The Happiest People in the World Live in…
Iceland. Yes, Iceland.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Apparently, Icelanders get something in their heads and they go for it. They don’t hold back. They don’t let public opinion, naysayers, fears or doubts hold them back from unleashing the creativity from within. Icelanders don’t see failure as something to be avoided and this frees them to create.
And this makes them happy.
According to writer Peter Bregman:
According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That’s right, Iceland. Yes, I know it’s cold and dark six months out of the year there. I’m just giving you the data.
The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn’t stigmatize failure. Icelanders aren’t afraid to fail  or to be imperfect  and so they’re more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That’s one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. “There’s no one on the island telling them they’re not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write,” Weiner writes.
Which makes them incredibly productive. They don’t just sit around thinking they’d like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, “It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.”
So if you think you’re good at something, whether or not you are, you’ll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren’t good enough at something, you won’t do it.
What would you try today if you weren’t afraid of failure?
- Ask out that girl in chemistry class?
- Open that coffee shop you’ve always wanted to?
- Pick up the paintbrush again and create?
- Plant that church that you know God has called you to plant?
Iceland is onto something. After all, they’re home to one of the most innovative bands ever to walk the face of the earth, Sigur Rós.
My guess is their proximity to Sigur Rós makes them that much happier. heh
Nice post! Great questions.
I don't really understand how Peter can write an article like that at this point. Like Trevor in the comments of that article, I have to share his sentiment that "I very much doubt that Iceland is the happiest place in the world right now." I bet the more interesting article would now be how their happiness has changed after a full collapse.
Here's a recent quote from an article about the riots and suicide that took place in Iceland (source http://www.businesspundit.com/iceland-collapse-ri…
"On Friday morning, human rights campaigner and protest organizer Hordur Torfason told a chilling anecdote to illustrate the desperation many Icelanders are feeling. He had received a phone call from a man who said that four generations of his family had lost everything. “He wanted me to help them build a gallows in front of the parliament building,” says Torfason. “I asked him if this was to have some symbolic significance. ‘No,’ came the answer. ‘A member of my family wants to hang himself in public.’"
“I said I would help them but not in this way,” says Torfason. “But he killed himself two days ago.”
And check this one out, a glimmer of hope: "More people are attending church, he says, not just for spiritual succor, but because food is sometimes provided for a nominal charge."
Anecdote: I recently finished the book "Flow," and I thought it was pretty mediocre. In his obvious hatred of most religion – especially Christianity – he tries to argue against it's truth in the first chapter, with quite laughable results. The poor quality of his attempt put me on guard for the rest of the book, and while it certainly got better, it didn't get too much better, with a few exceptions. It was not scientific at all, considering the subject matter.
Here's Forbes recent report on the happiest countries using slightly different metrics: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-p…
Ahh, my apologies, the quotes were actually from The Independent. Figures… Very moving, and great journalism. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/me…
Sorry, don't mean to spam the comments, but the more I read this Independent article, the more this seems to point to a much larger story of how Iceland WAS the happiest place in the world, and how maybe they got to that spot rather foolishly.
To once again quote the article:
"We were on our own for years and we went too far, too fast, in too little time. We behaved like children and the first thing we did when the stock market opened 10 years ago was go to London and buy toy stores and candy stores. Now we are bankrupt and there will be no money for years to come and we have more debts than we can ever repay.
We're just like kids whose parents went away for the weekend and we trashed the entire house."
Woah… So maybe the second question is: "Now that Iceland has indeed faced failure, what will its response be?"
The short term was obviously to demand a revolution of the government, followed by rioting and suicide. But will there be hope in the longer term?
There was a recent show on 20/20 that listed Demark as the happiest place on earth. Although I wonder how one measures the perceived happiness of a person let alone groups of people.
how could your iPhone send the reply 7 times and not be REALLY happy haha.
Aw snap.
Yeah, that was probably based on Forbes's list, which I linked above. In the article, Lauren talks briefly about the metrics used. The other database uses different metrics of course, but I'm sure they're similar.
To answer Justin's question in this post: Exactly what I'm already doing.