Instant Genius - What does it mean to be happy? - Helen Russell

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

What does it mean to be happy? The pleasure of doing nothing, the sense of community from performing a haka, or drinking in your pants? Helen Russell, author of The Atlas of Happiness, explains what happiness means to different people around the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And that was a really interesting find as well, that sometimes you have to be sad to be happy, and being sad sometimes can counterintuitively make you happier. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Focus magazine team, with the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store.

Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Jason Gojeezyngueger, commissioning editor of BBC Focus magazine. What does it mean to be happy? Is it the pleasure of doing nothing, or as the Italians would say, Dolce faniente? Is it the sense of community and shared contentment that the Maori people find in performing a hacker? Or maybe it's the Finnish habit of drinking at home in your pants. In her book, The Atlas of Happiness, Helen Russell explores what happiness means to people around the world and how what makes us happy is intricately linked into our cultures. She also looks into what the research has to say

about why these things might make us happy and suggests ways that we could experience happiness in all its forms of ourselves. In this episode, she speaks to BBC Focus online assistant Sarah Rigby about what she's learnt about happiness, misconceptions about the hacker, and what we Brits could do to make ourselves happier. First of all, can you please tell us a little bit about your book? Yeah, absolutely.

So the Atlas of Happiness is a look at the global secrets of how to be happy. So the unique happiness concepts that people in different countries around the world are using to keep themselves going and keep themselves upbeat and positive every day. So it sounds from your book like people from different cultures have really varied ideas of what it means to be happy and how they go about trying to be happy. Why do you think that is? I think as someone who is from England but has been living in Denmark for the last six years, you notice that there are different approaches to happiness, as you say. So some cultures have more communal approaches, collective happiness ideas are around that. And some are more individualistic.

So we might think of the UK and America, for example, as being quite individualistic. Whereas the Nordic countries have a very particular kind of communal idea of happiness, but it's often just for the Nordics. I looked into New Zealand, into Maori communities there, and there it's very much idea of communal happiness. So I guess it depends where you are. And South Africa, Ubuntu, this idea that if one person is unhappy,

then how can you be happy yourself, that I am because you are. So that's a whole kind of radical different way of thinking about it, whereby you are hoping that the people around you are okay and that will make you better off. I was interested going back to what you were saying about New Zealand. I was interested in your explanation of the hacker, because to us, it's something we often perceive as something that's sort of almost aggressive and powerful.

We associate it with the New Zealand's rugby team, but from what it says in your book, that's not really the case. Can you please explain what it is about and how it relates to happiness? Yeah, it's a really interesting one. So as you say, yeah, I had exactly the same. impression as you until I met a hacker instructor, a Maori guy who was explaining it to me and let me have a go and trying to teach me the principles of it. And in fact, it's about communication. It's about unity and ultimately love. The idea is that you will be part of something

with the people around you. So if one person's not having a nice time, again, the whole dynamic of the group changes so that everybody is included and everyone is involved. And there are different huckers. There's ones for weddings. There's ones for funerals. They do them in schools. There are all female ones. So yeah,

it's very much more than just the all-backed's idea that we would see of these very macho men doing this dance before they try to win a game. It's much more than that. And it's something very powerful, I think, about getting in touch with your feelings in a way that I certainly wasn't used to. and I think a lot of people in the UK is very much outside of their comfort zone. According to the NHS, one in four adults in the UK experiences at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any given year.

So, I mean, a lot of people do think that that could be to do with the way we sort of bottle things up and we don't talk about things. So do you think we could learn from the Maori? Yeah, I think so certainly. And I talk about England as well and this idea of bottling things up. and it's been a coping strategy of thought of sorts over the years. And it's linked to these ideas about blitz spirit and stiff up a lip. But certainly psychologists agree that we are better off when we are in touch with our emotions, good and bad.

And that was a really interesting find as well, that sometimes you have to be sad to be happy. And being sad sometimes can counterintuitively make you happier. So that was a really important one, I think, as someone who's raised a Catholic and went to an all-girls school in England and feel a lot of the repression that we associate with Britishness over the ages. I certainly felt as though getting in touch with your emotions is something other countries are doing better

and they seem to be happier as a result. I was also particularly interested by your section on Bhutan and Gross National Happiness. So that intrigued me because, well, first of all, can you please explain to us what gross national happiness is? Yeah, absolutely. So gross national happiness is this philosophy that guides the government of Bhutan, whereby happiness is measured and prioritised ahead of financial gain. And it's signed to have been in practice throughout Bhutanese history.

But the King Wangchuk, the fourth, told a journalist from the Financial Times in the 70s that gross national happiness is more important than gross national product. And since then, Bhutan has really champion policies that measure prosperity via the spiritual, environmental even and social health of its people. And the environment thing is really interesting as well because it's one of the few developing countries putting sustainability at the heart of its agenda. There are lots of studies that show the link between people who care for the environment tend to be happier and also people who are unhappy tend to consume more. That's pretty bad for the environment because you buy things to make you happier. So in Bhutan it's measured every two years as a big survey nationwide.

and everybody is asked how they are feeling about various different measures of their life. And gross national happiness is now the prism through which everything that the government implements is filtered through. So, for example, they will say no to McDonald's coming to Bhutan, despite the money, because they don't want to see the obesity levels that they've seen in other countries, just for example. It's a country of contradictions. They're not saying they've nailed it.

They're saying they're committed to working on it. So they have teachers in schools still wear the traditional robes, but kids in Bhutan are learning STEM subjects. They even have their own MIT lab. They're learning computer programming. So they're really taking old and new, seeing how these work together. And another great example that I love with their commitment to the environment is they said no to joining the World Trade Organization because doing so would have meant opening up Bhutan's forests in a way that wasn't compatible with their goals for the environment. they've committed to make sure that at least 70% of Bhutan, I believe, is covered with forest in perpetuity. So it's a real commitment to making sure that the country stays in a happy place for future generations. So I think that's something we can all learn from. So that sounds like it's something that's worked really well for Bhutan.

Do you think it's realistic for other countries to try and adopt a similar mindset? Well, Ban Ki-moon, when he was at the UN, he tried to take the philosophies used there and bring them to the rest of the world, I think, in 2011. So there have been moves to translate Bhutan's philosophy and try and spread it throughout the rest of the world. It's something I think we will remember David Cameron talking about, you know, measuring happiness and other countries are considering it. some in more of a sort of piecemeal way, but other countries are taking it to heart a bit more. So it's certainly spreadable. It's never going to be as easy in a tiny Himalayan nation, but it's possible to have that as a goal. What sort of interested me most about this concept of gross national happiness is that it sort of stuck out to me from all the others and that it seems like it's less sort of cultural and more like a policy. Do you think that is analogous to any of the other? sort of happiness ideas that you've seen anywhere else, or is this very specific to Bhutan? That's a great question. I think living in Denmark, I have a bias, I guess, and more knowledge

about that area. And certainly in Denmark, there's a term called Arbidesgul, from Arbidea, the Danish for work and Glull, the word for happiness, that literally means happiness at work. So that's, you know, that's a cultural concept that's something that Scandinavians prioritize and Danes in particular. But you're right that it helps when the infrastructure and the government are behind this. And that's the case in Denmark where the working hours are much shorter than they are in the rest of Europe. The official working week is 37 hours. But OECD studies show that the average day is putting in 33 hours a week. So the structure is set up to facilitate this Arbideskla, to help make this happiness concept something that people can enjoy no matter where

they are in the country, no matter what their job, what their social class, what their income. So I think certainly that helps. But there are other examples where there is no government sort of help behind that. I guess I'm thinking of in India, Jugaad, this idea of a hack or finding something that works for now. And that's almost in spite of the government and the infrastructure where, of course, there's still widespread poverty. Many people are living very hard lives, but people are finding a way to keep going. So it sort of works both ways. The human spirit is pretty strong at finding a way to thrive and keep going, whether the infrastructure is on their side or not.

How does this idea of innovation and creativity in Juggard for the Indians, how does that help them to be happy? Well, it really plays into resilience, which we have seen in lots of studies from psychologists to be really important for happiness, its ability to bounce back. And it also plays into the idea of, as a mother of three young children, myself, the good enough mother idea that many of your listeners all have heard of, that it really plays into the idea of just being a good enough, good enough person. If you've, if you've got a hack that's good enough for now or you've, you've found a way to make the best of what you've got, it may not be

perfect, but you'll get there. That feels like quite a positive message. And I think, you know, we've seen that perfectionism is not good, really, for anyone. And this is a way of just sort of getting on with things for now. It's, yeah, it's not perfect, as I say, in Indian. with poverty, we all think the best things in life may well be free, but we know that money buys us happiness to a certain level that we need to be comfortable and to be happy. And many people in India do not have this. But in a place where you do have food on the table, where your basic needs are taking care of, then Jugaad is a really positive attribute that you can help you fly almost, that can help you really sore in your workplace. And I spoke to various

Indian friends who have now left India and are working in different countries. And they all identified Jigad as being something really important in their work environments and in their relationships. This belief that we'll find a way and will make it work is something quite interesting in these days of many of us suffer from imposter syndrome. And it almost feels like the antithesis to this, this idea of, yeah, of course I can make this work. It's fine.

So, yes, that was quite inspiring to me. You mentioned actually in your book a study from the University of Cambridge that suggests that this Jugaad mindset could help struggling or emerging economies. Could you explain that a little bit, please? Yeah, well, I guess this idea, I guess going again back to sustainability, that we don't always need more resources. We don't always need more of things to make it work. We can be flexible and be creative using fewer resources. Creativity experts will often say that there is a freedom. within boundaries. And if you have restrictions of certain kinds, it almost sparks creativity. It helps your brain be able to problem solve and think of interesting options. And yes, this study

from the University of Cambridge claimed that Juggard could not only benefit emerging economies, it could serve as a way out of the financial crisis for developed economies who need to become better at this flexible, creative thinking without consuming more resources all and all the time. So that's a really interesting thing. Again, it's not much used to people who have not got enough to put food on the table in India. But in other countries where that is the case, there's this idea that we should really all be living like this. We should all be learning to think more creatively and more flexibly with what we have so that we're not consuming resources all the time. Some of these ideas of happiness sort of relate back. There's a common theme of it'll be.

be all right. Like this regard, you know, if you can think creatively and innovate, then it'll be all right. So some of these ideas are quite sort of proactive in that sense, but also some of the ideas you mention like, for example, the Dolcee Faniente in Italy, the pleasure of doing nothing. That's quite relaxed. Yes. Yes. And it feels quite revolutionary, at least to me, relaxing is not my natural state. But yeah, Italians are very good at it. They, there is, I guess, because there has been political unrest and there has been corruption, there's still very high unemployment. Italy is still a relatively new country in Europe until the 1800s. It was ruled by other people. So many Italians will describe feeling like the rebellious teenagers of Europe. And yes, there's this

sense of, well, why should I bother? Why shouldn't I just keep, just grasp hold of moments of pleasure and take time out. So rather than saving up your rest for an annual holiday or for having a big blowout at the weekend, Italians are a lot better typically at spreading their fun throughout the day and just taking moments of rest and relaxation and doing nothing, which is fairly, it feels quite radical. I think certainly as someone who used to live in London and I'm sure people in other big cities will recognise this sort of constant busyness and bribing yourself to get through the day and, you know, self-medicating with various, whatever your, your crutch of choice may be to get through the chaos. I think Italians are a lot better at sinking into the chaos

and letting it wash over them. And anyone who's ever been to Italy will, you know, remember carhorns or, you know, the traffic or just the vibrancy. And there is a lot of chaos. And that's celebrated there rather than it's seen as an extra stressor. So, so yes, that's Dr. Finlay Niente. That's one of my resolutions to this year. It's a very good resolution. So someone reading your book and looking for inspiration on how to be happy, do you think that there is any one idea in particular they should draw on? Or do you think it depends on the reader?

I think it's a rather beautiful sort of bibliotherapy that people have so far been in touch and said, well, I need this. And so then I will prescribe them something. Or they will say, well, I was feeling this. And so I found this. And so the Swedish entry is small tronsteller, which translates roughly as wild strawberry patch, which is from an old Swedish children's book. But it basically has come to mean an escape where you can go to when it's all feeling too much, where you can restore yourself.

And this can be as simple as a bench in your local park or a favorite chair in your house. Or for me, with a very young family, it's the back of my wardrobe behind all the coats where I'll sometimes just go and hide. and just take a minute and I'll come back restored and you'll go before you reach breaking point and then you'll feel better. So there's little things that are very helpful like that. And I think as well, the Brazilian entry, so there's a Portuguese word sodaji,

which is sort of a melancholy and the pleasure of reminiscing. So it's not always a jazz hands happy feeling. As I said that, you know, psychologists have found that it is counterintuitively good for us to be sad sometimes because it's cathartic because we end up being more grateful for what we've got. So it's this idea that sometimes it's good to think back, flick through old photos or to feel sad about something and properly mourn it as we talked about getting those emotions out is a really positive thing. So yeah, there are some like that as well that are perhaps less within the comfort zone of most of us growing up in the UK or living in the UK.

So that felt like quite a useful one to remember. I'm just trying to think of any other ones that people have particularly called out recently. I guess the Japanese one, Wabi-Sabby, this beauty of imperfection and the beauty of nature. And that feels really helpful at this time of year as well when perhaps things aren't so green, things aren't looking so beautiful. None of us are feeling quite so fresh, but that there is a beauty in aging and in the imperfection of nature and of people and growing old. and you may have come across the Japanese art of Kinsugi, which is mending broken ceramics, rather than trying to mend them really carefully so that the cracks don't show, you mend them with metallic lacquer so that the cracks, rather than being disguised,

are highlighted and celebrated in pure gold. And there's something rather wonderful about seeing that as an approach to life, that we all have scars of various kinds. But instead of hiding them in these days where we're all trying to perhaps be more authentic or we are having a bit of a sea change at the moment that actually we all need to be a bit more honest about who we are and say this is us, cracks and all. And there is a beauty and imperfection however we are.

That could seem quite like a quite radical idea actually, especially for us and in America it seems as well, where we sort of celebrate the idea of youthfulness, even on just on an appearance level. Yeah. So that could be something that's quite hard for us to adopt. Yeah, and certainly as a mother of three approaching my 40th birthday, and I think this is, yeah, there is certainly the useful thing is, is a big one. It's a big sort of acceptance, really, of where you are and what your body and what your face has been through and has witnessed.

And accepting that feels like quite a big hurdle in the age that we live in now. So that's been an interesting one to bear in mind. and a lot of people have been in touch about that one. Yeah. Yeah. I'd just like to go back to what you mentioned earlier about how the sort of counterintuitive idea that sometimes being melancholy can make you happier.

I was quite interested to note that in your section on Ireland about how sharing sort of sad or scary stories can bring you together as a community. Yes, isn't that great? So the psychologists from Oxford University have found that hearing harrowing tales can help with group bonding as well as triggering endorphins as our body gets ready to fight off, imagine pain in real life. So as well as giving us a bonding shared experience, getting scared or sharing sad or melancholy stories in a group setting counterintuitively makes us happier.

And as well, my editor was up pains for me to point out that drinking is not scientifically endorsed, but researchers from LSE found that happiness levels increased by almost 11% when a test group of selfless volunteers drank. alcohol in a social environment. So the Irish crack, this idea that, you know, it's not just getting giddy with a pint of Guinness, it's at its heart, it's storytelling. But the alcohol element, which many of us will associate with the Irish crack, certainly can play a part in this in terms of group bonding and in terms of traditionally, I guess, in some studies, happiness. Okay, that's really interesting. So now I'd like to just change tax lately. How did you go about researching this? How did you go about trying to find a way to accurately represent each culture that you're talking about?

Because you talk about such a wide variety of different countries and cultures. Yes, and there will doubtless be some I've got wrong. So I live in Denmark now. I have moved here in the beginning of 2013. And I wrote a book about Danish happiness, the year of living Danishly. and it was published around the world and I started to get messages from readers all around the world telling me, sharing really their own stories and their own unique happiness concepts from their countries

which struck me as a really interesting thing. There was a universal impulse to share our stories and to try to find happiness even in the most dire of circumstances. And where I live now is a strange sort of international community in that it really is an international community. people socialize, people talk. And so people from all over the world, I would interact with on a daily basis. And people started telling me their stories and sharing.

So, you know, for instance, there's a Syrian asylum center near me. So I met some Syrians in recent years. There are people from Canada, people from Israel, people from South Africa. So there were people from all over who were opening up to me. And I really wanted to be the stories of real people doing normal jobs like you and me. living their normal lives and then look a little bit more into maybe the history of the concepts and the research, what science says that the concept could be contributing in terms of happiness, in terms of well-being in these countries.

So really, it became friends or friends are friends. And it was all personal testimonies and interviews with people from all over the world. And it was a very interesting and humbling process, really. The world seemed much bigger and much smaller by the end when you realize that there's so much, we still don't know and also that people are pretty similar wherever they are in the world. Everybody sleeps and loves and cries and is happy about things. But this drive to be happy and this drive towards optimism seem to be a universal no matter how difficult people's circumstances were and what they've been through.

So that struck me especially in these times where we have rolling news and we have social media and it feels as though the world is a terrible place. but negativity bias means that as human beings, we experience bad events more intensely than we do the good and we also remember them more. But that doesn't mean bad is all there is. So I really wanted to find a way to offer a sort of a counter to this and offer some of these positive stories to help stay hopeful, really. Speaking generally about the British public, what do you think we could learn the most about how to be happy? do you think there's any ideas or cultures in particular that could teach us in general a lot about how to be happy? Interesting. I think I would struggle to pinpoint just one.

It would be like choosing my favourite child. But I think there is a lot about sharing that having lived in Scandinavia for a while now, I think it strikes me. And being raised an only child in Margaret Thatcher's Britain, I did not grow up to be good at sharing. And I think we have to be a little bit more community-minded in the UK than we currently are. And that's not to generalise. Of course, different parts of the country are different. It's different in urban areas and in the countryside and north and south and etc.

But I think there has to be more of a sort of communal mentality, an idea that we would look out for each other. And then I guess as well, we are really good at satire in England. We're really funny. and we're great at cheerful and we really excel at that but maybe satire can tip into snark quite a lot of the time and and we could do with perhaps taking more of the joy that people do in other countries as well as some of the resilience I guess as well because there's no point just complaining about things without finding a way to a way through them a way to make things better what was your favourite one to learn about what was one that sort of took you by surprise I suppose um I

I think, well, I mean, the pants drinking in Finland is pretty special. If anyone has not heard of this, there's this Calcericanit, which is this idea of, as my friend Marianne explained it to me, you know, when you hit 30, maybe you don't want to go out all the time, but you still want to beer. So you just strip down to your underwear and you just drink in your pants at home. And this idea of why you would do it in your pants rather than in your pajamas or in, you know, some cozy leisure wear. And apparently it's because all of the insulation and all the heating is so good in Finland that it's just not necessary. But I also quite like, I guess, yeah, I loved learning about the hacker in New Zealand. I loved the Brazilian so daji, this sort of idea that this permission almost to be sad sometimes feels very positive. And Iceland, they have this same Tatarodost, which is, again, it's another of these ones of it'll all work out. And Iceland, as any Icelanders I've ever met, are just incredibly impressive. and not necessarily boastful, but they just have this idea that they're capable of greatness because they are Icelandic. And Iceland has punched above its weight in terms of artists and writers and, you know, CrossFit in terms of physical endeavours and football and stuff

in recent years. So it made me want to be a little bit more like an Icelandic Viking by the end. So from what you've learned whilst researching this book, is there anything that you've taken on and started doing differently? Well, other than hiding behind my coats in my own personal narnia, making my small tons seller, yes, I try to, you know, I'm a writer, so I'm good at getting out there and talking to people, but I can also be quite a solitary creature and I'm very happy writing by myself. And I'm trying to embrace my Irish heritage and embrace the crack a bit more and just sort of think, well, now I'll stay up till 2 a.m. It's fine and just indulge in these sort of long, deep conversations.

I'm trying to be more in touch with my emotions and my physicality, as the hacker from New Zealand taught me to be, that's something that we don't tend to do often, certainly as women in the UK, is take up space and be loud. And this is not a time for tribalism or aggression, but the idea of being more confident in my body felt like something very positive. And yeah, I guess Bhutan was just a really, good reminder that the planet is all of our responsibilities and sustainability is not just

some worthy thing to be conscious of and it's not just about not using plastic drinking straws. It's about trying to consume less, as with the Indian Jugard as well, just consume less and just be a bit more creative and think a little bit more before I consume and before I do something that could have an impact on other people or the planet. That was Helen Russell, whose book The Atlas of Happiness is out now. Thanks for listening to the Science Focus podcast. In the latest issue of BBC Focus magazine, we look into China's Changi 4 lunar mission

and ask whether this is the start of a new space race. We're also examining a bizarre condition called Afantasia, in which sufferers can't imagine things with their mind's eye. And you can also read about whether accents are dying out and about a man who's on a mission to image every fish in the sea using a CT scanner. and as always there's much more inside. Remember, if you like what you hear,

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Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, name creates high-end audio. systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music just as the artist intended discover more at name audio.com ambition comes in all shapes and sizes at first citizens bank we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building fit for your ambition for citizens bank

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