International Day of Happiness – How Can We Lead Fulfilled Lives?

On 20 March, we celebrate the International Day of Happiness. The non-profit organization Action for Happiness suggests in the context of its campaign how to celebrate the day: “Keep Calm. Stay Wise. Be Kind.” This is undoubtedly a piece of advice we can take to heart in these challenging times to make life a little happier for us and everybody else.

Am 20. März ist Weltglückstag. Die gemeinnützige Organisation Action for Happiness regt im Rahmen ihrer Kampagne zur Feier dieses Tages an: „Keep Calm. Stay Wise. Be Kind.“ Dies ist sicherlich ein Ratschlag, den wir uns in diesen herausfordernden Zeiten zu Herzen nehmen können, um das Leben für uns selbst und für alle anderen ein wenig glücklicher zu machen.

DOI: 10.34879/gesisblog.2021.35

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“It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.” –

Sheryl Sandberg

The International Day of Happiness

Only eight years ago, on 20 March 2013, did we celebrate our first International Day of Happiness. In a resolution passed in July 2012, the United Nations General Assembly, acting on a proposal from the country Bhutan, had determined that happiness deserved its special day in the year ¹. But what is happiness? Is it just a moment’s feeling of joy, like in Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy”? Or is it something all-encompassing, something that should be the bedrock of our lives and something we are striving towards, like in the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”?

This blog post will first tap into the definition of happiness and its different levels. Then, we will turn to the Gross National Happiness and, among others, answer the question in which country Europe’s happiest citizens live. Finally, we will explore European and German citizens’ happiness status, drawing on data from the European Values Study (EVS) from 2008 and the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) from 2018.

Why Do We Feel?

Before we can address happiness, we first need to answer a more fundamental question: Why is it that we feel at all? For bad feelings, the answer is quite simple. Our ancestors led dangerous lives dominated by zero-sum games—in its most extreme form, a game about life and death. Bad feelings like anger, sadness, and fear warned them, and they still warn us today, that something or someone is trying to hurt or even kill us, attacking our territory, or that loss lies ahead ². Evolution showed that negative emotions could lead to actions like running away or preparing for an attack. But what about positive emotions? Arguably, they are “sensory systems” as well; only do they not tell us something terrible is about to happen, but that a “potential win-win encounter is at hand” ³.

Often, we only start to value these win-win encounters as soon as they are gone. During the pandemic, many people may have realized that it makes them happy to meet friends, eat at restaurants, go to festivals, or just be free in their decisions to go out when and wherever they want. They may now also place more importance on being healthy and knowing all their loved ones are in good health. So, what exactly is happiness? Happiness is often divided into three levels: momentary feelings, well-being, and a sense of higher meaning and fulfillment ⁴.

If someone asked you, ‘How happy do you feel right now?’ you would answer based on how pleasant you feel at this moment. Maybe you just watched a movie you enjoyed, bought a nice shirt, or had your favorite ice cream for dessert. Unfortunately, these momentary feelings do not stay with you for very long; that is why you could also claim they are just “myriad shortcuts to feeling good” ⁵. If you were asked, ‘How happy do you feel in general?’ you would probably consider your subjective well-being. This usually does not depend on whether you just had ice cream, but it comprises more: You reflect how you felt in the past or may compare your situation to those of others. The third level of happiness is the most difficult to achieve: It requires that you feel fulfilled through self-actualization ⁶. You might accomplish this by using your signature strengths to work towards something greater, that is, “a meaningful life” ⁷, for instance, by helping other people or doing what you feel called to do, like teaching.

Gross National Happiness

Bhutan, the country that proposed introducing an International Day of Happiness, is located in the Eastern Himalayas, between its neighbors China and India. Bhutan is different from Western capitalist societies: Its key priority is not the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but Gross National Happiness (GNH), its “biggest soft-power export” ⁸. Every five years, 8,000 households are selected across the country and are asked 300 questions about their lives, split up into nine domains: psychological well-being, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards ^{9 10}.

However, Bhutan does not quite manage to live up to the high expectations it has set for itself: In 2018, it only ranked 97^th in the United Nations World Happiness Report, while Europe’s happiest people lived in Finland (Germany occupied position 15) ¹¹. As commendable as this approach to provide the citizens with happiness may seem, it must nonetheless be mentioned that many critics accuse Bhutan of using the GNH only as a propaganda tool to divert attention from human rights violations taking place in their country ¹².

               By the way, if you are interested in how happy people are in a specific EU country, the European Commission provided an exciting interactive tool ¹³. It allows you to choose from eleven categories and then compare the value of the selected country with the EU average as well as with the countries holding the minimal and maximal values, respectively.

How Can We Become Happier?

So, which of the aspects mentioned earlier have—over time—proven to be most influential? A few of our life’s external circumstances can impact our happiness level; for instance, whether we live in a wealthy democracy ¹⁴ . Surprisingly, many aspects do not influence our levels of happiness at all, or at least not as much as we would have thought: It does not make us happier if we are excessively rich, nor is objective health related to happiness (only subjective health is); education, race, and gender do not matter much for the level of happiness either ¹⁵ . What seems to be more effective is turning towards the variables under our deliberate control, including feelings about past events. If we live in a constant sense of bitterness because of what happened to us a long time ago, this might also lead to the fact that we are unhappy in the present and our future life ¹⁶ .  

Healthy and Happy?

As we have mentioned above, the subjective assessment of our health can indeed influence how happy we are. Data from the EVS 2008 ¹⁷ show a similar pattern (see Figure 1): About half of the people who claim to be in very good health also report that they are very happy, while nearly 30 % of the people in very poor health are “not at all happy” and another 38 % state that they are “not very happy.”

Educated and Happy?

Although psychologist Martin E. Seligman claims in his book that educated people are not per se happier ¹⁸, the Life Satisfaction Gap (LSG) tells us something different: It denotes the life satisfaction discrepancy between people with low and high education levels and is “obtained by subtracting the average life satisfaction of those with low education from the average life satisfaction of those with high education” ¹⁹. In the case of the EVS 2008 ²⁰, the mean life satisfaction value on the original 10-point scale for the lowest educational category (i. e., for people with less than primary, primary, and lower secondary education) is 6.75, while it is 7.32 for the highest category (i. e., people having a tertiary education). Thus, the LSG corresponds to 0.57 points.

Attractive and Happy?

At the beginning of every interview conducted in the ALLBUS 2018 ²¹, the interviewers estimated how attractive the respondent was on a scale from 1 (unattractive) to 11 (attractive). Later in the survey, the respondents were asked to estimate their overall life satisfaction. Due to the small sample size of respondents classified as rather unattractive, the data are, naturally, not particularly robust. However, they at least suggest that attractive people walk through their lives happier.

Of course, attractiveness is a somewhat subjective issue. It may sound like a platitude, but is it not still true that genuine beauty comes from the inside? And as far as external beauty is concerned: The most important thing is that we feel beautiful and happy with ourselves. So, how convenient that this is a much-heard piece of advice: A smile is the prettiest thing you can wear!

Happy International Day of Happiness!

References

1. United Nations (n. d.). International Day of Happiness. Retrieved 21 January 2021, from https://www.un.org/en/observances/happiness-day
2. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
3. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
4. The World Counts (n. d.). What is the good life? There are at least three different types of happiness. Have you found the right mix or do you need to change? Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://www.theworldcounts.com/happiness/types-of-happiness-in-psychology
5. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
6. The World Counts (n. d.). What is the good life? There are at least three different types of happiness. Have you found the right mix or do you need to change? Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://www.theworldcounts.com/happiness/types-of-happiness-in-psychology
7. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
8. McCarthy, J. (2019, July 23). The Birthplace Of ‘Gross National Happiness’ Is Growing A Bit Cynical. Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://text.npr.org/584481047
9. McCarthy, J. (2019, July 23). The Birthplace Of ‘Gross National Happiness’ Is Growing A Bit Cynical. Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://text.npr.org/584481047
10. Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) (n. d.). Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index. Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://ophi.org.uk/policy/gross-national-happiness-index/
11. Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2018). World Happiness Report 2018, New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
12. Vishal, A. (2014, April 25). Bhutan’s Human Rights Record Defies ‘Happiness’ Claim. Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://thediplomat.com/2014/04/bhutans-human-rights-record-defies-happiness-claim/
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15. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
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17. EVS (2016): European Values Study 2008: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2008). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA4800 Data file Version 4.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12458
18. Seligman, M. E. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
19. Eurostat (n. d.). Quality of Life. Retrieved 26 January 2021, from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/qol/index_en.html
20. EVS (2016): European Values Study 2008: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2008). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA4800 Data file Version 4.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12458
21. GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften (2019): Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften ALLBUS 2018. GESIS Datenarchiv, Köln. ZA5270 Datenfile Version 2.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13250