Your Own Kind of Happy

I can't really go on any further without saying a little about the title of this blog.

Even as a little girl, when I saw the deep unhappiness which constantly seemed to envelop my father I wondered why there wasn't a book which he could read which would change all that. I dreamed of writing that book one day.

As I got older and learned more about the world, I was often struck by the fact that humans have achieved so much - they have explored the world, built skyscrapers, visited space, cloned animals, cured diseases, developed the internet and harnessed power from the sun. All of these things way beyond anything I could hope to achieve and the result of brilliant and focused minds. But despite all of these advances and achievements, as a species humans have still have not learnt to be happy - even though you would have thought this to be a priority to people with brilliant minds all over the world.

For years I wondered why this was. Why on earth were so many people still depressed and why did this seem to be a phenomena that was, if anything, getting worse? How was it possible we could achieve so much in some spheres and so little in others? In fact, when I finally understood the answer it was staggeringly simple, despite having taken an age for me to realise it.

The reason no one has succeeded in laying down a happiness-formula is because happiness, contentment, fulfillment - or whatever you want to call these things, are not the same to any two people on earth. Not entirely anyway. Certainly, there are many common elements which experts agree need to exist in order for us to flourish. But give the same life to two different people and while one might feel content, the other one could feel like dying.

The fact that no two people are exactly same and no two people's experiences are entirely the same, means that the way we will come to feel content, fulfilled or happy is not the same either. I have a good idea these days of the things, people and activities I personally need around me in order to stave off depression. But giving YOU this list would be pointless, because my own list is derived on the basis of my own life as it has been and everything I have experienced within it. It almost certainly would not work for you.

And this is perhaps the first useful lesson I learned on my road to where I am now.

In order to feel happier and in order to beat depression, you cannot expect anyone else to come up with the answers on your behalf. Because there is no way anyone else can see your life entirely through your eyes, experiences or memories. This is something only YOU can do. The good news is though, that you do have the answers in there somewhere. What you need in your toolbox are the questions that will allow you to come up with your own answers - and these are the questions which I hope to give you so that you can use them in your own life.

So that's it then, the reason for the title of this blog. Although I will share some of my personal story with you, the blog is not about inviting you to live as I do with the promise that you too will feel better for it. It is about embarking upon your own personal journey which will reveal to you what no book has been or will ever be able to do. It is about using these tools and questions to discover and then harness YOUR OWN KIND OF HAPPY.