There’s a poster up in tube stations at the moment which shows a pair of legs poking out of a tent in a field. “The way I get rich,” goes the strapline, “is by adding DOING NOTHING to my to-do list.” It’s an advert for the wellbeing benefits of camping, but its message — that people can be “richer” once they stop defining wealth and success by the size of their bank account — chimes impeccably with our times.
Last week, the phenomenally successful singer Adele (her last album has spent 16 weeks at the top of the UK album charts and she made this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with a personal fortune of £6m) admitted that she’d turned down a summer of mega-bucks arena gigs and festival appearances in favour of “sitting in Brockwell Park with my friends, drinking cider”. Staying connected with her friends is more important than “getting another million in the bank”, because, “what if I come out the other end and I don’t know who I am? That’d be horrible”.
The girl’s got her priorities right, you’re probably thinking. Well, quite. But it seems only recently that we started thinking this way. A glut of self-help and pop-philosophical books on what really makes us happy, not to mention David Cameron’s ‘happiness index’ and Big Society idealising, reflect a reassessment of the things that truly constitute a life well-lived. A redefinition of success.
For many of us, this has meant, and will continue to mean, a gradual reshuffling of our priorities. But that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the choice is even ours — especially when we need to pay the mortgage and our BlackBerry is liable to drag us back to work at any moment.
Then there are the naysayers. Look at the outrage that greeted reports that Kate Middleton plans to be a stayat-home wife. Granted, only the privileged can afford to give up work altogether, but shouldn’t she be free to make that choice without being labelled lazy or worthless?
Matthew B. Crawford used to run a think tank in Washington, largely funded by oil companies. “I landed the job because I had a prestigious education in the liberal arts,” he told me recently, “yet the job itself felt illiberal, and the tie I wore started to feel like the mark of a slave.” In his spare time, Crawford set up an improvised space to repair his motorbike, a 1975 Honda CB360. Soon he was fixing other people’s bikes too. His new life as a mechanic had begun.
A few years ago, convinced like Crawford that we could all gain from spending less time chasing “success” and more time exploring what really feels fulfilling, I started to combine journalism with growing my own food and making my own clothes. Why? I just felt like it. I had some setbacks, but overall the experience has been enormously rewarding. After writing a book about it, I was invited to teach classes on “How to Realise Your Potential” at The School of Life, in London. Many classes later, I’m still amazed at the number of people with good jobs and comfortable lives looking for more. Some want to see the world. Others want to write, or take photography more seriously. Others still may want to prioritise their relationships.
David Brooks hints at this variety in his book, The Social Animal, which David Cameron has advised his cabinet members to read. Human ‘flourishing’ (his definition of achievement), he says, involves “putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people,experiences, or tasks”. Martin Seligman, another of Cameron’s happiness gurus, argues a similar case in his new book Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing — and How to Achieve Them. He identifies five strands of human wellbeing: engagement, positive emotion, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment. But with the endless choices of modern society splayed out in front of us, how are we to identify what will really fulfil us, make us feel rich? One way might be to draw up a list of things you always dreamed of doing before a careers adviser, or similar well meaning busybody, told you to forget it.
Additionally, you could list, say, seven things in the past that made you feel particularly alive. In each case, consider carefully why: for instance, if you list “golf”, is that because you are competitive and sporty, because you like walking in fresh air, or because of the pretext for long conversations with friends? When you’ve identified the underlying reason for your enjoyment, in each case think of other activities in which you might achieve the same particular satisfaction. Richard Nelson Bolles, in his classic book What Colour Is Your Parachute?, recommends taking 10 sheets of paper and writing 10 different (short) answers to the question, “Who am I?” Afterwards, compare them and write down what you particularly like about each answer. Then put the sheets in order of preference: it will soon become obvious where your route to fulfilment lies.
Once you’ve identified it, you can start to pursue it. And unlike Kate Middleton, particularly if your definition of success still includes a healthy bank account (and there’s nothing wrong with that), you needn’t necessarily give up the day job. Wallace Stevens, for instance, was an accomplished poet with a job in insurance. Richard Reynolds, who worked in advertising when he first took it upon himself to tidy the fag-end infested municipal planters outside his flat in south London, is now leader of the fast-growing, global movement of guerrilla gardeners.
Many people resist the idea that a life of fulfilment is possible. It’s easier to pretend the matter is out of their hands rather than to acknowledge their own responsibility. But as Tom Hodgkinson, the hard-working editor of The Idler, puts it: “If we say we don’t have enough time to do something, what we really mean is that we don’t want to do it, and have allocated our time to different things instead.” And what he really means is, if every instant had monetary value, how could we justify watching TV, or staring out of the window — or even going to bed — instead of doing paid work? There is value in all the things we choose to do, the trick is working out which are valuable to you.
John Paul Flintoff is on the faculty of The School of Life. He will be leading our ‘How To Have Better Conversations’ session on 27 July. For further details, click here.
Reproduced with thanks to The Sunday Times and John Paul Flintoff
A man needs to hold on to the right to be miserable, as it is the only thing that makes him really happy when he is sad.
Posted by: Drew Byrne | July 13, 2011 at 01:12 AM
I really feel like loosing time and I don't feel love about anything I do.
Maybe it's because I forgot what brings me pleasure.
And I lost myself pursuing the success my family expected from me.
All my cousins are succeed on what they do. At least I think so.
And I keep going from one side to another without sticking to anything.
I remain completely empty inside. I would like to be a wife. But love is not
a easy goal to achieve. In fact I achieved what I would like to be when I was
younger. And now, it doesn't give me pleasure anymore.
I'm going to try the hints in the text.
I already love School of Life!
You guys rock!
Best wishes,
Ana.
Posted by: Ana Ferreira | July 04, 2011 at 08:50 AM