Women have never had so many opportunities. We've never had greater access to education and employment; we are on an (almost) equal footing to men in and out of the workplace; we can have a family and a career at the same time if we so desire and we can play as hard as we lik.
But this wealth of opportunity brings with it a maelstrom of demands. The pressures on modern women have never been greater: having been given the chance to have it all, the pressure is on for us to do it all and do it all brilliantly. If you are not a multitasking superwoman able to keep more balls in the air than a juggling millipede, then somehow you're letting the side down.
It isn't enough to be a great employee/manager, wife/girlfriend, best mate, mother, housekeeper and chef. You've also got to have a frenetic social life, a roster of fabulously close bosom buddies, the perfect relationship and an eye-poppingly good sex life, while being stick thin, but womanly, ultimately fashionable, perfectly groomed, perennially young and forever firm. Enough already.
"Expectations - from women themselves and outsiders - are all geared towards doing everything and doing it extremely well," says chartered psychologist and co-founder of Psychology Online Sue Wright. "It is the idea of perfectionism. If you are doing ten things and one goes badly you perceive yourself to be a failure. The problem with perfectionism is that it is not achievable and the longer you go on striving for it the more imperfect you feel," she observes.
And, of course, when one is striving for perfection there is no room in the schedule for me-time. Wright comments: "You can't allow any time for yourself without feeling selfish because you have so many other competing demands, but the fact of the matter is you must look after yourself and your own well being to be able to look after other people and other things."
But how to start? Women have always been bad at putting their needs first, even before we all had more agendas than a cabinet minister trying to keep his mistresses secret. Imagine you are your best friend. Now imagine that you had asked her how you could better look after yourself. What would she say? Don't be so hard on yourself? Take on less? Cut yourself some slack and stop trying to be superwoman because you are a super woman just as you are? Whatever she said, she'd be a lot more loving, caring and understanding towards you than you are towards you. And imagining being your best friend is one of the best ways to become your own best friend.
Try doing absolutely nothing for half an hour. Go outside or sit near an open window and clear your mind. Feel the sun on your face or the breeze in your hair, listen to the sounds around you, and breathe in the scents around you. Every time you catch yourself thinking about things refocus your attention on something in the present. It is hard to shut down the internal dialogue of our minds, but it is worth practising.
Now ask yourself what you'd really like to spend half an hour doing. A little me-time goes a very long way and if you don't think you have any time to spare, try switching off the TV - you'll be amazed how much time it gobbles up. You can't effect huge changes overnight, but you can change small things and lots of good little things soon amount to increased happiness, as proven by social experiments Making Slough Happy and Making Mums Happy. A team of experts spent three months improving the happiness levels of 50 volunteers from Slough using ten simple measures (see below). The guinea pigs registered an impressive 33 per cent increase in happiness. This year's mums project involved over 1,000 members of online community Netmums who showed an average happiness improvement of over ten per cent after just 28 days.
Happiness expert Richard Reeves noted that helping to run the Making Slough Happy research had shown him that by making simple changes to your daily life, you can truly make yourself happier. His sentiments are echoed by Dr Jenny Bywaters, director of public, the National Institute for Mental Health in England: "It is really important to spread the message about positive steps everyone can take to improve their sense of wellbeing, and Netmums have shown how small changes can make a big difference."
The Ten Principles of Happiness
Plant something and nurture it.
Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day.
Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week.
Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrangeto meet up.
Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it.
Have a good laugh at least once a day.
Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week.
Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day.
Cut your TV viewing by half.
Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day.
10 reasons why it's great to be female
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