The Wellness Scoop - Lessons in Happiness from Around the World

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

If anyone is looking for a little more joy and optimism in their life this episode is for you, as Matt and Ella talk to Helen Russell, journalist and author, who has been researching happiness since 2013. We look at a selection of concepts from around the world, each one relating to happiness, optimism and more positive takes on melancholy, from ageing to self-acceptance, joy in imperfection and resilience. The episode left us feeling inspired and excited, and we hope it’ll do the same for you, as we learnt how we can embrace concepts from other cultures around the world to enhance our own state of wellbeing.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Mills, my wife and business partner Ella Mills. Hi everyone, welcome back. Today we are talking all about happiness, optimism, positivity and what we can learn from other cultures around the world to enhance our own lives and the joy in our lives. So can't really get a happier topic than that. And we are joined by a really brilliant author and journalist today who was the editor of mariclaire.co.uk. She gave that up and moved to Denmark to live a very happy life and to learn a lot in the process and now has written a book which landed on my desk a few weeks ago and I said, we need this person on the podcast. It's called The Atlas of Happiness and it's 33 happiness concepts from around the world and what we can learn from those. So hopefully you're

going to get to the end of the next 40 minutes or so and feel like you're buzzing and full of joy and wisdom. And so welcome Helen Russell. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Lovely to be here. Okay, so just to kick off. So we want to talk about optimism today. I mean, I think the world today feels a bit negative. And Matt's like the most positive, happy, optimistic person I know. His whole family are just heaven. They are so optimistic. I definitely naturally lean towards worrying and glass not as full as they do. So I'm always looking for things to support me.

But the world does sometimes feel a bit depressing these days. The news is hard to watch. Yeah, that's a really, it's a really interesting point. And I've done a lot of research into negativity bias, so that as human beings, we are programmed to remember bad events more intensely and for longer than we do the good, which kind of makes sense in prehistoric times to remind us to outrun a saber tooth tiger or not to pick the weird red berries on that bush that could be poisonous. But we were never built for rolling news or social media. So today, our amygdala is getting all het up unnecessarily. And we have to work just like you are doing clearly to remember the good things,

because otherwise we can't make things better. I always say like optimism isn't frivolous, it's necessary. And especially now, as you say. So I've read a few interviews with you a couple of years ago when you wrote your first book, How to Live Danishly, about what you learned when you kind of gave up life in London and moved to Denmark. And can we start there? And that was your kind of, I guess, first experience kind of learning and enriching your life from another culture. Yeah, absolutely. So I had been living and working as a journalist in London for 12 years, and had no intention of leaving until out of the blue, one wet Wednesday, my husband, we had recently been married, hadn't been together so long, he came home and he told me he'd been offered his dream job working for Lego in Denmark.

And Denmark had just been voted the happiest country in the world. And although I had this great job, and I worked with all these amazing people, I wasn't really very happy. We'd also been trying for a baby for years with lots of failed fertility treatments. And my life was basically hospital visits, and work and commuting. And so we sort of thought, well, if we can't get happier by mixing things up and trying something different, then we can't get happier in Denmark, where could we get happier? Yeah, if you can't get happier in the happiest country in the world, you're in trouble. Exactly, then you're really in trouble. And I am not naturally great at taking these chances and making the leap,

but he promised that we'd relocate for my career next time, and I found myself agreeing. So we moved, packed all of our things into 130 boxes, shipped them across the North Sea, and emigrated in the middle of winter to Denmark. And I didn't know anyone, didn't speak the language, had no friends, had no job, and had to sort of learn to start over in a way. And so I started to realise straight away, really, that things were a bit different. People looked more relaxed, they walked more slowly, they talked more slowly, they took their time to eat together, or just sort of talk or just breathe. And we were really impressed. So I started writing about it for UK newspapers, and then got

asked to write a book about it. And I decided to explore a different area of Danish living each month to see what Danes did differently, what these happy people did differently. And if I could change the way I lived as a result. So as journalist you know and I was very scared in this new place but it was really good to have a project as I'm sure you guys find it's really you feel like you have a purpose and I had to get out of bed in the morning because I had to research you know politics in Denmark or or you know what the work-life balance was like there yeah so it was a really a really interesting wake-up call for us and then halfway through our first year living danishly i found out that miraculously i was finally pregnant um

gave birth to a flame-haired baby boy viking boy so and then i kind of discovered what being a parent is like in denmark and having lived there for several years do you feel happier now yeah i i mean i'm it's not utopia there's still lots of things wrong this but I think uh it's I have a better life than than I would have had I stayed in London um I gave birth to twins as well uh last year so I'm now a really big family but um and of course you still you still have bad days and you still suffer from all of the personal problems that we all have it's not as though it's a panacea and everything becomes better. But the things like work-life balance and spending time in nature and trying, you know, not being advertised to so much and

not feeling that comparison anxiety that I used to have in London a lot and getting just a bit more of a global perspective. It's quite an international community there. I meet people from all over the world. That's really helped me a lot. And so if there were kind of like five things that you've learned there that you would say, okay, I think these are the things that have made me happier. What are they? Oh, good question. I think the trust thing is really interesting

because I grew up in the UK with the full force of like the stranger danger campaign. But in Denmark, kids are taught to trust. They're taught that the world is essentially a good place and that most people are not out to get you. And that's a really liberating way of thinking. You can go through life less anxious if you feel that way. And trust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you trust the people around you, they are more likely to behave better. I think the work-life balance thing is also key. I moved out there and I was freelancing

and I tried, you know, turning off my laptop at 5pm, so still later than a lot of Danes were working. And I almost expected like a clap of thunder or a bat light to go on over the North Sea. But no, it was fine. Nobody died. It was not the end of the world. I was not as important as I thought I was. And that was a good thing. It was, you know, you don't have to work all of the hours. Danes don't really do presenteeism, so they'll do their work, then they'll leave. That's fine. I think spending time with family is something I value a lot more now. I got asked to write about how to survive family Christmases, because in the UK, I think spending time with the family over Christmas has been ranked up there with divorce and bereavement.

Because people find it so stressful. I know, isn't that crazy? But you know, in Denmark, people spend time with their family more. So there's less of an extra pressure at Christmas, because it's pretty normal. And they do lots to make sure everyone's busy. They're really honest. I mean, there's no word for please in Danish. They're quite blunt. Everything's quite out there. I think the hygge as well, you know, prioritising that self-care, but in a way that they just do naturally. And they have a phrase, putting your own oxygen mask on first, which I think is really useful. And spending time outdoors. I mean, they're outdoors, whatever the weather, you know, up to minus 20, they say you can put your kids to sleep outside. Everyone wraps up in their snowsuits, like Maggie from The Simpsons. Even though the weather's pretty grim, you just get out there and you always feel better for it.

Yeah. There are so many studies about spending time in nature being good for mental and physical well-being. So yeah, that was a really useful one as well to learn and so um in your most recent book you cover uh 33 different countries and um the ways that they find happiness there what were the most common themes that you found because they're so varied in in different places from australia to thailand china and it all feels like they have different ways of finding happiness in each of these different places yeah they, they do. And I felt that in itself was a really interesting, positive and useful thing to bear in mind that there were we're all different and there are different ways to be happy and you can kind of pick what works for you. But in terms of common themes, it's time with friends and family, it's time outdoors. And also resilience was a really interesting one um and i think the older i get the more i appreciate that everyone will have setbacks and you have to be able to bounce

back so for instance um iceland the the sort of unofficial national motto is something called which is uh it'll all work out and there is this sort of viking grit that courses through their veins the idea that they made their home in such an inhospitable landscape. I mean, if you've been to Iceland, it's just bonkers. They have an ad hoc sun holiday if there's an Icelandic heat wave of over 18 degrees Celsius. The weather is that terrible. There's barely any sunlight in winter. It's sunny all the time in summer, which does strange things to your brain. But they've produced great artists, great writers, great thinkers, and great sort of, you know, even their football team has done amazingly.

So they have this core of grit, which kind of sees them through. And they're also really big readers. And reading is a fascinating thing in terms of happiness. Because if we read, we develop our empathy skills. It encourages new neural pathways it's uh if we read um depressing stories or harrowing tales of woe it helps with group bonding and it helps us to feel better through catharsis we also get a little shot of we get a little endorphin rush as we imagine going through the the thing that we're reading about the experience ourselves so icelanders managed to stay upbeat while essentially living in a fridge.

Or a freezer. Yeah, this tata radost. And it's something that you also see in India. They have this thing, jugard, taken from in the 1950s. They would cobble together a vehicle from parts of old army jeeps. And Jogad now means this idea of a hack of cobbling something together to work for now. And of course, in India, a lot of people are living this way because they have to not because they choose to because it's still widespread poverty. But a lot of Indian people that I spoke to who now live elsewhere or who have got enough to put

food on the table, Juggard is a really interesting way to live because there's a sense that you can always get through it. You can always get things done, which means you think creatively, you think really flexibly. So if you ever in a workplace, it's incredibly useful. It's like the opposite of the typically female imposter syndrome. There's this idea of Juggard means that you'll always find a way. It might not be the perfect way, but you'll find a way and it'll be good enough, which is a really useful thing to kind of get your head around. And then closer to home in Wales, there is a real history of sharp elbowed resilience.

But in Wales, they have something called Hoyle, which comes from the word for sails being in full wind. So just imagine it's almost like your heart is a sail filled with wind and it's living life with that gusto and with that welly, no matter what you come up against. This sort of drama and I can just take this on. That felt like something really useful. It feels like something practical that we can do as we are in these tough times,

economically and socially and politically, to just think, well, I'm going to store up my resilience so that I can be an active member of society. I'm not advocating burying your head in the sand. It's more shore yourself up and get yourself as strong as you can and as fit as you can so that you are able to go and make a difference. Love a feeling. I'm like, sit taller to go and make some stuff happen okay so i have to ask you about one concept i bet every interview you've done about the book everyone's asked the same one but um in finland um i can't pronounce the word but let me just tell you i read this and i just had me laughing so much so the concept is quote drinking at home

in your underwear with no intention of going out. That's about as good as it comes. Isn't it? Yeah. So Kalsari Kanit is my best attempt at it. But yeah, so my friend Marianne, who I was at university with, I just was chatting to her about the book. And she casually said, well, of course, everybody drinks at home in their pants sometimes, don't they? And I was like, no, Marianne, I've never done that. You've mentioned this before she's like oh in Finland we all do this it's this idea that the outside world again can be quite inhospitable um it's sparsely populated large large parts of the country and the weather is pretty grim alcohol's very expensive so you'd

maybe you know buy a bottle of beer and you don't want to go out, but you just want to really feel relaxed. And so you'd sit at home in your underwear and it's a it's a very sort of equal thing. You know, everyone can do it. There's no cost barrier. There's no class barrier. And I've been staying in hotels a little bit for for work recently. And there is something strangely liberating about just like I'm wearing my pants and I'm drinking a bottle of beer hello this is quite nice um so yeah I guess it's a symbol of being relaxed isn't it which is of kind of not not caring so much and of just kind of enjoying the moment yeah and there's definitely a lot to be said about not caring so much about you know what other people think or

or what other people are doing yeah what other people do yeah no FOMO there it's just you're very much at home but you're also just ticking the boxes of a lot of like multiple different relaxing things just in one go yeah comfy pants exactly yeah inside and a bit of alcohol like all of those tick boxes in their own right to relax you so I saw a lot of stuff going around social media over Christmas with JOMO which was the joy of missing out which I really liked. And so moving away from FOMO, I thought that is hitting the nail on the head. Yes, that's 2019. And then there were other ones.

Well, actually, the next one I want to ask you about, which I loved, was from Japan. This one I feel like... I just like saying it. Wabi Sabi. Yes, lovely. Will you tell us a little bit about wabi-sabi? Yes. So wabi-sabi is the beauty of simplicity and acceptance

and sort of an appreciation of nature from, I think it's the word for simplicity. And it's this idea that there is a beauty in ageing and there's a wisdom that comes with that as well. And it's an acceptance of imperfection. So there's a wisdom that comes with that as well and it's an acceptance of imperfection so there's a big emphasis on things like forest bathing which studies have shown is incredibly good for you and that's there's no water required you literally just go into a forest and spend time in there soaking up uh you know the fresh air and just breathing and just feeling small around these big trees japan is not a terribly happy country so that's why i find it

especially interesting there is a there's urban, there's an increasing gap between old and young feeling like they don't understand each other and urban isolation. But there are many who now feel that going back to these ideas of wabi-sabi will be the way forward. So if you ask anyone in Japan, a grandmother in Japan is revered as someone with wisdom and cracks in the face are signs that you have lived and lived well. And as you know, somebody hurtling towards her 40th birthday, this felt like a really interesting thing to approach. I had just come back from maternity leave with twins, I was feeling overwhelmed and out of sorts and unsure how to reconcile the image I saw of myself in the

mirror with this person that I thought I was. And then I went to Tokyo for the launch of my first book there. And it was really interesting speaking to people of all ages and all different backgrounds about how this helped them. And because, you know, if you go into a forest and you see moss growing on a tree, it's not perfect, but there is something amazing about it. It means that even if you've had a terrible day, if you have a house plant and you can on your windowsill and you see the petals dropping one by one, there is a beauty to that. And you accept the transience of nature. And it's this idea, someone explained it to me, that if you're a farmer, sometimes the crop will work out well, sometimes it won't. That's just how it is. You have to accept it.

Which felt like a really useful thing to remember. And they also have something called kintsugi. This idea that you would mend broken ceramics with metallic lacquer so that the cracks, instead of being concealed and disguised, are highlighted in pure gold. Which feels like a wonderful thing as well because we all have scars of various kinds but instead of trying to hide them or disguise them or put a filter on on instagram it's this idea of saying here i am this is me authentic flawed and all and and moving forward from a position of truth rather than trying to put on this polished sheen all the time which is certainly how I used to live my life in London.

And I've become a bit better at that recently. But yeah, spending time in Japan was a real wake up call in terms of that. Yeah, I love that because I think it is really interesting when you say, be happy. And we were literally talking about this last night. There's almost a sense you've got to like, put on this massive smile and walk out the door like, I am so happy.

And sometimes that's not completely true. And so it's taking joy in whatever the day is and being completely happy in that rather than being kind of pretend happy and Instagram kind of filter happy and actually being like, I am me today, today flawed and totally imperfect but I'm really comfortable with that rather than being like I am so perfect and shiny and have no cracks because we all have so many cracks we should put gold on them um and then on that the other one which I felt like was quite similar to that was was Brazil I thought that was a really beautiful concept yeah and that's Sodagi. Obviously, it's in Portugal and in Brazil. And it means almost the absence of happiness. So like you're

talking about some days you're not feeling happy, that's kind of part of it. And Sodagi came about, okay, geek out for a moment. In the 15th century, Portuguese sailing ships sailed to Africa. And Sodagi was from the point of view of people left behind in Portugal, worrying about loved ones who sailed away, worrying if they'd ever see them again. But then the Portuguese conquered Brazil. And it became from the perspective of people who were in Brazil, possibly often against their will, feeling that they would never seen their homeland again. And Brazil is the only country in South America where Portuguese is spoken. So it's in terms of scale, Brazil is sort of the centre of Sodagi now. They even have their

own National Sodagi Day on the 30th of January, where radio stations... Oh, coming up! Yes, coming up, exactly. Radio stations will play melancholy music and just people will write poems, people will just be encouraged to maybe go through old love letters, or just sort of think back. And I hear a lot from Brazilian readers that there is a real sense of, it's almost the presence of absence. It's this idea that you're happy that you had this beautiful thing once, and you may not have it anymore. And it can even be sadness or missing a happiness that you merely hoped for. So perhaps if you hoped your life would turn out one way, and it turns out another way, it's mourning that, which I found fascinating, because scientists agree that there is merit in this way of thinking, that being sad sometimes can counterintuitively make us happier

by providing catharsis, improving empathy, promoting generosity. And of course, as you say, it's part of our lives, We will all go through tough times. And knowing that it's okay not to be okay, knowing that when we have those dips, it's not that we are terrible people or that we are, it goes back to resilience again. It's not that we're never going to get out of this pit. It's part of life. And so, Sardarji, this of of melancholy and missing things but you get on with how life is now because you've you've almost got got those feelings out of your system yeah I like that again the honesty in it in the the acknowledgement that there's beauty and imperfection and that there's joy in the kind of lack of certainty in a way and things and and I guess seeing life for what it really is

which is that it's ups and downs and it's you've got to you know you always say it's your favorite phrase that you can't have Friday night if you don't have Monday morning good one you know and that's that's a work related version but it's so true you know you're not going to be able to feel kind of absolute joy if you don't feel pain because you're not going to have the same appreciation for it and so if you keep putting anything sad or anything painful in a box and not really acknowledging it it feels like you're never going to kind of fully experience life for what it is yeah and and yeah life is feeling all of those feelings yeah the Chinese have um their real word term for happiness is zingfu, which is not just feeling jazz hands,

happy, smiley in the moment, it means living a good life. And it's all part of that. And the stoic philosopher Seneca would say, imagine losing everything that you hold dear, everything you love. And he encouraged people to imagine losing everything regularly, so that you would appreciate what you have, which strikes me as an amazing thing that I aspire to but I don't quite get there but just this idea of okay if I didn't have any of this even though it's yeah maybe Monday morning and I'm having a tough day and I'm tired if I didn't have any of this goodness I would miss it and I am very grateful for the life I have now yeah it was so interesting I was doing my yoga teacher training last year we were doing a lot

of the philosophy and there was so much focus on non-attachment and it really made me realize like how unbelievably attached I am to so many things and I was like wait I'm so attached to you like to Matt and like to our dog and to everything else and they were really encouraging us to kind of think okay but what happens if you weren't really attached to that not that you don't love or respect but that you are able to kind of imagine just you as you and appreciate that and not be kind of I'm gonna guess hooking yourself onto everything around you and it's quite interesting to reflect on that I'm not sure I'm very good at it but so what happened so when you had to go through imagining that what was the next next process? Well, it made me realize how attached I was and how much my emotions as a result are so linked to everything around me. And perhaps that makes me a bit more of a yo-yo.

I'm definitely an emotional yo-yo. So no, it was really, it was interesting to think about. So all of these vary so much in around the world. But we're all human beings. So it feels like a lot of this is, is nurture rather than nature. And you alluded to the, when we first started talking that we as human beings are predisposed to think more of the negative things and to absorb more of those and the positive things. So is there a practice that we can do where an everyday thing that we can do or something that you thought was particularly powerful from your studies

that enables us to remember or focus more on those positive bits rather than our memories automatically attaching to the negative fears we might have? I've got three for you. So in Italy, they have something called dolce far niente or the sweetness of doing nothing. And I found this very interesting as somebody who struggles to relax. It's not my natural state at all. I tend to be busy, busy, busy. Italian still exists and for good reason, because actually, although Italy isn't a terribly happy country, Italians have a sense that they will take pleasure during various parts of the day, whereas maybe in the UK, we often store up our fun quota for an annual holiday, or a big blowout at the weekend, you know, maybe our Friday night before our Monday morning. There's less of a distinction between work and play in Italy. So they are better at savouring the moments, which is quite a radical way of thinking almost. And instead of pushing out the chaos and trying to control it or master it,

Italians sort of sink into it like a hot bath. And I think by doing that, by resting more, there's a lot of evidence to show that we should all be resting a little bit more for our mental health, for our wellbeing, by taking these snatches of rest and peace throughout the day and just letting the chaos wash over us, we would all be in a more positive mindset. There's also a lot that I found in my studies about hobbies. So having a hobby is really good for us. We sort of know this already. There's

been studies into this for years now. It new neural pathways learning something new can even make time feel as though it slows down and in Greece they have something called Meraki which is doing something with passion and care so it's often something creative it can be as simple as laying the table with napkin swans or cooking or painting and doing this is really useful especially for anyone who's nine to five can feel like a bit of a daily grind, because you have this side hustle, you have this passion to keep you going. And it sort of gives you a reason to get up in the morning and to keep going. And you are completely focused, you're single tasking whilst you're doing that you haven't got your smartphone in your hand, you are not dialing it in, you're 100 present which is also really good for us and then

in america interestingly which many people of course don't associate happiness with america especially at the moment but hominess this idea of an emphasis on traditional crafts has become really big in the u.s in recent years and has actually has its as its roots back um to the beginning of last century during the the war, Americans were asked to knit one and a half million socks for soldiers to keep them warm. And I think in 1915, the Royal Philharmonic had to put out an announcement saying to people, please don't knit during performances because it's quite distracting. But there's this real history of, you know, the AIDS quilt, there's a real history of coming together to craft.

And a lot of people, it started off perhaps as a hipster movement. But now, you know, you can't, you'll just trip over a homemade brewer or, you know, a wood whittler in Brooklyn. But there is this real emphasis on going back to crafting. There's been a real upsurge in people taking up craft. And as well as feeling like you're producing something with your hands going analog in a very digital age, it's really about togetherness as well because people are doing it with other people, it's community.

And it's the definition of love and happiness for many now. And I think in America in particular, genealogy is such a big thing. Time magazine called genealogy the new porn in America. All Americans that I speak to will say, well, my second, my grandmother on my mother's side was from Ireland. And people are very interested in tracing their roots. And I think for a country that, of course, isn't new, but from the Declaration of Independence is relatively new, the America as we know it, there's a real sense of trying to

grasp onto history, and especially in turbulent times, trying to hold on to something tangible that grounds them in some way. And so craft and hominess, and a sense of nostalgia and almost little house on the prairie alter ego is something a lot of people are holding on to in America to stay happy, which I found fascinating and sort of linked in with the Greek thing as well. It's doing something with your hands that you then you are only having positive experiences because you've almost blocked out everything else you're seeing that here now as well like the massive rise in coloring books for example like loads and loads of grown-ups doing that I love coloring books I was a massive fan of that trend yeah coloring like I went to something the other day it was a kind of yoga day and we did a knitting class amazing because both my hands were busy so I

could not pick up my phone. And it's amazing, like an hour and a half later, I mean, I was a terrible knitter, but an hour and a half later, I was so calm. And we're just sitting in a circle knitting. Now, I don't know if I'd ever actually be able to knit anything of consequence, but there was something brilliant about, and I've been doing that a lot recently, reading. You know, you have to hold the book and look at words and not look at your screen. It's amazing. Yeah, meditative as well. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant.

So rest and hobbies are two really key ones. And if a hobby is something that you're doing as a craft with your hands, even better. I think so, yeah. So I have two more burning questions for you. Okay, first of all, I think we have to talk about Bhutan. It feels like a really interesting topic, obviously, when we're talking about happiness. And I didn't actually know this, but I knew that gross national happiness was a kind of big thing. But I didn't

realize that gross national happiness was instituted as the official goal of the government in 2008. That's huge. Yeah, it's really big. Yeah. So background for anyone who doesn't know that Bhutan had been, it didn't get roads and hospitals and schools until the 1960s. But then King Wanchuk came along and wanted to be a moderniser, but he didn't want some of the same trappings of modernity that he saw coming with other countries. So in 1972, he told a journalist from the Financial Times that for him and for Bhutan,

gross national happiness was more important than gross national product. And that meant that everything that the government did was filtered through the prism of will it make the people happier? And also, will it make the environment better off, which is a really key thing, because there's a lot of evidence linking sustainability to happiness. People who care about the environment are happier. And people who are not happy are bad for the environment because they tend to consume more because we buy things to bribe ourselves through the day. So yeah, in 2008, gross national happiness became part of what they decided they were going to govern the country by. And in 2011, Ban Ki-moon, then at the UN, tried to spread it

to the rest of the world. So because the philosophies and the practices they were putting in place in Bhutan were working. It's not just a sort of fluffy, nice to have pie in the sky. They survey people every two years. People are reporting being happier. It's not perfect by any means, but literacy is up. Life expectancy has doubled. They have STEM subjects in schools now. Kids are learning to make their own computers. They have Western hospitals as well as traditional Bhutanese hospitals. There's been a lot of change, but they are still preserving the things that they care about. So they said no to joining the World Trade Organization because then they'd have to open up their forests in a way that wasn't compatible with

their goals for the environment. And they've pledged to keep 60% of the country covered by forest forever. And it's currently 70%. So it's one of the only countries putting sustainability at the heart of its policy. And yeah, it's something that we could all really be learning from and not prioritising money over happiness. We all know money doesn't buy happiness. We need a certain amount of money up to a certain threshold to have the things that we like and to be comfortable but studies have shown time and again over a certain threshold it's not making us any happier and it's such an instant fix it's like happy for 10 seconds and then like on to the next thing yeah and and studies have shown that we uh we get far more pleasure from experiences than we do from buying more stuff that we don't really need anyway. So yeah, in Bhutan, it's the most beautiful country. It's incredibly lush. Bengal tigers are making their way to Bhutan because the landscape and the forest is getting destroyed in

India, but they're wanting to come through into Bhutan because there's still this great habitat there. So yes, they are getting a lot of things right that we can learn from i think i loved that and then my last question for you was of all the concepts you studied what's your favorite and what do you think is the most applicable i honestly i've spoken to a lot of people and i feel as though i often um get people coming up to me afterwards and saying well this is my problem like diagnose like, like which one, which country. So I think for me, Japan, Wabi Sabi and Brazil, Sodagi have been hugely helpful for where I am in my life right now.

There's also the Swedish Smoltronstal is a wild strawberry patch. It came from a traditional Swedish children's book where children would go into the forest and they'd thread wild strawberries onto a blade of grass. And it became symbolic of a place where you'd go to restore and relax and everybody would have their own special place. It's different for everyone. So for some people, it might be a favourite bench in a park, or even a special chair in their house. And it's just somewhere you go before you reach breaking point to reflect and it can again touch on melancholy it's not all about you know happy jazz hands but it's somewhere where you go to just center yourself and take a minute to calm down

and with three very small children I have found that behind my coats my own personal narnia quite often I will just now take oh just a minute to just um you know center yourself and and calm and restore so that i'm ready to get back out there and be an active participant in life so on a practical level that's something i use quite a lot as well i absolutely love it this feeling i feel really happy yeah i feel really uplifted so um helen one thing that we do with each guest that comes in is at the end of each episode, we just ask what's a daily practice or routine or saying that you live by each day? Oh, I think for me, it's about getting outside now. No matter

what the weather, I was on bedrest before I had my twins and I never really realised how much it meant to me to be out in the world before I couldn't move my body at all and I couldn't use it. And it was a real eye opener and I swore that as soon as I could move my body and move outside the four walls of my bedroom again, I would. And so there is a hill near where I live where I will walk up to every day and I will just breathe in that fresh air and just sort of get my heart rate going and get my trudge on. And it's so good for my mental health. So for me, it's walking. Okay. I love that. That's amazing.

Well, thank you so much for coming on. It was really fascinating. Yeah. And if anyone wants to learn any more about all these brilliant concepts, the book is called The Global Secrets of How to Be Happy, The Atlas of Happiness. And yeah, it's a brilliant book to have at home so thank you so much Helen thank you all so much for tuning in I hope you're feeling a little bit

happier yourselves and maybe a few things to take away from that um as always if you enjoyed the podcast please please do rate us review us share us with your friends it makes the world of difference to sharing happiness and hopefully living a little bit better with the world and we will be back next Tuesday. Have a lovely week. Thanks, everyone. with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.