Watch the step-change

My life is about to change. As of September, I will have two kids at secondary school. I will no longer be a mum of young children. Yikes! Where did those years go? Cue midlife crisis.

Freedom at last?

But before I plummet into mourning, I am trying to convince myself that a new, exciting era is about to dawn... Yes! More freedom! I will no longer be wholly defined by my relationship with my children. As they become more autonomous, so will I.

The little things

My 10-year old son and I are playing a game at the moment: the 30-day Happiness Challenge*. I bought it after he finished his entrance exams for secondary school. A bit of light relief. So each day he plucks a 'happiness challenge' from a little box covered in smiley faces. Two weeks in, he's been smiling at strangers, looking back on old photos and walking barefoot in some rather soggy grass.

My main objective is to keep him on a positive track after the stress of all the exams. Like many of us, he can get lost in the more negative aspects of his day. Apparently, this is a common human trait. "Our view of the world has a fundamental tendency to tilt to the negative," says social psychologist Alison Ledgerwood in a TEDx talk. 

How to boost your brain power

Book Review

These days a working knowledge of nutrition has become part of a parent's job description. I'm forever persuading my kids to eat pro-biotic yoghurt, oily fish and crispy kale, with varying degrees of success. If you want to be healthy... I tell them nine times a day. But imagine if you could eat your way to feeling happier, less stressed and more motivated?

The Brain Boost Diet Plan by Christine Bailey is the latest lifestyle-come-recipe book to promise us good health by cutting out gluten and refined sugar. The book is based on the premise that with the right diet, it takes four weeks to optimise your mood, memory and brain health. 

But before you roll your eyes and mutter - not another one - this book is worth a peek. Grounded in nutritional science, it contains a four-step programme to cleanse and revitalise your brain, with lots of tasty recipes that are relatively easy to prepare. It is also well-laid out with plenty of charts, infographics and glossy photographs.

Game on

"Come on Mummy, you can do it!" Could I though? Could I really? It turned out I could. Hop, skip and a jump along the towpath, ignoring the stares of the more sedate grown-ups out for a walk. That's all there was to it. Yes, I know, we are not talking about rowing across the Atlantic here, but for some reason I seem to have lost the ability to play with my children. Now the summer holidays are upon us, I am struggling to re-discover my inner child.

Recovering the lost art of entertaining the kids!

A whole year of working freelance, finishing off my novel and squeezing out the odd blog post has left me devoid of play skills (and I mean the physical, get-down-on-the-floor, act-like-an-idiot mode of play). When my kids were little, I wasn't too bad at it. Apart from that first culture-shifting moment at a Monkey Music class in Earlsfield, where I realised that parenthood now required me to sing ridiculous songs and swing my arm like an elephant's trunk, I generally managed to get down to my kids' level in those early years. 

At the zoo

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

The children came back from their dad's place this weekend full of the joys of spring. As I got supper ready, I listened stoically to their excited tales about going to the Land of the Lions at London Zoo. Apparently one of the male lions came right up to the glass partition and looked like he wanted to gobble up Walking Toddler! Imagine that? What fun! Oh, and Daddy managed to film it all on his iPhone. Wonderful. I can see it now: YouTube sensation as toddler becomes lion fodder at London Zoo. 

Walking Toddler as lion fodder!

Seriously though - I am glad we have reached a point in our lives where our kids are happy to spend time with either parent. Ex-husband and I can pat each other on the back for being civilised grown-ups and managing our divorce in a mature manner...

Happiness is...

As I was driving to meet a friend for coffee yesterday, I caught a snatch of a Radio 4 programme on Stacey Jackson. It was one of those surreal moments when the outside world seems to chime with your own thoughts. Stacey, a Canadian mother of four who became a pop sensation at the age of 40, was talking about her restless ambition to set up a new business selling fitness clothes:

"A lot of people say but she should be so happy, she has four great kids and she's got a great husband... I can't just settle with one source of happiness. I'm so happy when I am up on stage performing in front of thousands of people. I'm so happy when somebody says, 'Oh my God, I love your top! Where can I buy one?' I am so happy when somebody says your son is amazing, he just got into a great university..."

The art of being happy

Don't panic - I am not about to launch my new career as a pop star - but I could see sense in what Stacey was saying. Like many people mired in a midlife patch, I am often trying to analyse what makes me happy and how I should manage my life going forward. 

Psyching up for 2013

Another new year. Time to ring in the changes. January is a month of resolutions, stodgy thighs and enforced abstinence. We leave the excesses of Christmas behind and move into a new phase of betterment. For goodness' sake, why?

Not for me, thanks!
© Photographer: Milogu | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Facebook is full of miserable people bemoaning their decision to give up alcohol this month. Why do we impose these rules on ourselves? Lose half a stone. Go to the gym more. Learn a new language. Be nicer to the children / husband / mother / mother-in-law [delete as appropriate]. 

It's all in pursuit of happiness. Or at least an attempt to increase our sense of wellbeing during one of the bleakest months of the year. Setting resolutions provides a roadmap to a better future!

If we are to believe the American psychologist Martin Seligman, there are five elements that contribute to our sense of wellbeing. So aside from resolutions, we should also be thinking about:

• Positive emotion (life satisfaction, positive thinking)
• Engagement (being absorbed in something to the point of losing self-consciousness)
• Relationships (enjoying and constructively building relationships with other people)
• Meaning (having a purpose in life, belonging to something that is bigger than yourself)
• Accomplishment (achieving goals)

Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was asked to help develop a program to train the US Army in positive psychology. The goal was to make one million US soldiers more resilient to psychological trauma, at a time when the army was experiencing nearly a decade of protracted conflict. As a result, positive psychology is taught and measured throughout the US Army.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Simon Weston, a British veteran of the 1982 Falklands War. Weston, a Welsh Guardsman, suffered severe burns when his ship Sir Galahad was bombed by an Argentine plane. For 23 years afterwards, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which took the form of vivid nightmares, panic attacks and broken sleep. He even contemplated suicide.

After a slow and difficult recovery, Weston has become a motivational speaker, encouraging people to take control of their own lives. He is a classic example of someone who finally achieved post-traumatic growth. "What does not kill me, makes me stronger," the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said.

Of course ordinary people like you and me are unlikely to experience the horrors of war. Our combatants are more often depression, divorce, bereavement, or on a more modest scale, relationship issues and job dissatisfaction. Weston believes that we have to accept our situation and turn it to our advantage. It is all about having a positive mental attitude.

Who knows if this or Seligman's brand of positive psychology work - the US Army is still evaluating the success of its training program - but I am interested enough to put them to the test. So here it is: 2013, the year of engagement, positive emotion and accomplishment (hopefully). I guess it beats enrolling for boot camp or attempting to shed half a stone.


Click here to watch Martin Seligman deliver a lecture on the PERMA elements of wellbeing to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. I would like to thank Jamie Reed, an executive coach and author, for introducing me to Martin Seligman's work. 

Emma Clark Lam is the author of A Sister for Margot