How to keep positive and engaged on life's darker days

Sadly, however, we still seem to be in a weather-pattern where we have barely started to soak up those golden, healing rays, when nature throws in yet another curveball. 

So, I decided this week to write on the theme of cheering ourselves up even on the wettest and darkest of days. There’s no doubt that some of us are better at this than others, so I’ve looked at the common characteristics of happy people in the hope they may be of help to the rest of us.  

The top three seem to be:  
1.    An ability to find satisfaction in how they spend their days;

2.    A tendency to focus on being grateful for what they have, rather than dwell on negatives; 

3.    A habit of noticing and appreciating when they’re actually happy.  

Now, many of us derived a great deal of satisfaction from our careers when we were younger. Unfortunately, that environment where there is camaraderie, a mutual goal and job satisfaction is hard to replicate when you’re older and no longer working. 

Of course this isn’t the case with everyone. Some people love retirement and are excellent at packing it with fulfilling activities and leisure. This may be particularly true of adults who spent decades working at something they didn’t particularly like but stuck at because they needed the salary.   

However, I know that very many of us miss the structure and sense of achievement we took for granted at work.  

The other day, I was watching an edition of my latest favourite fly-on-the-wall medical programme. This one is called Geordie Hospital and I really like it because of the dedication of the staff, their spirit and humour and the fact that they say repeatedly how much they love their occupation because they can save lives, or get people mobile again, or even just make them more comfortable in their final illness.  

Now we can’t all tend to the sick.

But there are masses of careers in which job satisfaction plays a big part on a regular basis whether that’s in the charity sector, broadcasting, catering, retail, teaching, or in any other of a large number of professions. 

But now that most of us are without that full-time structure in our lives, what can we do to stop our existences from feeling rather pallid or dilute in comparison?  

Well, we all have skills, and I believe these are the key to increasing happiness. Perhaps we’re very good at cleaning and homemaking and can feel genuinely satisfied when we look at a sparkling bathroom or shiny kitchen.

Many people are great cooks and feel pleasure in turning out the perfect cake or casserole. Other folk are wonderful with their hands and enjoy working with wood and creating a toy for an infant, or a bench for the garden.

Making clothes for others or our ourselves must also be very satisfying. Gardening is another source of creative well-being. Or you might choose something more academic like studying for a maths GCSE to keep a grandchild company. Or try mastering a foreign language before your next holiday. 

So, what would give you guaranteed satisfaction several days a week? I bet there’s something. Please do think about this. I’m sure when you find the right ideas, your happiness levels will rise. 

As for the other common factors in contented and optimistic men and women, as I said earlier, gratitude is a great mood booster. For example, I notice that people who have been widowed appear to deal with their loss in a more mentally healthy way when they focus on how grateful they are for what they had in their relationship rather than dwell on all the negative aspects of loss.

Our minds are fluid and capable of new ways of thinking right up until death so do think about cultivating gratitude and how it might turn you into a more positive person. 

Finally, in my early days as a therapist, I devised a little routine in which I encouraged my depressed patients to notice and write down, every day, five happenings that had made them smile, or given them pleasure in the previous 24 hours. I first wrote about this in 2000, in a self-help book I was commissioned to write called Get The Happiness Habit.

Now, this exercise may seem a very simple thing. And in a way it is. But it means that instead of going to bed contemplating all the stuff that’s gone wrong that day, people are encouraged to focus instead on events that have brought them joy, lifted their gloom and got them thinking differently.

This has worked for loads of individuals over many years. So, if you’ve never done it, you might want to give it a try. 

Of course, if the sun would shine all the time, we might not need such tactics.

But, as we all know, it’s not that perfect a world!