Can happiness really be found in an App?

I get it, life can be stressful, often seemly unfair and a sometimes even for the most optimistic of us, a big fat pain in the butt!

I’ve done a fair amount of navel gazing over my 45 years on this beautiful planet, my Dad is a Buddhist, so I’m down with mindfulness and meditation. I trained as a therapist and ran my own thriving practice for over a decade, and i’d like to think on the whole I walked my talk, never offering advice to my clients that I hadn’t tried myself.

I’ve always been a naturally happy person, some have even said that I was too happy, to the point of annoyingness! Then one of life’s curve balls came hurtling into my world and everything changed…

I became allergic to pollution; diesel, solvent chemicals and perfume have become a huge challenge for me, I can go into anaphylactic shock or have an asthma attach within seconds of being triggered, if its a really bad day I can even do both at the same time!

I had to move from the City of my birth and leave all the people I love behind. My business went from having thriving clinics in Harley Street, Oxford and Bristol, to closed within 18mths of this condition taking over my life. You definitely can’t sit in a room with someone if the washing powder, shower gel, perfume etc they have used is going to possibly take your life at any moment.

I’m 3 years on from this now, thanks to the clean air from living half way up a mountain I can go from day to day without too much of a challenge, but that does mean hardly ever leaving the house, and if I do, I have to wear a mask and be prepared that in the days after going out i’m going to feel grotty to say the least. Hanging out with strangers is still not on the cards… so gigs, movies, going out to eat, parties, shopping/supermarkets, long trips in the car are things that I remember I loved doing, but right now, its not worth the fall out!

So I have become pretty adapt at seeing the joy and beauty in my very insular life, and most of the time I can work with that. But recently I’ve noticed my happiness pot is running very low and I recognised that I had to try something new.

Is an App really the way to Happiness?

There’s an app for most things these days, and there are loads of them for meditation and mindfulness, and quite a few for happiness. So with nothing to loose and a heap of happiness to gain I’ve started off with the Bliss Positive Psychology App.

I also looked at Happy Habits, which is also free, until you download it and get told you also need other apps that will cost you over a fiver for the privilege… So I uninstalled that bad boy immediately for being sneaky and cheeky!

According to the blurb, Bliss will help me rewire my brain for positivity…My first exercise is Best Possible Future, now given my condition, seeing a life in the future is really important and something that up until now has evaded me… So I’m giving it a month of my daily effort and then I’ll be back to share my increased joie de vivre!