Piece Of Cake

When I was a kid my mum used to make the most amazing birthday cakes. Whatever I was into that particular year she'd make a cake in that theme.

Over the years she's made:

• Football cakes
• Star Wars cakes
• Swimming cakes
• Roller Skating cakes
• Dog cakes
• Guitar cakes

I quite miss those days when she made cakes. Well, actually, it turns out she still does, just not for me any more. 

At the top of this page is the cake she made for my sister's landmark birthday. Looks like someone's still in the good books!

Favouritism?

My mum's cakes have always been amazing. Take a closer look at the one she did for Clare's 40th. 

This cake has got the twin themes of gardening and the seaside - two of my sister's recent interests.

You can see the sunflowers, the carrots, the cauliflowers, all the garden stuff at the top. Then at the front, lower down there's the beach, shells and starfish. Pretty awesome right?

Clearly, there's a lot of love and care gone into the creation of that cake. I know how much my mum will have enjoyed making it. It will have been a real labour of love and an outlet for her creativity.

And then of course I bet they all enjoyed eating it too. Who doesn't like eating cake?!

The Joy Of Cake

I use cake and the journey of its creation as a way of thinking about happiness. Specifically about how you can maximise the amount of happiness available to you.

The first thing to say is that there are three different levels of happiness to consider. Let's take them in turn.

Level 1- Joy

For this level I want you to think very simply of the immediate joy you get from eating cake. You take a bite of a lovely yummy cake and you get an instant hit of happiness.

It's an immediate joy, one that requires no thinking, just a simple "Yum, this makes me happy."

This level is great. Lots of fun and an immediate hit but it's also pretty short lived and can be quite shallow.

But shallow is okay. There's nothing wrong with a big fat slice of shallow instant joy, (whipped cream optional) but, like the quickly disappearing cake, this type of happiness is usually ephemeral and fleeting.

Enjoy it for what it is.

Level 2 - Satisfaction

Now this level is a bit richer.

Let's say you are the person who has made the cake. And making the cake gives you an wonderful sense of satisfaction.

Now that's got a lot more to it than level 1. There's a different, deeper sense of happiness up for grabs here.

You might not even get eat the cake yourself but because you're making it for others you're happy already.

The acts of creation and giving are where you're getting your happiness.

Providing level 1 joy for others is the thing that brings you the deeper level 2 sense of happiness.

The satisfaction is longer lasting.

You can step back, put your hands on your hips and look knowingly at your achievement. Purse your lips and nod knowingly at your own work of art. Satisfied.

Level 3 - Purpose

This is the biggie. Because knowing about this level can allow you to reach out and discover the happiness when it's not very clear that there's any to be had. 

Or perhaps the opposite, when happiness can actually feel like it's a long distance away.

We're keeping with the cake scenario but this time we're going shopping for the ingredients.

Now going cake ingredient shopping doesn't sound like too much of a hardship but imagine that you have to do it under difficult circumstances.

Say that everything is going wrong for you. You're going shopping but:

• You've left it a bit late and now you're rushing before the shops shut
• It's impossible to find a decent parking space
• You scrape the car paintwork squeezing into the tiny space you finally find
• When you get to the store you realise you've forgotten your bags
• Half the ingredients you need are sold out and you need to dash across town to another store
• It's really busy and people seem to be getting in your way on purpose!
• At the checkout you are called for a trolley rescan
• Your payment card is refused and you have to run to the cashpoint
• And it's raining by now
• Is that enough yet?

Okay, nothing too dreadful or life changing in a negative way but clearly the experience is far from what we'd describe as a happy one. Yet I'm chalking it down as a gateway to a deeper level of happiness.

That's because there is real purpose in the shopping trip. There's a reason it's taking place.

And assuming you're happy for me to refer baking a cake as a higher purpose, we can say there's a higher purpose at stake. Braving the shops in these circumstances is going to make people that you care about happy.

If you're not convinced that shopping for cake ingredients can really be classed as a hardship let's choose something that no one would argue with. You can experience something thoroughly unpleasant and find happiness there too.

Drain You

Once upon a time our drains were blocked. I'll spare you the details but this task on a hot summer day was the very definition of unpleasant.

The flexi rods weren't enough and I had to open up the cover and spend a couple of hours reaching far into  . . . well, you've got the picture I'm sure. Not nice. 

But I used level 3 to reframe this as a job I was doing to look after my family. To ensure that when I'd finished nothing untoward would continue backing up or spilling over and that their day to day lives were unaffected and their health was safe.

It was a (literally) crappy job and completing it on level 3 terms allowed me to feel happy.

You can use the same thinking for a challenge you're taking on that has a long term positive experience but is really difficult in the moment.

Running Up That Hill

A client who reads this newsletter ran the Pilgrim Challenge last weekend. Thirty three miles on foot across the undulating North Downs Way, running from Farnham to Redhill along England's oldest trade route.

I thrash my mountain bike along the eastern side of that route and I'd think twice about doing that distance on two wheels never mind shank's pony. Well done Kerry!

I know that the training that went into getting up to speed for this type of challenge wasn't always pleasant. Sometimes it will have been downright horrible.

But there's a deep sense of purpose that can be accessed by this sort of effort. It's level 3 happiness that this level of commitment can generate. But only if you actively go looking for it.

The Joy, Satisfaction and Purpose Of Cake

I think level 3 is the most important one to grasp hold of and keep handy. Levels 1 and 2 are easy enough to understand and engineer into being, but 3 is brilliant for when things aren't so great. 

You can use it for when you're having a really bad day. When you might not be able to find anything good by thinking about it in a normal way.

But if you apply cake level 3 thinking you give yourself a really good opportunity to reframe a situation and feel much better about it. Happy even.

Think back to a really crappy day at work where every element of what you were doing seemed harder than it should. I know too many people who don't have to think that far back at the moment. 

Now remind yourself what you were doing and who you were doing it for. That's the way in. That's your angle. That's the slice you're looking for.