Our third journal entry is on the subject of joy. One way to find your purpose is to find out what gives you happiness. Ed Haddon points out in his excellent book The Modern Maverick, that our happiness has a set point that we tend to revert to, as discovered by the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky . On average 50% of this set point is determined by genes and upbringing: only 10% by our life circumstances (much less than we would imagine) and 40% by how we choose to spend our time and think about the world - ie what we can control. So if we focus on joy, we can raise our happiness.

Tom Morris is one of the world’s most active public philosophers and is the author of over 30 books, many of them bestsellers, like The Art of Achievement, Mastering the 7Cs of Success in Business and in Life. He generously wrote this piece for the Woodhill Park Journal.

Our first journal offering is on Creativity, which is vital food for the soul. Its author Laurence Shorter has been searching for meaning for quite a while. His first book was The Optimist: One Man’s Search for the Brighter Side of Life and his second was The Lazy Guru’s Guide to Life: The Mindful Art of Achieving More by Doing Less.