Category Archives: Personal

My home is my hammock

15 September 2014 08:19 ,

This is where I decided that I want a hammock in my home.

2014-09-14 17.54.12

I spent a large part of my weekend in trains, travelling from Brussels to Apeldoorn, from Apeldoorn to Haarlem, and then from Haarlem to Brussels. A large part of this time I spent reading and writing about happiness at work, work and motivation, and collective well-being. The idea was to plan ahead, and write some of the more research-based content for the blog for the next two weeks or so.

But then, I arrived to Antwerp.

Due to the railway works, I ended up in a slower train, and I’d have to change at Brussels Airport. And I though that rather than staying on the train, I’d get off in Antwerp, enjoy the sun I had missed out on during my hours in the train, and then get a faster train to get back to Brussels.

I got an ice-cream (possibly the last one this year; when I am having ice cream or summer fruits this time of the year, it’s always with the thought it might be the last one for the season), and happened to spot a free hammock, placed there for the car-free Sunday. I was a bit discouraged to enter by the sign, saying the municipality would not be liable for theft. Anyway, I put my bags under the hammock, and lay down. I entertained some people when doing so, as I got in a bit too far to the end, and managed to make the construction supporting the hammock trip over.

But then, eating my ice-cream and admiring the view of Antwerp’s beautiful art nouveau station, my thoughts wandered off. I realised that a hammock is an ultimate place of relaxation. Even when you’re there very shortly, time goes slow. Even when I tripped over, I joined the people laughing rather than feeling embarrassed.

A feeling of bliss.

A room with a view

A room with a view, please

I decided that I wanted to have a hammock in my home. I can’t think of a better idea than replacing my ugly, flower-patterned old couch from the 1970s (now stalled in my bedroom) with a nice hammock. I can imagine Sunday mornings, with a book. I can imagine coming back from work, and spending fifteen minutes in my hammock before starting to cook, write emails or do house chores.

I’ll keep you posted. I hope to share a similar picture again, showing my home is really my hammock.

2014-09-14 18.03.25

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People make life interesting

3 September 2014 22:10 ,

During my time in high school, I was not the most social person in class. I didn’t really fit in with the two camps at my school.

At the one side, you had the popular kids. They played (field) hockey, wore shirts with their collars, smoke and drank, and dated each other.

On the other side, you had the alternative kids. They played in bands, dyed their hair yellow or green, smoke and drank, and dated each other.

I took my own course, alone, or interacting with the other pupils who where a bit in between the camps. I kept in my comfort zone, and if it wasn’t necessary, didn’t speak to people I didn’t know.

An encounter with F.

But that was high school. Let me tell you about an encounter I recently had.

I was sitting at a bar with some friends as a girl approached us and asked whether she could join us. She had had a bad day. At the bar, to a bunch of strangers she just met – us – F. told the story of her life.

F. had a bruise in her face. She had been hit by her boyfriend. They had spent a long time together, but recently he had turned violent. F. knew she had to leave him. At the same time, she wasn’t sure whether she was a ready to end it. There was a lot that connected her to him; the fight had broken her spirit but not her heart. A punch in the face is painful, but love can hurt even more.

On the outside, she had a good life. She only worked a bit for fun and personal interest. Otherwise, she was taken care off . Her lifestyle was rich, with frequent trips throughout Europe and money available for shopping sprees anytime she desired. In her early thirties, F. still enjoyed her life, going to crazy parties and doing whatever she wanted. Her friends looked up to her, admired her. And she couldn’t take it any longer. F.’s life, I think, had become artificial. It had to be changed.

The value of ephemeral encounters

It was a tense conversation, and an important encounter for her as well as for me. As I wrote above, in my days of high school I wasn’t very open to people. Now, I realised that I was able to engage in a deep conversation about all important parts of life with a person I met some minutes before. I gave her some advice, and I hope it helped her a bit. But it also helped me to reflect about myself and about human interaction.

Here in Brussels I regularly meet people only for a short time, and still have extremely interesting conversations. Initially, I used to think that these meetings are useless. I used to think that if a good level of contact is achieved, a seed of friendship should be made flourish. But I am starting to change my mind about this. Friendship is a great thing, but there is also a beauty and a value in ephemeral encounters. One nice chat for an evening, and than life goes on, each with their own friends, dreams and hopes.

Into The Wild

There are two ways I could finish this story. One is by referring to a Dutch poem, Aan Rika by Piet Paaltjens from the 19th century. It’s about a guy who sees a girl for a split second, when the train she’s riding is passing his. He gets dragged away by the moment immediately, and fantasises about both of them being destroyed by the colliding trains. But this is not a story of love or destruction.

The appropriate end to this story is a different one: the movie Into the Wild. The hero of the film, Alexander Supertramp, travels to Alaska alone to live a life of isolation, close to the nature he loves so much. The trip has moments of reflection, beauty and sincere happiness, I think. However, at the end of the film, Alexander realises an important lesson: happiness is only real when shared with others.

Is there anybody here?

Regardless how happy you are with yourself and your own life, it’s other people who make life truly worthwhile. Whoever they are.

Into the Wild

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On the road, the sequel

31 July 2014 22:51 ,

The first post on For A State of Happiness appeared ten months ago. After preparing for several months, I had promised myself to launch the blog in September. I barely made the deadline – the first post was written on the evening of Monday 30 September, in half an hour.

With an allusion to Jack Kerouac, I wrote that this was my first step on the road to the discovery of happiness.

And indeed, I’ve discovered a couple of things about happiness in the last year. I had promised myself to work seriously on the blog for at least a year. 40+ blog posts later, I think I am well on my way!

And these are some of the things I learnt in the last year:

Happiness indeed is a discovery.

There are so many different ways of looking at it: from the perspectives of psychology, economics, political science, neuroscience, genetics, behavioral economics, philosophy. Learning never ends.

Happiness is personal – and collective

One of the most interesting things of happiness, I think, is that happiness both a very personal thing (about our personal happiness) and a collective thing (about quality of life, well-being and the common good in a state or society). This conviction has grown more and more in me.

Happiness reveals itself in small bits and pieces

Writing one (interesting) blog post a week on happiness is easy! Since it’s such a broad topic, there are many ways to approach the topic. The ultimate article on happiness does not exist. But with every blog posts, one element of happiness reveals itself. Every piece of a large caleidoscope of happiness.

Everybody is searching for happiness

At least everybody I know. That means that both friends and strangers are interested in my endeavours to understand happiness. It has motivated me to look into aspects I hadn’t thought of, to publish elsewhere, and to create a newsletter.

You might wonder what the effect on my own happiness is. I did not start this project to become happier. The aim was to understand happiness, not to be it. But still, as a side effect, it has helped me to be happier. Reading a lot about happiness, I’ve learnt how certain mechanisms in the human brain work.

I’m more aware of how my brain (and my heart) react to positive and negative experiences. Sometimes I get frustrated about something small and insignificant. Maybe I miss a metro, and I’m very impatient waiting for the next one. I’ve started to diagnose myself in these situation, and tell myself: “this moment of frustration will disappear. You can’t control when the metro arrives, but you can influence how you deal with it. Just leave it”.

The first year of this blog has been extremely good. Over the year, being a happiness blogger became part of who I am. And I know the next year will be very interesting as well. I have some great ideas to develop the blog and myself as a happiness researcher. I’ll work a bit on that in the summer. And after that, the road to the discovery of happiness will continue.

I’m taking off August, see you back in September! And in case you can’t wait that long, take a look at some of the posts you might have missed during the season 2013-2014.

 

 

 

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The morality of the market: can everything be bought?

21 July 2014 12:48 ,

Can everything be bought?

Last week I wrote about ‘Happy Money’, written by Harvard professor Michael Norton, and concluded with him that happiness can be ‘bought’ when money is spent wisely.

Today, I want to face another question: should it be possible to buy everything with money, even if it is unjust, unfair or immoral? Another Harvard professor, philosopher Michael Sandel, has written a book pondering all facets of this question.

I bought Sandel’s book ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’ in February, shortly before travelling to my course on happiness economics at Schumacher College. His prose made me realise how evasively money has entered all domains of life and how absurd some transactions are.

Allow an ad on your forehead: $777

In his book, he dives into various weird, and sometimes even out rightly wrong, areas of capitalism:

  • Lobbyist pay homeless people to wait in line for Congress hearings in Washington  (quite sure this does not happen in Brussels): $10-20 per hour.
  • The pay a six-year-old school child in Dallas gets for reading a book: $2.
  • Compensation for offering your forehead as an advertising space for Air New Zealand: $777.
  • If you are a woman addicted to drugs, you can ‘earn’ money by agreeing to sterilisation: $300.
  • Markets crowding out social values: priceless.

Some of these are clear excesses of capitalism, whilst others are a little more subtle. In a way, money and power have always mattered. Wealthy businessmen are sponsoring the presidential campaign Obama in the hope to get rewarded with an ambassador post or a certain policy. Or they might make a donation to an Ivy League university in the hope their children will be taken on. Like it or not, but I fear it is how the world works and worked for centuries. But even if that is reality, it does go against the principle of equality we all sympathise with – unless we risk losing out ourselves.

Rent-A-Friend: $10 per hour

Still, we know that these things feel a lot better and authentic when they are deserved. In 2000, a Dutch movie ‘Rent A Friend’ came out, about an an agency that rented out ‘friends’ to people that felt lonely. Despite the feeling that friendship can’t be bought, the idea has been taken up in real life: www.rentafriend.com boasts being able to offer over 500,000 ‘friends’, starting at $10 a hour, though many will waive their fee if you take them to a concert or sports event – very generous!

Markets in life and death 

Markets should have limits, argues Sandel. And it should be us as people, citizens, consumers to pose them. One of the most fascinating chapters talks about the markets of life and death. He documents many examples where life and death are sold and bought. For instance, he speaks of ‘celebrity death pools’, where people place bets on who is most likely to die.

Death list is one of these sites (though it appears there is no money involved). ‘Hopes’ are her on a death for Prince Philip or Stephen Hawking; Fidel Castro is on for the 11th year. Castro also makes it to a list at ranker.com. Here, voters have a good hand; six names out of the top ten have died this year.

But Sandel cites even crazier and more repulsive practices: employers  take life insurances on their employees, and then cash the payout if they die prematurely. Or people trade on the terrorism futures market, which rewards people who rightly guess when and where terrorists strikes, and how many people are killed.

Bring morals back to the market

From a capitalists perspective, there is nothing wrong with this. It is a market, and people are only accountable to themselves for their transactions. But as Sandel indicates, there are too many absurd, immoral, and sometimes plain wrong things that are bought and sold. And all this should stop.

Still, I don’t think laws and regulation are not the best ways to put limits to these markets. It is a moral issue, and it is our responsibility as citizens to reflect on our decisions and follow or moral compass. The limits of markets are set by consumers and nobody else. In recent decades, we have allowed ourselves to go way too far. It’s time to bring morals back to the market.

Everything can be bought. But markets crowding out social values: priceless.

 

Little surprise: also Sandel has given a TED talk about his work.

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A feel good video to witness happiness

7 July 2014 22:04 ,

Editing a blog about happiness provides so many doses of positivity and optimism. Now people know about my interest (or passion, or obsession, according to some) to understand how happiness works, I often receive links to nice videos and articles to the topic. I received this one from one of my colleagues.

This is a feel good video and commercial at the same time – it’s a Thai life insurance company telling us about happiness. Feel good is a difficult genre, especially for companies. If the story is too sweet, or over the top, your ad becomes cheesy. But I think their video strikes the right tone and shares a story that everybody can feel – and witness happiness.

The story reminds us how small and big, and simple, happiness is: if the seeds of kindness and optimism are sown everyday, happiness can flourish.

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Football & happiness: the feelgood factor of Van Persie

16 June 2014 21:57 ,

Whether you are a football lover or football hater, you will have noticed that the World Cup has started. Time for me to ask the question: do good performances make countries happier?

Let me take a – randomly selected – example. As a Dutchman, my expectations ahead of last Friday’s match against Spain were very low. We had lost the World Cup final against them in 2010. Spain’s selection contains a list of stars that rivals any team. Their team is experienced, having won three tournaments in a row: no match for our defense on young and unexperienced players.

How wrong we were!

The match turned out to be one of the best stories of Dutch football ever written. In the first half, the Orange Clockwork started slow. After an undeserved penalty, Spain led 1 to 0.

But just before half time, when we already had given up on our chances, something majestic happened. Daley Blind, at the left side of the field, gave a long pass, and the new Flying Dutchman Robin van Persie scored a goal that will go into history as one of the most beautiful ones ever: 1-1.

And this was just a start. The Dutch team – and fans everywhere – went crazy. Arjen Robben: 2-1, revenge for the lost final 2010. Defender Stefan de Vrij, after a scrimmage in front of the goal: 3-1. And Van Persie and Robben went on to score an improbable 4-1 and 5-1. The feeling was amazing. The beer was good. The girls in orange dresses were pretty. Even Dutch music of poor quality was good enough to sing along to. Viva Hollandia! And the good feeling persists. Waking up the next day – with a collective hangover – the result was still the same. 5-1. We beat three time champions Spain 5 to 1!

 

I guess one can safely say: yes, football results affect the collective well-being of a country. But beyond strong anecdotal evidence, let’s see what academics say about it. Indeed, there are several academic and popular-scientific studies about this question of life and death.

The host advantage

In their book Soccernomics, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski show that hosting a World Cup increases happiness levels in a country until several years after the event. National pride increases when visitors from all around the world are received in the home country. However, this effect does not appear in Brazil, where many people strongly oppose the World Cup. Street art protests dot the walls of their cities, and even the 3-1 win against Croatia, courtesy of the referee, on the opening night seems to have done little to increase the mood.

Brazil World Cup

Suicide and strokes

Kuper and Szymanski also show that stories about increasing numbers of suicide after dramatic losses are a myth. To the contrary, World Cups are social events involving the entire community, including depressed people. But football does carry a health risk: matches can create stress and thus contribute to heart attacks. A study, in a scientific article with the improbable title “A matter of life and death: population mortality and football results”, found a correlation between heart attacks and home defeats: male supporters of the English teams of Newcastle United, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, and Leeds United are more likely to die from a stroke when their team loses in its own field! For instance, in Sunderland, stroke deaths increased by 66% in men when Sunderland AFC lost at home.

Today it matters, tomorrow it doesn’t

Another study by Kavetsos and Szymanski finds that the impact of sports success on happiness is mainly short term, and not statistically significant in the longer term. Beyond the home nation advantage, a second positive effect appears when a team, like the Netherlands on Friday, beats the expectations. But rather than a long-standing legacy effect, football results only are a positive feel-good factor for a short time. This also confirms the finding of a seminal study concluding that whether you win the lottery or end up in a wheelchair today, your happiness level is the same in one year time.

Whether you win or lose, in three months it doesn’t matter anymore, claims psychologist Dan Glibert. But I live today, and not in three months from now. And today, I am happy.

Today, Robin van Persie and Daley Blind provide sheer happiness.

RVP

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The Independent’s Top 100 (of happiness, not of wealth)

2 June 2014 09:37 ,

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the richest of them all? In 2013, Bill Gates topped Forbes’ annual billionaire list, with a wealth of $77.6 bn. To compare: that is above the annual GDP of about one hundred countries on earth. His wealth is about the size of Oman’s GDP in 2012, which ranked 65th.

'Underground artist' Kim Kalan

‘Underground artist’ Kim Kalan. Photo via the Independent.

Fortunately life is not about money. As an antidote against Forbes-like lists of the rich & famous, the UK newspaper The Independent last week released its seventh annual Happy List. As The Independent writes, their feelgood list contains “100 people who, without thought of personal gain, give back and help others, rather than themselves.”

Again quoting the paper, the Happy List of 2014 features: “a 93-year-old who has raised more than £100,000 for Age UK by dressing as a bee; a teacher who donated a kidney to one of his pupils; the world’s oldest barmaid; the limbless Plymouth man who founded a charity to help other amputees; the London woman who founded a pop-up restaurant that employs only refugees and migrants; a couple who set up a bereavement service for parents who have lost a baby; and the heroic lollipop lady of Rhoose.”

What a great positive and inspiring message! Happiness often lies in small but significant acts of kindness. The stories of the 100 individuals making Britain a better, more beautiful and ultimately happier place. But the people on the list also offer a lot of inspiration. Their efforts are easier to emulate and more valuable to society at large than the efforts of most of the billionares listed by Forbes.

Let’s share some of the most striking stories (all bios written by the Independent). Even if they do not inspire you to raise money, fund charities or volunteer, they’ll bring a smile to your face.

Jean Bishop. Photo via the Independent

‘Buzzing Fundraiser’ Jean Bishop. Photo via the Independent

Jodi-Ann Bickley: Happiness spreader

A tick bite led to encephalitis and a stroke, leaving this author from Birmingham unable to walk or write. She learnt to write again, and now, via her website, onemillionlovelyletters.com, spends her time writing cheering notes to all those who ask for one. And thousands do.

Jean Bishop: Buzzing fundraiser

Known as the Busy Bee throughout east Yorkshire, 93-year-old Jean began raising money for Age UK Hull 14 years ago after her husband died. She wears a bee costume (made by her daughter) while rattling her tin, and has so far collected over £100,000.

Kim Kalan: Underground artist

Kim, customer service assistant at Caledonian Road Tube station, north London, brightens up the ticket hall with whiteboard drawings. Kim draws up to two a week in her breaks or at the end of her shifts. Her Mona Lisa is among works bringing daily smiles to the faces of commuters.

Colin Marvell: Job finder

After a banking career, partially-sighted Colin, from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, was unemployed at 50. His struggle to find another job prompted him to launch Inspire4Work, a charity that helps the older unemployed gain new work. He also organises soul music events in aid of charity.

Charlie Simpson. Photo via the Independent.

‘Fundraising cyclist’ Charlie Simpson. Photo via the Independent.

Charlie Simpson: Fundraising cyclist

Charlie, aged 11, from west London has been raising money for international children’s charity Unicef since he was seven. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, he cycled round his local Fulham park seven times. Word of this feat spread, meaning he eventually raised a massive £260,000.

Robert Williams: Kindness dispenser

Robert helped set up The Kindness Offensive, a group which carries out “random acts of kindness” across London, from delivering Christmas gifts to the underprivileged to handing out chocolate to passers-by. One nominator said Robert has “a real impact” on Londoners’ happiness.

The full Independent on Sunday’s Happy List 2014 is available here.

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Felicità!

29 May 2014 21:27 ,

“At school, they teach you about the capital of the Netherlands, but they don’t teach you how happiness works.”

That’s one of my key messages when I spoke at Radio Alma last month. You can find the show (in Italian) online on the website of Radio Alma.

And if you want the full picture, I already wrote about the interview the week before and after my chat with hosts Rossella, Tiziana and Leandro.

Buon divertimento!

E per felicità ulteriore:

Posted in: about For A State of Happiness, also published elsewhere, personal , Tagged: , , , ,

Runner’s high

19 May 2014 21:01 ,

A man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body, yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

James Branch Cabell, American author, 1879-1958

As I’ve written here before, ‘flow’ is one of my favourite experiences. ‘Flow’ or ‘optimal experience’ is a term used by positive psychologist Mihaly Csiskszentmihalyi, the most boring hero I have. With the concept, he describes the feeling you have when you’re so engaged in an activity that you lose track of time and place. Concentration is intense. Your activity challenges all your skills. Your self-consciousness disappears.

Very briefly, I experience such a feeling of flow when I was running the 20 kilometers of Brussels yesterday. It was close to the half-way point in the Bois de la Cambre. I had trained in this park before, and exactly knew where the curves of the road would take me. On a bridge above the street, a DJ was playing music. I didn’t actively notice which song it was, but it fitted the rhythm of my steps. And though I already had suffered the heat before – and would still suffer it a lot more afterwards – at this point close to the 10k mark, I entered my flow and ran effortless. A large smile appeared on my face. I was euphoric.

I experienced, I like to think, a runner’s high.

A runner’s high, tells Wikipedia, occurs when people exercise so strenuously that their bodies reach a certain threshold. A switch is turned, flow is achieved. In chemical terms, it’s created by the release of endorphins during intense workouts. Endorphins reduce the sensation of anxiety and pain and cause feelings of euphoria.

Running 20k on a warm day, like yesterday, is not fun. With a temperature above 20 degrees and a burning sun, I had to take regular breaks to get my body temperature  down (I had gotten sun burnt the day before, and still felt a bit light in my head). But when I crossed the finish line after 2 hours, 12 minutes and 19 seconds, nothing of this mattered. All suffering disappeared. I was proud. I was happy.

The body of man, Cabell said, is capable of much ‘curious pleasure’.

Crossing the finish (to the left side, in a Dutch orange shirt). Screenshot taken from a video from the site of the 20k of Brussels.

Crossing the finish (to the left side, in a Dutch orange shirt). Screenshot taken from a video from the site of the 20k of Brussels.

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Serious play & Happy gin-tonics

5 May 2014 21:28 , Leave a Comment ,

Last Saturday, I found myself back with a gin-tonic in my hand, dancing to Pharrell’s Happy in the middle of Place Flagey. It was 14.30 in the afternoon, and almost got hit by the vehicles cleaning up the square after the market. Why did that happen?

And as a second question, why did I title this post Serious Play?

I’ve already written before about Happy – the global of hymn of happiness, as I see it – and the many local versions that people all around the globe have made. And after seeing one of not-too-impressive versions from Brussels, a friend of mine decided to recruit some people as well.

Honestly, the result is not amazing. As our videographer backed out, it was shot with a shaky iPhone. All shots were fully spontaneous, without script or storyboard. Though the gin-tonics did stimulate us to move, I’d argue the footage is not suitable for the Internet. (Even in the age of selfies and excessive social media use, real life is enough. Experiences still matter if nobody has given a like for it).

So why am I still writing about this? Well, I think the example serves as an illustration of the importance of play as a force for creativity and joyfulness.

Playfulness stimulates creativity
Being playful is good for our creativity. Children generally are better at this than adults. Men never seize to be children and often are more playful than women. Play is great, because it helps us use our imagination. And those skills are useful to solve problems, as tinkering and experimenting come with play. Unfortunately, this is a skill we tend to lose as we grow up, by saying play is just for children.

As Stuart Brown says, play is a must for creative and problem-solving jobs like designers and engineers (The famous TED talk by Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity is also nice to watch in this context).

Playfulness stimulates joyfulness
Play is fun. Once you stop being embarrassed about dancing on a square, you enter the realm of happiness. Once we decided to be ridiculous, I saw my fellow dancers smiling all the time (it’s not without a reason that ridiculous means ‘to be made fun of’).

And it’s even more than just being joyful in the here and now. It’s proven that play is important for mental health! Psychologists believe (also referenced by Brown) that there some murder cases are associated with ‘play deprivation’. That is, the repression of play by parents can result in depressions or even criminal behaviour.

So to those who say that one who dances in the square is not sane, I will say that insanity must be preferred over repression.

Play on!

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