Meik Wiking, author of best-selling book *Hygge*, understands happiness better than anyone. In his role as Founder and CEO of the world’s only Happiness Research Institute, he has travelled the globe interviewing the world’s happiest people to discover the key components of happiness. In this episode, we explore the fascinating findings of his research and uncover what we can learn from the world’s happiest countries.

We talk about the impact of stress on our happiness and how although we are richer than ever before, we have failed to convert that wealth into wellbeing. It seems that despite all our cultural differences, we as a human race have a very similar view of happiness across the world. Meik and I discuss how one of the most important components of a happy life is meaning and purpose and how this has been gradually eroded from our lives. This is an eye-opening and fascinating conversation – I hope you enjoy it.

Episode Highlights:

• What does Meik do for a living?
• Does Meik think that money is an important factor for happiness?
• What effect does Meik think social media has on our happiness?
• How does Meik and his team define happiness?
• What 6 main factors show the variance in happiness across the globe?
• Hear Rangan & Meik talk about ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ and The Free Help Guy
• Is happiness about individual choices or is it shaped by the society around us?
• Why do Scandinavian countries come out on top in happiness charts and what can we learn from other countries of the world?
• Are parents happier in Scandinavia or the US?
• What is the correlation between stress and happiness?
• Hear about the newly launched experiment converting an office into a ‘lab’ measuring happiness.
• ‘So Happy’ study – Meik talks about a recent worldwide study showing the correlation between psoriasis and their mental wellbeing.
• What has Meik changed in his own life to increase his happiness?

Further learning:

• The Happiness Research Institute
• The U.N. Happiness Resolution
• World happiness report 2018
• The Happy movie
• London School of Economics Mappiness study & app
• 2018 Happiness survey for UK, Russia, France, Romania and Poland
• The Happiness Research Institute publications
• The Free Help Guy