What’s Your Happiness Baseline?

by Nick Laight | Jun 15, 2026 | Blog | 0 comments

How’s your day going?

This isn’t meant to be a polite rhetorical question.

Your answer will say a lot about your outlook on life.

For example, one reader might answer…

“Great, Nick! Thanks for asking! I just heard a great song on the radio and my breakfast was delicious.”

Then a second reader might reply…

“Awful, Nick, quite frankly. Don’t even get me started. My stomach hurts and I’ve got a boring job to do.”

The person who answers positively isn’t necessarily someone who is doing well in life. They might have a long-term illness and money worries.

And the person who answers negatively might not be suffering nearly as much. They might be generally healthy and earn a decent income.

The difference is in their HAPPINESS BASELINE.

This is the psychological theory that we each have a personal and highly subjective level of happiness.

For instance, a rich person with a big house might moan all the time because they feel there is more that they want… or need… or deserve to have.

Or someone who experiences hardship and suffering, might always find positive things to say… because they feel fortunate for what they DO have.

I was thinking about this idea the other day when I read something by the journalist and author, Julie Burchill.

You might know her from her columns and articles in The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and The Guardian.

Or from her novel Sugar Rush, which was made into a TV series.

Now, I’m not always in agreement with what Burchill writes.

Neither am I the only one…

About twenty years ago she was ranked number 85 in Channel 4’s poll of ‘100 Worst Britons’!

She’s famously outspoken and notoriously controversial.

Unusual Things to Be Thankful For

In the article, she professed an interest in the ‘Happiness Baseline’.

This is because a few years ago she nearly died and she’s been wheelchair-bound ever since – it’s so serious that she needs a catheter.

Yet, despite these serious physical challenges, she says her “glass is half full”. And in the article she listed all the little things in life that she enjoys, and is grateful for.

They include:

A freshly made bed
the smell of oranges
drinking strong black coffee from her Brexit mug
putting on lipstick in public
a clean nappy
a free limoncello after lunch
strong painkillers
Music in the morning
a pavement table available outside a favourite bar.
a new indwelling catheter

Burchill is using some typical provocative humour here… and some very idiosyncratic examples…

But I think that’s what makes this list so different from your usual self-improvement fayre.

Because, I’ll be honest, there’s a lot of rubbish written about ‘Daily Gratitudes’.

They’re often the easy ‘cut and paste’ answer offered by self-help grifters.

Rather than structurally change your mindset, create new habits and follow proven plans and systems… the solution is to just write down three things you’re thankful for.

And usually they’re pretty dull…

The sun… your cup of tea… your supportive network.

Not only that, but the suggestion is that you can remain in your current situation more happily if you just reframe it.

Hate your job? Be grateful you have one.

Feel burnt out? Be grateful you’re alive to feel anything.

An Alternative Gratitudes List

I want you to write your own Burchill-style list.

Not three obvious, worthy gratitudes but small, oddly specific things that genuinely lift you on an ordinary day.

For example, you might write…

The first cup of coffee in the morning, made and drunk before anyone else is awake
Getting a parking space right outside work
Toast with way too much butter
A robin who’s decided to take residence in the garden
Finding a tin of classic car sweets in the glove compartment
Hearing the post land on the doormat and realising that it isn’t a brown envelope or a bill.
A cute dog that runs up to you in the park.
The smell of dinner made by someone else
Arriving at a busy supermarket checkout just when a new till opens and you’re in a NEW QUEUE!
Realising there’s one more episode left when you thought you’d finished the series
Waking up before the alarm and discovering you’ve got another 37 minutes in bed
When it stops raining.
Or, maybe, when it STARTS raining and you can sit on the sofa with a book, guilt free.
The banana in the fruit bowl is perfectly ripe with no bruises.
Putting on new box-fresh socks!

See also I was messing about on Google Earth the other day (as you do!). When I zoomed-in on a wooden shed in an allotment in West London. A couple of years ago a friend and I spent a weekend re-felting that very roof! Now, here's the thing…. My friend is a satellite engineer at the European Space Agency. And I remember sitting up on that freshly felted roof with him one lunchtime, eating sandwiches, squinting into the sun, feeling rather pleased with ourselves. I had absolutely no idea that a satellite was probably passing overhead that would one day take the photograph I'd be staring at years later on my laptop. It made me stop and think. Sometimes all it takes is zooming out – literally, or otherwise - to see something familiar from a completely different angle. We get so close to our own lives. Our routines… our worries… our daily to-do lists. We forget there's a bigger picture. And occasionally, if you zoom out far enough, you catch a glimpse of just how remarkable the ordinary actually is. Which is a great way of looking at your current life in a more productive way. For instance… Do You Feel Stuck In the Everyday? Right now, you might feel like you’re just about getting through each day. That might mean work, commuting, lunch, dinner, telly, bed… And it might mean taking out the bins, walking the dog, emptying the dishwasher and idly scrolling through your phone in the moments in between. It can feel a little WASH-RINSE-REPEAT, can’t it? A bit humdrum. Like you’re just a small cog in a machine, running through the motions, with no great destiny ahead of you. Which makes it easy to forget how much potential you have to do something utterly amazing… It could be something that might feel completely unlikely right now from your ‘smaller’ everyday perspective. For instance, publishing your first book, running a profitable digital business, or making a fortune on a bestselling Amazon product. And yet… All those things have been achieved by ordinary people who are no smarter, and no more qualified than you are. The only difference? At some point, they zoomed out. They took their imaginations out of their daily routine for a moment, and sought a glimpse of what might be possible from higher up, on a larger scale. What You Look Like From the Satellite At the ground level, when you go about the business of everyday life, it's easy to focus on what you LACK. "I'm not techy enough." "I haven't the time." "People like me don't do things like that." These feel like brick walls when you're standing right in front of them. But zoom out… like that satellite over West London… and these obstacles look a lot smaller. Barely visible, in fact. Because from the satellite point of view, the picture can look very different. From up there, you look like someone with: • decades of real life experience… • knowledge about subjects you take for granted… • interests and opinions that other people could genuinely benefit from. And there’s no reason why you can’t move beyond your immediate everyday experience to something else. Especially now that there are AI tools that can cover pretty much any skill you feel is lacking! So from the satellite viewpoint, you don't look like someone who ‘could never do it’. You just look like someone who just hasn't decided to start yet. The Zoom-In Trap The main reason that so many people feel stuck in their home business ambitions isn't because of the obstacles themselves. It's because they're looking at them too closely. Think of it like a smartphone camera… When you zoom in too close to an object, it fills the entire screen, until all you see is a blurry blob of colour. You just can't make sense of it! The same is true when you're planning a major home business project. You focus your mind on all the processes you need to learn… the tools you need to grapple with… the decisions you need to make…. and all the ways it could go total wrong! When you zoom-in close, these challenges seem massive – overwhelming - insurmountable! But if you zoom out, they seem smaller. Yes, they’re still there… The difference is that, from a wider viewpoint, you can now see ways around them. It’s like standing directly in front of a wall, wondering how you can possibly get through it. Yet if you could see yourself from above, you’d realise that if you stepped ten metres to either side, you could simply walk around it! How to Put The Zoom Effect Into Practice Here's a little exercise for you. At some point over the next few days, take ten minutes somewhere quiet and ask yourself three questions: • What do people come to me for advice about? (It could be anything from gardening to budgeting to dealing with a tricky boss.) • What do I know a lot about that I completely take for granted? • If I could earn an extra £500 a month from something I actually enjoyed, what might that look like? Don't overthink it and don't judge the answers yet. Just write them down. Because that little list is your satellite photo. It’s a wider view of what's possible for you, taken from high above the daily routine and the never-ending to-do list. You might be surprised by what you see! Of course, you might immediately think of an obstacle that’s going to get in the way. So write THAT down. Maybe it's "I could never build a website” or "I haven't got time” or "I wouldn't know where to start with AI." Whatever it is, try and zoom out! Ask yourself… is this really a brick wall, or does it just LOOK like one because I'm standing too close? For instance… • "I don't know how to build a website" - you could use platforms like Substack or Amazon FBA where you don’t need a website. • "I haven't got time" — could you find three hours a week if it meant an extra £500 a month? That's one evening in front of the telly, or one quiet early Sunday morning while everyone else is in bed. • "I wouldn't know where to start with AI" — if you gave yourself 60 minutes to go onto Chat GPT and type a question into a box, you’d quickly see how easy it is, even without any experience or knowledge. Can you see how it works? Up close, obstacles seem enormous. But zoom out and you realise they're either easily solvable - or they were never obstacles in the first place! That's the power of satellite thinking.

You can go as crazy as you like with these…

Really, the point is to have fun, make yourself smile, and give yourself a lift this Monday morning…

Even if it feels like your whole life is going to hell right now!

And hopefully you can use this as motivation to make some proper plans for a home income.

Because here’s what the gratitude grifters miss…

Mindset First, Then Action!

Thankfulness on its own just leaves you slightly more content to stay exactly where you are.

But in my view, the key is to use gratitude as a way to reset your life-view…

This way, you gradually shift your ‘baseline happiness’ so that you don’t constantly feel like you’re losing out, or that you’re cursed and doomed to suffer.

Because that’s how we become passive victims of circumstance – trapped and sceptical of change.

However, when you become more positive about yourself, you can use this as motivation to transform your circumstances.

Maybe that’s finally starting that educational course…

Doing an hour’s research into a product idea..

Setting up a newsletter on Substack…

Using AI to come up with some Print On Demand ideas.

Or maybe it’s just opening a blank document and starting to brainstorm possibilities for how you can make yourself an independent income.

And it could all start with your weird gratitude list!

The dafter and more specific, the better.

Try doing it today, when you get 5 minutes spare.

And if you feel like sharing yours, send it to me!

If I receive enough of them, I’ll maybe knock up an anonymous list for a future issue!