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...

We go into session number three knowing it’s going to be difficult: we pretty much agreed at the start of the course forgiveness could be the hardest of the habits to practice. As we were divided into groups to discuss what forgiveness ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’ at the start of this session, people were still generally unanimous in thinking this way. We also found that forgiveness is not quick: there’s generally a lot of work involved. We looked at the case of a priest, Fr. Michael Lapsley, who had been the recipient of a letter bomb; which took both of his hands and one of his eyes. The blast also shattered his ear drums. As the letter bomb was carefully disguised in-between some religious magazines, it was clear that this attack was calculated, and deliberately aimed at Lapsley. Lapsley described original feelings of “hatred and desire for revenge”, but went onto say that nowadays if his attacker was to confront him and ask for forgiveness, his first question would be “have you stopped...

We are all sat in a half-horseshoe like shape, waiting for the night to take action. Having just eaten, the atmosphere is almost comfortable, but for the blaring lights: firing on all cylinders to discomfort the eyes in the room. This is it; not the first official week, but an important one nonetheless. In these few seconds alone, we await the introduction to the six week journey we are about to embark on together. The pursuit of true happiness is about to come to life this evening as we prepare ourselves for ‘The Happiness Lab’ course (funded by the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’). Starting from the 9/9/2015, this course will run every Wednesday until 14/10/2015, where all of us in this room will learn the secrets to true happiness. Largely inspired by The 8 Secrets Of Happiness (Paul Griffiths, director of the ‘Ugly Duckling Company’, & Martin Robinson), the course will be filmed, with a subsequent DVD planned for release. The main aim of this course is to unpack six kinds of be...