My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place

by Meik Wiking

Since seeing the vacant chair principle in action, I have been more mindful of the ways the seating plan impacts the behavior and atmosphere in the room.

With a round table, nobody sits at the head of the table, so everyone is positioned as an equal.

A round table allows everybody around it to make eye contact with everybody else, which makes the atmosphere more personal and intimate.

The results showed that higher levels of well-being were associated with spending more time talking to others and further associated with having more meaningful conversations and less small talk.

Also, I find that working with our hands allows us to deal with silence without panicking so much.

Studies have shown that people who engage in volunteer work experience higher levels of satisfaction with life, an increased sense of purpose, and stronger social relationships. The

How do we create good conditions for well-being while working remotely?

It is important to understand how visible objects trigger our mental capacity.

so a home office should ideally be a separate space in your home, somewhere you can shut the door or draw

a curtain to fulfill the essential need to separate your work life...

MAKE SURE YOU SCHEDULE BREAKS

overachiever self a break, so make sure you make time for breaks when working from home.

fact, trial and error is exactly what we have to thank for making two of the world’s

Play around.

In our work-obsessed society, play is overlooked and undervalued—even ridiculed, unless it’s a “creative” hobby.

Play just for the sake of play is vital to our happiness. To me, the good life—a rich life—includes moments of laughter, joy, and play. And I

LEGO Play Well 2020 study, 98 percent of children say that playing as a family makes them very happy, and 88 percent of children say that play helps their parents get to know them better.

Furthermore, 95 percent of parents say that play improves family well-being. Interestingly, 91 percent of children say that play makes their parents very happy.

Make sure you do family activities where you face each other. If

A hygge home is a home that understands the value of play.

Remember: You don’t have to stop playing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop playing.

He found that laughter is thirty times more frequent in groups compared with private settings.

We are more likely to laugh and find jokes funny when we hear other people laughing. This

point of all this is that I think we should incorporate some play elements

i intentionally try to create this .

would like to point out that I think work can and should be a source of happiness—we all need to feel that there is purpose and meaning in life, structure to our days, and a sense of accomplishment is vital to our well-being.

Work hygge, play hygge.

The question then becomes, how can our homes help us in working toward self-actualization? It means curating your space so you are reminded of what you love to do and what inspires you to do it. Let’s take a closer look at how the rooms in our home affect us.

check every floor of the pyramid

Instead of considering what a room looks like, I started to ask whether I felt like spending time in it.

it? The setting influences the script.

The setting influences the script. It impacts our behavior.

However, it wasn’t until I later visited Cézanne’s studio that I fully understood how spaces can inspire us an...

Joking aside, I believe the lesson here is that rooms and homes can inspire us.

Housing is not a noun, it is a verb—or it should be. It is how building and designing continuously allow us to flourish. A

this

That is the Cézanne effect—when a home inspires us, when it facilitates self-actualization.

Second, the point is that your home and your room impact you and your behavior.

A modern variation is John Samuel Waters Jr, an American actor and director, who is credited with saying, “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t sleep with them.” Don’t sleep with people who don’t read.

there is a clear link between having a TV in the bedroom as a kid and being overweight a few years later.

In other words, how we design our children’s rooms—and our own—can directly impact our health and our well-being.

A hygge home means a series of spaces that remind you of who you are and what brings you happiness. It means making space for what you love to do.

Netherlands—

I believe that one key to hygge is the homemade element.

It is said that the recipe for happiness includes something to do and something to look forward to.

But, most importantly, cooking is an act of love.

It is a way to show people that you care, that you prepared and created something for them to enjoy.

The first physical item is the sofa, in seventh place—but love, the sound of laughter, and family meals are the heavyweights when it comes to making a home.

me, the good life includes both elements—purpose and pleasure.

If health is not just the absence of disease but full physical, mental, and social well-being, then healthy food is something that makes us happy, gives us comfort and pleasure, and connects us with other people.

“With good friends . . . and good food on the board . . . we may well ask, when shall we live if not now?”