Tag Archives: For A State Of Happiness

Five years on the road

This Sunday – 30 September 2018 – marks the fifth anniversary of For A State of Happiness.

On 30 September 2013, I quietly set my first step  outside my door, into the wide world of blogging about happiness. As I then wrote, the blog is a travel journal, recording impressions and findings about what makes people, countries, and workplaces happier.

My journey so far

My journey has brought me to wonderful places. It has brought me to conferences in Bhutan, Mexico and Turkey and to visit the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. It allowed me to do book reviews, give  workshops, and talk on radio shows. I’ve had the chance to speak to researchers, journalists and inspirational speakers. I got to research pizza robots and the benefits of high taxes, to ponder about money and art. I even (after a few drinks) spoke to women about happiness during my very own bachelor party (no, there is no blog post about that…).

Happiness is easy, and it is not

My perspective on happiness hasn’t changed massively since my explorations began. Like I did then, I believe happiness often arises from small things in life: pleasant interactions with close friends or family, enjoying a home-made curry or a shared cup of coffee, being astounded by the beauty of a new landscape, or made to think by a piece of art. The art of life is to take notice of the happy moments we experience. Happiness is surprisingly easy.

I still believe we often act against our happiness, even wittingly doing so. We fail to step back in the face of stress. We allow modern technology to encroach on our use of time and attention. We stick to habits that bring about neither ephemeral happiness today nor strengthen our quality of life tomorrow. Happiness is surprisingly difficult.

Why I do what I do

When asked why I am writing this blog, there are generally two types of answers I give, depending on the occasion. Sometimes I say that I write about happiness because I learnt everything that is important in school, with the exception of how to be happy (fortunately, nowadays there are more and more educators that ‘teach’ happiness). And as happiness remains mysterious enough, I’ve reason enough to keep going.

The other answer is that I wanted to write a book about happiness, but figured a blog would be simpler. If you regularly write blog posts for a few years, all you basically have to do is bundle and print them, and you kind of have a book. Evidently it isn’t as easy as that, but there’s a lot of material here and in my head that would make a fine book. Sometimes an unfulfilled dream pushes you forward.

Both answers still apply as much today as they have over the last years. Today, they give an answer to the question “why do you do what you do?”, and hence the journey will go on. I am enjoying every step in the pursuit of happiness.

And I hope, dear reader, that you are enjoying the journey with me. Happy anniversary to you, too!

Image found here: https://www.amindonfire.com/road-trip-movies/

Image found here: https://www.amindonfire.com/road-trip-movies/

Looking back at my experiences and achievements in 2015

In the beginning of this year, I formulated no less than ten New Year’s Resolutions. For me, the end of the year is the natural moment to look back and review what I experienced and achieved throughout the year.

This is how I did:

  • Live together with the girl I feel in love with last year

Yes! And it is a very special experience. Moving in together comes with some challenges. But these challenges are insignificant in comparison to the wonderful pleasure of being together every day.

  • Track and improve my sleep

Fairly well. Especially in the beginning of the year, I used sleep-tracking apps. They helped me somewhat improve my discipline in going to sleep and getting out to bed on time. But I haven’t systematically used them all year round. And my sleeping habits still can improve.

  • Expand my blog

Not bad. Especially after summer, I’ve opted for a somewhat slower frequency. I’ve taken the chance to take on some speaking occasions presenting my work in this field. But maybe most importantly, I’ve visited two ‘happy countries’ this year: Denmark and Bhutan.

  • Work on my health by running or by yoga

Could be better. I regularly do yoga, but not every week. And while I ran a personal best at the 5k (22 min 20 seconds!), I have only ran in training for that race, not all year round.

  • Celebrate my 30th birthday

Yes! And I celebrated it well, spending a weekend in the Belgian Ardennes with a group of friends.

  • Continue to do well at work

I think so. My role within our team has grown this year. And in the last week before the holidays, I won a new promotion (yeah!)

  • Travel to two new countries: Portugal and Bhutan (finally!)

Yes! I spent two weeks in both of them, discovering different towns and landscapes and learning a lot about their culture. And apart from these two, I also visited Denmark for the first time and made stopovers in Nepal and Qatar en route to Bhutan.

  • Watch at least one new TED talk per week

Almost. I’ve had a good amount of inspiration in watching TED talks this year, with topics ranging from basic income to indoor plants to improve air quality in house and from the strength of Muslim women in peace processes to cold-water surfing. While I saw many, I don’t think I got to one per week. And unfortunately I did’t attend any TEDx events this year.

  • Read novels and books about happiness

A little bit! A quick glance at my current happiness bookshelf suggests there aren’t too many additions: books on the November GNH conference in Bhutan and The Power of Negative Emotions being the exceptions. Still, (un)happiness was also a theme in other books that I read, such as Haruki Murakami’s title Norwegian Wood. And reading A History of the World in Twelve Maps also made me happy!

  • Become a better public speaker

Yes! Two and half years after joining, I finished Toastmasters International‘s Competent Communication programme. And I undertook some public speaking opportunities to talk about my discoveries on happiness.

 

Especially in the beginning of the year, I occasionally took a glance at the list to remind me what I wanted to achieve. But as the year progress, I took more and more distance. And now, I don’t even understand why I needed ten goals.

Goals are helpful to meet objectives and develop yourself. But if there is one goal I have for 2016, it is to have less goals…

Juggling yellow stress balls – my message to the Foro Bienestar conference

What serious message can a tiny, bright yellow, stress ball with a smiley convey?

Last week I shared a couple of lessons I learnt from other speakers at the well-being and development conference in Guadalajara. Today, I wanted to tell you about the points of my own presentation.

Juggling a yellow stress ball

The panel I was on had the title ‘what is the role of governments in happiness of the people? I used this little yellow ball to illustrate my message. I realised that many participants were triggered by these little balls in their welcome pack. Some people took pictures of them, holding them in front of their face or their bag and tweeted them. Probably, others just left them in a corner or threw them away. And myself, I decided to juggle with them at the beginning of my speech.

Is there a message in (very poorly!) juggling with stress balls?

I argued there was. My point was simply: everybody will use tools you give them in a different way. You can bring a horse to the stream, but you can’t force it to drink. Sometimes a horse just wants to splash the water!

It’s the same with public policies: as a government you can design policies that you hope make people happier, but you can’t control how they will react. Still, I think there is large responsibility for governments to create the underlying conditions in which citizens can strive. Long-term well-being and quality of life combine subjective elements (our emotions, how we react to circumstances) and objective elements (the  environment we live in). This environment is partly shaped by governments’ economic, environmental and social policies. If good or bad choices are made, that will ultimately influence the quality of our lives.

In the speech, I tried to give my own ‘little stress balls’, or methods to enhance quality of life. I made three suggestions to the policy makers in the room:

Integrated measurements of well-being

Firstly, I advised them to carefully measure the well-being in their jurisdiction. Well-being indicators from all areas – economy, environment, social affairs, health, education, and others – should be measured together, rather than in isolation. Now, in most countries, GDP is the main metric that is used in public policy. I argue that a dashboard of several indicators, such as in the OECD’s Better Life Index, is a good tool to have an additional layer of information. As such, policy makers can detect in which area improved policy outcomes can win the most in terms of quality of life. This can help them to focus their resources on the areas where they can make the biggest difference.

jb at forobienestarTreat well-being as a political agenda

Secondly, I suggested to treat well-being as a political agenda like any other. If the focus will be more on quality of life and well-being, and less on purely economic growth, that is a massive shift in policy! Administrations know that they have to communicate all their policies to citizens and engage in a public debate to explain the choices the made. This applies to well-being just the same as to other areas.

It starts with happiness at work

Thirdly, I advised to also look at the happiness at work of staff in the administration. Motivation and job satisfaction at an individual and team level massively affect the success that an administration will have in the implementation of it its policies. Surveys can be used to monitor and improve work satisfaction and working conditions of the staff responsible to deliver the well-being policy objectives set by politicians and policy makers. Only happy staff can create happy citizens.

Now it is to the administration of Jalisco to translate the lessons from me, and all other speakers, into new and better policies. To be continued!

(and next week, I’ll face one of the other questions debated on the conference: why are Mexicans so happy?)

yellow balls

What my TEDx talk taught me about happiness

Picture 3It doesn’t happen every day that I make one of my dreams come true.

6 March 2013, a little over a year ago, I realised one of my bigger dreams. I gave my very own TEDx talk. For around 150 visitors of TEDxLuxembourgCity, I shared my ideas about personal and collective happiness.

Even though I was proud and excited about the opportunity, delivering the talk on the big day didn’t make me  happy. Why it happened is a different story, but my slides changed automatically, and faster than I spoke. I got distracted and more nervous than I already was. Parts of the talk are almost embarrassing to watch. I recall that I felt very frustrated after the talk. I fled to the bathrooms and needed some time to calm down before I could speak to people.

Imagination

Later that night I noticed the irony.

In the talk, I spoke about one of the great powers of the brain: imagination. Imagination is a force that can both have a positive and a negative effect on our happiness. On the positive side, our possibilities to foresee what the future could be like help us to set goals and ambitions and realise a brighter, happier future. But there is a catch. If our expectations are too high, the reality of our daily life is nothing but a pale reflection of your colourful imagination. This is crucial. When we get something new – say a job or a car – we compare our life with the situation we had before. If our old car was slow and ugly, we’re better off with a new one.

But we also compared with what we imagined. Say that I imagine that my new car allows me to go on a ride in the countryside, wonderful landscape and wind blowing through my hair. That’s the ideal vision I have. But pale daily reality might be different. It might be raining. I might get speeding fines. I might need to go to the garage all the time. In those circumstances, it’s more difficult to appreciate the car and to be happy.

Turning bad things into good ones

What does all this have to with my talk? Well, it’s simple. I was a victim of my imagination. I though my talk had to be brilliant, exactly as I rehearsed it. When it wasn’t, I got upset.

But something interesting happened. I surprised myself. Something different and unforeseen happened. The key moment of the talk is the point where I accept the fact that the slides change. I acknowledge the problem. And I improvise – with my dry Dutch humour – by saying something spontaneous about it, commenting that the road to happiness, like my talk, sometimes makes some strange deviations.

It is true. In this way, the speech becomes more authentic, and more powerful. I’m not sure whether there’s a real message in it. If there is one it might be about one of the challenges of public speaking, happiness and life alike.

Turning bad things in good ones is possible.