• The Secret to a Happy Life 1

    It’s not money. Or fame. Or marriage. But you know that already.

    Those aren’t secrets. They come with their own rewards and challenges.

    The real secret to a happy life?

    It’s helping others.

    That’s it. Really. But hardly anyone talks about it.

    The world makes you feel like happiness is something you can earn. But it’s not a product. It’s a consequence. It’s what happens when you stop thinking about what you need, and start asking what you can offer.

    Not in a “donate to charity” kind of way. That has its place—but writing a cheque or setting up a direct debit doesn’t really do it. Not in your bones. Not in your soul. You don’t feel the friction—and that friction is the point. You need to labour for others. You need to face their problems with them, use what you know, what you’ve learned, and actually solve something.

    We often call this “sending the elevator back down.” Helping people who are earlier in their journey than you. Sharing the map after you’ve already found the way out of the woods.

    Some of the most fulfilled people I know aren’t defined by the size of their bank account. In fact, a lot of them who retired started working again—because there’s a kind of work that has nothing to do with salary. It’s a calling. A compulsion. They mentor. They volunteer. They build. They give—not passively, but with effort.

    Compare that to the people who retire and slowly dissolve into daytime television. The body might hang around for a while, but their spirit leaves. And statistically, that matters.

    Turns out, retirees who volunteer even a few hours a month literally age slower at the cellular level. Their DNA says so. Meanwhile, the more TV you watch post-retirement, the shorter your lifespan tends to be. One study even found that just three hours a day in front of the screen doubles your risk of death over eight years.

    So maybe the secret to a longer, happier life isn’t about freedom from work. It’s about finding the kind of work that sets other people free.

  • The Sanctity Of Small Routines

    In a world that feels like it’s permanently spinning just a bit too fast, the smallest routines can feel like sacred acts.

    I’m talking about the coffee you make for your partner each morning, half-asleep but still reaching for the coffee pods before they’ve opened their eyes. The pint with your dad in the same corner of the same pub, before kickoff. The walk with your colleague at lunch, tracing the same stretch of the Thames no matter the weather.

    They’re not big. They’re not revolutionary. But they matter.

    Because the world today is chaos dressed up as convenience. Everything’s available. Nothing’s grounded. Our attention is a currency we’re spending recklessly on things that do not give a single shit about us. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re lonely. The endless scroll won’t hold your hand when life cracks open.

    And yet we let it in, constantly. Like moths to the light.

    So these tiny rituals? They’re rebellion. They’re resistance. They’re deeply, quietly human.

    If you rewind just a few decades—before the avalanche of content, before phones became appendages—life was defined by routine. You knew the rhythm. Friday: Top Of The Pops with fish and chips. Saturday: football. Sunday: roast then The Simpsons. Monday: EastEnders at 8PM. You weren’t just surviving. You were participating in a kind of secular liturgy with millions of Brits. You belonged to something, even if it was just a pattern. And that had weight. It had meaning.

    Now? Everything’s a blur. Every app wants to be your new home. Every platform wants to colonise your time. And in all of that noise, it’s these small, self-defined moments of routine that whisper: you’re still here. You’re still a person.

    I’m not writing this to help you. I’m writing this because I had to. I needed to say it out loud. Maybe because I’m trying to remind myself, too.

    Forge your own rhythm. Mark out your own minutes in the day that no one can steal from you. They don’t have to be profound. They just have to be yours and you have to turn up for them.

    Because without them, you’ll get swallowed.

  • “You Wouldn’t Understand, You Don’t Have Children” — And Now I Do.

    There’s a phrase that used to make my skin crawl.

    “You wouldn’t understand — you don’t have children.”

    It always felt like the highest form of condescension. Dismissive. Wounding. As though empathy was something you either earned through parenthood or didn’t possess at all. As if my experiences, my capacity to care, or my exhaustion didn’t count.

    Worse still, it ignored something deeper: that not everyone without children chose that. That for many, it’s a source of grief, not a lifestyle. And so that phrase, delivered casually in conversation, could be so unconstructive. Even hurtful.

    And yet — five weeks into being a father, I now understand where that sentiment comes from. Not the delivery of it. But the deeper truth it’s trying — and often failing — to communicate.

    Because something happens — something huge. You go from being an autonomous adult with your own rhythm, overlapping with your partner’s, to suddenly… everything changing. You walk into a hospital as two people. You walk out as three. And your entire world flips.

    Every minute of every day is now tied to this tiny human. Your brain doesn’t just shift — it rewires. Priorities you thought were non-negotiable suddenly feel less urgent. Work, emails, even basic things like meals and sleep — they get squeezed to the edges while you deal with this immediate, constant, beautiful chaos.

    And it’s not a choice — it’s instinct. A complete internal shift you can’t pre-empt or fully imagine until it’s happening to you.

    So no, I’d never say “you wouldn’t understand” to someone. I know how alienating that can be. I’d try something more honest. Like:

    “There are things about parenthood that don’t land until you’re in the trenches — not because you lack empathy, but because your whole frame of reference changes overnight. I didn’t get it before either.”

    It’s humbling, this shift. And I think if I ever talk about it with someone on the other side of it — the ‘before’ side — I’ll do so with a lot more softness than I was once shown.

    Because now I see both sides. And that perspective’s taken me by surprise.

  • Parental Evolution

    Becoming somebody’s beginning is something that nothing in life can prepare you for.

    I’m so aware of how unoriginal this experience is—billions of people have done it, are doing it—but it’s also the most personal thing I’ve ever lived through. That contradiction is wild. It’s ordinary, but it’s cosmic.

    My wife and I were saying the other day how fast the first six weeks of our son’s life have gone. But at the same time, it feels like we’ve never really lived without him. Like he’s always been here, folded into the shape of who we were, slowly emerging.

    People gave me all kinds of advice. Everyone has their version of what it’s going to be like. The most vivid one I remember is someone saying, “It’s like a grenade goes off in your bedroom.” Which… fair. But also: a bleak metaphor.

    I prefer to think of it as an evolution.
    Kind of like a Pokémon.

    You and your partner evolve almost overnight—from some final form of adulthood you thought you’d reached—into something new. Something nobody else can quite train you for. You become a person who a human being needs to survive. Not just survive, but to become whole.

    If you don’t do right by them, they won’t thrive.
    They’ll be hungry, or cold, or feel alone in a world that’s supposed to feel warm and held.

    So you do it all. Feed them. Clean them. Dress them. Entertain them. Read the instructions of the world and try to translate it into something soft and safe. You think about everything in their life—and somehow, you try not to get too caught up in the future.

    You live in the moment, even when it’s two in the morning and you’ve forgotten what day it is.

    It’s just such a beautifully complex situation for one of the most tried, tested, and ancient experiences in the history of humankind.

    And still, it feels like something brand new.
    Because it’s ours.