myself. Deep breath, and I’m in. It was just how I imagined, a perfect rectangle of chairs, a table in the middle strewn with newsletters and biscuits, pigeon holes crammed full of paper down one side and the kitchen area at the back. I felt like I had made it. I was in. This was the inner sanctum. I was a grown-up.

I sat down and very quickly a woman approached me, ‘Excuse me son, you’re sitting in Anne’s chair’. I remembered them telling me at uni that some staffrooms were a bit funny about this, how certain individuals would always sit in the same seat. I moved, awkwardly, to the adjacent seat.

‘Go and get yourself a coffee, son,’ someone said.

Awkward again. I have a caffeine allergy you see. But I was straight out of school and still in the mindset of being the pupil, so I did as I was asked and made a coffee. I stood there stirring it, thinking: ‘I’m going to die. I haven’t even made it into the classroom yet and someone is going to have to phone my mother.’

But I was rescued. Another woman approached me and pointed out, ‘Excuse me son, you’re using Anne’s mug.’

Anne was causing me problems and I hadn’t even met her. In fact, I never did. She was always off. With stress. Too many people using her mug, apparently.

So there I stood, Monday morning in the kitchen area of the staffroom in my new place of work, a 45-year career stretched out before me. I didn’t know where to sit, what to drink from or who to talk to. I stood for a few more minutes. No one spoke to me.

I cupped my coffee, tempted to take a sip just to take away the numbness. Maybe death wasn’t such a bad thing? People were coming and going; some stood in conversation with others. I listened, I watched and my unease started to grow into worry. Forty-five years began to feel like a life sentence. There was a feeling about the room that is best described as grumpiness. There was plenty of chatter, but the undercurrent was most definitely an unease with the world. There was a distinct atmosphere. And believe it or not I began to doubt my entire choice of career. Think about this for a moment, I began to doubt my entire choice of career based entirely on other people’s conversations, moods, energy, attitudes, mindsets and faces.

You’ll have met these people. You might even be one.

Just as I began to think I had made a huge mistake, it all changed. The entire feeling in the room flipped upside down with the introduction of just one member of the team.

I later learned this woman wasn’t in any official leadership role and she wasn’t a classroom teacher; she was a classroom assistant – a very important role, but not a very lofty position in the overall pecking order. She just floated into the staffroom like Mary Poppins. Practically perfect in every way. It was like she had rays of light coming out of her face. She just lit the room up and you could feel it. Everyone seemed to smile, the room lifted, conversations changed. People were delighted to see her. In less than five seconds the grumpiness had been exorcised.

Just to clarify – and so the enormity hits you, like it did me – this lady hadn’t even said anything, she’d just walked into the room.

I stood there thinking, ‘WOW! Who are you? You’ve not even opened your mouth, I want to be you. I want to be Mary Poppins.’ I had never had this thought before! Eighteen years of age and my life’s biggest challenge had now become, ‘How do I channel my inner Mary Poppins’?

It instantly threw me back to when I was in school as a child and the types of teachers I encountered. In fact, let’s get interactive; think about the teachers you had as a child. There will be two types you remember immediately: there are your Mary Poppinses and there are your Mr Bankses.

Let’s look at the Mary Poppins type first. These people are pure magic – delightful, hardworking, engaging and fun. They listened, they valued you, they actually taught you and you looked forward to their classes. At times life-changing, always a joy. They made a positive difference in your life and you can remember them to this day.

And now the Mr Banks type. Let’s just be blunt. These men and women are a disgrace and shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom in the first place. Angry, miserable, bored, negative, unhappy, complain-y people. You learned next to nothing about their subject but you remember the negative impact they had on you to this day.

And then there are all the ones who sit between these two extremes. You won’t be able to remember them straight away. There’s a good reason for this … they’re not memorable!

So there I was, stood in the ‘salle de professeur’, thinking to myself, ‘Who are you going to be Gavin? Mary Poppins or Mr Banks? They both have impact. Huge impact. Life-lasting impact. Just in two polar-opposite ways.’

I made a pact with myself that day. Whatever I do in life, whatever I find myself faced with, I’m Mary Poppins.

‘Open different doors, you may find a you there that you never knew was yours. Anything can happen.’

Mary Poppins

All of a sudden the lady with the sunbeams shining out of her face turned, and with a big smile came towards me. ‘Are you Gavin?’

The first person to address me by name! ‘Yes,’ I stuttered, ‘and are you Mary?’

(I didn’t really ask that …)

‘Yes, that’s me,’ I beamed back.

‘You’re with me this morning Gavin. In the nursery. Let’s go play!’

And with rays of light coming out of our faces, we floated off down the corridor.

As we approached the nursery – I kid you not – she turned and said, ‘And today, Gavin, we’re making kites.’

BOOM … she really was Mary Poppins.

There’s something about Mary …

We were tempted to end the chapter in Fatboy Slim style, right here, right now, with the sentence above. But Andy can’t help chucking his PhD at you, so while Gav goes off to make a kite, here’s the science behind his ‘Mary Poppins experience’.

I’ve been studying the science of human flourishing for the last 12 years (in the UK. Yes, really!) and have gained insight into information that was locked up inside pay-per-view academic journals. These tomes are written in such dense scientific jargon that only rigorously trained researchers could extract any meaning. So I donned a white coat and infiltrated their world. I became one of them. An interloper.

A translator.

If I told you that you could have 27% more energy and 24% more happiness, you’d be interested, right? If I told you this energy was clean, green and renewable, I’d have your undivided attention. If I threw in the fact that this extra energy/happiness combo is totally free, you’d be like, where do I sign?

I’ve discovered what you already know: that too many people are counting down to their weekends, next holiday or retirement, accidentally falling into the trap of wishing their lives away.

But there are a few outliers – people who are bursting with energy and enthusiasm. The Marys; folk whose happiness and positivity leak out into the people around them.

Brace yourself for some big thoughts. As we go through life we accumulate experiences and add layers of who we think we should be. As RuPaul says, ‘We’re born naked, the rest is just drag’. We’re striving to be a good parent or a good employee, partner, lover and carer, whilst also keeping on top of our emails. There’s a certain etiquette about how we think we should behave in certain situations. And, to be frank, life can get a bit serious. We learn that Mondays are bad and Fridays are good. Like the clay Buddha, we become mummified under layers and layers of who we think we’re supposed to be.

But what if all those layers mean we sometimes forget who we really are? And therefore the secret of eternal happiness isn’t to learn a whole load of new stuff, but rather to peel back some of the layers to reveal the shine inside. It’s more than self-improvement. We call it ‘self-remembering’.

But how did we forget in the first place?

The simple truth is that we’re social animals. We’re wired to copy. Humans have an overwhelming desire to fit in that manifests in conformity of thinking and behaviour. Look around you. Most people are exhausted, harried and worn. Your desire to fit in means you learn to do the same. So here’s the rub – you can wait (and wait, and wait …) for everyone else to shine and then you can join in.

Chances are you’ll die waiting.

‘I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.’

Jim Morrison

Or you can do what the happiness outliers do. Realizing that life is a short and precious gift, they flick a switch in their thinking and go for it. The sublime realization is that a candle can be used to light other candles. And lighting other candles doesn’t diminish your light, it creates more.

For Mary, shining is not a waiting game, it’s a starting game.

When was the last time you just stopped and thought about the impact that you have? At work, in your team, on your customers, in your family, amongst your friends, online, on the train …

Everyone’s heard of paranoia. We’re interested in the opposite, ‘pronoia’; the sneaky feeling that people are saying nice things about you behind your back. Wouldn’t that be a nice affliction to have? Imagine, there might even be whisperings as people conspire to be on your side. Yes, the bastards are out to help you!

And it’s totally possible. If you’re like Mary, that is. So who is Mary? She’s got the same job, same pressures, same work colleagues, same pay structure and working hours as everyone else in that salle de professeur. So how come she has sunbeams radiating out of her face? What’s she doing that’s different? And, more to the point, why the heck is she the only one doing it?

‘Long-term strategy: Don’t be a jerk.’

Seth Godin

Gav’s Mary Poppins experience happened to take place in a work context, so let’s examine that before extrapolating it to the big stage show we call ‘life’.

Why not have a go and see if you can prove something to yourself? Think about your last working week, get a pen and map yourself against the 16 emotions. Keep it rough and ready – gauging the strength of feeling and approximate time you experienced each one.

In my research, the top-right quadrant (enthusiastic, joyful, inspired and excited) is summarized as ‘engaged’. The bottom-right quadrant (calm, relaxed, laid back and at ease) is ‘satisfied’. Bottom left (depressed, dejected, despondent and hopeless) is labelled as ‘depression’ and top left (nervous, anxious, tense and worried) is labelled as ‘anxiety’.

So what?

Well, I graphed a shed load of people onto the diagram and built up a heat map of workplace emotions. The really hot stuff is happening in the top-right quadrant, a space inhabited by what I call ‘2%ers’. These employees are not only significantly happier, but they also possess bags more energy.

Tying in to the fabulous work of Kim Cameron, positive energy creates feelings of aliveness, arousal, vitality and zest, suggesting, ‘It is the life-giving force that allows us to perform, to create and to persist’ (p. 49).¹

Bringing you back to Gav’s words, these are the handful of folk who have sunbeams shining out of their faces. The problem with 2%ers? The clue’s in the name. There aren’t enough of them!

Yet they’re crucial. This small minority of people you can think of, right now, are your life-givers. Philosopher Gav nails it non-academically with his Mary Poppins sentence: ‘We floated off down the corridor’. Kim Cameron says the same thing academically: ‘Interacting with positive energizers leaves others feeling lively and motivated … interacting with them builds energy in people and is an inspiring experience’ (p. 42).

A point of clarification before we go any further, my 2%ers aren’t a bunch of self-nominated Duracell monkeys who bounce in on a dreary Monday all cymbal-clashing and false happy-clappiness. ‘Don’t those weekends drag? Isn’t it great to be back to work?’ will, quite frankly, get you slotted into the category of ‘some village is missing its resident idiot’.

The 2%ers have been painstakingly sought, filtered through various processes, the most important of which is that they have been nominated by those around them as ‘someone who makes me feel good’. So, yes, they rate very high on happiness and energy but, crucially, their feel-good factor has leaked. Reminder time: Mary Poppins came into the staffroom and the whole atmosphere lifted.

AND SHE HADN’T EVEN SPOKEN!

Back to the spider diagram, this time with some detail. My research is clear. The conclusion is that 2%ers are satisfied, rating significantly higher than their colleagues on feelings of ‘calm’, ‘laid back’, ‘relaxed’ and ‘at ease’ – yet they are also experiencing heightened feelings of ‘enthusiasm’, ‘joy’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘excitement’; emotions that drive them in their pursuit of something extra. They rate significantly higher in the quadrants of ‘satisfaction’ AND ‘engagement’, as well as lower in all aspects of ‘depression’ and ‘stress’. For the purists, 15 of these emotional differences are of statistical significance.

Engagement (the four emotions in the top-right quadrant) is characterized as positive, fulfilling, vigorous and absorbing.² In the workplace, engaged employees are more likely to agree with statements such as: ‘I eat, live, and breathe my job’, ‘At my work, I feel bursting with energy’, ‘I find the work that I do full of meaning and purpose’ and ‘When I am working, I forget everything else around me.’³

Digging deeper into that certain ‘something’ that Mary had, Kim Cameron’s work on vitality examines four types of energy: physical, mental, psychological and relational – only one of which is renewable.

Physical energy is the body’s naturally occurring energy, produced by burning calories. Just sitting reading this book will burn calories. Listening to it as an audio book while you’re out jogging will burn a whole lot more.

Psychological energy is specifically to do with mental concentration and brain work. In my case, my psychological tank runs low when working on a spreadsheet or attending a long meeting.

Emotional energy is all about experiencing intense feelings and is depleted by, for example, periods of intense excitement or sadness.

But it’s the last one that’s the biggy. ‘Relational energy’, in contrast to the other three, is an energy that increases as it is exercised. This form of energy is enhanced and revitalized through positive interpersonal relationships. Cameron describes relational energy as uplifting, invigorating and rejuvenating, and concludes it is ‘life-giving rather than life-depleting’ (p. 51).⁴

And where does ‘relational energy’ come from?

People, that’s where. The Mary Poppins kind.

The missing book store genre

It boils down to this: is Mary just a weirdo?

The short answer is yes. If we’re defining ‘weirdo’ as someone who deviates from the norm. Mary is a statistical anomaly.

But then, I can’t think of any ‘normal’ people who have changed the world.

So far, we’ve been talking about work, but we think there’s an easy crossover with life. In Baker, Cross and Wooten’s⁵ study, energizing relationships produced feelings of being ‘stimulated’, ‘up’, ‘intense’ and ‘animated’. People explained how energizing relationships made them feel engrossed, enthused and drawn in.

I hope you can see why we’re so excited. This goes way above ‘satisfaction’ with life and into high levels of energy and resilience; way above ‘acceptable’ into being fully present and happily engrossed. Engagement is associated with drive, vigour and energy.

Basically, ‘life satisfaction’ sets the bar very low, whereas ‘engagement’ requires one of Dick Fosbury’s bar-raising flops. In short, 2%ers are not ok with ‘ok’. You have to want to shine, you need to know how to shine and you need some resilience in order to stay shining.

It’s very easy to lose your lustre, or to use the analogy of a couple of paras ago (minus the prose), there’s always some bastard trying to piss on your candle.

If you browse the bookshop shelves you’ll find an entire section called ‘self-help’ and no section called ‘help others’. Think of your mission as shining for the right reasons, in the right place, with the right people, and by the right amount in order to help others glow.

Hopefully you are now ‘getting’ what a 2%er actually is. Maybe you can think of one (sadly, you won’t be able to think of many) and, if the penny has dropped, you will realize that this book is about the modern-day imperative that you need to be one!

In fact, let’s rethink that sentence because, of course, you already are a 2%er – sometimes. Those times when you feel zestful, full of energy, bouncy, confident, passionate and optimistic. Nobody can feel like that all the time, but everyone can learn to feel amazing more often.

So, cutting to the chase, physical, psychological and emotional energy are depleted during the day. The only way to renew your energy is to mix with other 2%ers.

The chances are you will have experienced both ends of the energy spectrum. At the lower end are the Eeyores or mood hoovers; those with a lifetime of experience on how best to suck every drop of spirit out of you. They’re not horrible people, it’s much subtler than that. They might be deliberate blockers and naysayers, but most mood hoovers aren’t purposefully negative – they’ve simply learned to be a doom merchant and/or habitual moaner. Their default thinking draws them into an ultra-defensive mindset of spot-the-problem-rather-than-the-solution.

‘If you can’t pick the people up in your life, for goodness sake don’t let them take you down.’

Les Brown

Of course, the mood hoovers might actually be right. Once again, we are not advocating some sort of happy-clappy blue-sky-thinking rainbow-unicorned orgazmatron of positivity. Some ideas and situations are just totally shit. We get that. The weather is sometimes dreadful. People lose their jobs. Relationships break up. Teenagers go off the rails. People die. ‘Another work restructure – how thrilling. With fewer jobs to go round. I’m like beyond excited!’ is a sure-fire way to lose friends and alienate people. Cheshire catting through your grandma’s funeral; ditto.⁶

‘People seem to forget that the core principle of all our differences is as simple as not being an asshole.’

Anon

The problem with mood hoovers is that their default negativity kills everyone else’s creativity, stone dead. Over time, it’s like putting bromide in Tigger’s tea. The bounce is extinguished.

The quest

Did you know there are only seven stories? Apparently, all books and films, ever, revolve around one or all of these:

1. Overcoming the monster (Harry Potter).
2. Rags to riches (Cinderella).
3. Quest (Indiana Jones).
4. Voyage and return (Wizard of Oz).
5. Comedy (Hangover 1 & 2).
6. Tragedy (Hangover 3).
7. Rebirth (Grinch).

If we’re allowed to be so bold, we suggest SHINE attempts them all. By Chapter 3, you’re already well into the perilous journey. We’ve introduced you to mood hoovers but you can expect more monsters. There will be laughs along the way, but also plenty of tears. Essentially, it’s a rags to riches story that involves rebirth. Of you. But more than anything, it’s a quest, because that’s our fave genre.

The quest saga always has the same basic structure, though local details may vary. Each saga begins with a hero receiving a call to adventure which makes him/her abandon their familiar safe environment to venture into the dangerous unknown. Remember, Indiana Jones gave up his job as a lecturer to go after the Arc of the Covenant. Next, our hero undergoes a series of tests and trials, negotiates a few serpents, kills a few baddies, and so on. As a reward s/he wins a magical prize (a golden fleece, a princess, some glass slippers, a chest of treasure, elixir of eternal life, that kind of thing). And, in a final hurrah, the prize is brought back from the kingdom of doom to redeem their community.

Of course, we’re not suggesting that we’re heroes, swashbuckling away on your behalf. No, no, it’s much bigger than that.

We’re suggesting YOU are!

Hats off to you. You’re already our hero. Maybe it’s time to be yours too.

Back in the so-called good old days, local entrepreneurs sold ointments and remedies that would cure anything and everything. Or so they claimed. Snake oil. Fake medicine.

But is there an elixir? A magic cure-all? A universal remedy that would fix psychological and emotional woes? And by fixing them, might there be a knock-on effect physically?

Happiness really will! It’s good for your mind, body and soul. It’s the ultimate elixir. Forget Indy chasing after the holy grail; happiness is it! Sip from the cup of happiness and everything changes. Your present, but also your past and your future.

So, a big thought to end a big chapter …

Consciousness involves the experience of knowing and the awareness of the known. Choice emerges from consciousness. If you are not conscious of something, you cannot choose it. Which brings me onto the result of my 120k-word door-stop of a thesis. This is by no means a rollercoaster of a thesis crammed with sizzling gypsies, it’s a lummox of a thing which, if I were ever to give it an Amazon review, the 1-star would read ‘The covers of this book are too far apart’. And that’s a review, by me, the author of said door-stop.

Twelve years. One hundred and twenty thousand words. A study of 4000 people. And my principal finding? In one sentence, what exactly is it about Mary?

Drum roll …

Happy/energetic people consciously choose to be positive.

Shush that screaming voice in your head. The one that’s shouting: 12 years! For that? How the heck did he string that out to 120k?

To be fair, it was a struggle. The ‘stringing it out’ bit. However, the finding isn’t quite as obvious as it seems. Remember from a few sentences ago, ‘If you are not conscious of something, you cannot choose it’?

Very few people actively choose to carry a positive attitude with them. Yes, that’s maybe because the modern world is so full-on and relentless that they get embroiled in busyness to the point that they forget to choose. Or the ‘choice’ is brow-beaten out of them. But what if it’s bigger than that? What if the vast majority of people don’t know there’s an attitudinal choice available? If you didn’t know you could choose, it’d never cross your mind to do so.

Take it from us. You’ve got lots of attitudinal choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

We’re into the realms of some things being so obvious they’re hidden in plain sight.

Our eyes are our windows on the world. It’s easy to be critical. It’s easy for our windows to become grimy.

Fact – not everything in the world is good and bright and fantastic. We’re not pretending it is. We’re not advocating rose-tinted spectacles, merely that if you clean the shit off your current ones, the world’s a lot brighter than you think.

Gav focuses his audiences with this: are you the best in your team or are you the best for your team? Are you the best in the world or best for the world?

Remember, no one will remember everything you say, but they will remember exactly how you made them feel. Other books might call it authenticity. Remember our word from earlier: pronoia? What kind of person do you have to be for people to be saying nice things about you behind your back? This chapter is about reminding you that you already are that person. Sometimes! Our job is to nudge you to live there more often, in which case you will become the kind of person who, without intending it, is a source of marvellous accidents.

It’s time to unleash your inner Mary Poppins. That’s an interesting thought, but time is short so we’ll crack on with the next chapter. We’ve got kites to fly.