The supreme list of things that make you feel good

Whole books are written on how to be happy. But sometimes all it takes to boost your mood is to acknowledge the small things that make you feel good.

Turn that frown the other way ‘round and look at a wombat. (Pic: Zak Simmonds)

A couple of months ago I interviewed a man who was very happy.

It wasn’t hard to fathom why he was happy: he has that floppy hair that practically begs you to run a hand through it, sexy three-day stubble and sufficient physical ease to wear one of those soft cotton scarfs without looking like a total knob.

His name was Meik Wiking — pronounced Mike Viking — and as well as sounding like some sort of Scandinavian superhero, he’d also just written a bestseller.

The book was about hygge — the Danish concept of happiness and contentment — and after devouring it I decided this “cosiness of the soul” was exactly what I needed in my life. Certainly it seemed more appealing than that insufferable decluttering manual that took the world by storm the previous year and left everyone I know wishing they hadn’t got rid of their second potato peeler.

So I embraced hygge, pronounced “hoo-ga”, by doing all sorts of hyggey things like having saunas and eating cinnamon pastries and lighting candles and making stew.

English comedian Bill Bailey. (Pic: Supplied)

Trouble was, a fat bloke with tatts was moaning about the heat in the sauna at my local swimming centre, the cinnamon pastries seemed to add a kilo per bite, the only candle I had in the house had a noxious tropical scent and the kids moaned about the stew because it was actually casserole and they hate casserole.

Anyway, I persevered until last week when I went to see British comedian Bill Bailey. Like me, Bailey had been sucked in by hygge before realising it was utter codswallop or whatever word they have for “bollocks” in Denmark.

Real happiness, Bailey pointed out, was finding a valid receipt for a faulty appliance you’d bought thus realising you could take it back.

And with that I put down the handmade bunting I’d been stitching, stopped searching Airbnb for a cottage with artfully stacked logs and made a list of all the little inconsequential and unrecognised things that genuinely make me happy.

So here goes:

— Realising there’s just enough paper left on the toilet roll to fulfil my needs but also enough left over so that I’m not the one who has to change the roll

— Finding a parking space

— Staying over the time limit in the parking space and not getting a ticket

— Predicting the exact moment a contestant on The Bachelor is going to say “we have a real connection”. *Not actually difficult

It didn’t take long to realise The Bachelor Richie Strahan and Alex Nation had a connection. Getting in a chocolate bath together would have been (even more) awkward if they didn’t. (Pic: Network Ten)

— Wombats

— Playing hide-and-seek and not being found for half an hour thus enabling nap and/or Facebook scrolling

— Crunchy peanut butter

— Blocking emails from the reader who every week sent me a score out of 10 for my column. Ten out of 10 to me, eh Allan?

— The lift arriving the second you push the button

— Someone else making you a cup of tea

— When your child says thank you to someone without having to be prompted

— Attending a Trivial Pursuit night and bringing it home for your team because you’re the only one at the table who knows that the cousins in the Dukes of Hazzard were called Bo and Luke

— Finding the coins in your wallet add up to $3.60 so you don’t have to go to the ATM just to buy a coffee

— Seeing the idiot who passed you too fast on the highway broken down

— The cat choosing your lap over all the others who are shamelessly trying to entice him

— Your bag coming off first on the baggage carousel

— Getting your head massaged during a haircut

If I slip you an extra $10, will you just keep going on that head massage, please? (Pic: Supplied)

— Dropping something and it not breaking. Especially the $90 Giorgio Armani luminous silk foundation that someone recommended and which I can attest does look luminous when smashed across a bathroom floor

— Holding a bird’s nest in your hand

— Babies smiling in pushchairs

— That nice Phil on Location Location eventually finding a suitable house for a couple who want something urban but in the country, two-storey but with no stairs and not near a motorway all for 100 quid

— Your kids telling you their friends like coming over because “mostly you’re not weird”

— Finding a functioning umbrella

— Solving a problem

— Trying to remember where that thing was that you read on the internet and then remembering that your browser has a history

— Getting the Q, U and Z in Scrabble and realising you can spell out QUIZ on a triple word score

— Your Scrabble opponent telling you they have no vowels

— Pairing 24 socks and realising they all match with no strays left over

— Laughing uncontrollably

— Wearing high heels and feeling instantly elegant

— Finding your keys in your handbag without having to dig around

— Being deliciously surprised by the ending of a book

— Finishing something … a crossword, a cake, this column

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Originally published as The supreme list of things that make you feel good