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 thought that to deal with a major
life hardship, there has to be that almost instantaneous belief that you can
come back, and come back stronger. Indeed, when I told the group what I’d
mainly learned from the Happiness Lab experience, I had to say that it was to
try and maintain a more consistently positive attitude, through good times and
bad.
We also moved on to discuss the idea of ‘rituals’. In my own personal
experience, I haven’t dealt with too many life difficulties, certainly none that
have been really serious, but I often find my happiness level decreasing when I
notice that life is too ‘samey’ (when there’s not enough different things
happening). On the subject of rituals however, facilitator Nigel went on to ask
“how would it feel if someone died and there was no funeral?” Everybody agreed
that not only would it be weird, but there would be no sense of closure. Nigel
then expressed that simple things such as handshakes were also rituals, and
expressed that common rituals can actually really help us move on from bad life
experiences. This is because they give us a sense of normality, that life is
really moving on as normal: therefore helping us move on.
The session draws to a close, but the night goes on. Here on the last
night, everybody is sticking around for a chat with each other, talking about
the things they’ve learned on the course. People are already looking forward to
December 16th, when we plan to meet up for a meal and discuss how
life will have gone since now. As I hoped at the start of the course, everybody
has come in, and made some new friends from this experience. It could not be
clearer from the smiles that light up the room that this course was a
worthwhile experience.