Our “Living Well” weekly theme takes place on the following breaks in 2008
“the unexamined life is not worth living”
Socrates (quoted in Plato’s Last Days of Socrates)
Can you learn to be happy? Yes, according to recent psychological research.
Throughout history, philosophers, authors and other thinkers have debated the “Good Life” and how to live it. For the ancient Greeks, the good life was something that required a lifetime’s cultivation, but could be achieved. Epicurus believed that pleasure was the key to happiness, but he did think of pleasure somewhat differently to how we might think of it now! And many other views have been advanced since then.
The last fifty years have seen a blossoming of ideas on the good life. In particular, psychologists have looked closely at what makes us happy and, in many cases, their conclusions differ greatly from what we actually do with our lives. In many cases, what we think will make us happy, doesn’t do so. Once understood, these insights provide a basis for a happier life in the future.
How often in your life do you do something just for the fun of it – a mindless, laugh-out-loud kind of fun? Maybe you feel too burdened with responsibilities to do something just for fun. We should aim to question what holds us back so that day-to-day happiness can be rediscovered
Many people “live to work” rather than “work to live”. Yet very few people get to the end of their lives and look back thinking “I wish I’d spent more time in the office”. Like people who live a beautiful city and yet never visit the local sites, we often ignore what is around us in pursuit of other, far-off goals. Work-life balance is about letting go of the pursuit of far-off things to the detriment of the present and rediscovering the joy in your regular daily life, right under your nose.
Many of the ways to increase happiness require a different view of the primacy of income and expenditure in our lives. Psychologists suggest that extra income brings only short-term gains in happiness, and that expenditure is rarely as satisfying as we think it will be. Longer term, people’s happiness is not closely related to financial matters. Yet at the same time, very few people are able to create a framework for understanding their financial position and to set out their long-term financial goals. We will examine this issue and consider what such a framework would contain.
Since the 1960s, there has been a steady series of ideas linking the good life to a simpler life. In these views, “graceful” living is curtailed by the complexity of much of modern life and people would be happier if they stepped back a bit from this turmoil. You don’t need t
o live like the Amish to live with grace, but you may find it better to do fewer things in a deeper way rather than spread yourself out, never really developing a deep appreciation of anything
So this week’s theme will look at questions such as how to be happier; how to develop a better work-life balance; we will look at ideas on simple living and downshifting, and even think a little (but not too much) about personal financial planning!
