Investment Happiness Fast

Www Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity Fr 2010 06 20 A Happiness Finding Happiness Life Happiness Happiness Quotes Happiness Richard Layard Money Make You Happy Happiness Layard Can Buy Happiness Money Makes You Happy Money Happy My theory on happiness – we can only know if we have found it when we reach the end | Alastair Campbell

Www Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity Fr 2010 06 20 A Happiness Finding Happiness Life Happiness Happiness Quotes Happiness Richard Layard Money Make You Happy Happiness Layard Can Buy Happiness Money Makes You Happy Money Happy

Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity n Www Www t Www t Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity e Www h Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity asearcht Www osearch searchh 2010 t Www q Www e 2010 t Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity osearch searchh Www r Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity s 2010 a 2010 lt 200 Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity o Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity ea Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity csearch Wwsearch Www t 2010 2search10searchr Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity Ww searchi Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity g Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity ssearchu Www fgsearchi Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity g 19n. searchai Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity searcha Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity e 2010 o Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity searcha Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity searchdsearche19 h Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity ppi Www e Www s Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity rgsearchnr 2010 lsearchw Www l Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity -b 2010 isearchg,thappiness+quotes Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity h Www a Www trsearch 24h Www tpsearchlsearchcsearch harootyoun%20mugurditchianak 2010 r Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity h Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity uld 2010 inc Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity ude17wh 2010 n Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity anal Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity sharootyoun%20mugurditchianng Www p 2010 l Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity c. Cu Www rsearchntsearchysearchm 2010 n Www ssearcher are Www a Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity ksearchdsearchto searchaksearch harootyoun%20mugurditchiancc Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity unsearch o 2010 2010 c 2010 n Www m 2010 csearch 2010 o Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity i Www l 2010 asearchd searchn Www i Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity o Www m Www nt Www l searchmsearchac Www , as well as the effect on gender and racial equality. Now happiness is to be added to that.

I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t believe governments can make people happy in the way that families and communities can but they can and they should think about creating the conditions so to do. Right now mind you I don’t think Mr Cameron is too happy. Or Mr Murdoch. Or Rebekah Brooks. Or the public with them.

Without getting overly political, I can say where I think a lot of his policies will deliver the opposite of happiness, not least in some of the welfare changes, and the cuts to school building programmes, and the end of EMAs, and – well, there’s universities of course – but as a general approach I have no complaint with it at all. I think if we genuinely applied this new approach it could lead to a lot of change.

My daughter has just done her AS levels and is apparently THE most examined year in schools history. We ask of our schools to deliver education and get kids through exams, all under the pressure of regular inspection. But the happiness factor is every bit as important as the exams, and should not be overlooked.

Our approach to the economy under both Labour and now the coalition and indeed governments around the world is to focus on GDP. Yet it is interesting that though we have grown much wealthier as a country and, most of us, as individuals, we are not happier. Professor Richard Layard, who is an advocate for happiness in policy-making, superimposed two graphs – one our wealth which showed a steady rise, and one on our happiness which showed a flatline ending with a bit of a dip. Fair to say poverty can certainly cause unhappiness, but it does not automatically follow wealth causes happiness. Some of the least happy people I know are among the richest.

81% of Brits apparently believe the Government should prioritise creating happiness over creating wealth, according to the New Economics Foundation (nef).

They brought together research from 400 scientists worldwide to come up with the equivalent of “5 a day” for well-being. They are:

• Connect with the people around you
• Be active
• Take notice – be curious and aware of the world around you
• Keep learning – try something new
• Give – do something nice for a friend or a stranger

Despite the phonehacking scandal, I promise that I will not do my usual rant about the modern media. But it is very hard to see how as a country we can be deemed happy when every day more than 2 million of our people feel the urge to buy the Daily Mail. How can we be happy knowing that merely to step out of our Middle England front door is to risk being mugged by out of control kids and asylum seekers?

Envy, hatred and anger do not lend themselves to happiness. Yet much of our media, most of the time, is now slavishly dedicated to making people feel jealous of others, blaming others for their problems, hating others for their actions and attitudes. They have created a kind of whingocracy in which the issues for moaning are put into the papers, and then the radio and TV stations can moan about them for the next 24 hours until the next lot of whinges come round. Add in the criminality we have seen exposed recently, the amorality, the venality, and it is not a happy scene.

The relentless negativity is a relatively new thing. The positive to negative ratio in our national press has gone from 3-1 to 1-18 in three decades.  And if I have one big suggestion for a nice base for happiness – it is to focus more on your own life and experience and put the media largely to one side. There came a day when I genuinely ceased to care what the media said about me. It was liberating. It has helped my happiness.

So on this, I wish Mr Cameron all the best. I wish him all the best with a civil service machine that is not always quick to adapt to new thinking, and which in any event  he is cutting to the bone. I wish him all the best with ministers who will probably say they did not come into politics to make people happy.

This is not a new approach of course. The tiny Buddhist country of Bhutan has for many years had Gross National Happiness as its main indicator, though the methodology is somewhat slanted in favour of the regime. Spin, I believe they call it.

Which brings me to myself, my own views and experience.

David Cameron, like Tony Blair before him, seems quite an upbeat and optimistic kind of chap. I think Gordon Brown would admit to be somewhere higher on the gloom ratings. And as Philip Gould suggested, so am I.

But then I sometimes wonder: are we here to be happy, or to be productive, to become better people, and make a better world?

I can feel happy reading a good book – you know that moment a few pages in where you think yep, this is going to be a good one, and then anything else is just a distraction … I can feel happy watching a good film or listening to good music …… But am I?  Maybe it is less happiness than successful distraction from the reality of the human condition which is not so much permanent happiness or unhappiness as ‘let’s try to get through the day?’

Stimulation is not the same as happiness. Excitement is not the same as happiness. I’m not even convinced that contentment is the same as happiness, whatever the dictionary may say.

Oddly given my own state, my mum is one of the happiest people I know. Rarely down, always smiley and singing, rarely a bad word to say and never a bad word said about her.

Yet often she would say to me ‘ why can’t you just be content?’ Well often I am. But I’m not sure if it is the same as happiness. I can be content after a good meal, but still worrying about a big project coming up that is making me edgy and nervous.

I can be content after a Burnley win but not happy that I happen to be besotted by a football club based four hours from where I live. I enjoy the drive there, hate that drive back. Every second Saturday I do it and win lose or draw between arrival home and MotD something happens and Fiona will say ‘I don’t know why you go to Burnley – it never seems to make you happy.’ It does make me pleased, excited, thrilled, engaged, enervated, often disappointed, even fulfilled but not happy that it takes four hours to get home to a partner who hasn’t even bothered to find out the score.

When I think back about happy moments, they are a strange mix, and the ones that you might expect to be there are not. I was closely involved in three election wins. These are big moments not just in my life but the life of the country. When I transcribed my diaries, I spotted a trend. Let’s start with 1997 …

The scene is Tony Blair’s house in Sedgefield and here is my diary entry, late at night after the campaign has finished and the country is about to vote …

‘TB said afterwards he would never have been able to do it without me. I said I’d loved every minute, then said “that’s a lie by the way.” I called home and spoke to the kids…  I said life is never going to be the same again, because this is part of history and we’re all part of that, our whole family. Calum said “are we definitely going to win?” I loved the “we”. I said yes, I think so, and we might win big. After I put the phone down, I sat down on the bed, put my head in my hands and cried my eyes out. I don’t know what it was. Relief it was over. Letting go of the nervous energy. Pride. A bit of fear. It was all in there. But I felt we’d done a fantastic job. We were going to win and we were going to make a difference. I’d felt the emotion welling up in me for days…  I’d been worrying about Dad’s health and was glad he and Mum would both see this happening, but sad that Bob (Fiona’s father) who’d always said one day Labour will get back, wasn’t there to see it, or even know that Fiona and I had been involved. ‘

Then fast forward to the next day, we have won bigger than any of us had ever imagined – we were even winning in seats we had not campaigned in – and here is my diary entry for the Festival Hall … ‘It was weird. I felt deflated. All around us people were close to delirium but I didn’t feel part of it. We were taken up to a room afterwards, and I said to TB, this is so weird, you’ve worked so hard for so long for something, it comes, you’re surrounded by people who are so happy, yet you don’t feel like they do, and you just want to get home to bed. He said he felt exactly the same. ‘

Four years later, we have won another landslide, the only moment I feel any joy was when I saw my other son Rory waiting for me at Millbank Tower when we came for the victory party, and here is how I close the entry for this, the day of our second great victory . ‘In some ways, I had enjoyed the night more than in 1997, but I still didn’t feel the kind of exhilaration others seemed to. It was also because I knew there would be no let up, and in all sorts of ways the future was unclear. Maybe it was just my nature.’

Now I am only up to 2001 in the published diaries but I am going to give you a sneak preview of 2005, another win … this is after the victory party in London … ‘I was now beginning to share TB’s sense of disappointment at the result. It was light by the time I left and I got a really nice reception from people as I was walking to Victoria Street. A few people were shouting out congratulations from cars,…  but I felt a bit low about it all. … I said goodbye to a few people at party HQ and as I made for the door, there was a spontaneous round of applause. I stopped and looked back and there was a standing ovation going on, which I found really moving. I felt like these were the people I really loved working with … I felt my eyes filling with tears and must have looked like I was crying when I got into the cab home. ‘You should be happy,’ the cabbie said  ‘Three in a row.’