Gill South meets a woman who specialises in being happy and helping others spread the joy.
Today, joyologist Pat Armitstead has come to my house. Feeling a bit ignorant because you've never heard of a joyologist before? Never fear, Pat invented the word. Her argument was there's a lot of "ologists" in the world, so why not a joyologist?
This former nurse and former ad agency owner is now a radio show host and works with individuals and businesses, helping people to maintain "high states": positive states, rather than ones that deplete them.
Before we meet, Pat asks me to sit the VIA survey of Character Strengths - on the authentichappiness.org website. This takes a long time, so if you are tempted to do it set aside a good 20 minutes. You have to go through 240 questions asking your natural liking and dislike of certain things. I come out of it thinking, I know what I don't like: questionnaires.
I emerge with five key strengths. My top strength is curiosity and an interest in the world - handy for a journalist, I would have thought. Woo hoo! Chose the right occupation. Big tick. Then after that comes a love of learning and new things, again handy for a journo. There is a reason we work on different stories every week, us hacks. We have rather short attention spans ... I also have good social intelligence, it emerges, in other words I am aware of the motives and feelings of other people. And I know how to put others at ease. Oh yeah, I'm a regular ice-breaker.