How To Be Happy #1: You Are Not Your Job

With the hemisphere shift and pressing the pause button on my career, it's no secret I've been thinking a lot lately about the different ways of measuring success, and recognising there IS a different approach to achieving happiness.

Do watch this TEDtalks vid from Alain de Botton -- the author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

"One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

Rules for happiness: 2012 edition

• Do the hardest thing(s) first
• Sleep at least 8 hours a night
• Practice yoga asana 6 days a week
• Take full breaths
• Take a digital sabbatical one day a week
• Eat natural, nourishing foods that agree with me, i.e.: no wheat or casein
• Speak up for what I need
• Act the way I want to feel
• Remember birthdays
• Laugh out loud
• Be fully present in each moment
• Spend time in nature as often as possible
• Listen to my body and nurture it
• Move towards my dreams daily
• Apply structure to weekdays
• Reach out to others in a crisis
• Arrange to always have leftovers in the fridge
• Avoid experiences with prohibitive cancellation fees
• Never buy cheap shoes
• Indulge in a salon blow-dry before long-distance plane travel
• Don't neglect self-care and grooming. It profoundly affects self-worth
• Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength
• Arrive early and breathe
• Say yes to invitations

Routeburn Track

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Behind the scenes of a MediaStorm workshop

In December 2008 I took an Advanced Multimedia Workshop at MediaStorm in NYC, producing Beautiful Noise with Eric Maierson, Brian Storm, Morag Livingstone and Mariele Paley. Here's a pictorial journal of the week-long process.

Jetlag-busting breakfast at Heartbeat in the W Hotel. Sadly not where I was staying, but close by. Flickering open fire and a gorgeous smell of the signature W candles.


Christmas at the Rockefeller Center


Decadent takeaway zucchini and pine nut lasagna from One Lucky Duck takeaway near Union Square, over the Times review of the Metropolitan Museum's Byzantine and Medieval galleries I'd swooned over that afternoon (before the jetlag struck).


The street view from my hotel room.


Where the magic happens


DUMBO view from the window


Two-thirds of the best workshop team ever (Morag Livingstone and Mariele Paley) with our minder/mentor, Eric Maierson


Saks holiday lighting spotted on the walk home from the subway


Workshop group begins reporting in the East Village


Morag, Eric and Mariele shadow Evelyn's every move


In the public garden


Old meets new in the gentrified East Village


Takeaway sopes cactus from Hecho en Dumbo while we worked into the night


Another early morning, another wait at Bleecker Street for the subway back to my hotel bed


Working mac 'n' cheese lunch from Bubby's


Morning juices from the fabulous Forager's Market kept me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed


Burning the midnight oil (pic by Morag)


Best workshop team ever have their wrap party at Zum Schneider


Final feed was a portobello mushroom quesadilla at JFK airport