The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World's Happiest People (The Happiness Institute Series)

by Meik Wiking

If we look at the World Happiness Report, there is a four-point happiness gap between the happiest and unhappiest countries, and three points of these four are explained by six factors: togetherness or sense of community, money, health, freedom, trust, and kindness.

eudaemonia. That is the Ancient Greek word for happiness, and it is based on Aristotle’s perception of happiness. To him, the good life was a meaningful and purposeful life.

The summer solstice may be a pagan ritual, but to this day it remains my favorite tradition. The Nordic sun sets into a night without darkness and the bonfires are lit throughout the country to celebrate midsummer. Remember: Danes are the direct descendants of Vikings, so we enjoy watching things burn: bonfires, candles, villages. It’s all good.

The capacity of fire and food to bring people together is almost universal across cultures and geographical borders. And sometimes, we need do no more than light a candle to create a sense of community around our dinner tables.

Whether you look at the English word companion, the Spanish word compañero, or the French copain, they all originate from the Latin com and panis, meaning “with whom one shares bread.”

Starting out with the rituals of food and fire around the dinner table can ignite an understanding that the good life builds on connection and purpose. That our wealth is not measured by the size of our bank accounts but by the strength of our bonds, the health of our loved ones, and the level of our gratitude. That happiness does not come from owning a bigger car but from knowing that we are part of something bigger—part of a community—and that we are all in this together.

It’s all about knowing that happiness does not come from owning a bigger car but from knowing that everybody you know and love will be supported in their time of need. What works well in the Nordic countries is an understanding of the link between the good life and the common good. We are not paying taxes; we are purchasing quality of life. We are investing in our community.

One of the hundreds of Danish bofællesskaber is Fælleshaven, where my friend Mikkel grew up. It is home to sixteen families, among them twenty children. The bofællesskab is designed for privacy as well as community. It means that each family has a private home with all the traditional amenities, including its own private kitchen. Yet the private homes are clustered around a shared space—a garden and a large communal kitchen and dining area. The families live separately, yet together.

“What would you recommend people do if they want to do what you did?” I asked Shani. “Don’t do anything we did,” she said, laughing. “Figure out what works for you. What to build your community around. Find out what interests people, what unites people, and build on that. One of my friends started to build a community on his street around tomatoes. Now there are fifteen families coming together each year to can tomatoes.”

Bring your local community together by creating a directory to share skills and resources.

The most important thing is to start talking with your neighbors, to learn their names, find out their skills, interests, and needs, and build a community around them—a community that is as unique as the people who live on your street.

Since 2006, the Dutch have celebrated National Neighbors’ Day on May 26. It started as an initiative to get neighbors together and has grown to become an event that is celebrated in two thousand Dutch districts. It was inspired by a survey that showed that three out of four Dutch people found that neighborhoods that engaged in regular activities were the most pleasant to live in

we find that people who reduce their consumption of social media are happier and connect more in the real world.

So it is important to get critical mass within your social circle. You could convince a number of families on your street to make Thursday night analog night and send the kids out to play together, or start at home by making Thursday night family night. Other options are to create a no-phone zone for two hours around the evening meal, or place a basket for phones by the coat hangers and encourage friends to deposit any devices there when they visit.

Like most things, the more we have of something, the less happiness we derive from it. The first slice of cake: awesome. The fifth slice: not so good. Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility.

For the ambitious among us, once we reach our goal we soon formulate another to pursue. This is the hedonic treadmill. We continuously raise the bar for what we want or feel we need in order to be happy—and the hedonic treadmill spins faster with ambition. In other words, the downside to being ambitious is a constant sense of dissatisfaction with our achievements.

Take time to enjoy the journey toward your goal while also being mindful that achieving your goal will not fulfill you completely.

perhaps we need to consider how to turn the idea of the pursuit of happiness into the happiness of the pursuit. People on a quest for something they find meaningful—whether that is building a boat or growing the perfect tomato—tend to be happier; they know that happiness is the by-product of the process and not a pot of gold at the finish line.

The point of it all is that, if we spend our money on stuff we don’t need to impress people, we are not getting closer to happiness, we are just getting involved in an arms race.

I think it is interesting to hear the story of Michelle McGagh, who went a year without spending a single pound. Michelle is a freelance journalist from north London and the woman behind the book The No Spend Year: How I Spent Less and Lived More.

wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

Bibliotherapy, the art of using books to aid people in solving the issues they are facing, has been around for decades, and the belief in the healing power of books is said to go as far back as ancient Egypt and Greece, where signs above libraries would let readers know that they were entering a healing place for the soul.

Once a week, write down three to five things you are grateful for.

In recent years, “gratitude journals” have become more and more popular, but it is important not to treat these exercises as just another item on your to-do list. Also, studies show that it is better to do it occasionally—say, once a week—than every day, to keep it from becoming a routine.

form a free-fun fellowship in which each friend takes a turn at planning an inexpensive activity and you all meet up to spend time together doing it. What my fellowship has done is to watch the horse races (bring a potluck picnic), visit museums, go swimming, play board games, and go hiking in Dyrehaven

Buy experiences and memories, not things.

Shinrin-yoku literally translates to “forest bathing,” or taking in the atmosphere of the forest, and refers to soaking up the sights, smells, and sounds of a natural setting to promote physiological and psychological health.

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, where the belief is that the human pursuit of everlasting happiness leads to suffering. We feel pain because nothing lasts. Mindfulness is about being present. Right here, right now, in this moment, and being loving and kind to yourself. Whereas our thoughts usually revolve around the future or the past, mindfulness is all about the present moment.

To fight the stigma that surrounds mental illness, we need to listen more and learn more. We need to end the misunderstanding and the prejudice. We need to end whispering about mental illnesses behind closed doors. We need to say the scary words out loud, so they lose their power, and so no one has to struggle on in silence.

“No people can be truly happy if they do not feel that they are choosing the course of their own life,” states the World Happiness Report 2012—and it also finds that having this freedom of choice is one of the six factors that explain why some people are happier than others.

Every day, we each get 1,440 minutes and, every week, we each get 168 hours. However, we have very different levels of freedom when it comes to how we spend our time.

The notion in Scandinavia seems to be that it takes two people to make a baby, so it should be the equal responsibility of those two people to raise that child. “At work, the men will say they can’t make a meeting at four p.m. because they have to pick up their kids. That would never happen in London.”

The average annual hours worked per worker is 1,457 in Denmark, compared to 1,674 in the UK, 1,790 in the US, and an OECD average of 1,766.

In addition, there is a minimum of five weeks’ paid vacation for all employees.

Fifty-two weeks of paid leave per child are allocated by the state, and these can be divided between you and your partner. The amount you receive depends on a range of factors, including your salary and whether you work full-time. However, even if you are unemployed, you will receive around 18,000 kroner (about $3,000) per month from the state. Child care is subsidized too, which brings the price tag for parents to about $400 per month per child.

There is no doubt that kids are great sources of joy and love; at the same time, they are sources of stress, frustration, and worry.

To try to fill this gap, several cities in Denmark have now created “Bonus Grandparents Systems,” where senior citizens volunteer to be a foster grandparent for a specific family. For instance, the bonus nanny will help if the kids are sick but will also take part in family celebrations and activities. Although the system has already been set up in Denmark, you could create something similar yourself. An extra pair of hands, a different experience for the children, and an extra source of patience to draw on can be helpful. And another upside is that it also reduces loneliness in older generations. Meeting your neighbors through the mini-library or the community garden you set up may be a good first step to build the necessary relationship and trust.

“You are going to spend a huge part of your life working—it should be something you enjoy.”

Entrepreneurs have a greater sense of purpose, of direction in life, but studies also confirm the widely held notion that greater freedom and the opportunity to be your own boss are sources of happiness both at work and outside work.

“A successful society is one in which people have a high level of trust in each other—including family members, colleagues, friends, strangers, and institutions such as government. Social trust spurs a sense of life satisfaction.”

People who trust other people are happier, and trust does make life easier.

there is a link between empathy, cooperation, and trust. If we have strong empathetic skills, we are more inclined to cooperate than to compete and, when we all cooperate, we are more inclined to trust one another.

So, let’s start by being reliable, by keeping our word, and by keeping secrets if people have confided in us. Loyalty to those not present proves our loyalty to those who are. Being trustworthy is a valuable asset, both in our own life and to the lives of the people we care about.

“We look at the coherent development of the child—academically, socially, and emotionally. Math and science are important, but so are empathy, understanding how to be a good friend, and knowing how to work with others,” Louise explains.

Just because you win, it does not mean that I lose. Education systems that rank their students are teaching them that success is a zero-sum game. If you do well, it undermines someone else’s opportunities. But happiness should not be like this.

FIVE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS TO DO THIS WEEK 1. LEAVE A GIFT ON SOMEONE’S DOORSTEP. 2. LEARN THE NAME OF THE PERSON AT THE FRONT DESK, OR SOMEONE ELSE YOU SEE EVERY DAY. GREET THEM BY NAME. 3. MAKE TWO LUNCHES AND GIVE ONE AWAY. 4. TALK TO THE SHY PERSON WHO’S BY THEMSELVES AT A PARTY OR AT THE OFFICE. 5. GIVE SOMEONE A GENUINE COMPLIMENT. RIGHT NOW.

Altruism is concern for the welfare of others and it is one of the factors that explains why some countries are happier than others. According to the World Happiness Report 2012, a society cannot be happy unless there is a high degree of altruism among its members.

World Kindness Day was introduced by the World Kindness Movement, a group of national kindness organizations, in 1998 and is celebrated on November 13 each year.

Studies back up my experience that volunteering can lead to more social relationships and friendships, and this (I hope it comes as no surprise at this point) has an impact on our happiness. It may also be one of the reasons for the large number of Danes who engage in volunter work. At the time of writing, 42 percent of Danes are engaged in unpaid activities and 70 percent have been active in the last five years, according to the Danish Institute for Voluntary Effort—and this helps to keep Denmark happy.

The question, of course, remains: If kindness is so great, why aren’t we doing more of it? If there is a helper’s high, why aren’t rock stars checking into rehab centers because they volunteer too much? According to a report by Jill Loga of the Norwegian Institute for Social Research, perhaps the reason is that most of us see volunteering as doing something good for others—not for ourselves. In other words, we need to highlight the personal benefits that come from perpetrating acts of kindness and altruism, such as getting more friends and making us feel more grateful for what we have. You don’t have to sign up to do work for a charity, it could be anything from volunteering to help out at football practice to simply giving out more smiles to strangers in the street.