Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #178 BITESIZE | The 6 Keys to Happiness | Meik Wiking

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 32 of the podcast with founder and CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, Mike Viking. Mike has traveled all over the globe interviewing some of the world's happiest people to discover the key components of happiness. And in this clip, he explains some of his fascinating findings. How would you define happiness? No, so it's actually a question we work a lot with, obviously.

Starting point is 00:01:58 And so the Happiness Research Institute, we are a think tank based in Copenhagen that basically tries to solve three questions. So we try first to understand how we can measure the good life or happiness. Secondly, why some people are happier than others. And thirdly, we try to explore how we can improve quality of life for people. So we usually follow the guidelines that have been produced by OECD on measuring subjective well-being. And they recommend that scientists look at three dimensions. So the first one is sort of an overall life satisfaction. So in surveys, we would ask people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. So you can get them to imagine the worst possible life they could live and the best possible life

Starting point is 00:02:43 they could live on a scale from 0 to 10. And then ask them, where do you feel you stand right now? So that is the metric that is usually fed into the World Happiness Report. I think the average for the UK is around 6.5. In Denmark, it's 7.5. But that's one dimension of happiness. So it's sort of an overall satisfaction with our lives as a whole. So it's sort of an overall satisfaction with our lives as a whole.

Starting point is 00:03:10 That's different to the second dimension, which is what kind of emotions do we experience on a daily basis? So if you take yesterday, did you feel worried, happy, sad, lonely, angry, frustrated, stressed? And of course, that is much more volatile. We can see there's a weekend effect when it comes to what kind of emotions we experience. And it's, of course, also linked with life satisfaction, because if you have a lot of every days with a lot of positive emotions, you probably also are more satisfied with your life. And there's actually some super interesting studies in the UK in that domain. A really cool study under London School of Economics called Mappiness,

Starting point is 00:03:42 where I think almost 70,000 people now have downloaded an app and are asked one to three times a day how happy they are and where they are, who are they with, and what are they doing. And then they can see when people are in the countryside, they're happier. The happiest day throughout the year is Christmas Day. The unhappiest day, 2016, was when Trump was elected. People are unhappiest when they're ill in bed. The second unhappiest day 2016 was when Trump was elected. People are unhappiest when they're ill in bed. The second unhappiest activity is being at work. So of course, you know, that's an

Starting point is 00:04:11 interesting study that also shows that, you know, we are sort of daily mood gets impacted by political events and so on. So that's the second dimension. And then the third dimension, which is I think actually the one we know least about, is a dimension that builds on Aristotle's perception of happiness. So he was, I think, perhaps the first happiness researcher, wrote extensively about happiness. And to him, the good life was the meaningful life. So in that dimension, we explore whether people have a sense of purpose or meaning in life. I think right now there is a global search for new ways of doing things. I think there is a global sentiment that a lot of us have become richer without becoming happier. And perhaps a recognition that we've been looking for happiness in the wrong places. A lot of us feel pressure to be happy all the time.

Starting point is 00:05:06 And I think us at the Happiness Research Institute actually have a responsibility to say, well, that's not what we necessarily should be striving for. And happiness researchers get angry and frustrated and lonely and sad too. And that's part of the human experience. So nobody can be happy all the time. What we're interested in is how do we create good conditions for good lives? How do we get people to flourish? Including having purpose and meaning in their lives. Mike, when I was doing my research on you and your work, I saw that you have been all around the world and you have spoken to people

Starting point is 00:05:47 from different countries, from different cultures, from different socioeconomic groups. I'm really interested, are there some commonalities between all these different cultures, all these different groups in terms of what makes us happy as human beings? terms of what makes us happy as human beings? Yes, there is. And I think that to me, that's rewarding to see and to recognize in the data. If we're just looking at the World Happiness Report, to start with, that's a report that covers 155 countries, ranging in the top, when we look at average happiness levels from Finland, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, and so on, down to the least happy countries, Central African Republic, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq. And obviously there are some explanations

Starting point is 00:06:38 for why some people are really unhappy in war-torn countries. But if we look broadly across those 155 countries, we can see there are six factors that explain the majority of the variance between those countries. So GDP levels per capita. Yes, money does matter because being without money is a cause of unhappiness. We can see that health, so healthy life expectancy is the second factor. Third, we see freedom, being able to be the captain on your ship, choosing the destiny that you want. Matters, equal inheritance rights for men and women, classic freedom rights, freedom of assembly and so on. Freedom from corruption, so do we have a good government?

Starting point is 00:07:19 Do we have a government that ensures that the money that are paid in taxes are actually distributed out to people in terms of quality of life. And then it becomes more interesting. Then it's actually a factor called generosity. So is there a spirit of generosity in society? Is there a spirit of kindness in society? And then as the last factor, social support. So do we have somebody in our lives we can rely on in times of need. Scandinavian countries are doing something right. I think that's something we've seen on a number of levels. One thing that I have taken from when I'm reading about Scandinavia, or even when I've been there, there seem to be things that are set up culturally for the greater good. I think there is a lesser level of the perception that happiness is a zero-sum game, that my happiness also depends on how you and your family is doing.

Starting point is 00:08:14 I think there is a framework in place that ensures there's simply less to compete for. Because whether you are rich or poor, you will still be able to have a decent life and you will still be able to enjoy life having an infrastructure in place that allows everybody to move around the city to be mobile in terms of pedestrians and in terms of cyclists so you do not need to own a car um i don't own a car because I don't need a car. So my mobility cannot be taken away from me. I have a bicycle. I can go anywhere, everywhere I need to go. And in addition, it also keeps me healthier than if I was driving. And I think having a society where you don't need to pay to get into a decent level of quality of life, I think that's the key to ensuring a society where it's not me first all the time. There's real joy to be had in the simple things in life. One of the strategies I've come

Starting point is 00:09:12 up with to try and help in a very accessible way for my patients is about doing something that you love. I see so many of them throughout the whole week, they never do anything that they absolutely love. And I kind of feel that's a really important thing to lower our stress levels and increase our happiness is, you know, how many times in a week do you do something that you love, that you're doing, not because someone else told you to do, but because you want to, whether that's going for a walk in nature, whether that's doing a bit of painting, whether it's listening to some music mindfully, you know, not scrolling your phone and your emails at the same time. It can be something so simple. It doesn't have to be a big thing that costs money or anything like that. And I wonder, is that something you see as being a key component of happiness?

Starting point is 00:09:59 Very much so. I mean, it's one of the key pillars when we look at happiness broadly. We can also see when we survey people in terms of job satisfaction, a sense of meaning also comes up in the top of the list often. And a lot of people talk about the pursuit of happiness, but I think in many ways it's better to talk about the happiness of pursuit and seeing happiness as a byproduct of something else, a meaningful life, for instance, or a greater purpose. From what you said just now, I'm reminded of one of the people I mentioned in my latest book, the little book of Lücke. He's a young guy. His identity is a secret.

Starting point is 00:10:43 Here in the UK, he's known as the free help guy. And he had that experience that you're describing there, every day going on the tube, going to Oxford Circuit Station, working in marketing and just sort of feeling part of the rat race, feeling like it really didn't matter. There was no sense of purpose. And then he told me that he, for some reason, decided to quit and give himself six months to find meaning in life

Starting point is 00:11:17 and to make his worth and his contribution in more than pounds and pennies. his worth and his contribution in more than pounds and pennies. And funny enough, he said the first week he binged watched Breaking Bad. But then for some reason he decided to write online in a forum, is there anybody I can help? I'll do it for free, the free help guy. And that became the first step in a really interesting journey where he has, he sat next to a guy on planes to help the guy get over his fear of flying. He has tried to find a bone marrow donor for a young girl who is suffering from cancer. He has tried to reunite a father with

Starting point is 00:12:00 his son. And he's done all these amazing things and and he says that despite of that he feels that the one that have benefited the most from the project is himself because his heart beats in a way that he never has before and and now he wants to make the um and the project that was originally a six months project permanent um and i think that is a testimony in terms of how important meaning and purpose is in terms of just joy and satisfaction with life. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest.

Starting point is 00:12:48 And if you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading,

Starting point is 00:13:07 quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com

Starting point is 00:13:23 forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #178 BITESIZE | The 6 Keys to Happiness | Meik Wiking

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