so I’m gonna talk about some of the
world’s happiest people and the lessons
they give us about being happier but I
thought I’d start out with you and maybe
telling you something about yourself
which maybe you didn’t know so I’m gonna
ask you to binary questions one is about
the quantity of life and the other one’s
about the quality of life I want you to
raise your hand to one of the questions
the first question I’m going to ask you
is a question if you think life is
longer short okay I’m gonna ask you
raise your hand you can only raise your
hand to want them raise your hand if you
think life is short now raise your hand
if you think life is long okay it’s
maybe a short conference all right now
written about quality of life raise your
hand if you think life is hard think
life is hard now raise your hand if you
think life is easy all right so a guy
named Michael Norton a Harvard
researcher led a team of researchers
from a few universities from around the
world and they surveyed 2,500 people now
so some exact same questions than they
correlate it with happiness and sadly
they found that the people well before I
do that I’ll probably tell you the
results I like the people who think that
life is long and easy to stand up
anybody raise their hand able long and
easy alright stay standing don’t worry
you’re gonna like the outcome so the
least happy people and actually the
majority of respondents were people who
thought that life is short and hard and
in the middle were the people who
thought life was short and easy and long
and hard but the happiest people the
people who were 20% happier as
represented by this young lady right
here were the people and this lady here
why don’t you two stand up just one more
time does one more time hold it these
are the happiest people in the room and
by the way there
more likely to vote and they’re more
likely to be generous so these are the
two women you want to invite to your
next fundraiser I’ll be hitting you up
for money afterwards and it’s kitty so
for the last 13 years I’ve had the honor
of working with National Geographic and
have developed somewhat of an expertise
at finding the most extraordinary
populations in the world and then
learning their secrets and part of that
is doing careful measurement ahead of
time for the this first project we
actually spend two years to identify
five parts of the world where people
live
statistically longest then we recruited
a team of experts who could help us go
to each of these places and distill out
their lessons or the common denominator
so in a sense we reverse engineered
longevity
I wrote this cover story in 2005 and
found that no matter where you go and
find extraordinarily long-lived people
whether it’s Europe Asia the United
States or Latin America you see the same
nine common denominators number one they
don’t really exercise in the way we
think of exercise but rather they live
in environments that nudge them to move
every 20 minutes or so for the most part
they live in walkable communities they
suffer the same stresses that we suffer
except they have sacred daily rituals
that help them unwind that stress and
get rid of some of the chronic
inflammation that is the core of every
age-related disease they have vocabulary
for purpose which is worth about seven
years of life expectancy good news based
on what I’ve observed at the conference
they do drink a couple glass of the day
most often with meals and no you cannot
save up all week long and f14 on the
weekend we did a meta-analysis at diets
of longevity all over the world and
found that 95 percent of the dietary
intake of the longest-lived people are
low processed plants grains greens nuts
and beans beans are the cornerstone of
every longevity died in the world if
you’re eating about a cup of beans a day
it’s probably worth three or four years
of life expectancy they their houses are
set up so it’s easier to eat the right
food and they
strategies to keep from overeating like
saying a prayer before meals are taking
electronics out of the kitchen and the
foundation of every longevity culture in
the world is how they connect they tend
to put a priority on family over work
and hobbies they tend to be religious
people who are religious and show up at
least four times a month live four to 14
years longer than people who aren’t and
they curate their tribe we now know that
if your three best friends are obese and
unhealthy there’s a hundred and fifty
percent better chance you’ll be
overweight so how you select people to
surround yourself with probably has the
biggest blasted impact on how you’re
gonna live the biggest finding when it
comes to longevity and I think this is
the disruptive part in America we tend
to pursue health but where people
actually live the longest they have no
idea how they live so long
you find these hundred year olds who are
waterskiing or standing on their head
and you ask them how they got to live so
long and they really have no idea the
truth of the matter is longevity happens
to people these guys on women never say
at age 50 will go darn it I’m gonna get
on that longevity diet and live another
50 years they don’t buy tread masters or
accelerometers or sign up for the
Wellness Program at work the bottom line
is they live environments that make the
easy healthy the Healthy Choice the easy
choice or the unavoidable choice no
matter where you go and you see long
live people you’ve seen these these same
five factors that are ingrained in their
environment that make this easy choice
the Healthy Choice the easy choice so
now what about happiness 15 months ago
Susan assigned me the story to do the
same thing with happiness and to start
off you have to be able to measure
happiness with longevity that’s pretty
easy you can find a guy who tells you
he’s a hundred you can check his birth
certificate and it’s really just a
mathematical exercise to confirm that
he’s indeed 100 and this is what
demographers do to population is confirm
ages but how do you do this with
happiness you can see somebody who smile
today but they may be glommed for the
next six days or they may be depressed
or they may you may just be catching
them right after happy hour how do you
measure happiness and how do you measure
for the whole world well it turns out
there are two statistical tools we can
use to do exactly this the first tool is
something called the representative
sample the representative sample says
that if you can find if you can analyze
just 1500 individuals out of a big
sample you can extrapolate to that whole
sample and I’ll give you an example
imagine a swimming pool with 100 million
marbles some of those marbles are black
some of those marbles are white and
you’re given the job to tell me what how
many of each marbles are in the pool
well if you close your eyes and randomly
select just 1,500 marbles and count
those marbles and find that 39 percent
are black sixty-one percent are white
you can be pretty sure that in this
whole swimming pool there are 39 million
white marble black marbles and 61
million white marbles so that’s the
first tool the second tool is called the
regression analysis so psychologists
over the years and these psychologists
have won Nobel Prize have divided Nobel
Prizes have developed questions that
measure different kinds of happiness how
you evaluate your life how you
experience your life and purpose and
meaning those are the three main ways
that we assess our lives then we can
actually measure it and then they ask
another number of demographic questions
about age ethnicity gender income 75
other questions and then doing this
regression analysis is just basically
math you can establish the correlations
I am going to tell you what sorts of
things you can do to make it more likely
that you will be happy for the long run
and to do that I want to profile three
of my favorite countries the first
country not too far from here Singapore
country of five million people the tip
of Malaysia extraordinary place it has
one of the highest GDP s in the world
one of the lowest rates of corruption
one of the highest life expectancies it
has the highest life satisfaction in all
of Asia no not the islands of Tahiti or
Fiji
no not Bhutan Bhutan is actually about
number 91 it’s not as happy a place as
we think but this little Iowa nation
that’s very clean even though the island
is at 70 miles or 70 kilometers long and
20 kilometers wide
it has 256 shopping malls
it’s a shopper’s paradise so the chief
architect of this social experiment
Singapore is only about 50 years old is
Lee Kuan Yew this fellow here he’s sadly
passed away but he is a Cambridge
educated lawyer who speaks the Queen’s
English but supremely understands
Confucian values the values dominant in
Asia he understands the notion and the
importance of respect harmony hardwork
respect for elders and he went about
shaping a community that made it easy to
live out those values very important not
always easy he inherited a country or he
took power of a country that was very
ethnically diverse about 70% were
Chinese ethnic Chinese Han above 13%
were Indian and about 12% 14% rather
were were Malay Muslims so this is a
recipe for ethnic strife but
interestingly there’s hardly any ethnic
strife you’ll hear a few anecdotal
stories but actually it’s a country that
gets him long very well together how did
that happen well he was under Lee Kuan
Yew and his his a government were under
a good bit of pressure to make Chinese
the lingua franca but but that would
favor one of the ethnic groups and
instead of doing that he made English
the lingua franca which not only favors
a fourth it doesn’t give anybody an
advantage but also was an advantage for
the finance industry he made it easy for
people to buy their own homes people who
own their own homes take much
care of them the neighborhood is nicer
not only that every one of the
high-rises most people live in these
government high-rise of eighteen
eighty-five percent or so living these
government high rises every high-rise
reflects the ethnic diversity of the
country so everybody whether you’re Moya
Indian or Chinese you live together you
eat together you work together your kids
go to school together there’s no Indian
ghetto or Malay slum if everybody lives
together Lee Kuan Yew was very big on
security famously canes violent people
and hangs drug dealers but on the other
hand people have the security that their
kids can play in the street
or anybody can a woman can walk across
all Singapore any time of day or night
and not worry about being a constant so
a little bit less on the freedom scale
more on the security scale he set up the
taxation system so that if you work you
can work hard if you want to buy
luxuries you’re gonna pay a tax for
luxuries but if you do any job whether
you’re sweeping the streets or you’re
cleaning the laboratories or just
selling bananas at the market
everybody’s pay is topped up everybody
has enough money to buy food shelter
health care and education for their kids
there the ante for happiness is covered
in this country Singapore is a place
that does a great job of illustrating
this notion of life satisfaction it’s a
place where if you favor security if
your values are conservative if you’re
willing to work hard just so long as you
know that there’s a payoff this is a
place where people really thrive on the
other side of the planet we found a
place with a completely different kind
of happiness but everybody’s every much
is every bit as important in the
highlands of Costa Rica the Central
Valley this is the area with where
people have the highest positive effect
in other words they enjoy life day to
day this is the country whose first
presidents were teachers and unlike the
rest of Central America
we’re the first presidents were often
dictators here the early presidents went
to Europe and we’re education at a
educated by the Social Democrats they
invested heavily in education Costa Rica
has the highest literacy rate in all of
Central America it has so for the past
60 or 70 years about 98% of people can
read invest heavily in public health as
early as the 1920s there was fresh water
throughout Central America every man
woman and child in the country has the
right to one free visit a year from a
health ambassador this health ambassador
will come into your home if you’re
lonely spend some time talking to you
get your health record take your blood
pressure check you for diabetes
screening for depression and catch a
disease before it’s a 911 she’ll go in
the back yard or he will go in the back
yard to look for standing water that’s
why there was never a big Zika outbreak
in Costa Rica they don’t have big
problems with dengue and malaria and
even go in the refrigerator and coach
people the right way to eat now
we tend to think of health and happiness
as two separate things but actually
there in a strict inextricably linked
you really can’t be happy if you’re not
healthy and in Costa Rica they spend one
fifteenth the amount America does on
health care and they have half the rate
of middle-aged mortality in fact the
longest-lived people in the world live
in Costa Rica and those longest people
are among the poorest poorest actually
lived longer they’re completely pops the
myth that you need money to be healthy
their notion of Aguada Shores that
whether you’re able bodied or disabled
straight or gay older young people are
all for it of the same services and it’s
a place where this x-factor of Latin
American happiness if you control for
everything else Latin Americans are
happier than anyplace else
Costa Rica has the best manifestation of
that Latin American x-factor a factor
that’s favored by a pop
that puts huge emphasis on family
religion no matter where you go in the
world religious people report higher
levels of happiness than non-religious
people and they’ll favor social
interactions the happiest people in the
world socially interact face-to-face not
Facebook not FaceTime six hours a day so
what we’re doing at this conference this
kind of happiness known as positive
effect is the type of happiness
that draws people who really like to
seize the day and save her life over
sacrificing too much today to save for
tomorrow and then I think one of the
best examples of happiness in the world
is here in in Denmark Denmark has most
consistently topped the happiness scales
for about 50 years
several organizations met her happy the
best is Gallup about a hundred years ago
they suffered a crushing defeat they
turned inward and this was the first
country in the world to educate children
of peasants they were usually just
thought of workers until about the 20th
century here in 1850 these folk schools
taught the children of farmers art
appreciation and consensus and civics
and most notably they taught girls this
is the first place in the world where
girls were given an education first
place in the world to start cooperatives
which led to unions which led to
universal health care and education in
Denmark today everybody has free
education through college fact you get
paid to go to college free health care
and everybody who retires this shirt a
comfortable retirement it also has the
highest trust in the world one of the
biggest correlates to national happiness
is trust
do you trust each other do you trust the
government do you trust the cops and
here the best example of trust that I
saw happen mid-morning in the cafes in
Aarhus where women would get together
with their friends to chat but because
their toddlers were noisy they just
left them out in there in the lobby and
for those crying little babies while
they just parked him outside which is
completely natural in Denmark but when a
Danish woman tried to do this in New
traditionally it’s been a very tower in
place in America we like to brag because
just in the last 20 years or so we
started letting gays marry but in
Denmark gays have been marrying for the
past 50 years and no matter what your
values there’s a way to express them
whether you like to read the newspaper
naked or ride your bike naked don’t try
this at home and it’s set up really so
people can get the right kind of job
Denmark famously has the highest tax
rates in the world but on the other hand
all their needs are taken care of so
when people are deciding what they’re
gonna do for a living
it makes no sense to favor a paycheck
over a job that fuels your passion
because you’re gonna get taxed to the
mean anyway so here’s a place where the
garbage man makes as much as the lawyer
so it favors work professions like
design furniture making and architecture
some of the best architects in the world
are here in Denmark and it reminds us
that while we tend to think of happiness
as the pursuit of joy actually
mitigating those things that cause us
day-to-day stress is just as important
in Denmark as I’ve said they don’t have
to worry about whether or not they’ll be
cared for if they get sick whether or
not their kids will go to school or
whether or not they’ll have a future
after they retire so three different
parts of the world three different kinds
of happiness there’s one set of factors
that explain each of the three places a
little stronger set that explains – and
then the sweet spot here these six
factors explain about 90% of human
happiness
the first one GDP gross domestic product
thing to remember about GDP though it is
a blunt instrument
G
is important for poor countries but
after you hit GDP of about $25,000 a
year or the GDP of Portugal say more GDP
doesn’t really bring much more happiness
there’s diminishing marginal return so
after your country has made enough if
leaders are really interested in
producing well-being and happiness they
would focus their resources on other
things I’d already the second most
important thing to focus on is healthy
life expectancy Costa Rica produces the
highest healthy life expectancy per
capita than anyplace else in the world
generosity which is the propensity of
people to donate tolerance which is the
freedom to live out your values that
doesn’t necessarily mean the freedom to
demonstrate or cause trouble or to do
drugs but freedom to live out your
values you live in a place where social
interaction is easy there’s a very big
correlation by the way between
bikeability and the happiness in a place
most bikable place in the world is
Copenhagen Denmark about 50% of all
trips are down on bicycling on bicycles
and then the biggest and then
second-biggest choral it is trust do you
trust your government do you trust your
cops and do you trust each other and
there are policies that will favour
trust over the favor trust so three
types of happiness but how do you apply
them to your life so I hired a couple
researchers to do an academic review of
all the available research so we can
measure three types of happiness life
satisfaction how you evaluate your life
positive fact how you experience your
life and purpose which is more or less
meaning and there’s one set of things
you can do to favor each if you’re
interested in life satisfaction you work
full-time and make at least $75,000 a
year if you favor day-to-day joy you
make sure you get your seven hours of
sleep you vacation six weeks which is
the optimal if purpose is important for
you you do the internal inventory and
make sure you get the job you like
there’s a few factors that fall in both
categories
having faith seems to be good for both
purpose and life satisfaction
volunteering is good for both experience
life and and purpose and having sex
twice a week is good for not only how
you experience your life but how you
evaluate it and that may be a pearl of
wisdom you you guys might want to take
home to your wives and then there’s the
sweet spot for individuals five or so
things we know favored all three types
of happiness so these are the things
that will statistically make you happier
and the literature of positive
psychology is full of different tricks
and techniques to make you happy but the
problem with pursuing positive
psychology is two thing two-fold number
one the intervention only works as long
as you’re paying attention so as soon as
you quit practicing gratitude and
savoring the effect goes away
and number two other research shows that
the harder we try to be happy the more
miserable we are so if you really want
to be happy here’s what I think you
ought to do and this is all driven by
statistics you want to shape your
environment so you’re more likely to be
happy so most of us live about eight
kilometres from our home and work I call
this the life radius and there’s a
number of things you can do to
permanently shape that environment so I
have six different domains here the
first one is the individual it’s not
much you can do to your inner self but
there is one thing that seems to work
people who go through an intense
meditation experience like Vipassana
seem to rewire their brains for several
years to be able to stay in the present
more favors happiness when it comes to
finances believe it or not financial
security is more important than
consumption so if you have a little bit
extra money you’re much better off
putting that extra money in an insurance
policy or pain down your mortgage or
opting in for some automatic for savings
plan than you are buying a new pair of
shoes
or getting a new electronic gadget when
it comes to your home though you read
reorder will tell you to buy the
cheapest home on the block you’re
actually much better off to buy an
average home on the block because you
don’t want to walk out your front door
every morning and see a nicer car than
yours and a bigger house than yours
because it slowly grates away at our
psychie a few other things you can do in
your house is make sure you have natural
light make sure you have a window that
looks out on nature and have the type of
house that invites people in social
networks there’s a lot you can do with
your social network the minimum we
should all have our three friends that
we can count on on a shitty day we can
have meaningful conversations with them
and we actually like them and for every
new happy person we add to our network
it increases our own chances of
happiness by about fifteen percent when
it comes to work I pointed out the
importance especially for everybody in
this room the importance of pursuing
your passion over a paycheck it’s a much
better strategy in the long run but
Gallup asks 2 million employees over the
course of five years what the most
important determinant of whether or not
they were happy and guess what it was
what are the expectations that’s close
the biggest determinant whether or not
you like your job is do you have a best
friend at work so whatever you can do as
an individual to find that best friend
or as an employer to help foment
friendships at work you should see job
satisfaction going up and finally the
most important thing and this I think
will shock you if happiness is a kink
recipe so you have to have the right job
you want to marry the right person you
want to be healthy you want to feel like
you’re giving back etcetera the most
important variable in that cake recipe
the most important ingredient is where
you live so two experiments worldwide
have been done one formal immigrants
from one davia moving into copenhagen
Moldavia tends to be one of the least
happy places in Europe but when they
move to Copenhagen
their happiness about doubles from four
to about eight and a bigger study has
just been completed by a friend of mine
named John Holly well in Canada he
followed five hundred thousand
immigrants from less happy places like
Africa and Asia follow them as they came
to Canada and within one year those less
happy people regardless of their age
their gender their level of education
we’re reporting the happiness level of
their adopted home so if you’re unhappy
now about the most important the most
powerful thing you can do is move to a
happier place and the data now exists
not only nationwide but within Nations
to tell you where that happy place is so
science cannot assure anybody in this
room happiness but it can tell you how
to stack the proverbial deck in favour
of happiness with that I want to
disclose with the best advice I got an
year and a half of traveling I met the
happiest guy in Latin America his name
is a give a Fuentes they calm Elka tone
he brights four articles a day he’s 85
year old 85 years old he said the secret
to happiness is to eat without Gwaltney
drink without getting drunk love without
jealousy never argue and occasionally
with great discretion misbehave thank
you very much
[Laughter] [Applause]
world’s happiest people and the lessons
they give us about being happier but I
thought I’d start out with you and maybe
telling you something about yourself
which maybe you didn’t know so I’m gonna
ask you to binary questions one is about
the quantity of life and the other one’s
about the quality of life I want you to
raise your hand to one of the questions
the first question I’m going to ask you
is a question if you think life is
longer short okay I’m gonna ask you
raise your hand you can only raise your
hand to want them raise your hand if you
think life is short now raise your hand
if you think life is long okay it’s
maybe a short conference all right now
written about quality of life raise your
hand if you think life is hard think
life is hard now raise your hand if you
think life is easy all right so a guy
named Michael Norton a Harvard
researcher led a team of researchers
from a few universities from around the
world and they surveyed 2,500 people now
so some exact same questions than they
correlate it with happiness and sadly
they found that the people well before I
do that I’ll probably tell you the
results I like the people who think that
life is long and easy to stand up
anybody raise their hand able long and
easy alright stay standing don’t worry
you’re gonna like the outcome so the
least happy people and actually the
majority of respondents were people who
thought that life is short and hard and
in the middle were the people who
thought life was short and easy and long
and hard but the happiest people the
people who were 20% happier as
represented by this young lady right
here were the people and this lady here
why don’t you two stand up just one more
time does one more time hold it these
are the happiest people in the room and
by the way there
more likely to vote and they’re more
likely to be generous so these are the
two women you want to invite to your
next fundraiser I’ll be hitting you up
for money afterwards and it’s kitty so
for the last 13 years I’ve had the honor
of working with National Geographic and
have developed somewhat of an expertise
at finding the most extraordinary
populations in the world and then
learning their secrets and part of that
is doing careful measurement ahead of
time for the this first project we
actually spend two years to identify
five parts of the world where people
live
statistically longest then we recruited
a team of experts who could help us go
to each of these places and distill out
their lessons or the common denominator
so in a sense we reverse engineered
longevity
I wrote this cover story in 2005 and
found that no matter where you go and
find extraordinarily long-lived people
whether it’s Europe Asia the United
States or Latin America you see the same
nine common denominators number one they
don’t really exercise in the way we
think of exercise but rather they live
in environments that nudge them to move
every 20 minutes or so for the most part
they live in walkable communities they
suffer the same stresses that we suffer
except they have sacred daily rituals
that help them unwind that stress and
get rid of some of the chronic
inflammation that is the core of every
age-related disease they have vocabulary
for purpose which is worth about seven
years of life expectancy good news based
on what I’ve observed at the conference
they do drink a couple glass of the day
most often with meals and no you cannot
save up all week long and f14 on the
weekend we did a meta-analysis at diets
of longevity all over the world and
found that 95 percent of the dietary
intake of the longest-lived people are
low processed plants grains greens nuts
and beans beans are the cornerstone of
every longevity died in the world if
you’re eating about a cup of beans a day
it’s probably worth three or four years
of life expectancy they their houses are
set up so it’s easier to eat the right
food and they
strategies to keep from overeating like
saying a prayer before meals are taking
electronics out of the kitchen and the
foundation of every longevity culture in
the world is how they connect they tend
to put a priority on family over work
and hobbies they tend to be religious
people who are religious and show up at
least four times a month live four to 14
years longer than people who aren’t and
they curate their tribe we now know that
if your three best friends are obese and
unhealthy there’s a hundred and fifty
percent better chance you’ll be
overweight so how you select people to
surround yourself with probably has the
biggest blasted impact on how you’re
gonna live the biggest finding when it
comes to longevity and I think this is
the disruptive part in America we tend
to pursue health but where people
actually live the longest they have no
idea how they live so long
you find these hundred year olds who are
waterskiing or standing on their head
and you ask them how they got to live so
long and they really have no idea the
truth of the matter is longevity happens
to people these guys on women never say
at age 50 will go darn it I’m gonna get
on that longevity diet and live another
50 years they don’t buy tread masters or
accelerometers or sign up for the
Wellness Program at work the bottom line
is they live environments that make the
easy healthy the Healthy Choice the easy
choice or the unavoidable choice no
matter where you go and you see long
live people you’ve seen these these same
five factors that are ingrained in their
environment that make this easy choice
the Healthy Choice the easy choice so
now what about happiness 15 months ago
Susan assigned me the story to do the
same thing with happiness and to start
off you have to be able to measure
happiness with longevity that’s pretty
easy you can find a guy who tells you
he’s a hundred you can check his birth
certificate and it’s really just a
mathematical exercise to confirm that
he’s indeed 100 and this is what
demographers do to population is confirm
ages but how do you do this with
happiness you can see somebody who smile
today but they may be glommed for the
next six days or they may be depressed
or they may you may just be catching
them right after happy hour how do you
measure happiness and how do you measure
for the whole world well it turns out
there are two statistical tools we can
use to do exactly this the first tool is
something called the representative
sample the representative sample says
that if you can find if you can analyze
just 1500 individuals out of a big
sample you can extrapolate to that whole
sample and I’ll give you an example
imagine a swimming pool with 100 million
marbles some of those marbles are black
some of those marbles are white and
you’re given the job to tell me what how
many of each marbles are in the pool
well if you close your eyes and randomly
select just 1,500 marbles and count
those marbles and find that 39 percent
are black sixty-one percent are white
you can be pretty sure that in this
whole swimming pool there are 39 million
white marble black marbles and 61
million white marbles so that’s the
first tool the second tool is called the
regression analysis so psychologists
over the years and these psychologists
have won Nobel Prize have divided Nobel
Prizes have developed questions that
measure different kinds of happiness how
you evaluate your life how you
experience your life and purpose and
meaning those are the three main ways
that we assess our lives then we can
actually measure it and then they ask
another number of demographic questions
about age ethnicity gender income 75
other questions and then doing this
regression analysis is just basically
math you can establish the correlations
I am going to tell you what sorts of
things you can do to make it more likely
that you will be happy for the long run
and to do that I want to profile three
of my favorite countries the first
country not too far from here Singapore
country of five million people the tip
of Malaysia extraordinary place it has
one of the highest GDP s in the world
one of the lowest rates of corruption
one of the highest life expectancies it
has the highest life satisfaction in all
of Asia no not the islands of Tahiti or
Fiji
no not Bhutan Bhutan is actually about
number 91 it’s not as happy a place as
we think but this little Iowa nation
that’s very clean even though the island
is at 70 miles or 70 kilometers long and
20 kilometers wide
it has 256 shopping malls
it’s a shopper’s paradise so the chief
architect of this social experiment
Singapore is only about 50 years old is
Lee Kuan Yew this fellow here he’s sadly
passed away but he is a Cambridge
educated lawyer who speaks the Queen’s
English but supremely understands
Confucian values the values dominant in
Asia he understands the notion and the
importance of respect harmony hardwork
respect for elders and he went about
shaping a community that made it easy to
live out those values very important not
always easy he inherited a country or he
took power of a country that was very
ethnically diverse about 70% were
Chinese ethnic Chinese Han above 13%
were Indian and about 12% 14% rather
were were Malay Muslims so this is a
recipe for ethnic strife but
interestingly there’s hardly any ethnic
strife you’ll hear a few anecdotal
stories but actually it’s a country that
gets him long very well together how did
that happen well he was under Lee Kuan
Yew and his his a government were under
a good bit of pressure to make Chinese
the lingua franca but but that would
favor one of the ethnic groups and
instead of doing that he made English
the lingua franca which not only favors
a fourth it doesn’t give anybody an
advantage but also was an advantage for
the finance industry he made it easy for
people to buy their own homes people who
own their own homes take much
care of them the neighborhood is nicer
not only that every one of the
high-rises most people live in these
government high-rise of eighteen
eighty-five percent or so living these
government high rises every high-rise
reflects the ethnic diversity of the
country so everybody whether you’re Moya
Indian or Chinese you live together you
eat together you work together your kids
go to school together there’s no Indian
ghetto or Malay slum if everybody lives
together Lee Kuan Yew was very big on
security famously canes violent people
and hangs drug dealers but on the other
hand people have the security that their
kids can play in the street
or anybody can a woman can walk across
all Singapore any time of day or night
and not worry about being a constant so
a little bit less on the freedom scale
more on the security scale he set up the
taxation system so that if you work you
can work hard if you want to buy
luxuries you’re gonna pay a tax for
luxuries but if you do any job whether
you’re sweeping the streets or you’re
cleaning the laboratories or just
selling bananas at the market
everybody’s pay is topped up everybody
has enough money to buy food shelter
health care and education for their kids
there the ante for happiness is covered
in this country Singapore is a place
that does a great job of illustrating
this notion of life satisfaction it’s a
place where if you favor security if
your values are conservative if you’re
willing to work hard just so long as you
know that there’s a payoff this is a
place where people really thrive on the
other side of the planet we found a
place with a completely different kind
of happiness but everybody’s every much
is every bit as important in the
highlands of Costa Rica the Central
Valley this is the area with where
people have the highest positive effect
in other words they enjoy life day to
day this is the country whose first
presidents were teachers and unlike the
rest of Central America
we’re the first presidents were often
dictators here the early presidents went
to Europe and we’re education at a
educated by the Social Democrats they
invested heavily in education Costa Rica
has the highest literacy rate in all of
Central America it has so for the past
60 or 70 years about 98% of people can
read invest heavily in public health as
early as the 1920s there was fresh water
throughout Central America every man
woman and child in the country has the
right to one free visit a year from a
health ambassador this health ambassador
will come into your home if you’re
lonely spend some time talking to you
get your health record take your blood
pressure check you for diabetes
screening for depression and catch a
disease before it’s a 911 she’ll go in
the back yard or he will go in the back
yard to look for standing water that’s
why there was never a big Zika outbreak
in Costa Rica they don’t have big
problems with dengue and malaria and
even go in the refrigerator and coach
people the right way to eat now
we tend to think of health and happiness
as two separate things but actually
there in a strict inextricably linked
you really can’t be happy if you’re not
healthy and in Costa Rica they spend one
fifteenth the amount America does on
health care and they have half the rate
of middle-aged mortality in fact the
longest-lived people in the world live
in Costa Rica and those longest people
are among the poorest poorest actually
lived longer they’re completely pops the
myth that you need money to be healthy
their notion of Aguada Shores that
whether you’re able bodied or disabled
straight or gay older young people are
all for it of the same services and it’s
a place where this x-factor of Latin
American happiness if you control for
everything else Latin Americans are
happier than anyplace else
Costa Rica has the best manifestation of
that Latin American x-factor a factor
that’s favored by a pop
that puts huge emphasis on family
religion no matter where you go in the
world religious people report higher
levels of happiness than non-religious
people and they’ll favor social
interactions the happiest people in the
world socially interact face-to-face not
Facebook not FaceTime six hours a day so
what we’re doing at this conference this
kind of happiness known as positive
effect is the type of happiness
that draws people who really like to
seize the day and save her life over
sacrificing too much today to save for
tomorrow and then I think one of the
best examples of happiness in the world
is here in in Denmark Denmark has most
consistently topped the happiness scales
for about 50 years
several organizations met her happy the
best is Gallup about a hundred years ago
they suffered a crushing defeat they
turned inward and this was the first
country in the world to educate children
of peasants they were usually just
thought of workers until about the 20th
century here in 1850 these folk schools
taught the children of farmers art
appreciation and consensus and civics
and most notably they taught girls this
is the first place in the world where
girls were given an education first
place in the world to start cooperatives
which led to unions which led to
universal health care and education in
Denmark today everybody has free
education through college fact you get
paid to go to college free health care
and everybody who retires this shirt a
comfortable retirement it also has the
highest trust in the world one of the
biggest correlates to national happiness
is trust
do you trust each other do you trust the
government do you trust the cops and
here the best example of trust that I
saw happen mid-morning in the cafes in
Aarhus where women would get together
with their friends to chat but because
their toddlers were noisy they just
left them out in there in the lobby and
for those crying little babies while
they just parked him outside which is
completely natural in Denmark but when a
Danish woman tried to do this in New
traditionally it’s been a very tower in
place in America we like to brag because
just in the last 20 years or so we
started letting gays marry but in
Denmark gays have been marrying for the
past 50 years and no matter what your
values there’s a way to express them
whether you like to read the newspaper
naked or ride your bike naked don’t try
this at home and it’s set up really so
people can get the right kind of job
Denmark famously has the highest tax
rates in the world but on the other hand
all their needs are taken care of so
when people are deciding what they’re
gonna do for a living
it makes no sense to favor a paycheck
over a job that fuels your passion
because you’re gonna get taxed to the
mean anyway so here’s a place where the
garbage man makes as much as the lawyer
so it favors work professions like
design furniture making and architecture
some of the best architects in the world
are here in Denmark and it reminds us
that while we tend to think of happiness
as the pursuit of joy actually
mitigating those things that cause us
day-to-day stress is just as important
in Denmark as I’ve said they don’t have
to worry about whether or not they’ll be
cared for if they get sick whether or
not their kids will go to school or
whether or not they’ll have a future
after they retire so three different
parts of the world three different kinds
of happiness there’s one set of factors
that explain each of the three places a
little stronger set that explains – and
then the sweet spot here these six
factors explain about 90% of human
happiness
the first one GDP gross domestic product
thing to remember about GDP though it is
a blunt instrument
G
is important for poor countries but
after you hit GDP of about $25,000 a
year or the GDP of Portugal say more GDP
doesn’t really bring much more happiness
there’s diminishing marginal return so
after your country has made enough if
leaders are really interested in
producing well-being and happiness they
would focus their resources on other
things I’d already the second most
important thing to focus on is healthy
life expectancy Costa Rica produces the
highest healthy life expectancy per
capita than anyplace else in the world
generosity which is the propensity of
people to donate tolerance which is the
freedom to live out your values that
doesn’t necessarily mean the freedom to
demonstrate or cause trouble or to do
drugs but freedom to live out your
values you live in a place where social
interaction is easy there’s a very big
correlation by the way between
bikeability and the happiness in a place
most bikable place in the world is
Copenhagen Denmark about 50% of all
trips are down on bicycling on bicycles
and then the biggest and then
second-biggest choral it is trust do you
trust your government do you trust your
cops and do you trust each other and
there are policies that will favour
trust over the favor trust so three
types of happiness but how do you apply
them to your life so I hired a couple
researchers to do an academic review of
all the available research so we can
measure three types of happiness life
satisfaction how you evaluate your life
positive fact how you experience your
life and purpose which is more or less
meaning and there’s one set of things
you can do to favor each if you’re
interested in life satisfaction you work
full-time and make at least $75,000 a
year if you favor day-to-day joy you
make sure you get your seven hours of
sleep you vacation six weeks which is
the optimal if purpose is important for
you you do the internal inventory and
make sure you get the job you like
there’s a few factors that fall in both
categories
having faith seems to be good for both
purpose and life satisfaction
volunteering is good for both experience
life and and purpose and having sex
twice a week is good for not only how
you experience your life but how you
evaluate it and that may be a pearl of
wisdom you you guys might want to take
home to your wives and then there’s the
sweet spot for individuals five or so
things we know favored all three types
of happiness so these are the things
that will statistically make you happier
and the literature of positive
psychology is full of different tricks
and techniques to make you happy but the
problem with pursuing positive
psychology is two thing two-fold number
one the intervention only works as long
as you’re paying attention so as soon as
you quit practicing gratitude and
savoring the effect goes away
and number two other research shows that
the harder we try to be happy the more
miserable we are so if you really want
to be happy here’s what I think you
ought to do and this is all driven by
statistics you want to shape your
environment so you’re more likely to be
happy so most of us live about eight
kilometres from our home and work I call
this the life radius and there’s a
number of things you can do to
permanently shape that environment so I
have six different domains here the
first one is the individual it’s not
much you can do to your inner self but
there is one thing that seems to work
people who go through an intense
meditation experience like Vipassana
seem to rewire their brains for several
years to be able to stay in the present
more favors happiness when it comes to
finances believe it or not financial
security is more important than
consumption so if you have a little bit
extra money you’re much better off
putting that extra money in an insurance
policy or pain down your mortgage or
opting in for some automatic for savings
plan than you are buying a new pair of
shoes
or getting a new electronic gadget when
it comes to your home though you read
reorder will tell you to buy the
cheapest home on the block you’re
actually much better off to buy an
average home on the block because you
don’t want to walk out your front door
every morning and see a nicer car than
yours and a bigger house than yours
because it slowly grates away at our
psychie a few other things you can do in
your house is make sure you have natural
light make sure you have a window that
looks out on nature and have the type of
house that invites people in social
networks there’s a lot you can do with
your social network the minimum we
should all have our three friends that
we can count on on a shitty day we can
have meaningful conversations with them
and we actually like them and for every
new happy person we add to our network
it increases our own chances of
happiness by about fifteen percent when
it comes to work I pointed out the
importance especially for everybody in
this room the importance of pursuing
your passion over a paycheck it’s a much
better strategy in the long run but
Gallup asks 2 million employees over the
course of five years what the most
important determinant of whether or not
they were happy and guess what it was
what are the expectations that’s close
the biggest determinant whether or not
you like your job is do you have a best
friend at work so whatever you can do as
an individual to find that best friend
or as an employer to help foment
friendships at work you should see job
satisfaction going up and finally the
most important thing and this I think
will shock you if happiness is a kink
recipe so you have to have the right job
you want to marry the right person you
want to be healthy you want to feel like
you’re giving back etcetera the most
important variable in that cake recipe
the most important ingredient is where
you live so two experiments worldwide
have been done one formal immigrants
from one davia moving into copenhagen
Moldavia tends to be one of the least
happy places in Europe but when they
move to Copenhagen
their happiness about doubles from four
to about eight and a bigger study has
just been completed by a friend of mine
named John Holly well in Canada he
followed five hundred thousand
immigrants from less happy places like
Africa and Asia follow them as they came
to Canada and within one year those less
happy people regardless of their age
their gender their level of education
we’re reporting the happiness level of
their adopted home so if you’re unhappy
now about the most important the most
powerful thing you can do is move to a
happier place and the data now exists
not only nationwide but within Nations
to tell you where that happy place is so
science cannot assure anybody in this
room happiness but it can tell you how
to stack the proverbial deck in favour
of happiness with that I want to
disclose with the best advice I got an
year and a half of traveling I met the
happiest guy in Latin America his name
is a give a Fuentes they calm Elka tone
he brights four articles a day he’s 85
year old 85 years old he said the secret
to happiness is to eat without Gwaltney
drink without getting drunk love without
jealousy never argue and occasionally
with great discretion misbehave thank
you very much
[Laughter] [Applause]
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