(Photo: 2006 UK Gurning Championships - James Walker, 2nd place (under one’s))

I was very fortunate to have had grandparents who grew up in very different times to me. My grandmother was born in 1906 at a time when the opportunities for ordinary people were incredibly limited and when expectations were generally much lower than today. She was an incredibly cheerful woman. I never heard her say a bad word about anyone or anything. She liked to tell jokes and sing silly rhymes. Her brother was in much the same vein; always cheerful and smiling and highly appreciative of the good things in life.

As a child, I went with my brother and sister and grandparents on ‘mystery tours’ that the local coach company organized, where the destination was never known. More often than not we would end up at the seaside and on the way back we would stop for fish and chips without fail. The coach was full of my grandparents friends, all residents of the same village. One of my fondest memories of those trips was how someone on the coach would start singing and everyone would join along. I learned such songs as “It’s a long way to Tipperary” and “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag” from such trips. This was the generation that went through two world wars, the great depression and the years of rationing in the aftermath of WWII. I’ve never known such a cheerful bunch of people. It was a time when people left each other’s company by saying “Cheerio!”

My mother’s generation was generally nowhere near as cheerful. They seemed to struggle more with obligations to conform, to keep up with the Joneses and the examples and expectations offered by television. My mother is now the same age as my grandmother was when I went on all of those coach trips. I asked her whether people sing on the coach and she said that that never happens.

My generation grew up even less cheerful. In the midst of the greatest levels of prosperity, opportunity, technological and material wealth that the developed world has ever known we seem to have the greatest levels of cheerlessness. As our material and survival needs have become easier and less time consuming to fulfill we have become more and more preoccupied with satisfying abstract desires such as success and happiness. It seems like the more we chase after those things, the less we have of them.

My generation (and those following close on behind) have been encouraged to aspire for ever higher (and hence unlikely to get) desires. I have long felt obligations to compete, to excel and to be outstanding, whilst still conforming and toeing the line. For too long I attempted to do the highly unlikely and to balance conflicting ends. I ended up immobilized, downtrodden and despairing.

Throughout all of that though, I kept on thinking of my grandmother and those of her ilk. I wondered how I could get back to cheerfulness. The answer lies in managing desires. As Lao Tsu said millennia ago in the I-Ching, “The people are happiest when the rules are fewest.” Rules are another form of expectation and hence desire. When we load ourselves up with more and more rules, expectations, obligations, objective desires, needs and beliefs we end up making our lives almost impossible to contend with. All of these desires create setpoints upon which to judge ourselves. The more we have of them and the more difficult they are to achieve, the more unlikely it is that we will fulfill them and the more likely it is that we will feel pervasive negative emotions.

The art of cheerfulness thus lies in shedding as much of the baggage of expectation as you can. By having few desires and expectations, cheerfulness returns. Unlike a lot of blogs and literature in the field of personal development, I rarely write about happiness. Happiness is a consequence of managing desires more sensibly and of taking actions that fulfill desires. Do those two things and happiness is a guaranteed by-product. The other reason I don’t write about happiness is that it is a relative state and not an absolute state. As soon as you raise the bar on happiness you set a new standard to judge happiness against. That means that if you have a few ‘off-days’ that you might feel relatively unhappy, even though all the underlying trends in your life are going great. I don’t see much value in this and so cheerfulness is my aim. When you feel cheerful you absolutely live moments well and you know it. In the game of life it’s always in the moment that we win or lose our benefits.

When you feel cheerful it radiates from you. No one asks a cheerful person “Are you happy?” because the result is plain to see: smiling face, sprightly step, open gestures, warm and welcoming speech, playful attitude, helpful actions, and sometimes a whistle, a dance, a song. I often wonder that when people say that they want more happiness do they actually mean that they want to feel cheerful on an on-going basis?

Another great thing about cheerfulness is that we can kick-start it quite genuinely and then benefit from the better attitude that results:

• Count your blessings - the reverse of focusing on what you haven’t got and a fillip for getting in touch with sources of strength and resource that allow us to remember that we have a lot going for us.
• Make a list of personal accomplishments, skills, heartening experiences, fun moments shared with other people and so remember what you have done and what you can do again as long as you keep making the necessary efforts.
• Sing a song (even if it’s just in the shower, or in the car). I was shy to sing until I was introduced to karaoke by a Japanese business man during my time in Bangkok. It really is great fun and once you belted out a few songs it always improves your mood. It’s real ‘in the moment’ living life to the full and it’s also great fun.
• Give a little whistle - singing heartily on the street is a little unusual but whistling is a great alternative. When was the last time you heard someone whistling? It’s high-time that we revived this little tool in the arsenal for expressing cheerfulness.
• Pull silly faces in the mirror - this is a nice way to put an end to taking yourself seriously. In parts of England they even have an ancient sport dedicated to the art of pulling ridiculous faces. It’s called gurning and there’s even a world championship
• Watch some comedy (use Stumble Upon to get comedy clips randomly delivered to your browser and why not review my site while your at it and spread some cheer in my direction?)
• Visit websites with collections of jokes, limericks, silly rhymes and funny quotations.
• Play that special piece of music that whenever you hear it makes you want to dance (come on, I know you must have at least one) and start dancing. When I do a full clean of my apartment I play bluegrass banjo music. It makes me want to jump and holler and I channel all of that frenetic energy into my cleaning. It’s now a ritual - works every time!

Purposely make a stop in your day, routine or week to relax and do some of these pleasurable things - give yourself the luxury of some cheerful time.

What makes you instantly cheerful? What songs instantly bring cheer or make you want to dance and party?