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...

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...