Alastair Campbell’s “5 a Day” for Happiness

Alastair Campbell’s “5 a Day”
Alastair Campbell

Happiness is no longer a cigar called Hamlet, so where can we find it?

At the WACL dinner last week we were all given a free copy of Alastair Campbell’s book “The Happy Depressive” (Arrow Books - £4.99).

It contains a recommended “5 a Day” for “general well-being” - a more modern and sophisticated route to happiness:

  1. Connect with people around you.
  2. Be active.
  3. Take notice -  be curious and aware of the world around you.
  4. Keep learning – try something new.
  5. Give – do something nice for a friend or a stranger.

Actually they’re not just Alastair’s, they are the distilled wisdom of 400 scientists working for the New Economics Foundation.

It is a thought provoking list and I think I can just about give myself a tick for each one – although I immediately feel guilty about not being active enough and not getting on with learning music theory which I have long promised myself I would do.

I recommend the whole of Alastair’s short book because he writes as he speaks in a style which is entertaining while being disarming, funny and frank.

Happiness is, of course, a very big and complex topic, but one thing marketers and consumers can be sure of - as we get richer we don’t necessarily get happier.  There are two excellent charts in the book – happiness in the UK and US plotted against per capita income,  and they are definitely not correlated.  Hence the serious interest  politicians are now taking in measures of “well-being” rather than GDP.

So how happy am I? I can think of three times in my life when I was euphorically happy for a period that lasted longer than a few days.  When I rowed in a winning crew at Henley; when I managed to launch my own advertising agency; and when I got married for the third time.  All were achievements that seemed to  be the culmination of something I had been trying to do for years.

Right now I don't feel happy because I am trying to write this while worrying about all the other things I should be doing in my endlessly complicated job and social life.  I shall be happy (I hope) when I read it in print or in our blog, but I know that the happiness won’t last long.

A more underlying happiness comes from my feelings about my work and my home life and whether they are heading in the right direction.  Perhaps both of these spheres need me to define my “Purpose" more clearly.  This is a word much in my mind at the moment because I have just spent a happy period of a few hours, as a Trustee of Barnardo’s, helping them to bring their “Purpose” up to date.

Meanwhile, Alastair’s “5 a Day” are definitely worth printing out and keeping handy. And  they are definitely better than taking up smoking again - even those lovely mild cigars from Benson & Hedges.

Read more from Hugh Burkitt.

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