The Ugly Duckling Company

As quickly as it started, the Happiness Lab course draws to a close, yet as we sit in this dark, dusty hall for the last time, we have one last evening ahead. Week number six is all about resilience: how we cope when life gets (as it inevitably does) hard. Psychologist Roger Bretherton stated that there’s two coping mechanisms that people have: problem solving and “acceptance”. Problem solving is the mechanism to try and work out our problems, but for the bigger issues in life that we often can’t do anything about, acceptance is also key. As a full group, we worked together on a mind-map: highlighting the kind of traits needed to come back from a significant life difficulty to carry on as normal. On this list, we included the likes of patience, hard work, learning from the experience and the need to surround ourselves with positive people: professionals, family, friends, or perhaps all three. Self-belief was also referred to, and this was the biggest for me personally. I thou...

The soul is the “deep” and “natural longing that we have to address those questions of purpose and meaning” in Bishop Martyn Snow’s mind. This definition of ‘soul’ in particular intrigues me, because I feel that everybody is searching for at least some level of truth in their lives. Snow’s statement implies that humanity’s search for truth, however great or small, is part of our souls and therefore not simply our genetic coding. Up to this point in the session, the main thing that had stuck with me was the talk of ‘parrots’ and ‘peacocks’. A ‘parrot’ was defined by Nigel (the programme facilitator) as “that voice on the shoulder”, the words that have stuck with us from points in the past, that impact us negatively. Conversely, the ‘peacocks’ are the voices of encouragement we remember, the words that give us confidence. I have to admit, I really struggled to remember too many of either on this occasion, yet one idea from the group did stick out: maybe we can be our own ‘parrots...

Every eye in the room is glued to the little pink head. The baby can barely keep its eyes open, but it pokes out its tongue, time after time. The screaming of another child out of shot deters no-one: we’re all transfixed. The clip ends. It was at the start that the Dad, out of shot, had explained he would poke his tongue out at his child and observe the response. The baby was only an hour old. Facilitator Nigel now explains that we’re hardwired to respond to other people, even from such a young age, which is why the baby responded as it did. As we move on, we’re set an exercise: work in a group of five so that we have a square each, all the same size. The one catch: we’re not allowed to communicate. I found this to be a generally enjoyable task: everybody in my own group moved their own pieces into the centre where we constructed them together. In no time at all, we were pulling them back towards us, all perfectly the same size. I noted that one person took charge from the star...