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‘It’s nice to have a night out that doesn’t revolve around drinking,” says the person next to me as we put the finishing touches to our lino prints of pomegranates, wintry trees, the anime character Totoro (mine) and a martini-drinking cat, which we’ve spent our Friday evenings crafting. There has been wine, but it wasn’t central to the evening – a small block of clay and some inks were.
It’s a different kind of night out from going for dinner and, possibly, having one too many, which is the formula plenty of us fall back on. At best that can be fun and nurturing, but at worst you find yourself on the bus home feeling hollowed out and en route to a hangover. So how else can we let our hair down?
First, it needs saying, the variations between what looks fun and fulfilling vary wildly from one person to the next. Not everyone is going to come away from lino printing feeling, as I did, as if their night has been well spent: it helped that, after some early ill-disguised scepticism, there was celebration of how well I’d captured Totoro’s expression.
We need, instead of specifics, to think about general issues. The behavioural scientist Jon Levy has a guiding principle: “What’s your ultimate objective?” Sally Dibden, a holistic health coach and founder of the Wellbeing Consultants, thinks a good place to start is by settling on the feeling you hope to achieve. Then ask yourself “how you would align an evening out from the feeling you want to generate”.
You could aim for a feeling that will add some balance to your day, or the rest of your week. Are you working from home all day? Perhaps it’s in-person connection you need. “Flipping it completely on its head,” says Dibden, “for some people who are so on the hamster wheel of going out, it might be that they need solitude.” She has questions you could ask yourself: “Do I want to feel more energised? Do I want to feel more connected? Do I want to feel calmer? And then you can choose …”
According to Dr Michael Plant, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, “One of the most interesting lessons from happiness research is that we’re often wrong about what will make us happy, so we go after the wrong things – it’s called ‘miswanting’.” It’s why, he says, we’ve all had the experience of trying something new and being pleasantly surprised.
If you’re struggling to figure out what’s right for you, Gillian Sandstrom, a professor in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, suggests thinking back to what you enjoyed as a child. Partly because that’s when we often did things we weren’t always great at, but still enjoyed. For adults, she says, “There’s something freeing about allowing yourself to not be good at it and do it anyway – uncoupling the achievement from enjoyment.”
There’s a temptation, especially if you’re tired at the end of the day, to go for something easy and fun that you can simply consume, such as a comedy night or a film. Levy points to the words of a friend, Elan Lee, the co-creator of the game Exploding Kittens. “He said: ‘When we looked at all the games we created, and compared the ones that succeeded versus those that failed, the ones that failed were fun games; the ones that succeeded were the ones that made the players fun.’” Levy says: “When we pick an activity, let’s not focus on just what will be fun, because most of the stuff that’s fun is very passive.”
In fact, on a good night out, it may be that more effort, not less, is preferable. “To have an exciting or interesting or exceptional experience, you have to feel like you’ve grown from it.”
Levy points to the Ikea effect: “It says that we care more about our Ikea furniture because we have to assemble it. So anything we invest effort into, we care more about.” He also gives the example of karaoke. “When we are in a vulnerable state, like when singing karaoke, it leads to a higher level of trust and connection.” Attempting to hit the high notes in a Chappell Roan song can be part of a growth experience. “You’re doing something that makes you a little uncomfortable and that’s healthy”; perhaps the perfect close to an otherwise mundane week.
But stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be as extrovert as publicly clawing for top C. Try a different location, suggests Levy, who in 2016 published a book called The 2am Principle: Discover the Science of Adventure, looking at whether you could socially engineer a great night out. “There’s this tendency that if you go to the places you already know well, you fall into your patterns,” he says. Although even in familiar places, we can construct things differently. Levy suggests setting yourself a challenge, such as performing three acts of kindness.
Unless it’s solitude you need, the perfect night out will involve talking to others, whether that’s chatting to friends or strangers. According to Sandstrom, “There’s research showing that not only the quality and quantity of social interactions we have, but the diversity of our conversation partners, is also related to how happy we are.”
Sandstrom has found mental health benefits to “weak tie” social connections, which are even brief conversations with strangers, or people outside our close circle. I remember with glee not a conversation but a sung chorus of the Totoro theme song that a stranger struck up without warning on seeing my evening’s work.
Of course, you can’t plan for these encounters. “I think that’s part of the joy of it,” says Sandstrom. But you can build a mindset that will grease the wheels. It’s about “being open to it”, she says, giving the example of striking up a conversation with a stranger on the train home from an evening out. “If I had sat down and just pulled out my phone, it would never have happened.” It “ends the night with that perfect cherry on top”, she says. It won’t be easy for everyone, but from her research, practice helps.
Looking at connection from a different angle, Dr Dan Weijers, co-editor of the International Journal of Wellbeing, suggests factoring nature into your plans. “There is a lot of evidence supporting connecting with nature as an important way to boost wellbeing. Combine this with what we already know about the benefits of exercise and socialising, and we get a compelling case for doing things with others outdoors.” This might be easier said than done, especially in winter.
Holli-Anne Passmore is an associate professor at Concordia University of Edmonton, Canada, whose work looks at “simple, everyday ways that people can enhance their wellbeing and meaning in life”. She is clear that factoring in nature doesn’t necessarily mean spending the whole evening in the park (although, as a Canadian, she is fairly robust about being outdoors, even in the cold).
It can, she says, be a case of spotting nature as you walk around your neighbourhood, maybe even on your way out for the evening. It sounds, she says, “like a really basic thing”, but when people are doing this consistently, her tests show that it works wonders, boosting “transcendent connectedness”, something she explains as “essentially feeling connected to everything and everybody”. It also boosts “elevation”, which she describes as “a composite emotion that includes feeling morally elevated, spiritually uplifted, profoundly touched, deeply grateful”. Hearteningly for those of us living on grey city streets, she sees these emotions registering as much with people looking at a tree at the bus stop as with people gazing at the Grand Canyon.
Our mindset on a night out is also key. Dibden advises seeing it as trial and error, “pulling the things out that worked and the things that didn’t work … deconstructing it”. In fact, sometimes doing something that goes wrong is, according to Meik Wiking, the chief executive of the Happiness Research Institute, “far more likely to be fun and memorable”. He points to a night that has gone down among his group of friends as the Great Sausage Disaster of 2015 because they spent an evening making a mountain of revolting sausages. “We still don’t know what went wrong – but it was a memorable evening.”
So don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. “I think there’s a problem in the title,” says Dibden. “‘Perfect’ doesn’t exist.” For Plant, “expecting that something should be perfect is a recipe for disappointment”. He recommends framing it, instead, as an experiment. “That way, you either have a good time or you’ll learn you don’t really like whatever it was. You can then cross it off the list, and do something else next time.”
