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

by Meik Wiking

Perhaps people who move to and live in the big cities are less happy not because of the big city but because of the type of person you are if you choose to live in a big city. Perhaps people who are attracted to big cities are more ambitious, and the downside to being ambitious is that you are chronically dissatisfied with the status quo.

What I see is a big potential to improve happiness through little adjustments in our behavior. Great things sometimes have small beginnings.

Danes are the direct descendants of Vikings, so we enjoy watching things burn: bonfires, candles, villages. It’s all good.

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. What we at both the Happiness Research Institute and the World Happiness

Danes are not only among the happiest in the world but are also among the ones who meet most often with their friends and family and trust that their friends will catch them if they fall.

The French eat together. That might be one of the reasons why the French are the ones who spend the most time eating each day.

The average income in Denmark is about $47,000 per year and the average Dane pays around 45 percent in income taxes. If you make more than $73,500 per year, there is an additional tax rate—making it 52 percent over this threshold.

We are not paying taxes; we are purchasing quality of life. We are investing in our community.

Maybe it is because of the cold climate, but Danish words like to spoon.

I can tell you that a café latte in Copenhagen will set you back 40 kroner.

According to the Office of National Statistics in Denmark, the number of bofællesskaber has increased by 20 percent in the past six years. It is especially attractive to families looking for supportive environments for their kids, and to elderly relatives, who are in danger of falling into social isolation.

I cannot be the only one who has felt lonely in a crowded room. We may see and meet other people, but the important thing is whether we connect. Do I get you? Do you get me? Do you trust me enough to let your guard down, to let me know what is really on your mind? To let me in? We also see this reflected in the numbers. The more people we have with whom we can talk about personal matters, the happier we are.

So, loneliness is bad for happiness. Mind-blowing, right? More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out that man is a social animal; and, in the 1940s, Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of human needs showed how love and belonging come just after basic safety and physiological needs.

88 percent of people believe that they know someone they could rely on in a time of need. People in New Zealand, Iceland, and Denmark feel most secure. In these countries, 95 percent or above believe their friends have their back in times of need, while people in Hungary, South Korea, and Mexico report the lowest levels of confidence with 82, 76, and 75 percent, respectively. A couple of years ago, I called my bank to see if I could borrow some money to buy a place to live. When I said that I studied happiness

Back in 2000, Harvard professor and political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, about the decline of American civil society. Putnam’s diagnosis was that Americans were engaging less and less with their communities and this was damaging American society as a whole. Americans were far less likely to participate in volunteer work, go to church, know their neighbors, invite friends home, go to bars, join unions, or just spend time hanging out with friends (and their cats).

This is part of the reason why, over the past decades, countries like the US have become richer but have at the same time experienced a drop in happiness levels. Across the world, we seem to be looking for happiness in all the wrong places. To make matters worse, this is not a US thing but a global thing. We—human beings—are happier when we feel connected with others. And, so far, I have yet to discover a more powerful force to explain human happiness than the fulfillment of our longing for love, friendship, and community. So, people want to belong, but they are not exactly sure how to make it happen.

This challenge has become even bigger with the advance of technology. We are connecting like never before, yet we still feel alone. Our relationships are complicated, they are demanding, and they are messy—so we attempt to clean them up with technology. We prefer calling someone to meeting them in person—and would rather text than call. We are drawn in by the illusion of connection without the demands of intimacy, and while there are positive aspects of social media (for example, keeping in touch when geographically apart), we find that people who reduce their consumption of social media are happier and connect more in the real world.

What we found was that the treatment group reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction. The people in that group also reported higher levels of enjoyment in life and felt less lonely, and not using Facebook led to an increase in their social activity and their satisfaction with their social lives.

If you are the only one without your phone and the rest of the class is Snapchatting with their friends back home, that is a lonely experience. 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.

If money and happiness were to describe their relationship on Facebook, it would read: “It’s complicated.”

Generally speaking, in richer countries, people are happier. The gross domestic product—the GDP per capita, a nation’s wealth—is one of the six factors that explain why people in some countries are happier than others.

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. That is one of the reasons why some countries and people get richer—but not happier. Another reason is that we adapt to new levels of wealth. In happiness research, we call this the hedonic treadmill.

In materialistic terms, Marcus Aurelius might have been right in saying that “a man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions,” but perhaps he overlooked the fact that a man’s worth does not equal his well-being.

For the ambitious among us, once we reach our goal we soon formulate another to pursue. This is the hedonic treadmill. We

the hedonic treadmill spins faster with ambition. In other words, the downside to being ambitious is a constant sense of dis...

“Year after year, they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.”

So 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

so now we know who all the respondents in the original study wanted to kiss. The study also showed that the respondents would be willing to pay more for the experience three days from now than for having the experience right now.

The reason why a large proportion of us prefer to live in the first world is that we not only care about our ability to consume, we also care about our position in the social hierarchy.

In other words, we are spending money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.

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. That is why we would all be better off if we put a lid on the bling.

In English, this is known as tall poppy syndrome.

South Korea ranks fifty-fifth in the World Happiness Report of 2017 and, more alarmingly, it has top ranking when it comes to suicide rates in OECD countries.

South Korea also sends more visitors to our Happiness Research Institute than any other country.

One of the reasons for this is inequality. If a country doubles in wealth but 90 percent of that wealth goes to the richest 10 percent, that is not growth. That is greed. And no, Gordon Gekko, when it comes to happiness, greed is neither good, nor does it work. And your braces look stupid.

Money is tight but, fortunately, fun can be free.

I think what works well in Denmark is that enjoying a good quality of life does not have to cost a lot of money. If I lost my job and my savings, I would still be able to enjoy most of the same things I enjoy today.

The ancient Greek stoic and philosopher Epictetus once said that wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

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are then asked which purchase made them happier, 57 percent will say the experience compared to 34 percent the tangible object.

It would also provide you with an identity beyond your job. So what do you do? I am interested in the color blue.

the reverse relationship—that happiness may lead to a higher income—may also be true.

so we can remove the effect of the parents. The happier brother is going to make more money later in life.”

In the Nordic countries, all of which consistently rank among the ten happiest countries in the world, free health care is available to everyone. People in these countries simply have less to worry about in daily life than most other people on this front, and that forms a sound basis for high levels of happiness.

“In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what ‘freedom’ means. In that country, they have gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that come with economic insecurity. Instead of promoting a system that allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system that guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all—including the children, the elderly, and the disabled.”

Individuals with higher positive affect have better neuroendocrine, inflammatory, and cardiovascular activity. Those with higher positive affect are less likely to catch a cold when exposed to a cold virus and recover faster if they do.

It turned out that the happiest third had a 34 percent lower mortality rate—even after controls undertaken for demographics and health status at the outset.

In general, Danes smoke a lot, drink a lot, and eat loads of meat and sugar, which is not compatible with a long and healthy life. Hygge—the cornerstone of Danish culture and the Danish way of life—is, in part, about indulging in cinnamon swirls and hot chocolate with whipped cream without ordering a side of guilt. Hygge may be good for happiness, but it is not necessarily good for health.

but 31 percent of Danes are physically active at least five hours per week in their spare time,