Reasons To Be Cheerful part 3 (Ian Dury)

“Health service glasses
Gigolos and brasses
Round or skinny bottoms

Take your mum to Paris
Lighting up the chalice
Wee Willy Harris

Bantu Stephen Biko, listening to Rico
Harpo, Groucho, Chico

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
1 2 3”

Songwriters: Charles Jeremy Jankel / David Stanley Payne / Ian Robins Dury / Stanley Payne David.

It is so easy to remain focused on the things that make us unhappy. Modern society sets such a premium on happiness. So, if we’re unhappy, there must be something wrong with us. And that needs to be fixed. In order to fix them, we spend a lot of time focused on the faults.

In reality of course, the solution is beautifully Zen: forget the faults, focus on what makes you happy and do more of that. Simple.

Reasons To Be Cheerful, part 3 is basically a shopping list of things that made Ian Dury happy. He was a man with much to be unhappy about who had beaten the odds to become a successful pop star, so he should know.

This got me thinking about other things where focusing on the problem negates the solution… Like Trends. So many businesses worry about being ‘on trend’. They hire Trend analysts to keep them up to date. How do you know what is a trend? You analyse what has already happened… you look backwards. By the time the analysis is complete, everyone is doing it and you’re part of the herd. Businesses want to move forwards so they look backwards. Reasons to be cheerful.

Seems to me to be quite obvious we should just all spend more time being what we want to be instead of worrying about what we are not. A business that just does good work is likely to be further ahead of the curve than one that worries where it is… just like Ian Dury!

There are so many clichés that say the same thing:
You always have everything you need
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

And yet…..

Now, watch the video, that’ll cheer you up!