Why You Still Need a ‘Happy Place’

(Spoiler: it’s maybe not the reason you think.)

People feel a real connection to their favourite places, and can form deep emotional bonds with specific physical settings. Where we are affects how we feel, think and behave, and this sentiment helps to form the notion of ‘environmental psychology’: our surroundings influence us and we, in turn, affect our surroundings.

Most of you will hopefully have valued memories attached to at least one location from your past or present, and the joy, hope, contentment, or sense of security associated with it can come flooding back, to positive effect, when bringing it to mind. This is how and why people were first encouraged to think of a ‘happy place’, and imagine being transported there, in order to influence their current mood.

And yet in late 2025, I believe the idea of telling someone, or being the one told, to go to their happy place has a slightly tired association.

Perhaps it’s just too widely known: a simple phrase that’s easily repeated, which through repetition acquires a whiff of laziness, even insincerity. Or maybe it’s the years of mickey-taking across popular culture. With more time and patience, I could pull together a detailed list of examples from movies, sitcoms and drama series of the concept being caricatured and mocked, but while you can Google *that* scene from the first Happy Gilmore movie nearly 30 years ago, there’s probably no need to do so: Adam Sandler makes the case for me in a shade under forty seconds.

This post is not trashing the idea: quite the reverse. I have numerous locations that can make me feel differently about current circumstances when I think of them. I can also present, through experience, a slightly different take on the ‘happy place’, and in doing so maybe reclaim some of its value.

One of mine is somewhere I’m fortunate to visit quite often: the 12th hole of my local golf course. It’s a scenic par 3 with trees, a stream and a small stone bridge between the tee box and a two-tier green which you feel you’ve done particularly well to hit, should you do so. If the weather turns, and it’s no longer fun to be outdoors, a gateway to the side of 12 is your shortcut back to the car park, and coffee. A route to and from my house also drives you past it, so when I’m not on the course I can still be reminded how lucky I am to have it nearby. It’s even got Cheshire-style white railings at the boundary with the road, which themselves have happy associations of visiting an aunt in farm country as a kid.

So, regardless of how well or badly I believe myself to have played up to the point where I walk down the path from tee to green, or how frustrating the day may have been before passing it in the car, I always feel calm, grounded in nature, and very grateful to be on – or near – the 12th.

On only one occasion have I not felt that way: which brings me to my point.

If you’re at all familiar with mentalitee you’ll know the idea came about during recovery from a mental health crisis (if you don’t, please do have a read once you’re done here). One evening, a month or so before I completely burned out, but already experiencing constant anxiety, tiredness from crappy sleep, and a general feeling I was losing influence over numerous significant life challenges, I decided to try and give myself a boost and head down to the course with a 7-iron: I’d use the practice ground for a while, then play my favourite hole before heading home.

It was warm and sunny, but I had the place pretty much to myself, and while striking the ball well (by my standards at least), I listened back over a favourite podcast episode which was just as funny the third time round. There were no tasks to rush back to, and a good two hours of daylight left to play with, if I wanted it. The perfect setting for a golfer in need of headspace.

After forty minutes or so, my mood hadn’t improved. What’s more, on realising this, it began to worsen. Trees in full leaf, low evening sunshine, and time to myself to do something enjoyable: why didn’t I feel any less anxious, and any more in control of my emotions?

I decided to call it a night, and walking down the 12th to get back to my car I began thinking something really unsettling. I’d experienced lengthy periods of depression before, some of them very bleak indeed, but thanks to bits and pieces of therapy and some useful reading recommendations along the way, had come to trust the idea that it wouldn’t last forever, and brighter days would come. For the first time, I felt convinced they would not. That this could be permanent.

In the moment, it felt like a misfire: a happy place had failed me. But it hadn’t. It had held a mirror up to how unusually bad things had become.

Did I act on it? No. As I’ve already admitted, I barrelled straight past this red flag and carried on for another few weeks before the wheels finally fell off. Could I have kept them on, and lessened the damage to my health if I’d made the decision then and there to ask for help? I honestly believe so.

This is why I advocate for golf, and happy places, and combinations of the two. Nine times out of ten, they will improve your mood. On the one occasion they don’t, you’ve maybe had a gentle warning you should pay attention to.