CRAIG BROWN: Angling to find happiness? Just go fishing

Every day we get new advice on how to be happy, usually offered by celebrities in their infancy.

Currently in bookstores you can find Happy: Finding Joy In Every Day And Letting Go of Perfect by Fearne Cotton, recommended by Craig David ‘for anyone looking for truly consistent happiness’.

A writer named Marc Reklau has published no fewer than thirteen books that tell us how to be happy. Among them are How to Become a People Magnet and Love Yourself FIRST! On his website he describes these books as ‘international bestsellers’, although this may be his publisher’s way of keeping him happy.

Celebrities used to write children’s books, mainly because they require very few words and can be supplemented with illustrations.

Today they give us advice on how to be happy. Most of their tips revolve around the narcissistic idea that no matter who you are – Kim Jong-un or Gordon Ramsay or Liz Truss – the secret to happiness is to love yourself more.

Craig Brown said: ‘fishing and working are both ways of thinking about a world outside ourselves, a world beyond the reach of the self-help gurus’

The late Tina Turner began her book Happiness Becomes You with the words, “Thank you for being you, just the way you are.”

The Duchess of Sussex has never been short of advice in this area. She once revealed that the phrase “You must know that you are enough” is “a mantra that has now become so deeply ingrained within me that not a day goes by without hearing it echoing in my head.”

“Never forget that you have a fundamental right to love and be loved, to be successful and to be happy,” advised former TV personality Noel Edmonds in his crazy book Positively Happy: Cosmic Ways To Change Your Life. He then told his readers to remember this: Wait a minute, I’m a special person. I can be happy in what I do.’

In her guidebook Thrive: The Third Metric To Defining Success And Creating A Life Of Well-Being, Wisdom And Wonder, Arianna Huffington, the brassy founder of the Huffington Post, told her readers: “Forgive yourself for any judgments you face . yourself.’

I imagine another famous self-help guru, Russell Brand, reciting these words over and over as he ponders his future.

British psychologists reported that fishermen are happier than the rest of the population and less likely to suffer from depression or anxiety (Stock Image)

In my experience, one of the surest ways to become unhappy is to read books that tell you how to be happy.

Living by the sea, I sometimes look out my bedroom window at fishermen sitting alone in their little black tents in the wind and rain. They are often there all night.

I wonder what brings them there. Are they a) deeply happy or b) deeply unhappy? Psychologists from three British universities think they have found the answer.

After surveying 1,700 men, they found that fishermen are significantly happier than the rest of us, and less likely to suffer from depression or anxiety. The more they fish, the better they feel.

‘Exposure to blue spaces can lead to better mental health and wellbeing. A useful way to do this is through recreational fishing,” the psychologists conclude.

On the same day the report was published, the irrepressible Gyles Brandreth – one of the few people I know who is able to brighten up any room he enters – offered his own advice on how to be happy.

He said his old director, Mr Stokes, then aged 82, told him: ‘Busy people are happy people.’ Those five words, he says, have been decisive throughout his life.

86 year old David Hockney is also a great ad to keep busy. He is more productive than ever and paints canvases full of hope and joy.

In a great series of TV interviews with Melvyn Bragg, he embraces the discipline of getting up early and getting to work immediately. “As you get older, you realize that everything else is nothing compared to painting and drawing.”

Can these two different approaches to happiness – fishing and working – both be true? With one you do almost nothing other than sit still and hold a fishing rod, with the other you do as much as possible.

Oddly enough, I think they are two completely true approaches to achieving the same goal.

The happiness gurus tell us to think more about ourselves and how great we must be. But fishing and working are both ways of thinking about a world outside ourselves, a world beyond the reach of the self-help gurus.