Your Happiness Factor

   For me the perfect recipe is simple, colourful and delicious.  Here is all I need for a perfect evening at home.  Really, it is a very easy recipe.  All you need to add is some lovely, chunky, fresh bread. Ingredients ·          4 tbsp  olive oil ·          2 medium onions, quartered ·          2 cloves of garlic, crushed ·          1 red pepper, sliced ·          1 yellow pepper, sliced ·          2 large aubergines, halved horizontally then sliced into 3cm pieces ·          3 medium courgettes, sliced into 3cm pieces ·          400 g canned chopped tomatoes ·          small bunch of basil, leaves torn ·          2-3 sprigs of thyme ·          Red wine or vinegar and sugar – added for a more intense taste but optional Method   1.      Heat oil in a large casserole dish and sweat the onions and garlic for 10 minutes on a low heat with the lid on.  2.      Add the peppers, aubergines and courgettes and thyme. Season with salt and pepper, stir and cook for a further 20 minutes wit

A    I ’ve always had a problem with food!   Most of my family have had connections with the land in the past.   Unfortunately my physique, and my taste in food, seems very much more suited to hard physical labour in all weathers in the great outdoors, rather than the sedentary existence I lead now. Even when I am racing around Central London going to meetings, I don’t seem t o use up the energy my appetite seems to want me to consume.  My rather gentle approach to exercise doesn’t help.  It really should be a lot more than walking to the station a few times a week. So I’ve made a decision. I am going to develop a philosophy of eating that treats it almost as  meditation .    In future I shall take much more time to relish what I eat.   I shall work towards having as varied as diet as possible.   And each thing I eat will be the object of my contemplation.   I shall think in detail about what it is and where it comes from.   I shall honour those who have grown or raised it a

Changes in life like redundancy affect us all deeply. They change us and they change our relationships. Redundancy is like bereavement and can leave you with the same gut-wrenching sense of loss, the furious “why me?”. Everyone says it’s not personal, but of course it feels that way to the one who has lost their job. But that sense of loss isn’t just felt by us, it is felt by those close to us as well. Their lives have been changed and probably in ways they would never have chosen for themselves. Sometimes in mass redundancies you can turn that anger outwards and on to the employer or the perceived cause of the problems for example the Bankers. Then the group binds together against the world. If a whole community is facing difficulty, there is likely to be lots of support from within that community – think of the pit villages in the North East of England between the thirties and the seventies. Under siege you pull together. But most of us live in communities without that kind of tradi

   We all feel down sometimes.   I’m talking about those days when something has gone wrong or those odd days when you just wake up feeling down.    I'm not talking about depression here!  If it is happening on more than the odd day, then please have a word with your doctor because depression can strike anyone of us and you will need help to overcome it!  But let us assume you are not ill, you just feel down today. First of all understand that it is OK and perfectly normal to feel down now and then.  It may just mean that you need to take a rest.  Anyway, if you just want to feel brighter, try on these simple techniques to raise your mood. Get a pen and some paper and write down 20 things you are grateful for right now.   It might be the film you watched you last night.  It could be your favourite soap – I love Coronation Street and East Enders .   It can be as simple as the blue sky above you or the smell of the earth after rain; or even what you had for breakfast. Bu

     Daniel Goleman , in  The Meditative Mind :   The key elements of flow are The merging of action and awareness in sustained concentration on the task at hand, The focusing of attention in a pure involvement without concern for outcome, Self-forgetfulness with heightened awareness of the activity, Skills adequate to meet the environmental demand, and Clarity regarding situational cues and appropriate response. When I sit down in my office at to write,   I enter a state of flow and I love it.   I see and feel nothing but the words before me. The state of flow is when you are so fully focused on the task at hand that you no longer realize the passage of time.   You may not feel heat or cold (I don’t) and   you may not hear what is said to you. Being in this state of allows you to achieve high productivity and be happy at the same time.   To enter the flow state, you need a goal; you need to know what you want to do and why.  Vague in