BBC News: Path to true happiness revealed!
The BBC is revealing the path to true happiness. No sorry, President Bush and Tony Blair are not resigning! Things are not quite that happy yet! The BBC is revealing another kind of happiness. A team of six specialists: a psychologist, psychotherapist, work place specialists, a social entrepreneur (?) – with an OBE no less, and a man whose expertise spans philosophy, public policy and economics (?), made a three month experiment to improve the happiness of a UK town. The lucky town chosen was Slough. Now why they chose this town I have no idea, perhaps it was the most depressed town in the UK before, or perhaps Tony Blair had been there, or they just pulled the name out of a hat. Taking 50 volunteers from this apparently unhappy town they measured the individual happiness or unhappiness (the half full-half empty glass view of things) and gave the volunteers 10 simple strategies to follow. The increased happiness of these volunteers was to cause a ripple effect, like on a pond, across the town.
The 10 steps to happiness are as follows: Plant something and nurture it, Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day, Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week, Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up, Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it, Have a good laugh at least once a day, Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week, Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day, Cut your TV viewing by half (ironically the BBC television filmed this experiment and are showing this in a four part series), Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day.
They also got the volunteers doing things like dancing in a supermarket aisle, to a spot of graveyard therapy and tree hugging. If you want to increase your TV viewing you can see the results on the BBC.
This is the path to true happiness and apparently it can be achieved even with Tony Blair and President Bush still in power, although this might be hard to imagine!
The 10 steps to happiness are as follows: Plant something and nurture it, Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day, Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week, Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up, Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it, Have a good laugh at least once a day, Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week, Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day, Cut your TV viewing by half (ironically the BBC television filmed this experiment and are showing this in a four part series), Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day.
They also got the volunteers doing things like dancing in a supermarket aisle, to a spot of graveyard therapy and tree hugging. If you want to increase your TV viewing you can see the results on the BBC.
This is the path to true happiness and apparently it can be achieved even with Tony Blair and President Bush still in power, although this might be hard to imagine!
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