Category: Welcome to the Home of Happiness

Welcome to my website. I hope you’ll find plenty here to help you get the most out of your life. I’m the author of more than 30 books including How To Be Happier, Have Great Sex, Transform Your Life With NLP, Get Intimate With Tantric Sex, Help Yourself To Live Longer and the ebook Secrets Of The Kama Sutra.

Stephen Covey And Self-Help

Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, has died at the age of 79. In his lifetime he is believed to have sold some 20 million books. And on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, businessmen Luke Johnson and Mark Constantine revealed that they both read and take inspiration from self-help books. Self-help books, it was pointed out, are an incredibly cheap source of both information and motivation. Quite right. So why not buy yourself a copy of, say, How To Be Happier or Have Great Sex or Get Intimate With Tantric Sex. Where else would you get so much pleasure for just a tenner?

Circumcision

Circumcision of babies and infants is in the spotlight once again following the decision of a German court to declare it illegal and the subsequent announcement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she wants the decision reversed.

The subject raises some very intriguing ethical arguments. The big one is: Do parents have the right to inflict permanent physical mutilation on children who are too young to make an informed decision for themselves?

Some of the subsequent arguments have, to my mind, been somewhat illogical. There are those, for example, who say the banning of a tradition that goes back thousands of years is an outrage. ‘Tradition’ is often brought up in arguments over all kinds of subjects but the people on the side of tradition only seem to want to apply it when it suits them. You never hear, for example, anyone saying they want to travel to work on a traditional donkey, or live in a traditional cave, or cook on a traditional open fire. Where I live, ‘tradition’ is often cited in defence of those whose hobby is shooting small birds. To me, tradition is not an argument.

Then there are those who condemn female genital mutilation but say that cutting off the male foreskin is quite different.

My particular interest is in the practical effects. Is there any difference in sexual pleasure (for women as well as men) between sex with a foreskin and sex without? There is some evidence to suggest that male circumcision makes the penis less sensitive. You can see why that might be so. Part of the role of the foreskin is to protect the glans, just as gloves protect your hands when you’re gardening. Make a habit of using a spade without gloves and you’ll soon develop tough, less sensitive, skin.

Those circumcised as babies or infants have no reference point. But if you were circumcised as an adult, for whatever reason, did you find that the loss of your foreskin made any difference? Was sex better or worse or the same? I’d like to hear from you. And, ladies, if you’ve had experience of both circumcised and uncircumcised men, did you notice any difference? Please click on the word ‘comments’ at the top of this blog and share your thoughts with us.

Happiness, Money And Drugs

The unfortunate death earlier this month of Eva Rausing, wife of Hans Kristian, the Tetra Pak heir said to be worth 5 billion, suggests that fabulous wealth doesn’t automatically translate into fabulous happiness. She was found dead at home after her husband was arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs. The couple, who met in drug rehab 25 years ago, were said to be taking a cocktail which included morphine, heroin and cocaine. Apparently, Eva had told a friend: ‘If I stay with Hans I know I will die.’

Ever since I wrote How To Be Happier people have been telling me that I’ve been missing something. ‘Isn’t it true that you need money to be happy?’ they say. Well, it’s certainly true that being unable to pay the bills causes a lot of unhappiness. And it’s also true that a bit of money on top to buy at least some of life’s more expensive pleasures – an annual holiday, a decent car, a modern kitchen – can make you very cheerful. But beyond that, there’s really no evidence that more money equals more happiness.

Certainly, with a lot of money you can buy a lot of drugs – and a lot of misery. According to a report in the Mirror, Eva’s family went so far as to hire an eight man former SAS surveillance team to try to prevent her buying drugs. But even they couldn’t stop her.

The list of the rich and famous who died from drugs includes Olivia Channon, daughter of the then MP for Southend West, in 1986; John Hervey who died penniless aged 44 in 1999, despite having inherited around 40 million; Radio Rentals heiress Jayne Harries; John Paul Getty III (grandson of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty) who rendered himself quadriplegic and nearly blind after taking valium, methadone and alcohol, but lingered 30 more years. And there are many more.

Drugs are a big mistake. Never ever imagine they can be the solution to a problem or a fast track to happiness. Money is not a fast track to happiness either. If you’d like to know what is, you can buy How To Be Happier on Amazon.

Drugs, Wealth And Misery

Ever since I wrote How To Be Happier people have been telling me that I’ve been missing something. ‘Isn’t it true that you need money to be happy?’ they say. Well, it’s certainly true that being unable to pay the bills causes a lot of unhappiness. And it’s also true that a bit of money on top to buy at least some of life’s more expensive pleasures – an annual holiday, a decent car, a modern kitchen – can make you very cheerful. But beyond that, there’s really no evidence that more money equals more happiness.

The unfortunate death earlier this month of Eva Rausing, wife of Hans Kristian, the Tetra Pak heir said to be worth 5 billion, certainly suggests that fabulous wealth doesn’t automatically translate into fabulous happiness. She was found dead at home after her husband was arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs. The couple, who met in drug rehab 25 years ago, were said to be taking a cocktail which included morphine, heroin and cocaine. Apparently, Eva had told a friend: ‘If I stay with Hans I know I will die.’

Certainly, with a lot of money you can buy a lot of drugs and a lot of misery. According to a report in the Mirror, her family went so far as to hire an eight man former SAS surveillance team to try to prevent her buying drugs. But even they couldn’t stop her.

The list of the rich and famous who died from drugs includes Olivia Channon, daughter of the then MP for Southend West, in 1986; John Hervey who died penniless aged 44 in 1999, despite having inherited around 40 million; Radio Rentals heiress Jayne Harries; John Paul Getty III (grandson of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty) who rendered himself quadriplegic and nearly blind after taking valium, methadone and alcohol, but lingered 30 more years. And there are many more.

Drugs are a big mistake. Never ever imagine they can be the solution to a problem or a fast track to happiness.

50 Shades Of Grey

British author Jilly Cooper has told the Daily Telegraph that ‘women don’t want to have sex any more.’ Doctors’ waiting rooms, she said, were ‘brimming these days with women suffering from low libidos’. Her explanation is that ‘we all have so many other demands on our time now’.

Well, is she right? I’ve been looking at sex surveys. A current internet sex survey asked people ‘Do you have a low sex marriage?’ A staggering 88 per cent (16,583 out of 18,691) said they did. Not very scientific but significant, all the same.

And a study by Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, found that women’s sexual desire in a relationship decreased every month – while men’s remained more constant.

But now there’s something that is apparently curing low libido in women quite effortlessly. It’s not a pill but an erotic novel by E L James called 50 Shades Of Grey which, with its two follow-ups, is said to have sold some 20 million copies worldwide. The book is being credited with causing a boom in bondage accessories as well as pregnancies. Women, it seems, need to be titillated – and men, nowadays, are not very good at it. The story involves the young and beautiful Anastasia Steele signing a contract with the handsome and extremely wealthy Christian Grey, giving him complete control of her life – and he’s a man into bondage and a little light sadomasochism.

Of course, we’ve been here many times before from The Story Of O to the film Nine And A Half Weeks. On the face of it, the book mines the well-known idea that women can’t fully enjoy their sexuality unless they are somehow absolved of guilt. But there is another ingredient in the book’s success that is less commented on. It’s not that Anastasia is forced to do what Christian wants. It’s that Christian does everything Anastasia wants without being asked. He understands. He knows. He washes her hair, he puts money in her bank account, he takes care of her. It’s this that seems to appeal to women so much.

To me, the book’s impact confirms that no one has a fixed sexual appetite. I’ve never subscribed to this idea of sexual incompatibility based on the notion that the man ‘needs’ sex, say, every other day, while the woman ‘needs’ sex only twice a week. If everyone had a fixed need then a book like this wouldn’t change anything.

You don’t have to wait until you ‘need’ sex. Given that it’s something highly pleasurable, why not do it as often as possible? Why wait for lust to become overwhelming?

Just think about it. Let’s take Janet. She’s 20. She’s not in a relationship. She masturbates once or twice a month. Then she falls for John. They start having sex. She moves in with him and they’re having sex every day. After a year they’re down to twice a week. They get married. They have a child. They’re down to once a week. After five years they’re hardly having sex at all. Then Janet reads, let’s say, 50 Shades Of Grey and wants sex every day. So what is Janet’s true ‘need’ for sex? Is it none, is it daily, or what?

If the sex has gone out of your relationship this book might be worth a try. But if your libidos are fine and you’re looking for ideas then you might like to read my books Have Great Sex and Get Intimate With Tantric Sex. They’ll certainly improve your technique and keep you entertained in bed for many years.

 

Alan Turing, Sex And The Law

This is the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the mathematical genius awarded the OBE in 1945 for the role he played in breaking German codes at Bletchley Park. But in 1952, everything changed for him. That was the year he was arrested for homosexuality. He lost his security clearance and, rather than go to prison, accepted ‘chemical castration’. Some two years later he was found dead from cyanide poisoning.

In 2009, the then prime minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government. Unfortunately, as someone else said, the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. There is a type of person who becomes enraged by what other people do sexually in private. And, unfortunately, those seem to be the people who make the laws. People continue to be persecuted for things that have nothing whatsoever to do with governments.

The UK’s first sodomy law, ‘An Acte for the punysshement of the vice of Buggerie’, was passed in the reign of Henry VIII in 1533. The maximum penalty was hanging and confiscation of property – which conveniently allowed Henry to confiscate monastery lands.

Sodomy remained a capital offence until 1861 and the law against it wasn’t repealed until 1967. Around the world, about 70 countries still have laws against homosexuality. Places that have the death penalty for homosexual acts include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen, Mauritania, and Sudan, as well as parts of Nigeria and Somalia.

As recently as 1990, gay men in the UK were found guilty of assault and unlawful wounding after they had voluntarily taken part in sado-masochistic sex sessions, even though none of the men had needed medical treatment nor suffered permanent harm. Their appeal to the House of Lords was dismissed in 1993.

I don’t want to be thumped around during sex and I don’t suppose you do either, but what exactly has it got to do with the government? The government hasn’t intervened to stop people boxing, nor to prevent them taking part in extreme sporting events like the Iron Man, nor to prevent them having piercings. It’s something about sex that disturbs our legislators. I suggest they go to see a good psychotherapist.

If you’d like to say something on the subject, please click at the top of this article on the word ‘comments’.

It’s Never Too Late

Last weekend Arthur Gilbert completed his 41st triathlon, comprising a 500 metre swim, a 20 km bike ride and a 5km run. His time was a very creditable 2hr 47 min 22 sec – working out at about 1 kph for the swim, 5kph for the run and 17 kph for the ride. Creditable, that is, for a youngish, moderately athletic person. But Arthur Gilbert is not young. He’s 91 and officially the world’s oldest triathlete.

At the age when most people’s bodies cause them only discomfort, pain and embarrassment, Arthur’s is still bringing him pleasure and contributing to his happiness. And Arthur didn’t even start running triathlons until he was 68. Which all goes to show that it’s never too late.

Last year another 91 year-old, Charles Eugster, told the Guardian newspaper how, six years earlier, at age 85, he had looked in the mirror and seen ‘an old man’. ‘I was overweight, my posture was terrible and there was skin hanging off me where muscle used to be.’ He decided to do something about it.

The astonishing thing about Charles (pictured) was that he already went rowing six times a week. Many people might have felt disillusioned and given the whole thing up. Not Charles. He reasoned that he needed to do even more. He added bodybuilding, for muscle, and judo to ‘teach me how to fall properly’. At age 87 he went wakeboarding for the first time. In 2010 in competition, with some modifications on account of his age, he did 57 dips, 61 chin-ups, 50 push-ups and 48 abdominal crunches, each in 45 secs. He could easily pass for a man 20 years younger and there are bits of him that look 40 years younger.

Charles is proof that as you get older you have to do more, not less. For the past three years he’s added hypertrophy training, which means taking the muscles to the point of exhaustion. The result has been a 50 per cent increase in muscle strength. If you’d like to read more about Charles take a look at his website at http://www.charleseugster.net/index.htm.

Meanwhile, how am I getting on with the HIT (high intensity training)? Well, I’ve discovered that you really need an indoor cycling or rowing or cross-country  machine. Out in the ‘real world’ it’s too dangerous to take yourself to the point of total exhaustion, in the way I described in a recent blog. Falling off your bike on a road is not a good idea. But I’m getting as close as seems prudent. And I’m increasing my regular exercise – on Tuesday I cycled 17 km to the beach, swam, then cycled back again – and that included about 700 metres of climbing. I felt pretty pleased with myself – until I read about Charles and Arthur.

Depression And Exercise

You may have seen the reports this week that physical exercise is ineffective as a treatment for depression. Well, I don’t agree. John Campbell, Professor of General Practice and Primary Care at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at Exeter University, described it as a ‘carefully designed research study’. But was it?

Here’s what happened. Researchers from the Peninsula College, together with those from Bristol University, took 361 patients aged 18 to 69 with mild to severe depression, and divided them into two groups. Half were given the ‘usual care’ and half were given ‘usual care’ and, in addition, advised to take exercise. At the end of one year the two groups were assessed. Those assigned to the ‘exercise group’ were slightly less depressed but the difference was not considered large enough to be statistically valid.

So, if you suffer from depression, can you drop the exercise? Well, of course, exercise has other well-known health benefits, so that wouldn’t be a good idea on physical health grounds anyway. But the two big flaws in this study were, firstly, that it relied upon self-reporting of exercise levels and, secondly, that the ‘exercise group’ only did, on average, twice as much exercise as the others (assuming they didn’t exaggerate).

Now, most people don’t take much exercise. So testing the effects of doing twice as much is far from conclusive. Twice nothing is nothing. All that happened was that the ‘exercise group’ met PE trainers three times face to face and had 10 telephone calls. If I’d been running the trial I’d have had regular organised exercise sessions at, maybe, three different levels.

Now, it doesn’t take a lot of exercise to make a difference but it does have to be vigorous. For example, as I reported in my book How To Be Happier just eight minutes of exercise increases noradrenaline (norepinephrine for US readers) up to ten times, while 12 minutes increases endorphins five times, and 30 minutes almost doubles PEA. All these chemicals are mood boosters. But the research that produced these findings was conducted on people exercising vigorously, which is to say, at around 70 per cent of maximum heart rate. At that level you’d still be able to talk but you’d be puffing.

The researchers took the view that it wasn’t realistic to ask depressed people – possibly middle-aged, overweight people who didn’t normally exercise – to, say, get a bicycle and cover 20 miles a day. Fair enough! But that’s not a comment on the efficacy of exercise. All this study has shown is that ambling along behind a dog does little to combat depression. My advice is to ignore the headlines. Keep exercising. The more the better.

Female Genital Mutilation

I’ve just signed a petition against female genital mutilation, asking the Home Secretary Theresa May to take action. FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985 but, apparently, no one has ever been convicted of this crime in the UK. That certainly isn’t because no young women are being mutilated. In the London area alone there were 166 complaints over the past four years. And last month a Sunday Times investigation uncovered some of those who are willing to commit this crime for a few hundred pounds. If you would also like to sign the petition here’s the link:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_female_genital_mutilation_in_the_UK/?cl=1821543365&v=14523

Pyjama Parties

I’ve heard of the Conservative Party and I’ve heard of the Labour Party but I’ve only just started hearing about the Pyjama Party. I’m not quite clear what the policies of the Pyjama Party are but it seems peace, goodwill and togetherness have something to do with it. Apparently, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, members of the Pyjama Party were invited over to Chequers to mingle with members of the Labour Party. Or have I got that wrong?

Personally, I wouldn’t vote for the Pyjama Party, although it does sound slightly more interesting than the others. I find pyjamas hilarious. Ever since I began seeing films in which men had sex with women I realised that real men didn’t wear pyjamas. Only Rock Hudson and Doris Day did that. So I resolved to throw out my pyjamas and I haven’t owned any for forty years. To me, wearing pyjamas seems about as absurd as wearing a wetsuit in the shower. What is the point? When you go to bed you should be naked. I don’t want to reach out and feel winceyette. I want to feel skin. When skin touches skin oxytocin gets released. And that’s very good for bonding. So get naked and improve your relationship.

Sad Life stories

One of my particular interests is how to have a happy relationship. So I was fascinated by the actor Dennis Waterman’s masterclass in how not to. He confessed on Piers Morgan’s TV programme Life Stories that he did hit the actress Rula Lenska when the two of them were married. Here are some of the things the 64 year-old star of The Sweeney, Minder, and New Tricks had to say:

‘It’s not difficult for a woman to make a man hit her… The problem with strong, intelligent women is that they can argue well. And if there is a time where you can’t get a word in…and I…lashed out. I couldn’t end the argument… Something must have brought it on. When frustration builds up and you can’t think of a way out…It happened and I’m very, very ashamed of it…If a woman is a bit of a power freak and determined to put you down, and if you’re not bright enough to do it with words, it can happen.’

Rula Lenska says the violence only occurred when he was ‘very, very drunk’. She said she was never sure how he was going to be when he came home because ‘it was like living with two totally different people’.

According to the Daily Mail, a lot of the arguments were over the time he spent in the pub, his three times a week golf sessions, and his golfing holidays with his pals in which drinking was said to be the first aim, eyeing up birds the second and golf third.

I want to focus first on that phrase ‘determined to put you down’. This is something that, unfortunately, you so often see in couples. There’s this tendency to try to undermine a partner’s confidence to make that person more manageable, more malleable. And it’s one of the worst and stupidest crimes anybody can commit in a relationship.

An analogy is buying a beautiful new sports car then deliberately denting it and refusing to put oil in it. It would be crazy. And yet that’s exactly how many people behave in relationships.

If you want a happy relationship, build your partner up, don’t put your partner down.

That might sound as if I’m taking the Dennis Waterman’s part but I’m certainly not because choosing to spend a long time away from your partner, flirting with others and having affairs are also all ways of putting your partner down. Knowing that your husband or boyfriend is choosing to spend yet another evening at the pub with his mates rather than with you is not great for self-esteem. And, of course, I utterly condemn violence, especially by men against women, which is almost always far, far worse than the other way around.

 

Showing contempt for a partner is one of what relationship experts call The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (as I explained in my little book Be A Hot Date). Any one of the horsemen is bad. When all four turn up it’s The End.

Sex Toy Injuries

An article in today’s Sunday Times quotes a Relate counsellor as saying that ‘mechanically-induced’ orgasms can alter brain circuitry such that response to another person ‘has to be relearnt’. How real is that danger?

A study of 2,000 American women who used vibrators found that:

  • 71.5% never experienced any side effects
  • 16% reported numbness
  • 10% reported irritation
  • 8% reported swelling
  • 3% reported pain
  • 1% reported tears or cuts

The key point is that none of those who reported negative side effects judged them to be either serious or long-lasting.

But people do have accidents with sex toys as Russell Griffin and Gerald McGwin from the University of Alabama School of Public Health discovered when they examined reports from American emergency rooms. They found that from 1995 to 2006:

  • 6799 people aged 20 and up were treated in U.S. emergency departments for sex toy injuries
  • There was an overall doubling of the number of injuries, from 2.41 per million in 1995 to 5.46 per million in 2006
  • Men had higher injury rates than women, and rates were highest for people between 30-39
  • 74% of injuries involved a vibrator, 13% involved dildos, 2% rings, and 11% other,
  • 78% of injuries were anorectal, 18% vaginal/penile, and 4% other

It seems, then, that the greatest danger comes from the use of vibrators in the anal canal and rectum. Not many people realize how powerful the muscles are. It’s very easy for a sex toy to be sucked inside the rectum where it could heat up. The best advice is only to use a vibrator in the anal canal or rectum that has a sufficiently wide base to stop it slipping all the way in. But if you are unlucky you should be able to expel it from the rectum in the usual way. And remember that the anal canal and rectum (unlike the vagina) have no natural lubricant. So never attempt any kind of anal penetration without a good dollop of a suitable commercial lubricant.

Scouring the internet, I have found some claims of permanent numbness due to overuse of sex toys. But they seem to be pretty rare. If you’ve had a problem I’d like to hear from you. Just click on ‘Comment’ and have your say.