Art of Being Brilliant (eBook)

Brace yourself for a complicated formula, a fast-flowing river and two decades of reverse psychology.

You're introduced to a recurring theme of the book – the so-called two-percenters – and then spend a couple of paragraphs luxuriating in the benefits. Oh, and if you've ever wondered how much love actually costs, we have the answer to that, too.

But first, ‘Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains …’

‘Doctor, doctor …’

Maybe you've heard the story of the man who went to see an eminent Viennese psychiatrist, complaining that, for some reason, he felt sad all the time. After some discussion, the doctor said, ‘Let me suggest, as a first step, that you go to the theatre tonight. The great clown Grimaldi is performing here in Vienna. He is so funny, he makes everyone laugh.’

‘But Doctor’, sighed the patient, ‘I am Grimaldi!’

It's a lovely story that holds an important truth. Nobody's happy ALL the time. Sadness is an important part of life. It's okay NOT to be okay. Painting a fake smile on your face is NOT the answer.

Upgrading to ‘best self’ is a BIG part of the answer. Once you have purpose, meaning, positivity, gratitude and strong relationships, a lot of the low-level dreariness melts away.

No, you won't have a smile on your face and a spring in your step all the time, just more of the time

Rocket science

There are some seriously clever people out there. I once got an email from an academic who had so many letters after her name that I thought she might have had a stroke and collapsed on her keyboard!

I doff my cap to the heavyweights, but personally, I'm a big fan of simplifying their academic hieroglyphics.

Here's an example. Researchers at University College London spent a load of time and money researching the secrets of happiness and, guess what, they did exactly what you'd expect scientists to do. They justified their research paper by creating a formula.

You ready for it?

Please imagine a drum roll … while I reveal what humans have been searching for since time began – the secret formula for happiness, according to UCL3

… is this …

You'll most likely be scratching your head in befuddlement and thinking what I'm thinking – what the heck's all that about?

If you unpick the formula it basically suggests that you should lower your expectations of happiness, and that way, you'll never be disappointed.

I have several issues with the formula. First, they seem to have confused it with rocket science; second, it's wrong (why on earth would you go through life with such low expectations?); and the third, the secret of happiness doesn't require a complicated formula at all.

For those who like simple science, read on …

Reverse Psychology

I'm a rotcod. That's ‘doctor’ backwards! I'm basically the exact opposite of all the other doctors you've ever met.

I'm not a medical doctor. I can't whip your appendix out and please don't ask me to look at your rash or the fungus between your toes.

I'm a Doctor of Positive Psychology. Let me explain …

Since its birth in the 1800s, the subject of psychology has largely been a ‘disease model’. It's predicated on illness. Most psychologists study disorders – anxiety, depression, phobias, trauma – those kinds of things. This makes perfect sense because once someone from the medical profession has diagnosed you with something they can apply therapy, counselling or meds to help you.

Psychology exists for the right reasons. ‘Fixing’ people is an incredibly noble and very useful thing to do.

But (and it's a big BUT) despite the combined efforts of the psychological profession – 150 years of administering the best therapy and medication that we can concoct – the truth is that mental ill health has been getting steadily worse, not better!

Look around. Depression, anxiety, panic and stress … they're all on an exponentially upward curve. It's incredibly common for people to be taking pills to combat the side-effects of the side-effects of medication they're taking for whatever the original problem was.

The median age of mental ill health is being lowered, meaning that more and more young people are succumbing to anxiety (and worse). At the time of writing this sentence, we're just short of 100 million antidepressant drugs being prescribed every year in the UK (that's way more than there are people), and by the time you read this sentence that figure will have climbed.4

The grimmest statistic of them all is that global suicide rates are close to a million people a year. The sobering reality is that one person is taking their own life every 40 seconds.5

My point? Despite the well-intentioned efforts of doctors, therapists and counsellors the truth is that mental ill health has skyrocketed. That's a big fat clue that the current approach might need a re-think.

A white-water life

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a man with a twinkle in his eye. ‘The Arch’ and Mr Mandela were probably as influential a pair as the world has ever seen. Tutu used to tell the story of a man standing on the bank of a fast-flowing river. Above the sound of the torrent he heard someone yelling and he looked upstream to see a woman being carried by the current, arms waving, ‘Help, help, I'm drowning!’

The man secured his life jacket and waded in, pulling the drowning woman to safety. As she coughed and spluttered in her recovery, the man heard another call for help and he waded in again, this time rescuing a teenager in trouble.

No sooner had the young person been pulled from the swirling water, there was a third, fourth and fifth drowning person.

At which point Desmond Tutu delivers the punchline like only Desmond Tutu can. He says there comes a point where we need to stop pulling people out of the water and go upstream to find out why they're falling in in the first place.

The Arch has beautifully articulated the difference between traditional strands of psychology (the noble art of rescuing people who are struggling) and positive psychology (equipping people with strategies so they are able to rescue themselves).

The therapy and counselling professions are overwhelmed by metaphorically yanking people out of the river. Upstream is where we need to be. There is a lot of ‘white water’ in the modern world. Positive psychology is about learning to be your own first responder.

The rise of the two-percenters

‘Positive psychology’ is a subject popularised by Professor Martin Seligman.6 It's been around since the 1990s but the Prof. wouldn't claim to have invented the study of wellbeing and flourishing – they've been on the radar for centuries. Go way back and you'll have heard Plato and Confucius banging on about the good life. More recently, Carl Rogers, Howard Gardiner and the god of management courses the world over, Abe Maslow. All have elements of self-fulfilment, happiness and subjective wellbeing in their studies. So although it's hitting today's headlines, I guess positive psychology is best described as having a very short history with a very long past.

As hinted at earlier, there's a general acknowledgement that for its 150 years of existence psychology has been predicated at illness rather than wellness. The subject has developed branches, or specialisms, to deal with the various ailment offshoots. Excuse my pen portraits, but clinical psychology tends to be about easing mental suffering while developmental psychology often focuses on impairment of language or motor skills. Forensic psychology helps solve crimes and catch serial killers. Neuropsychology is often about brain disorders, educational psychology helps work out why children are struggling at school.

In short, you're very unlikely to be referred to a psychologist if you're buzzing with health, happiness and vitality!

Basically, if individuals lie on a range of wellbeing from –10 (very unwell) to +10 (very well indeed) then we've always been focused on getting people from say minus 8, 9 or 10 to zero (to the point of them ‘not being ill’). Job done! Except of course it isn't!

Positive psychology is about getting to a plus 8 or 9. In my research I describe this as ‘flourishing’.

Fascinated by the positive end of the wellbeing spectrum, I decided to do the exact opposite of what most of the other psychologists were doing. My idea was this; what would happen if, instead of studying poorly people, we studied well people? So, instead of finding out what's wrong with you, we revealed what's right with you.

I surveyed a whole bunch of people to gauge how happy they were, and plotted them onto a wellbeing graph.7 The hugely simplified cartoon version looks a little bit like this …

Broadly speaking, if we measure levels of happiness and wellbeing on the lollipop chart, most people in the developed world inhabit the ‘perfectly fine’ zone. We generally have reasonable health, a roof over our head, a fridge full of food and a comfy bed. In...