The Little Things

It’s always surprising to find that real satisfaction tends to come in the smaller, more spontaneous moments rather than from the big things you spend time planning to get. So much of our focus is on goals and getting what we want, yet the real pleasures in life often fall in the spaces in between – shining moments of unalloyed pleasure, effortless and peaceful.

The novelist, Maeve Haran, has entered the ranks of the happiness gurus with a tome on that very subject, entitled Froth On The Cappucino. She argues that “an appreciation of the ordinary things in life is one of the best gifts because they’re always there for us … when you look around, you find that every day is filled with objects of beauty. All we have to do is notice them.”

She names warm towels, buying flowers for yourself, being met from a journey, sitting in a park and getting a really good haircut as some of the best little things in life, along with looking up an old friend. While the success of Facebook would attest to reconnecting with long-lost friends being a universal pleasure, I would suggest that some friendships are lost for a reason.

In Maeve Haran’s world, “friendship is an amazing tapestry that grows through life”. She recalls being “disgusted when a life coach suggested discarding friends who were no longer positive influences in your life.” Hmm. I’m all for the Pollyanna approach, but having a rigid expectation that all friendships – or relationships – will stay the course is a fast-track to disillusionment.

Good, deep friendships can sustain us for the whole of our lives, but even then they’re not without their ups and downs and our sense ofcloseness isn’t always a constant. It’s the same with intimate relationships – you may always love your partner, but you don’t always like them. Quite frankly, we don’t even always like ourselves, so expecting to adore our friends and partners 24/7 is a pretty big ask.

Again, just like an intimate relationship, you also know when a friendship has run its course. Some people come into your life because you’ve bonded over work or a shared interest and when that comes to an end, you often find that there’s not really enough in common outside of that to sustain the connection. Or you can simply grow apart, as your interests take you in different directions. Even more importantly, you can outgrow a friend who is self-centred, judgemental or jealous. There is absolutely no justification for hanging on to a friendship that’s destructive, however long-standing it may be.

None of us let go of friendship lightly and very often we will persevere long beyond the sell-by date of a toxic friendship. It is not a failure and certainly not ‘disgusting’ to let these relationships fall away. We know the difference between a friendship that’s having a bad patch and one that’s just bad. Hanging on for the sake of a belief that friendships should last a lifetime is self-destructive.

When we have rigid rules about how things should be, these are the true enemies of happiness. We enter the world of sacrifice, doing what we ‘should’ do and not what we feel is right. Authenticity, joy and spontaneity cannot exist where sacrifice rules.

This week, take a look at the immutable laws you live by and see if any of those rules have you hanging on to a way of life, a relationship, a friendship or a habit that no longer serves you. What could you let go of, if you let yourself off the hook? Where are you sacrificing what you want to do, for what you think you should do? Where are you settling for what you can get, rather than what you want?

And where are you failing to see the small pleasures, the little things that make life worthwhile? What are your top three small joys that lift your mood and bring you pure joy? We may not agree on everything, but Maeve Haran and I are as one on the joy of cappuccino – there’s nothing more fabulous than savouring that chocolatey froth!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 3 Sep 07)

The Lounge Lizard & The Laptop


I’m trying a little experiment as I write this week. Normally I’d be tapping away in my office or I’d have dragged the laptop outside, cappuccino in hand, to take the sun, but now that autumn has set in, I’m feeling curled-up and comfy mode coming on. So today I’m emulating one of my favourite authors, SARK, by writing in bed. She does all her writing tucked up under the duvet, in PJs, and that just has to be the most admirable work ethic of all. Personally, I would recommend silk pyjamas for literary inspiration, but today I’ve just propped myself up with a bunch of pillows in my usual day gear. It’s a little too early for PJs, even by my louche standards!

This week has also brought the liberation of wireless working, so I have managed to run my little office from a Prada briefcase in my favourite restaurant, which is pretty much my ideal life. I hate being chained to a desk and as I grew up on tales of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir scribbling away in Parisian left bank cafés, I do have a rather romanticised view of the writing life. Perhaps they did it out of necessity, rather like JK Rowling, who wrote in cafés because she couldn’t afford the heating in the merciless Scottish winters. However, I prefer to believe that they took their inspiration from life and liked to be surrounded by it when working on their art.

Writing is such a strange occupation anyway, because, like any other artist, there’s no useful explanation for where the ideas come from or what makes a writer see things in a different way from others. That goes for all artists – something in them is always searching for a depth of meaning that most people are comfortable to live without.

Anyway, enough with the navel-gazing – let’s get down to business. As you know, I tend to write about the themes that crop up for those around me and I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of tension around friendships of late. Life seems to have been quite difficult for a lot of us lately and that can have a knock-on effect on the quality of our friendships too, as we struggle to cope with simmering tensions.

Sometimes it’s just general life stuff, but sometimes we have to face the fact that a friendship is somehow altered and might be reaching its use-by date. Friends was a great sitcom, but hardly a documentary. None of us are that cheery, supportive or generally all-round good guys all the time. We don’t have little flare-ups and then see them die down in five minutes, to be completely forgotten in ten. We’re also probably on the other side of the city to our closest friends, not right next door, so even keeping in touch can be a challenge.

Television has a lot to answer for, because – like it or not – the cultural images we hold about relationships are often more a product of the small screen than reality or our own experience. Movies, too, give us romanticised versions of friendships that last lifetimes without even a glimmer of a bad hair day. They might make great stories, but they do perpetuate the myth that human relationships are meant to be havens of eternal sunshine. The last time you looked, could you find any friendship that was enduringly and everlastingly upbeat? The answer is no, because it just doesn’t work that way.

Friendships are meant to be uplifting and supportive the majority of the time, but expecting perfection is not only unrealistic but downright destructive. If you cannot accept the vulnerability of humanity in another, you won’t be able to accept it in yourself. Friendships don’t continue on a single note either – they grow and evolve just as you do, and then again sometimes they don’t. Just as in romantic relationships, sometimes you grow together and sometimes you grow apart. It’s not a judgement on the friend, but just an acknowledgement that your paths have diverged.

Rather like the ideal of the marriage that lasts a lifetime, we’ve also bought into the myth of friendships that do the same. Yet our experience differs enormously from that ideal. The more we move around and try different jobs or locations, the more our friendships reflect our interests of the time. Some will last and some won’t. We’ve all had the experience of bonding with people at work, only to discover once we’ve moved on that the only thing we had in common was the job – and usually the habit of moaning about it, as nothing binds people together better than a good whinge about the boss! Friendships come in all shapes and sizes – some burn brightly, then fade away, while others endure in some shape or form for many years. I’ve seen many friendships change character over time, as the closeness inexplicably diminishes only to suddenly resurrect itself as mysteriously as it went.

Perhaps the hardest thing to deal with is knowing that a friendship is really over. We don’t have any useful role models for this, so it’s a tricky one to negotiate – when was the last time you saw a movie scene where two friends came to the amicable realisation that they no longer had anything in common? For the most part, we end up having a bust-up or simply letting the friendship fade away. Neither approach is ideal, but culturally perhaps we’re not quite ready for the level of honesty, self-knowledge and self-worth it would require to have that kind of conversation and still leave both parties feeling good about themselves.

This week, my fabulous friends, I encourage you to take a good look at your friendships and treat them like investments. If they’re not giving you a return, maybe you should think about cashing them in. Maybe you’ve outgrown what they have to offer or maybe you’re just not in that line of business anymore. Look to see what is working and what isn’t. Where’s your secret stash of gold? Who’s the friend you really treasure, but maybe haven’t realised lately just how great they are? Now would be a good time to tell them. Where are you spending your energy – with the ones who are ‘golden’ or the ones where you’re getting nothing back? This isn’t a call to be ruthless, but a reminder that in the long run friendships need to offer something to both parties.

In a good friendship, there’s give and take over the life of the friendship, even if it looks a little lop-sided every now and then. We all have tough times and we all need a little extra support from time to time. A great friendship can embrace the ups and downs, the times of closeness and the times of distance and still manage to stay on track. If you’ve got one of those, recognise just how lucky you are. Truly fabulous friends are few and far between, so count your blessings to have them in your life. And if you want to be a fabulous friend yourself, be compassionate with the ones you love – be willing to overlook the occasional bout of thoughtless behaviour, because we all do it. Just don’t let anyone make a habit of it - you need to be a fabulous friend to yourself too.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 2 Oct 06)

Tea With Uncle Roger

This weekend brought me one of life’s greater joys - taking tea with my friend Charlotte’s Uncle Roger. Age has certainly not dimmed his capacity to savour life, as he enters his seventies with more chutzpah than most people half his age could muster. Hugely entertaining, he’s always a gracious host and his company is so charmingly uplifting that you’re guaranteed to walk away feeling blissful. Everyone needs an Uncle Roger in their lives – someone who’s always interesting and interested, enchantingly supportive and overflowing with joie de vivre.

Life is supposed to be joyful. Too often we get lost in our circumstances and mistake them for our complete reality. Even if some things are tough, there are still plenty of joys to be found, if you have the mind to look at it that way. A huge factor in determining how we feel about life is the kind of company that we choose to keep, so if you want to keep your energy high then you’ll need to keep a weather eye on the quality of your friendships. Uplifting friendships will help to reinforce your enjoyment of life and your belief in a positive future, but friendships that are locked in a negative cycle will drain your energy faster than Colin Farrell can down a pint.

Over at Coach Fabulous a lot of the issues that come up are about friendships and romantic relationships and how these can have a devastating impact on our lives. It’s nigh on impossible to stay stoically positive when all those about you are wallowing in a sea of negativity. That’s not to say that we don’t all have times when we find it difficult to cope or sudden tragedies that knock the wind out of our sails, and as friends we would want to be supportive. However, what is most subversively toxic to your enthusiasm and passion for life is prolonged exposure to people who are stuck in their stories of pain, who continue to moan about their problems but won’t ever take any real action to resolve them.

The US comedy skit show, Saturday Night Live, has a gloriously exaggerated example of this in the character of Debbie Downer, who punctuates any conversation with depressing comments on every topic under the sun. Nothing is safe from her relentless negativity. This is a woman who could find the down side in any eventuality – and does. Lest the men feel left out, the comedian Steve Carrell has brought a male version to life in the character of Bob Bummer, a match made in heaven for Debbie Downer.

The reason the rest of the cast crack up every time Debbie utters one of her downbeat lines is that there’s an essential truth to this character. We all know someone like Debbie or Bob. They’re not just visiting hell on earth, they’ve booked a season ticket. The slow dripfeed of misery is their home from home. They like it so much they’ve taken up residence there.
Life is bound to serve you up at least one Debbie Downer in your group of friends – that’s pretty much a given – but when you start developing your own private collection of them, that’s when it’s really a cause for concern. Being a good friend or partner is about supporting your loved ones, but it’s not about propping them up eternally. Sooner or later you cross the line from being genuinely helpful to simply enabling them to stay stuck. If you’re willing to hear the same tale of woe over and over again for years, without any real effort being made to move on, then you’ve long since ceased to be of any real assistance.

What adds the insult to injury is that not only are you not helping your friend, but you’re draining your own energy while you’re at it. We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone when you’re feeling quite positive, letting them bang on about their problems for hours and ending up feeling like you’ve been run over by a semi-trailer, while they walk away with a spring in their step. When this is a habitual form of relating with someone, it’s a form of ongoing energetic vampirism. There’s also a more subtle version to look out for, where your friends may not necessarily be negative, but the entire interaction is still about them and you barely get a look-in. If that’s standard operating procedure in some of your friendships, then it’s time to redress the balance.

Healthy friendships leave you both feeling uplifted. Unhealthy ones make you feel like you’ve just been psychically mugged – and you have been. So pay attention to who you spend your time with and how you feel afterwards. You’ll already have a fair idea of who the main culprits are, but experiment with noticing how you feel before you meet them and compare it with how you feel afterwards, if you want proof. If it’s a temporary glitch, then hang on in there, but if you know in your heart that you have a Debbie or a Bob on your hands, then have the courage to cut them loose. You’re not helping them and they’re certainly not helping you.

The tone of your personal energy is your charisma, that indefinable quality that makes you attractive to people and draws opportunities to you. Keeping that energy flowing and positive is your responsibility, so no matter how exhausting a Debbie Downer may be, you can’t blame her for draining your energy if you’ve still made the choice to keep her in your life.

This week, take inventory of all the relationships in your life. Who do you really want in your inner circle? Are there some Bob Bummers you could spend less time with or lose contact with entirely? Most importantly, do you have an Uncle Roger in your life? Who is the person who unfailingly makes you feel good about yourself, whatever the circumstances? Whoever they are, take some time to appreciate them this week and let them know how much they mean to you. Make plans to spend time with the friends who uplift you, respect you and know how to have fun.

I shall be occupying myself with a campaign to have Uncle Roger declared a national treasure for the sheer life-enhancing capacity of his presence. What a fabulous way to be … let’s all aspire to being uplifting and uplifted this week.

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 26 Jun 06)