10 Rules That Lead to Happiness

10 Rules That Lead to Happiness “What was a Buddhist saint doing at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos?” asks William Davies in his book The Happiness Industry, published in 2015. The monk, the author argues, like “happiness officers” in business corporations, reflects a trend that has developed over the past decade: various entities are increasingly interested in measuring how people feel, solely to exploit this data for their own political or commercial needs. Brain scientists working for the consumer industry hope to finally discover the “buy button” in our brain, and advertisers for pharmaceutical firms seek research to substantiate the claims of their costly products. The flood of literature and research on happiness in recent years leaves no room for doubt: while half of the population strives to be happy, the other half is busy examining whether the former succeeded in finding happiness. Sophisticated scanners that search for happiness centers in our brain are suddenly replacing our simple subjective feeling: “Yes, I’m happy at the moment.” When the UK’s Office for National Statistics published its first report on happiness in 2012, it was also able to cite regions and jobs in which British citizens were happiest. It appears that the color green has a beneficial effect on our happiness—and we’re not talking about greenbacks here. Rather, green regions in Scotland with breath-taking scenery were home to the happiest people and forest rangers led the list of contented workers. Intuitively, we all understand what the studies show: above a certain level, wealth does not bring happiness, though it can buy a lot of comforts. We also know from experience that many of the moments that give us great pleasure require only modest means or no monetary expense at all. Strangely, even though we all feel that wealth does […]

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