Today, I want to write about maximising happiness.

Many psychologists talk about “being present in the moment”, and that’s a big part of it.

But so is opening our senses in order to fully recognise joy, contentment and gratitude while it’s happening.

I know there are days when nothing strikes us as being nice at all.

But for most of us there are high spots that delight us at least some of the time. And the trick is to ensure we notice and appreciate them.

Naturally, when something exceptionally good happens, it’s easy to feel as if we are replete with gladness. 

Sporting events offer that kind of exhilaration. When your football team gains promotion, or the player you wanted to win Wimbledon does so, it’s an ecstatic feeling.

Many folk also feel utterly blissful at the birth of a grandchild. And of course, falling in love probably eclipses everything.

I was in the hairdressers the other day and a woman there was talking about how, at 55, and very unexpectedly, she was in a romantic relationship again after years of being alone. She was glowing with excitement.  

When something wonderful like this occurs, we’re in a bubble of delicious emotion – and may well think to ourselves, “If I could bottle this feeling, I really would”.   

I’ve been thinking about this, and it seems to me that perhaps in some way we should fix the feeling firmly in our brain, mentally put it in a bottle, and then when a day is not going so well, re-open that bottle in our mind, and focus on the special sensation within.

I believe this could reassure and remind us that we have the capacity for happiness and enjoyment, and that we can experience something this great again.

A couple of weeks ago, I was present at one of the exceptional concerts given by Concerts at Cratfield, the summer music festival held in St Mary’s church in that Suffolk village.  

You’re probably aware of the Kanneh-Masons – the family of seven enormously talented musicians who are becoming internationally famous and sought after. One of them, pianist Jeneba, played at that concert, and it was magical.  

Everything about the performance went brilliantly and she played with the assurance, emotion and virtuosity of an artist twice her age.

At the end, there was a spontaneous standing ovation, and as people left the venue, they were saying they would remember the afternoon for the rest of their lives.

I certainly will too – because as I listened to her, I was full of such a heightened sense of pleasure that I felt acutely and intensely thrilled to be alive.

Now that is something worth mentally bottling, don’t you think? And I have tried to lodge it in my brain, so that I might revisit it if I have a bad day.

That kind of joy doesn’t happen all the time so in more general terms what can we do to become aware and present in those moments when our mood soars – particularly since, in our busy lives, it’s all too easy to be thinking about the next thing we need to do, while we should be appreciating the moment we’re in.

When I was very much younger, I had a friend who liked the same sort of plays and musicals I did and often we went to them together.

But he was quite a tense individual and always as the show was coming to an end, he would become fidgety and start gathering up his coat and other belongings so we could be first out of the theatre and onto to as early a train as possible.

Frequently, he insisted on us leaving before the curtain calls. This felt so wrong, that I had to stop going with him in the end.  His urge to progress to the next thing diluted the delight of the performance before it had even ended. 

So how can we train our minds so that they can tune into the present more and allow us to enjoy good stuff while it is going on?

YouTube is an excellent source of free meditative practices that can encourage this change of mindset. There is a lot on mindfulness, for instance, including a strategy I filmed some years ago. It’s here if you fancy it:

https://christinewebber.com/6-mindfulness-a-10-minute-strategy-to-de-stress-you.

But if this kind of approach isn’t your cup of tea, why not just allow yourself to sit still once a day, and concentrate on your breathing?

At first, your mind will wander but just calmly bring it back to the present and the sound and feeling of your breath.

Try inhaling for a count of 7 and exhaling for 11 and keep going for several minutes. Hopefully, this might prove useful.  

I’ve often had patients in the past tell me that it was only when their lives went badly wrong, that they realised how happy they’d been before. Isn’t that sad? Let’s not make that mistake.