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I would have written a blog sooner but I’ve been laid low by one of the worst  winter viruses I’ve ever been smitten by. This is why the following report on our great thriving event is later than intended.

Last  Tuesday the Centre held an evening event called Thriving in Turbulent Times in the Glasgow University Union. We had four speakers all talk on different themes – many of the 180 who attended went away saying it was the best event they’d been at in Glasgow for a long time. That was praise indeed given that the venue was pretty cold.

Basically what people got from the event is what the Centre had intended – to be presented with information which counters the whole idea, now dominating in the media, that life is primarily about money and material goods. Of course money and material security matters. What’s more, unemployment is not good for how people feel about themselves and their lives. So if the impending recession ushers in lots of redundancies – as many commentators are predicting -  then there will be lots of pain. Nonetheless we must struggle to get economics in perspective. Pleasurable feelings, happiness, satisfaction can all be generated in different ways.

Nic Marks, from the New Economics Foundation based much of his talk on the recent Foresight report on Mental Capital and Wellbeing. Foresight is a think thank connected to the Westminster Government.  The Foresight report was based on findings gleaned from  more than 400 scientists in the well-being field. The  came up with a ‘five a day’ idea for well-being -  connecting with others by enriching relationships with family, friends and colleagues; being active; living in the moment more and savouring what’s good in the present; learning new things; and giving to othes.

Professor Nanette Mutrie followed up the point about the importance of exercise by presenting useful data on how walking as little as 30 minutes a day for five days can improve our mood. This half hour slot doesn’t have to be in one session. So this isn’t about gyms or complicated exercise programmes this is as basic as getting off the bus a few stops early and walking to the shops.

It was my turn next. The theme of my talk was about control of negativity. I am a fan of the celebrated American psychologist, Albert Ellis who died recently.  Ellis compiled what he considered to be the irrational beliefs of western society. One is that it makes sense to worry about what might happen. (It doesn’t since it often only makes you feel down about things that often don’t happen or which will happen whether you worry or not.) Another of Ellis’s irrational beliefs is that it is a terrible thing if anything happens to anyone which they wouldn’t have chosen. However, life isn’t like that. Often we would not choose things even though they often work out  for the best. Redundancy is often like that. Once the pain recedes we often find ourselves in a better postion to move on and do something different with her lives. Research suggests that 80 per cent of people say, within three years, that being made redundant, was for the best even though they would have resisted it happening. Psychologists now call the development which can happen to people as a result of adversity as Post-traumatic growth.

However, I  ended my talk warning of the dangers of being too optimistic and positive too quickly when adversity strikes. This happened to me years ago when I was made redundant from a post at the BBC. I quickly moved into optimistic mode and concentrated on planning my new future. After the redundancy period when I got my P45 in the post and they took away my TV set (a perk in those days) I felt really ill. Basically, rather late in the day, I had to confront that I really felt very hurt, rejected and angry. No amount of optimism for the future could deny that and it would have been more appropriate for me to have felt negative and fed up for a few weeks and more in touch with my real feelings. We must always remember that bad feelings are appropriate in many situations and it doesn’t pay to run away from them.

The final speaker was Phil Hanlon, Professor of Public Health. I have heard Phil many times and I’m always impressed by his fluency and the subtlety of his thoughts. This talk was Phil at his very, very, best. I can’t do justice to Phil’s message which  was on the theme of ‘a film, a horse, and a man’. The film was ‘It’s a wonderful life’ and the thread running through the three parts of his speech was the importance of the heart. No wonder many took heart from what they had  heard and left feeling more able to cope with another onslaught of negative news coverage.