SPORT PSYCHOLOGY

Orienteering and the Psychology of Happiness

Lisa Lampe

Recently, psychologists and psychiatrists rediscovered happiness. No, it wasn’t that we’d all been miserable for years, but a large proportion of our day-to-day work was dealing with miserableness, of all shades and hues. It can lead to a kind of tunnel vision. We became totally focused on alleviating depression. Then a few psychologists started to ask, shouldn’t we be aiming for happiness, rather than just “not being depressed”?

Perhaps the most famous psychologist to do the turnaround, both personally and professionally, is Martin Seligman. Seligman began his career by studying how people got depressed and stayed that way (he coined the phrase “learned helplessness”). In his more recent book, “Authentic Happiness”, he describes how he came to realise that he himself had a habitually negative outlook and decided it was time to change. This new science of happiness is called “positive psychology”. The message, supported by science, is that we can cultivate an authentic, lasting happiness, if we’re prepared to put in a little work. Research has identified a number of strategies that can lead to greater long term happiness. These include: • Plan for happiness • Identify goals and plan to achieve them • Develop your ability to appreciate the positives in your life, past and present • Train yourself to be realistically optimistic • Live in the moment, focus on the present • Identify your personality strengths and actively use them • Develop your intimate and social relationships • Live a healthy, active lifestyle • Engage in altruistic acts • Act in accordance with your moral standards • Do things you love and create “flow” So, how can Orienteering make you happy? A closer look at the list above reveals that the sport of Orienteering encompasses a large number of these strategies. For many of us, Orienteering is a passion, and for others hopefully at least a pleasure. Even for those who go only to keep a partner company, there is the act of love and altruism in supporting someone you love doing something they love! When we are orienteering well we will experience that sense of “flow” that comes from being totally in the moment, totally absorbed by an activity. Clearly, Orienteering offers healthy physical activity, which in turn can promote good quality sleep and assist with weight control, all parts of a healthy lifestyle. For me, Orienteering also provides the motivation to get out and be active during the week to try to maintain or – in my dreams! – improve my fitness. Orienteering is also a satisfying social activity. It is one we can share with the family, and it provides an opportunity to see our friends – many of whom we may not even have met were it not for Orienteering. For those who volunteer to help with events, there is the engagement with altruism – and for those who haven’t yet volunteered, a good reason to do so! So Orienteering nicely addresses a good chunk of the strategies that can increase our happiness in life. How can you address the rest? Planning is important for a start. We can’t rely on happiness just falling into our lap! You probably have a good idea of the things that put you in a happy and positive mood. Do you plan to include more of these things, or just hope they’ll happen? It’s also important to think about your goals in life more generally. Most of us probably spend more time planning our route on a score course than we do planning our life. Take a little time out and think …What would your ideal life be like? We need to guard against setting the bar too low just because we think we mightn’t achieve a lofty goal. So many times we just don’t try something at all because we’re frightened we wouldn’t cope with disappointment or failure. A partial success can be surprisingly satisfying and sure beats the total failure (and demoralization) of not even trying. Can you learn to be more optimistic? Seligman and others would argue a resounding “Yes!” You can cultivate mental strategies that can be used to help see the bright side, focus more on the positives and choose to be less upset by disappointments. Helpful

reading includes Sarah Edelman’s book “Change the Way You Think”, and Seligman’s book (above). You can train yourself to become more aware of positives in your life. Many people unconsciously develop the habit of focusing on the negatives, and perhaps this is contributed to by prevailing cultural attitudes: after all, we all love to whinge and the media are full of “bad news stories”. Like that column in The Sydney Morning Herald, “Heckler” – would you read it if it was called “Applauder”? Whingeing can become a habit! Tim Sharp, a clinical psychologist, author of “The Happiness Handbook”, and “Chief Happiness Officer” of The Happiness Institute in Sydney, described research that shows that actively focusing on the positives in your life every day for six weeks can cause an increase in happiness for the next six months. Thinking more about core strengths is also recommended. When we do something we’re good at, we feel good. Similarly, when we actively exercise our character strengths – things like honesty, fairness, kindness, loyalty, perseverance, courage, perspective, leadership, enthusiasm, humour, appreciation of beauty, and capacity for analysis – we feel good. Note that we need to actively exercise these strengths: it’s the decision to act in a particular way (e.g. choosing to exercise our generosity by pitching in and helping), as opposed to remaining a passive observer, that makes us feel good. Seligman has a quiz you can take to identify your own inner strengths – it’s at www.authentichappiness.org. Professor Seligman recommends exercising your strengths every day! A strategy to help with the ability to focus on the moment can be found in the various mindfulness approaches. “Mindfulness” is a hot topic in psychology these days. Jon Kabat-Zinn was one of the first to apply mindfulness strategies to problems of stress, pain and chronic illness (e.g. see “Full Catastrophe Living” or “Wherever You Go, There You Are”). He defines mindfulness as actively attending to the present moment, without judgment. Noticing things as they are, being aware of all the sensory information available to us, but not seeking to change the experience, and trying to refrain from judging it, for example, as good or bad. Mindfulness practices are usually based on the meditation techniques of Vipassana Buddhism, but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness can be practiced in many ways – from just “paying attention” to something you’re already doing, like brushing your teeth or having a shower, to more formal practices such as focusing on the breath or bodily sensations. Mindfulness strategies are easy to learn – not so easy to master, but it’s the practice that’s important! Such practices can result in a greater sense of wellbeing for anyone who chooses to practice them, as well as being helpful in conditions such as chronic pain, chronic illness, and depression. Mindfulness practice can also help you to attend better to your work or study and, importantly, to those you love. You can learn more about mindfulness based stress reduction at www.openground.com.au. So there you have it in a nutshell – how Orienteering can be not just a great hobby, but an important part of your happiness plan!

Dr. Lisa Lampe is a consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer in psychological medicine at the University of Sydney.