A Rough Guide to a Smooth Life

Health and happiness have never been so high on the agenda. The books, articles and TV shows on the subject of wellness are overwhelming yet still we see increases in stress related absences, diagnoses of depression and obesity related illness. This is the age of wellbeing where resilience has never been so important and a balanced healthy life has never seemed so elusive.

Throughout my time in the corporate world I have studied and witnessed the evolution of business success and simultaneously the demise of our health. One of the things that I observed and also experienced is that the number one factor in good leadership, good business performance and happy employees is health and wellbeing, even more so in our current climate. Nothing ruins finances, business performance or happiness like poor health. Health and wellbeing have become the biggest challenges of our generation.

Our lives have changed and evolved particularly over the past couple of decades. There is a huge expectation placed on us, especially women. Many women now work full time, bring up children often whilst looking after ageing parents yet are still expected to keep the house, cook most of the meals and make all the social arrangements for the family. It’s a tough balancing act and it’s no wonder we are left looking for more hours in the day, even before finding time for ourselves. The world is on 24/7. Supermarkets, fast food chains, gyms and pubs now open around the clock.

The evolution of electronic connection in the form of our devices means we can also be in the office 24/7 and are never away from our emails. But how sustainable is this way of life and at what cost? The advances in technology in recent years have changed our lives forever. We can see this in the next generation of children growing up now. We live through our devices and can now lead virtual lives, often in place of our real lives.

We text each other rather than talking even if we’re in the same room. We order shopping on line to be delivered and we can buy pretty much anything online now from cars and wives to plane tickets and pizzas. My phone tells me what the weather is doing outside but I could just step out of the door and see the real thing. We read books without ever holding a physical book and can visit far flung corners of the world from the comfort of our sofa, but are we missing out by replacing the real thing with virtual substitutes?

The medical world has responded to these increased demands with more pills that address the symptoms of our busy lives but what about the cause? We can see in the statistics that drugs are being prescribed like never before to treat insomnia, depression, anxiety but what about the causes of these diseases. How can we adapt our lifestyles to address this spiralling demise?

Health and happiness seem to be written about a great deal today but even with the wealth of information out there about what we know we should be doing many of us still seem to have trouble applying it on a daily basis. I was guilty of this myself. I’d read countless articles about improving my health yet I was still making bad choices. I decided to look for new information and experiences to help me figure out how to apply the things I already knew but didn’t do, putting the information into practice and turning what I knew into action. I asked myself “how can I make lasting changes to my lifestyle so they just become a way of life?”

The Happiness Model

This book doesn’t create happiness for you, it’s already there inside. It will teach you how to tap into that and create your own happiness. It is innate in everyone just like the ability to learn new things.

This book is designed to share the information, practical tips and exercises that helped me create my own happiness. I believe happiness is like a jigsaw puzzle which requires all the pieces to make the full picture. This is a guide book on living life, if you want to learn to master something you read a book about it (or nowadays you go on Youtube or Google). When I was growing up there was no book on ‘life’ to teach us the most critical skills of all so I thought about creating one which I hope will inspire you and the next generation as they grow up. This is my manual for living a life you love and finding happiness.

My journey has taught me about the balance required for happiness and how each piece of the puzzle matters. Each part is a sum of the whole and from this my interest in holistic happiness grew. It also opened my eyes to the control we have on our happiness. It is not in a certain place we must travel to, it is not in our status, our bank account or in a 5 star resort on an island beach. Happiness is something within us that we must cultivate and it travels with us wherever we go.

I’ve spent time with corporate business people, hippies on communes, yogis, Buddhist monks and nuns and enlightened ones. Experts in the field of health and happiness, poor people who live very simply, rich people who live very well, athletes and fitness fanatics, those who party hard and sleep very little. People from different cultures in different countries and I’ve taken the best bits I’ve picked up along the way. In the process I’ve learned what doesn’t work for me and what I feel is fundamental for happiness.

Health and happiness are intrinsically linked. When we think of health the first thing that springs to mind is diet and exercise but there’s so much more to it than that. Mental and emotional health are key aspects and by this I mean connecting with others, compassion, being in the present moment, adjusting to change, being resilient in the face of difficulties and being true to your values and living your purpose. We should not underestimate the mental and emotional side of health. The statistics published for depression and mental illness are showing it’s an ever growing problem. Studies are suggesting that being happy actually improves our health and that our mental and emotional state is just as important in keeping us healthy as the diet and exercise we know so much about. The fact is that any of these things in isolation will not bring you good health and therefore happiness. It is a holistic jigsaw and it’s not until all the pieces are put together that you get the full picture of health and happiness.

These are not new ideas. In many cases ancient wisdom talks about similar themes but in times gone by life did not travel at the pace it does now. People did not commute in traffic to work each day, dread the credit card statement arriving or face an inbox of 200 emails. Expectations were very different. We seem to have lost our way over the years in favour of the external search for happiness and look how far that’s got us. However, we are beginning to wake up to the possibility that there may be a different way of living, a happier, more sustainable choice. In an age where science is now telling us what ancient wisdom has known all along. It’s time to revisit the principles for health and happiness, learn how to incorporate this into our modern lives and put everything into perspective to live a life we love.