Still the Happiest People

When you try to start changing who you are to gain the high opinion of someone else, you will lose your authenticity along with your happiness. They focus on today. Happy people tend to be givers in the community.

Givers realize their blessings and take joy in giving back to others. There is a different, special kind of happiness that comes to those who help others. They spend time with people. Happy people enjoy making time for the people that mean the most to them and connecting with new people. Action takers get things done at work and at home which brings a sense of achievement. Professor of Psychology, the Glenn E.

Marie Helweg-Larsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. Scientists like to study and argue about how to measure things. But when it comes to happiness, a general consensus seems to have emerged.

Depending on the scope and purpose of the research, happiness is often measured using objective indicators data on crime, income, civic engagement and health and subjective methods , such as asking people how frequently they experience positive and negative emotions. Why might Danes evaluate their lives more positively? Yes, Danes have a stable government, low levels of public corruption, and access to high-quality education and health care.

The country does have the the highest taxes in the world , but the vast majority of Danes happily pay: They believe higher taxes can create a better society. The Oxford dictionary added the word in June , and it refers to high-quality social interactions. Pursuing goals, though, does make you happy.

According to David Niven, author of Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life , "People who could identify a goal they were pursuing were 19 percent more likely to feel satisfied with their lives and 26 percent more likely to feel positive about themselves. So be grateful for what you have, and then actively try to achieve more.

If you're pursuing a huge goal, make sure that every time you take a small step closer to achieving it, you pat yourself on the back. But don't compare where you are now with where you someday hope to be.

• Pleading Savior.
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• Gespräche mit mir: eine Möglichkeit, seine Gefühle besser kennenzulernen (German Edition).
• Finland is the happiest country in the world, says UN report | World news | The Guardian.
• The Seduction of Suzanne.
• The Conversation!
• Hygge: Four things we can learn from the happiest people on earth.

Compare where you are now to where you were a few days ago. Then you'll get dozens of bite-size chunks of fulfillment -- and a never-ending supply of things to be thankful for. Turns out it's true: Artists are considerably more satisfied with their work than non-artists -- even though the pay tends to be considerably lower than in other skilled fields.

I'm no researcher, but clearly the more you enjoy what you do and the more fulfilled you feel by it, the happier you will be. In The Happiness Advantage , Shawn Achor says that when volunteers picked "one of their signature strengths and used it in a new way each day for a week, they became significantly happier and less depressed.

Of course it's unreasonable to think you can chuck it all and simply do what you love. But you can find ways to do more of what you excel at. Start to shift the products and services you provide into areas that allow you to bring more of your strengths to bear. If you're a great trainer, find ways to train more people. If you're a great salesperson, find ways to streamline your administrative tasks and get in front of more customers.

1. Actively pursue your goals.

Everyone has at least a few things they do incredibly well. Find ways to do those things more often.

You'll be a lot happier. It's easy to focus on building a professional network of partners, customers, employees, connections, etc.

But there's a definite payoff to making real not just professional or social-media friends. Increasing your number of friends correlates to higher subjective well-being; doubling your number of friends is like increasing your income by 50 percent in terms of how happy you feel. And if that's not enough, people who don't have strong social relationships are 50 percent less likely to survive at any given time than those who do. That's a scary thought for loners like me.