The advent of the coronavirus and the steps we are advised to take to control it have thrown into sharp focus the vital but often ignored core of our lives: our homes. “Stay at home” “Work from home” “Self- isolate – at home”, is the advice on every website and every one’s lips.

How this advice is greeted depends very much on the homes involved and our feelings about them. For some of us this is a dream come true. It offers the chance to jump off the activity-driven treadmill of our working lives and to spend some time back in the “nest”. To finally take down those unread books on our shelves, curl up in a favourite armchair and make the most of this unplanned holiday from the “normal”. Or perhaps it’s chance to get into the garden, or tidy the attic, write that novel or phone those old friends we kept promising we would? This response comes from the sense of home as a place of welcome retreat, well-resourced for our needs day by day, and especially in times such as these.

For some of us though, the thought of having to spend a fortnight – or forty nights – at home, is one of dread. Or, if not dread, then at least a kind of claustrophobia or “cabin fever”. (It is worth noting here that no one has suggested actual home- imprisonment, so driving the car, walking in the park, as long as we are feeling well, remain sensible distractions.) For this group, life is definitely elsewhere – at work, out with friends or colleagues. Home is less a place of sanctuary and more a place we are all too ready to leave each day.

Some of the differences in response are down to our personalities and our personal circumstances. For somebody living alone, self-isolation might feel like a sentence to solitary confinement. For a parent of lively children the prospect of the schools closing and extended “home-time” might not initially make his or her heart leap with joy.

Some of the differences are economic and geographic. If I live in a leafy suburb, close to shops, in a house in good structural and decorative order, I am more likely to see my home as a retreat than if I find myself facing housing challenges in a more deprived or remote area.

What is transformational for both groups is the quality of our relationships inside and outside the home. A person living alone but able to rely on the ‘phone calls and practical support of family, friends and neighbours can be confident that they will not be forgotten. A family used to their own space and activities may find that semi-enforced time together presents more tensions than usual. For this reason, the evergreen virtues of patience, fortitude and charity in the home are never more clearly needed than now.

The following Ten Tips on how to face being at home are a useful corrective to some of the more gloomy offerings available, however we might feel about “Staying at Home”:

1. Optimism  – characterised by good humour and hope.
2. Routine – giving an ordinary pattern to these extraordinary days is both calming and productive.
3. Don’t kill time – use it and avoid the obvious timewasters found online.
4. Learn something new -you might not feel like it, but it can be a very welcome distraction to set about learning a new skill.
5. Practise hobbies – now is the time to revisit the things you enjoy but for which you never seem to have the time.
6. Take some time for quiet – turn off the news and the noise and spend some time noticing what is good in your life and what, in spite of all the anxiet, you are grateful for today.
7. Good conversations – take time to have a deeper conversation with loved ones. Maybe some real catching up is needed with those with whom we share our lives?
8. Support others – offering emotional and practical support to those who are struggling is not only helpful to them but also gives us a bigger picture to focus on.
9. Keep calm – easier said than done, but if you are exercising points 1–8 above, it will be easier.
10. Forgiveness – living together in these new conditions is complicated, be ready to offer and accept apologies when things do not run smoothly in our relationships.

Once things return to “normal” it may be that we have developed a stronger understanding of what we want and need our homes to be. In the meantime, let us make the most of this time and the homes we find ourselves spending it in.

Why do good things always happen to certain people?

The answer is very simple and it is not just about luck. According to Dr. Marian Rojas, it is because of how they react and interpret what happens to them. Happiness is not about what happens to us, but how we experience what happens to us. Good or bad, there are people who always see it as an opportunity. Their brain is predisposed to this way of thinking.

In 2019, a best-selling book in Spanish was How do you make good things happen to you? written by psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé. She talks about happiness from the point of view of psychiatry and believes that there are three factors that determine our way of acting:

1. Our belief system. We all have a series of beliefs in which we have been educated. In our homes, we have seen how our parents react to problems and this can limit us when facing issues.
2. Our state of mind. Your best or worst version depends on your mood. Depending on how I am, receiving good or bad news has more or less of an impact. If one is usually in a good mood, all bad news is less bad. If one is always angry or feeling burdened, good news is less good and bad news can appear worse.
3. ‘The ascending activating system’. This system is located in the brain stem and filters what it receives from reality, capturing only what our brain is interested in. For example, a pregnant woman may only focus on pregnant women in the street and an injured person only notice people on crutches… There is a famous phrase that goes: “What the heart really wants, the mind ends up showing you.”

According to Dr. Rojas, we live in a very advanced but very sick society. In fact, 20% of the population is on medication for mood issues. And this is because we live in a constant state of alert. This scientifically has a very important consequence: we generate so much cortisol that causes inflammation in our brain. Cortisol is a hormone that is at a low level at night and rises in the morning. Our body secretes the substance to make us  active but the problem is when living under constant stress or under threat, we secrete it in such excessive amounts that our mind cannot deal with it.

What physical and psychological symptoms are we talking about?
Our eyes are twitching, our hair falling out, hives, migraines, fibromyalgia, muscle spasms, irritable bowel syndrome… We feel uptight with people around us, have lapses in concentration or memory, sleep problems. If cortisol levels don’t drop at night, it’s impossible to sleep well as the body is intoxicated with cortisol.

How can we learn to manage cortisol so that we react in an appropriate manner and are therefore happier? Rojas recommends several things:
1. Exercise. Sport eliminates cortisol. In fact, our body performs better when used to physical exercise.
2. Educate our thoughts. Every emotion is preceded by a thought, and those emotions affect our cells, so it is important to educate the thought. Don’t let your inner voice boycott your mood. When the brain becomes excited, it transforms and more blood flows through the prefrontal cortex of the brain.
3. Detoxification of screens – meditation, relaxation. The screen stimulates people’s brains excessively, causing problems and altering our brain system. Smartphones have accustomed us to instant gratification, but who can say that we have become smarter since using smartphones? It numbs many of the functions of our brain, so the more we can disconnect throughout our day, the better.

This is just a short summary of what you can discover in this bestseller and a great way to celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Did you know that the United Nations decreed it only 7 years ago? In November in our 5th Conference, we will also discuss how happiness influences homes from the point of view of psychiatry.
Don’t miss it! Register here

The COVID-19 pandemic,  already all over the world and moving fast, is going to test our homes and our families, but will also prompt us to look at ourselves. We will be in the position to really question where we are and ask ourselves if we have the homes we would like, if we know how to live together as a family, and if we personally have the solid, well-grounded emotional intelligence to cope with this situation.

Let’s start with the most basic and immediate: our home. These days of self-isolation or quarantine give us the opportunity to look around and think about whether this is the room we want to be in for the next 15 days, or even 40 days?  If this is the kitchen in which we’re going to have to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner day in day out? Look around now: What do you dislike, what would you like to be different? Now is the time to make some changes.

Now is when we can make our homes the best possible places to spend a pleasant and beneficial time –even if it has been forced upon us.  To order, clean, tidy, and to recycle what you don’t need. If until now we were so busy that we couldn’t spend time on our houses, now the opportunity is in front of us. Depending on where we live and our own situation, it might be that we are temporarily unable to go to work or the gym or socialise with friends. This makes the home context all the more important for our well-being and for those we live with. Now more than ever, our homes are our refuge and our family our main companions.

It’s not alarmist, it’s realistic and has benefits. If we live with people, parents, brothers, grandparents, roommates let us take advantage of this time to talk to them, to have fun together, to get to know each other better. Share the household tasks, exercise as a team, even if there is not much space; read for a while each day, make meals and try to surprise ourselves with our best recipes. Keeping well-informed is important but we should make sure our sources of information are reliable – and not to become addicted to our newsfeeds. Common sense and unity are the best allies.

Finally, this is an opportunity to spend time with ourselves, too. A time for reflection to think about what we might want in the coming months and years. To ask ourselves:  Is this life the one I want?  If it’s the one you wanted and if that’s how you want it to go on, then set daily goals, try to meet them, and value what you have. This virus is going to allow us to reflect on our scale of values. The speed of our activity-driven days took us away from focusing on priorities. This moment of crisis can become instead a place of calm and can return home to the place it deserves, and us to the heart of our own lives.

We are pleased to announce that our new book with prestigious publisher Routledge is now available to pre-order.

The book collects the contributions of experts and professionals to our 4^th International Conference held in London in November 2017, which addressed the pivotal role of the home in health and social care.

People, Care and Work in the Home is an interdisciplinary book that looks at the changing demographics of our modern society and how these have impacted on the dynamics and relationships within the home. It brings together 17 different contributions from scholars, researchers and practitioners from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds including feature articles by leading figures, including Lord Best, Baroness Hollins and Sir Harry Burns. The chapters are organised within the three parts of people + work + care in the home.

Whilst the home is a concept universally experienced, permeating every aspect of our lives, it remains an entity whose influence on health and wellbeing is poorly understood. At a time when homes are increasingly becoming local hubs for care and wellbeing, this volume is a critical and useful addition to current literature in the social sciences, humanities, economics, culture, care and wellbeing in the domestic sphere.

We are very grateful to our patron, Professor Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem and our Academic Director, Professor Antonio Argandoña for all their time and editorial skill in bringing this important book to publication.

We are delighted to announce that the Scientific Committee of our next Conference is now complete. María Teresa Russo, Professor of Philosophy at Roma Tre University is leading this board which is made up of seven more prestigious experts on different areas:

• Renata Kaczmarska, Social Affairs Officer at the United Nations
• M. Gamal Abdelmonem, Chair in Architecture at the Nottingham Trent University
• Baroness Hollins, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry of Disability at St George’s University of London
• Antonio Argandoña, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Business Ethics at IESE Business School
• Rosa María Lastra, Chair in Banking Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London
• Richard Peatfield, Neurologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London

Richard Layard author of “Happiness: Lessons from a New Science” and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics closes this Committee and will be our Keynote Speaker.

If you are researching the contribution of the home to the happiness of society, click here to read the requirements for submitting a paper. These are just some ideas about the different topics that will be addressed in the Conference.

• Reflect on the transformations of happiness concept
• Ask ourselves why the economy recently began to be interested in the subject of happiness
• Point out that the quality of domestic comfort is one of the most important factors influencing human lifestyles, wellbeing and happiness
• Ask ourselves whether the use of technological innovations is increasing the degree of happiness in family life and study its impact on relationships with previous generations
• Underline the importance that building, designing and urban planning take into consideration the quality of family life and the opportunity of encounter and mutual assistance
• Reflect on the link between housework and happiness

This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the vital role of the home in connecting and nurturing individuals through shared values, work and purpose. This will promote future evidence-based discourse and policy-making in regard to the home.

As 2019 comes to a close I have great pleasure in sending news of our recent activities and some reflections on what has been a very good year for Home Renaissance Foundation.

The year began with our Experts’ Meeting: “The Home in the Digital Age” held with the support of the Social Trends Institute (STI). Clear indications for the importance of our work came from this meeting, along with high-calibre discussion and a publication in preparation.

We are committed to having “a seat at the table” where decisions affecting the life of the home are made. This has seen our directors and staff team taking part in discussions at the House of Commons, House of Lords and in the Spanish and European Parliaments.

This autumn has seen HRF continuing this work as a catalyst for change by engaging with key organisations and policy makers. Following our involvement in the International Federation for Family Development (IFFD) Congress in London this October, we were pleased to host a meeting with Renata Kacmarska Social Affairs Officer for the UN. As a result of this, we are looking forward to working with Renata on future projects.

The year also saw very successful launches in Nottingham and Warsaw of the publication from our first Experts’ Meeting: The Home: Multidisciplinary Reflections edited by our academic director, Professor Antonio Argandoña. I can now announce that we have signed a contract with Routledge for the publication from our 4^th Conference: A Place Called Home, edited by our patron, Professor Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem. This is something else to look forward to in 2020.

Preparations are going well for our 5^th Conference “Happy Homes, Happy Society? The contribution of domestic life in a time of social changes” to be held in London, 12-13 November 2020, again with the support of STI. We are delighted that Professor Maria Teresa Russo is our conference director, and that Richard, Lord Layard, the distinguished economist and author is to be our keynote speaker. There will be more about him and his work as editor of the World Happiness Report and author of the influential Happiness: Lessons from a New Science on our website in January. Please do share the Call for Papers for the conference with your own networks.

I end 2019 and this letter with thanks for the generosity of all those who have given their time, skills and financial support to the work of Home Renaissance Foundation this year, restoring the value of home for everyone.

Best wishes for Christmas and for a very happy 2020!

Bryan K. Sanderson, CBE

Home Renaissance Foundation informs you of the 5th International & Interdisciplinary Conference which will be held on November 12-13th 2020 at the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

The Conference will explore the contribution of the home to the wellbeing and happiness of individuals at all stages of life and, by implication and evidence, to wider society. Richard Layard author of “Happiness: Lessons from a New Science” will be our Keynote Speaker.

This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the vital role of the home in connecting and nurturing individuals through shared values, work and purpose. This will promote future evidence-based discourse and policy-making in regard to the home.

Call for Papers

The Call for Papers is now open! If you are researching the contribution of the home to the happiness of society, click below to read the requirements for submission. These are just some ideas about the different topics that will be addressed in the Conference.

• Reflect on the transformations of happiness concept
• Ask ourselves why the economy recently began to be interested in the subject of happiness
• Point out that the quality of domestic comfort is one of the most important factors influencing human lifestyles, wellbeing and happiness
• Ask ourselves whether the use of technological innovations is increasing the degree of happiness in family life and study its impact on relationships with previous generations
• Underline the importance that building, designing and urban planning take into consideration the quality of family life and the opportunity of encounter and mutual assistance
• Reflect on the link between housework and happiness

The Proposal submission deadline will be April 30^th, 2020. Proposals selected will automatically be eligible for a 45% discounted registration fee of the conference fee.

DOWNLOAD CALL FOR PAPERS

If you would like more information on the Conference, please consult our website: www.hrfconference2020.org
or email us at research@homerenaissancefoundation.org

Help us to promote this event by passing this information on to anyone who think might be interested in the Conference. Thank you!

REGISTER NOW!