Category Archives: Personal

Condivivere, sharing a life of happiness

21 April 2014 11:13 , Leave a Comment ,

Update: the show is available here now (in Italian)

And? Did you tune in to Radio Alma last Monday to listen to my chat about happiness with the hosts Rossella, Tiziana and Leandro?

You might have missed it, or you may not speak Italian, so let me share some reflections. To start, radio is good fun. It’s a very interesting medium. Talking on the radio really forces you to formulate your message in small bits and pieces as part of the dialogue with your host. I haven’t heard myself back yet (I’ll post the show once it’s available), but I think I managed to bring forward my message.

There are two points I wanted to raise. First: there are many things we can do in our daily life to consciously experience personal happiness. Many people think happiness is something magical or secretive. For me, the secret to happiness is that there is no secret. I spoke a bit about the five ways to well-being, as developed by the new economics foundation. Understanding where happiness comes from can help us to stand still for a moment, like I did in front of a traffic light in London, to look around to be amazed of the speed and hurry of all those around us. Often we’re too much in a hurry to realise we are happy!

Second: we briefly spoke about Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a tool to translate these lessons about happiness to the level of society. Countries are prone to focus on economic growth. But maybe GNH is what they should strive for, if they want to creative a meaningful community in the long run.

I also had an interesting exchange of ideas with the second guest on the show, a singer-songwriter and poet called Leopoldo Verona. He spoke about ‘living life in the now’ and about ‘a sense of freedom’ as factors linked with happiness. It made me think about freedom: do we know how to use our freedom? Do we freely choose to spend our time playing silly games on our smartphones or eating fastfood? How can we motivate ourselves to use our freedom in a way that we enjoy more deeply, for instance by writing blog posts or poems and by cooking a so much more tasty asparagus risotto?

Maybe happiness is knowing how to use your freedom in a meaningful way.

But the main thought I took home from the conversation with Leopoldo is a very simple one. He is a poet, and poets have the great skill to forge words together, creating something bigger than the sums from their parts. For Leopoldo, happiness is about living fine moments with those around us. He epxresses that in one word, putting together ‘share’ (condividere) and ‘live’ (vivere) in condi-vivere.

Simply put, happiness is sharing life.

But everything sounds better in Italian: la felicita è condivivere.

radioalma

In the studio, with Leandro, Rossella and Tiziana.

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Tune in to Radio Alma tonight!

14 April 2014 10:58 , Leave a Comment ,

Update: the show is available here now (in Italian)

Today is going to be an exciting day! I’ll be on Radio Alma to speak about happiness, well-being and my discoveries for For A State of Happiness. The show starts at 21, is in Italian and is called ‘I colori dell’anima‘ (the colours of the soul).

The transmission can be followed on 101.9 FM in Brussels or in streaming online from 21.00 to 22.00 (click the link ‘Radio Alma en direct’).

How do you prepare for such a show? Well, I won’t reveal yet what I will be talking about. Evidently, it will be close to the topics of exploration of For A State of Happiness. I’ll cover both the personal and the policy side of happiness and well-being.

How do you prepare for a show on a topic as large as happiness? As there are so many interesting angles to it, I asked my friends what questions about happiness they would like to have answered. I won’t be able to address all of them, but they do make me reflect for the show. These are some of the questions I received:

  • Does money or wealth actually make you happy?
  • Does happiness mean the same thing across cultures?
  • Do people have to be unhappy before they can experience happiness?
  • Can we all be happy one day?
  • Is happiness contagious?
  • How can we be happy if everybody around us spends their time complaining about everything?
  • Which factors determine happiness?

I won’t answer them for now… that’s for when I’m on air and for a follow-up blog afterwards.

But thanks a lot to Jakob, Otman, Fisnik, Katia and Isabelle for putting them out there.

Also have a question about happiness? Leave a comment and I’ll (happily!) share my thoughts. And of course, if you speak Italian, do tune in to Radio Alma at 21.00 today!

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Russell Brand is still farting – for revolution

24 March 2014 23:46 , 1 Comment ,

Tonight I went to see Russell Brand’s new show, Messiah Complex. Whether he has a true messiah complex, or just a strong opinion about everything, I’m not sure.

On stage, he is flanked by portraits of four great men: Mahatma Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Jesus Christ. And during the show, we find out what he  has in common with his personal heroes.

Brand’s texts are very sharp. He packages his criticism of society in extremely elaborate and fancy phrases that I can hardly reproduce here. Take a look at his famous interview with Jeremy Paxman of the BBC to get an idea of his ideas of revolution.

Brand believes in socialism and communism. He believes in revolution, though a revolution without a programme. He denounces politicians serving themselves and advertising creating false desires in us, but does not propose a way to an alternative.

That’s of course fine: diagnosing a problem does not mean you’re responsible to find the cure. And as a comedian, he fulfills the role of the fool or the clown that makes us question the world we live in, the planet we destroy, the lack of social justice worldwide.

The dark side of heroes

Admirably, he also discuss some of the things that Gandhi, Guevara and Malcolm X did not get right. He tells how Gandhi refused to give his wife an English medicine, preferring Indian ayurvedic medicins required by the Hindu tradition. She tragically died. When he fell ill himself some weeks later, he did accept the medicine.- In Brand’s interpretation, Gandhi had a mission on earth and more to live for.

But some of Brand’s social critic is a bit too simple. It is true that large global companies and some political systems concentrate power and money in the hands of the few. That is part of the system we live. But is it the systematic intention of people that go to work every day to exploit others or to accumulate wealth and power to the detriment of others? I don’t believe so. Large organisation also provide jobs, a livelihood and meaning to so many people that just want to live their lives. Many of us are better off than all generations before us.

Fart for revolution

Some of the elements are shallow. Call me conservative: some jokes about sex with cats are funny, but if it goes on and on it doesn’t contribute to the story. Denouncing all evils is worthwhile. But parts of his remarks, packed in fancy sentences, are mere provocation, the equivalent of farting for revolution. Brand’s attracting the attention by saying “look, I just farted, now listen to me”, as if he never grew older than four.

The message: find your heroes

In any case, the combination between high and low registers works. There’s something in the show for people who just want to have a laugh. Brand has great charisma, warmth and style. He is a personality on stage. And there’s a strong message: everybody needs to have heroes, even if they’re not perfect. Nothing is black or white. And even from those who have their dark side, there’s is a lesson to learn. Mistakes that our heroes have made don’t mean we can’t be inspired by them to change for the better. The same applies to himself – from a drug addict to comedian revolutionary.

Maybe Russell Brand is the messiah.

Russell Brand

 

Posted in: personal, spiritual , Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

What my TEDx talk taught me about happiness

10 March 2014 21:42 , Leave a Comment ,

Picture 3It doesn’t happen every day that I make one of my dreams come true.

6 March 2013, a little over a year ago, I realised one of my bigger dreams. I gave my very own TEDx talk. For around 150 visitors of TEDxLuxembourgCity, I shared my ideas about personal and collective happiness.

Even though I was proud and excited about the opportunity, delivering the talk on the big day didn’t make me  happy. Why it happened is a different story, but my slides changed automatically, and faster than I spoke. I got distracted and more nervous than I already was. Parts of the talk are almost embarrassing to watch. I recall that I felt very frustrated after the talk. I fled to the bathrooms and needed some time to calm down before I could speak to people.

Imagination

Later that night I noticed the irony.

In the talk, I spoke about one of the great powers of the brain: imagination. Imagination is a force that can both have a positive and a negative effect on our happiness. On the positive side, our possibilities to foresee what the future could be like help us to set goals and ambitions and realise a brighter, happier future. But there is a catch. If our expectations are too high, the reality of our daily life is nothing but a pale reflection of your colourful imagination. This is crucial. When we get something new – say a job or a car – we compare our life with the situation we had before. If our old car was slow and ugly, we’re better off with a new one.

But we also compared with what we imagined. Say that I imagine that my new car allows me to go on a ride in the countryside, wonderful landscape and wind blowing through my hair. That’s the ideal vision I have. But pale daily reality might be different. It might be raining. I might get speeding fines. I might need to go to the garage all the time. In those circumstances, it’s more difficult to appreciate the car and to be happy.

Turning bad things into good ones

What does all this have to with my talk? Well, it’s simple. I was a victim of my imagination. I though my talk had to be brilliant, exactly as I rehearsed it. When it wasn’t, I got upset.

But something interesting happened. I surprised myself. Something different and unforeseen happened. The key moment of the talk is the point where I accept the fact that the slides change. I acknowledge the problem. And I improvise – with my dry Dutch humour – by saying something spontaneous about it, commenting that the road to happiness, like my talk, sometimes makes some strange deviations.

It is true. In this way, the speech becomes more authentic, and more powerful. I’m not sure whether there’s a real message in it. If there is one it might be about one of the challenges of public speaking, happiness and life alike.

Turning bad things in good ones is possible.

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On waiting for traffic lights… and the ways to happiness

3 March 2014 19:33 , Leave a Comment ,

London, Friday night. A street crossing somewhere near Liverpool Street, in the direction of Shoreditch (where the hipsters live). It’s raining a bit. I’m wearing a heavy backpack in which I carry my life of a week. All other people cross the red light. I marvel at them, take my time wait for the traffic light to turn green first.

I just got back from a five-day course on the economics of happiness. I spent the week at Schumacher College, a ‘community college’/university in Devon, South-West England. Schumacher College is a special place. Students, teachers, volunteers and temporary guests are jointly responsible for the community. They take turns taking care of the kitchen, the garden and the day opening.

Living at the college is an intense experience. A lot of learning takes place through continuous reflection and discussions at the breakfast table. The sense of community and the feeling of being in touch with nature is a massive contrast with the abundance of grumpy Tube travelers and the ubiquity of commercial chains and ads in London.

During the week, I learnt a lot about happiness research: from measuring happiness to genetics and happiness at work to new economics. But in this post, I’d like to face the biggest question there is:

What makes us happy?

We often speak about the secret of happiness or the key to happiness. I don’t think there’s anything secret about it. And there are many, many keys that open the doors to happiness. In most cases, we do know what makes us happy. Following our intuitive knowledge should do the trick.

five ways

The Five Ways to Well-Being as developed by the new economics foundation

Still, irrational beings as we are, we sometimes act against what makes us happy. Or we need help to distinguish our needs from mere desires (hint: we need connections with human beings. We don’t ‘need’ a 100 gram chocolate bar on Sunday evening. That’s desire). To help us understand what it is that makes us happy, Nic Marks and the new economics foundation have created an overview of five ways to well-being. Marks was one of our teachers of the week. He also worked on the Happy Planet Index and currently is at Happiness Works to bring well-being to the work environment.

These five ways offer a framework to understand our needs and can be used as invitation to engage in activities that make us happy. Though there’s research behind them, they shouldn’t be seen as scientifically sealed and approved suggestions. The five ways are:

  1. Connect… connect with other people, friends, family or people in your community
  2. Be Active… live an active life, via sports or being outdoors
  3. Take Notice… be aware and appreciate the environment around you
  4. Keep Learning… discover new things and develop new interests
  5. Give… give a gift, do something nice for someone, or say thank you

How about you try to integrate these in your daily life?

Don’t expect they’ll lead you to direct happiness. But it’s likely they’ll produce happiness as a side-effect!

Happiness as a balance between contentment and dreams

In my view, Take Notice is probably the most important one. One of the most interesting moments of my week was a breakfast chat with Satish Kumar, an Indian monk whose words are a fountain of wisdom. He spoke about contentment – full awareness and gratitude for everything you experience. This is certainly an important advice.

At the same time, dreams and objectives can also be helpful to give us guidance and to bring us further in life. I think we need to balance contentment with some degree of ambition. If we’re content with everything, is it still possible to achieve a higher ideal?

Nevertheless, almost all of us in today’s hectic society can learn from Satish. Let’s try to stop for a moment and dedicate full attention to the place where we are. Slowing down, looking around. It doesn’t hurt to spend a minute and a half at a traffic light in London.

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The special power of music

24 February 2014 11:12 , Leave a Comment ,

In some ways, I’m old-fashioned, and I do take some pride in it. In my house, I have a historic artifact that was very popular in the end of the late 20th century but has declined ever since. I possess a CD player.

Of course I know that you can access any song any time through YouTube or iTunes, and that the storage space of an iPod or any other MP3 player is virtually endless. But it’s not the same. To me, CDs, and books alike, are more than .m4a or .epub files.

CDs are media with a soul. They are like friends who are accompanying me during my journey through life. When I select one of my CD’s, take it out of its case and put in my CD player, it’s an experience that goes way beyond pushing a play button in iTunes. I remind myself of the place and time where I bought it, the friend who gave it to me or what the band or singer means to me.

My passion must be hereditary: my father has at least 1,000 of CD’s, and counting. His collection now encompasses everything, from classical music to jazz and 1970s pop to country. Surprisingly, I discovered music very late. If we neglect my embarrassing purchase of ‘Smurfs House’ when in the 1990s Dutch house music was conquering the world, and the Krezip single ‘I would stay’ I sent to my three-day summer love at 15, I only bought my first CD at 16. It was Parachutes, the first album of a new band called Coldplay I had read about in a magazine.

Special tones and vibes

Music does something special to people.

How it exactly works I don’t know, but music creates ‘vibes’, a sense of ‘cosiness’,  goosebumps at times.

Melodies and sounds form a key to joy. Or to sadness, or any other emotion. Music can help to be happy, to be creative, to get through boring activities like doing the dishes or ironing shirts, push you up a steep hill when you are running.

What are the songs that make me happiest? It probably varies from time to time, but at the moment they’re mostly energetic songs with a good dose of electronics. Some of my current favourites:

To bring a smile to my face

I can’t believe anybody can be grumpy seeing the clip of Gramatik’s Hit That Jive! Or in the same electro-swing mood: Parov Stelar’s Booty Swing, with a guest appearance from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

To energise me.

I like to listen to one of the tracks of Peter and the Magician to get me going when I am lazy. The energy motivates me to do things around the house or do some writing. Django Django is also a good one in this category, also for a late afternoon when I’m alone in my office.

To listen in awe.

Anything from Daft Punk’s latest album will do. Giorgio by Morodor is one of my favourites but the entire album is awesome.

The ultimate happy song

And of course, this list is not complete without Pharrell’s Happy, one of the ultimate happy songs. And the cool thing is that it’s become a lot than a song. Last November, Pharrell made a 24-hour video clip. People in cities from Amsterdam to Cotonou (Benin) made their own versions. And the last days, the Flappy Bird version is conquering the internet.

And which songs do make you happy?

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The politics of well-being

10 February 2014 20:48 , Leave a Comment ,

Some time ago, I was ‘converted’ to the creed of well-being politics, if I may use that term. To the extent they’re willing to listen, I’ve told many people why I believe governments should adopt a broader perspective than economic growth and fully integrate environmental and social development in their policies.

In this context, I’ve had the question whether I’m pursuing a personal political agenda behind this. I’ve never had a clear-cut answer to this. Firstly, I don’t see myself as a politician. It’s a tough job to have a well-founded opinion about everything. And secondly, as a person with a social-liberal disposition, I am not sure how large the role of the government can be.

My recent discussions with fellow social-liberals indicated limited political support for my ideas to attach more weight to policies that can enhance well-being and happiness. And at the two congresses I recently attended, it still seemed to be seen as a creative, somewhat strange, idea. But what is the purpose of our state, if not promoting the well-being of its citizens?

Part of the aversion is out of fears of governments deciding how we should be happy. Even if that’s a concern in totalitarian states, there is no reason to dismiss any government role in ‘well-being politics’. Naturally, the government should in no way tell us how to be happy. Every individual is responsible for their own life and the happiness and well-being that result from their choices. Still, there are areas where we need our governments.

In the current post-crisis ‘happiness wave’, there is more attention for these policies. Media increasingly pay attention to it. On Bhutan’s initiative, the UN introduced an International Day of Happiness in 2013. Venezuela has a minister of supreme happiness. And several countries are exploring new ways to integrate well-being in their policies.

 

Beyond economic growth

Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley - a politician who believes in GNH! Source: UN

Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley – a politician who believes in GNH! Source: UN

The main point of the well-being political agenda is that objectives other than economic growth should be granted a larger role in political decisions. An important method to do this is the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index (see also this earlier post). If you are not familiar with its methodology, GNH by its name can come across as a vague phenomenon pursued by pot-smoking, tree-hugging utopians.

But it is a lot more solid than that. The Bhutanese concept is based on 124 variables that determine an individual’s well-being or quality of life. And apart from GNH, there are many other alternative ‘beyond GDP’ indicators.

Their aim is basic and revolutionary at the same time. Beyond GDP indicators (there is at least a dozen contenders) aim to benchmark the performance of a society in a broader perspective. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has many advantages, but doesn’t reflect the costs (in economic and well-being terms) of environmental damage and social inequality.

The assumption of ‘beyond GDP’ advocates that if you measure something else – GNH instead of GDP – you’ll also act differently. A state that benchmarks its performance on GNH does not neglect the importance of monetary wealth. What it tries to do is to carefully balance the benefits of economic growth with its environmental, social and psychological impact. Politicians are increasingly aware of the promise of well-being politics. One party congress I attended adopted a position calling for the use of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). But there is still a long way to go before politicians truly implement these lessons. I will play my part in convincing them.

Posted in: personal, state/policy , Tagged: , , , , , ,

Fitter, happier

20 January 2014 19:23 , 1 Comment ,

Fitter, happier
More productive, comfortable.
Not drinking too much.
Regular exercise at the gym (three days a week)

If you are like me, you’ve tried to start 2014 fitter and happier, like in the Radiohead song. Through New Year resolutions, we motivate ourselves to reinvent ourselves or to create a new and improved version.

Fitter, happier, more productive.

Evidently, New Year resolutions have something arbitrary: why would I quit smoking or start reading more often on the 1st of January? I can do that any day of the year. And psychology knows that the dark days of January aren’t the best time in the year to change a habit. Starting new habits just after the summer holidays seems to be a better moment. Still, the start of the year is a natural moment to evaluate personal development in the past year and set new goals.

But damn – does it require discipline to produce that improved edition of yourself! And I guess that by now, three weeks into the year, you might already have hit some of the dark moments. If you do, don’t fall for all the talk about Blue Monday, “the most depressing day of the year”, going around. Blue Monday is a scam, made up with the help of a fake academic to sell more holidays. And Monday is a better day than Wednesday, as I wrote before!

Instead, re-engineer your New Year’s resolutions.

Replace habits

In principle a new year’s resolution should do something very basic: replace a bad habit (like snoozing too long or wasting time on the internet) by a better one (getting up early or productively writing a blog post). But often our methods to attain these goals are unrealistic.

In this article – very much worth a read! – the author makes the analogy with a marathon. If you are training for a marathon, you don’t start your first day of training with a 30k run. You start with a couple of kilometres, and you gradually build it up until you are ready for that marathon.

So why should I suddenly spend one hour every day writing blog posts?

The point is: creating new habits is a tiresome process. You have to start slow. Start doing the activity five minutes a day (or one hour a week), until it’s a solid habit. And then increase the five minutes to ten, and so on, and so forth. That it gets done is more important than when!

In the words of US politician Horace Mann:

“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day and at last we cannot break it.”

A pig in a cage on antibiotics

But it’s not only overly ambitious goals that may fail. Often resolutions are too vague, and require further specification. In my case, I’d like to keep better in touch with old friends across the world. If that’s how I formulate the goal, it’s easy to fail. But if I aim to write to at least three people I appreciate every week, it’s probably more effective.

Still, in a way, I actually don’t feel all too comfortable about resolutions. Do I really need all these targets and deadlines? Do they make me happier, or do I feel stressed by all my self-imposed rules? Does all this planning really make me fitter, happier, more productive?

Or do I create, as the Radiohead songs ends

A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics

If there’s one thing I don’t aspire to (apart from losing my enthusiasm and curiosity) it’s feeling like a pig in a cage on antibiotics yet. Therefore, one of the key parts of my resolutions is to allow time for a break in all of them.

Something has to happen every day. But not everything does not have to happen today.

And breaking the rules is just as important as following them.

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Happiness. Curated by you.

18 December 2013 23:00 , Leave a Comment ,

Nowadays, when you have a blog, you don’t call yourself a blogger. No way. Your title at least is editor, or, to take it a step further, curator. A long time ago, only museums had curators. Then, theatre groups followed. Nowadays, the organisor of a conference is called a curator, and the catering manager curates food.

Anyway. One of the good things of this blog, apart from the fact that it makes me happy, is that friends are regularly sending me great articles about happiness. There are so many great stories of happiness that deserve to be shared, and I can’t always keep up with weekly posts… Therefore, this post brings some of those together: happiness. Curated by you.

 

Happiness and education – curated by Kasia.

Logan LaPlante is not your typical 13-year-old. He has long hair and a hat, loves skiing, and confidently says profound things on the TEDx stage. His argument is very simple: real learning comes from a radically different approach, far beyond the traditional education system. By creating a lot more space for discovery – ‘hackschooling’, as he calls it – we can learn how to make ourselves happy. Why doesn’t our education system teach us that?

 

Material mass unhappiness – curated by Maria.

Materialism promises satisfaction. It delivers despair.

That is the main message of a great piece by Guardian writer George Monbiot under the title ‘One Rolex Short of Contentment‘. The sarcastic remarks are illustrated with unintendedly hilarious pictures from the Tumblr ‘Rich Kids of Instragram‘. Customised car seats, tiny dogs, ridiculously expensive watches, that kind of stuff.

Citing several studies, Monbiot also has a serious message: research demonstrates that there is a causal link between materialism and lower levels of happiness. One example are the developments in Iceland after the crisis researched by Tim Kasser. After the financial crisis, some people focused on material goods to recover lost incomes; others dedicated themselves to family and community values. The well-being of the second group increased. Monbiot’s conclusion is simple: material aspiration is a formula for mass unhappiness.

Image found in Monbiot's article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

Image found in Monbiot’s article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

 

How to build a happy city – curated by Eva.

Some time ago, I already stumbled upon a piece by Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City. Very comforting to a Dutchman, his article seemed to back my claim that cycling to work brings happiness. Montgomery stated that for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.

On the BBC Future blog, Daniele Quercia takes it a step further. Architects are trying to build smart and efficient cities. But they are functional people and interested in how people use space. What would their design look like if instead, they’d wonder how their work makes people feel? Quercia cites the case of Bogota, where residents felt more optimistic on the day the mayor decided to ban cars from the streets for 24 hours. She also mentions work by Yahoo Labs, concluding that cars are associated with sadness. But smart cities are  not just walkable. It’s about identifying the happiest places in a city, and creating routes to connect them.

 

Time for some well-deserved Christmas holidays! I’ll be back on the first Monday of the New Year.

Posted in: personal, science, TED talk, video , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Intense London days

18 November 2013 22:58 , Leave a Comment ,

London, lovely London! I just spent five intense days in the City. The programme was so full with meetings, pub meals, walks and quality time with nice folks that the post on Costa Rica that is writing itself in my head didn’t make it to paper yet.

Back in the metro from Brussels Midi to my stop I realised I was too busy being happy to write about it – probably the best excuse ever. I’ve heard before, in this TED talk by Shawn Achor, that writing down your happy experiences on a regular basis has proven to have a lasting positive impact on your happiness levels. So, here are some of the highlights:

  • A walk to Kensington gardens on Thursday, just after my arrival to London. I had a very long working day on Wednesday. Fifty minutes through a park with coloured leaves, and my head was empty and ready to absorb new experiences.
  • A series of challenging meetings with financial sector experts, and a feeling of mastery and true understanding of what’s happening in this field.
  • Meeting some wonderful old friends in a new environment and noticing they haven’t changed even a little.
  • Sharing a hostel room of dubious quality with nine Dutch guys in a constant flow of mildly offensive remarks and attempts to outsmart each other.
  • The surprisingly flashy colours in the collection of Renaissance art in the National Gallery.
  • Extreme friendliness and hospitality of two friends who now wisely decided to date each other.
  • This lovely piece of street art in Shoreditch:

IMG_0880

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