For me, the radio is something I usually only turn on to relieve the boredom of doing housework, or of being trapped in the car for a long-distance journey. It was therefore entirely by chance that I stumbled across an interesting programme this Sunday morning.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee was being interviewed about his newly published book ‘Happy Mind, Happy Life’, in which he talks about the link between happiness and wellbeing.

Drawing on his years of being a doctor, Rangan explains how the state of mind and of body are interlinked – so that if we attend to our core happiness, we will also support our whole wellbeing. Further explaining that happiness is not something that we can just wait for, that it seldom just happens, Dr Rangan recommends several ways we can cultivate and maintain it.

One exercise mentioned in the radio interview has 4 parts to it: 

1)Think of 3 things that you could do this week, which would make you happy. 

2) Visualise yourself on your deathbed, looking back at your life and consider what 3 things you would have liked to have done, that you would feel happy about? 

3)  Look at where your answers to 1 and 2 align – that gives you the answer of what really makes you happy. 

4) Make sure you do something which attends to those things you identified every week, and review it regularly.

Radio hosts Rev. Kate Bottley and Jason Mohammad agreed with Dr Rangan that quality time with family is very often an important happiness factor, and one which is often simple to attend to. The trio also pointed out that dusting the furniture, losing weight or even buying a new car are never going to feature as core happiness factors!

– Feeling  better about ignoring the housework whilst the weather is good, I turned off the radio and set off to do one of the things which really make me happy – spending time with friends, walking in the great outdoors.