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Will Harris raises a few eyebrows

“I had my eyebrows threaded once,”says M. “It hurt like hell and I looked permanently startled.” It is just another Friday evening at M’s, which – let’s face it – is ground zero for all the best material. ‘What hurt like hell?’ asks C, wandering into the lounge. “Threading,” says M. “The first few days I looked like David Gest, but it was totally worth it.’

“Don’t be so ridiculous!’ C strides over to the mirror above the fireplace. “Why would you want to mess around with your eyebrows? I can’t think of anything more narcissistic…”

“––– does it,’ interrupts M.

“––– has peck implants.” I shake my head at him. “Very bad example.”
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Will Harris is positively breaking new ground

You left me, you will remember, at affirmation stations. My new life coach had furnished me with a list of positive statements, which I was to recite religiously all week. According to life coaching, when a person repeats a mantra often enough, they rewire their brain to believe it; an approach that’s half CBT, half NLP, and more than a touch of Alan Partridge roaring “You’re a tiger!” into his Travelodge bathroom mirror.

Thinking positive. It should be easy, shouldn’t it? The trouble is, when you spend a lot of time in London – where the daily commute includes overcrowding, signal failure, hyper-aggressive city boys, and people with only a passing acquaintance with deodorant – looking on the bright side can sometimes feel like a challenge too far.

“I mean, just look at this!” says my friend C, when I arrive – affirmations at the ready – at his birthday party. I take the business card from his hand and read it. Then I read it again.

“Your eyes aren’t deceiving you,” he continues. “This stupid woman has actually copyrighted her own name.” It’s true. There on the business card, at the end of a Scandinavian-looking name, is a tiny ©. “God, I’m sick of the Square Mile.” says C.
It’s funny; until you actively look for negativity, you barely realise how much of it is around us. We might pass it off as pragmatism or self-deprecating humour, but all we’re really doing is giving ourselves a good, hard emotional kicking.
“Hello,” brays a management consultant, elsewhere at the party. “Nice to meet you.”

“Kapow! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, vague feelings of inadequacy”

This throws me slightly, as I actually met this guy at a different party last month. Normally, my inner monologue would seize gleefully upon this fact and bash me about the face and chest with it. “Nobody remembers you!” it would squeal. “You’re eminently forgettable!” Then I’ll find myself pretending not to remember him either, or – even more outrageously –apologising for his mistake.
But tonight I am equipped with my arsenal of affirmations, and now seems as good a time as any to deploy one. I am worth getting to know. “We’ve met,” I say, shaking his hand, “at a party last month.”

POW! In your face, inner monologue! Leaving the management consultant blinking at my frankness, I waste no time in singling out a new face in the crowd: he is suited, handsome, and taller than 6’2″. Exactly the kind of man, in short, I would normally be far too nervous to strike up a conversation with.

What’s that, inner monologue? I am here for a reason? “Hello, I don’t think we’ve met, have we?” I say. KAPOW! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, vague feelings of inadequacy! Conversation started, phone numbers swapped. Is it really this simple? Is this how everyone else feels all the time? A little positivity, it turns out, can go a long way.

Will Harris tries his hand with a life coach

Stop me if this sounds crazy, but there’s a little voice in my head and he’s telling me what to do. He’s not my conscience, before you ask. He’s not my moral compass, and no, he’s definitely not the devil. His name is Adam, he lives in my phone, and he is incessantly, insistently perky.

“Tell me,” says Adam, in measured tones, “three things you really value and appreciate about yourself.”
I stare at the phone. The speaker button is illuminated, and Adam’s disembodied voice has been floating around the room for the last 25 minutes, showering me with positive thoughts. It’s a strange feeling, sort of like I’ve been granted an audience with God. Or Shirley Temple. “The other day,” I say, after a considerable pause, “I found a vein on my bicep.”

This is not what Adam, who has been a life coach for six years, is looking for. His role as a coach is “to challenge people and hold them to account so they can change their life for the better.” This makes him two-parts therapist to one-part drill sergeant, with a liberal dash of motivational speaker and a frosted rim of genuinely nice bloke.

For the first half hour of our consultation, Adam gently teases out the things I like about my life, as well as some of the things I’d like to change. On the positive side, I speak about my friends, my job, this column. Then, when we turn our attention to the negative, I return time and again to the same issues. Work meetings. Talking to men. Could it be I have a problem with confidence?

“The other day, I found a vein on my bicep”

One by one, we work through the list of negative beliefs I hold about myself and turn them on their heads, creating positive affirmations that I will live by for the next seven days. “I worry too much about what others think of me” becomes “I’m worth getting to know”, and so on.

Over the next week, I am to weave my affirmations into my daily routine. Some people, Adam tells me, write them on post-its and stick them to their mirrors. Others hide theirs in cereal boxes, so they can recite them over breakfast (“What?” I ask. “Like snap, crackle, and ‘I’m FABULOUS’?”). The idea is, by regularly repeating positive statements, we can reprogram our brains into believing them. “No matter what has happened in the past,” says Adam, “people can choose to behave and think in different ways.”

“It all sounds very dubious to me,” says H, later in the pub. Having been the little voice in my head for the past 20 years, she’s not giving up the mantle without a fight. “You don’t need a life coach; you just need to strap on a pair.”

“I believe in what I have to contribute,” I affirm, through a mouthful of crisps. The strange thing is, for once, I do.

Will Harris on the price of being perfect

Sitting in a shopping centre toilet, trousers round my ankles and swigging from a bottle of Courvoisier, it occurs to me I’m a long way from perfect. I should explain. The reason for this unconventional pit-stop is my friend M, or rather my friend M’s habit of inviting me to very grand house parties with very affluent gay men, which I always find easier to face after a slug of Dutch courage. Upwardly mobile, well-connected and fastidiously groomed, legend has it the A-gays can make or break a man with one flick of a fourth generation smartphone.
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