Long Way to Happy?

I’m in the middle of a month-long intensive ESL teacher training course. I don’t exaggerate when I say it’s grueling. Anyone I talk to who’s done it just looks at me, shakes their head and says, “oh you poor thing. I can barely remember the month I did my training.”

I should be, as P!nk so eloquently puts it, a “Long Way to Happy.”

Happy. How do you teach happy to someone who knows no English? Do you simply make a smiley face and point to it? Happiness is something we all want to feel, and yet often find so difficult to define. The Collins Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary says someone who’s happy has “feelings of pleasure, usually because something nice has happened, or because they feel satisfied.”

So where do we find satisfaction? I found some during an “a ha” moment in tonight’s “Rules of Happiness” workshop. I learned, as did those who took part, that we’re all a little bit closer to happy than we might think — we just need a reminder every now and again.

I reckon that one of the easiest reminders is this simple question …

What am I grateful for?

Go on, give it a go. Think of something that you’re grateful for right this minute. Maybe it’s the bed you’ll sleep in tonight. Maybe it’s the fact you got a seat on the tube, or a compliment from a stranger, or that there’s some Ben & Jerry’s in your freezer (or at least in your grocer's).

Here’s an experiment my Life Club is doing. Please join in. Think of one thing you’re grateful for. Then think of four more. One you have the first, the rest come easily. Tomorrow when you wake up, write down five more. Do that every morning for the next week and let me know how you feel. Odds are, it won't be a long way from happy.

Bob

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