by Meik Wiking
This is why hygge may be one of the reasons that Danes always report high levels of happiness. Not only are there policies that secure them time to pursue meaningful relationships, but the language and the culture also drive Danes to prioritize spending time with family and friends and to develop quality relationships over time.
SAVORING AND GRATITUDE
As mentioned in the chapter on food, hygge is about giving yourself and others a treat. It is about savoring the moment and the simple pleasures of good food and good company.
It is giving the hot chocolate with whipped cream the attention it deserves. In short, indulgence. Hygge is about the now, how to enjoy the moment and make the best of it.
More than anything, savoring is about gratitude. We often remind each other not to take things for granted. Gratitude is more than just a simple “thank you” when you receive a gift. It is about keeping in mind that you live right now, allowing yourself to focus on the moment and appreciate the life you lead, to focus on all that you do have, not what you don’t. Clichés? Totally.
Nevertheless, evidence-based studies show that practicing gratitude has an impact on happiness.
According to Robert A. Emmons, a professor of psychology at University of California, Davis, and one of the world’s leading experts on gratitude, people who feel grateful are not only happier than those who do not but also more helpful and forgiving and less materialistic.
In one of his studies, which involved interviewing over a thousand people, some were told to keep gratitude journals, writing down what they were grateful for on a weekly basis. The researchers found that gratitude has psychological, physical, and social benefits. The people who wrote the gratitude journals reported feeling more positive emotions like alertness and enthusiasm, reported better sleep and fewer symptoms of disease, and were more mindful of situations where they could be helpful.
Research also shows that grateful people tend to recover more quickly from trauma and suffering than others and are less likely to get stressed in different situations. You can see why it is important to include gratitude in your everyday life.
Unfortunately, since our emotional system is a fan of newness, we are quick to adapt to new things and events, especially positive ones. Therefore, you need to come up with new things to be grateful for, and not get stuck in the same way of thinking. Emmons believes that gratitude makes people take a step back and see the value of what they have and thereby appreciate it more, which makes it less likely that they will take it for granted.
Hygge may help us to be grateful for the everyday because it is all about savoring simple pleasures. Hygge is making the most of the moment, but hygge is also a way of planning for and preserving happiness. Danes plan for hyggelige times and reminisce about them afterward.
“Is nostalgia part of hygge?” one of the designers of this book asked me. He had read some of the first drafts and we were now discussing the feel and visual identity at the Granola Café at Værnedamsvej in Copenhagen. At first I dismissed his idea. But in the process of writing, I slowly realized that he was right. Reliving hygge moments, sitting in front of the fire or on a balcony in the French Alps, or walking back into the summer cabin of my childhood, I was tripping on nostalgia. At the same time, I noticed that I was smiling.
According to the study “Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Function” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (November 2006), nostalgia produces positive feelings, reinforces our memories and sense of being loved, and boosts self-esteem. So while happiness and hygge are definitely about appreciating the now, both may also be planned and preserved. Hygge and happiness have a past and a future as well as a present.
HYGGE AS EVERYDAY HAPPINESS
I study happiness. Each day, I try to answer one question: why are some people happier than others?
I’ve been told that musicians can look at notes and hear the music in their heads. The same thing happens to me when I look at happiness data. I hear comforting sounds of lives well lived. I hear the joy, the feeling of connectedness, and the sense of purpose.
Many people are, however, skeptical about the possibility of measuring happiness. One of the issues raised is that there are different perceptions of what happiness is. We try to acknowledge this by saying that “happiness” is an umbrella term. We break it down and look at the different components. So when the Happiness Research Institute, the UN, the OECD, and different governments try to measure happiness and quantify quality of life, we can consider at least three dimensions of happiness.
First of all, we look at life satisfaction. We do this by asking people in international surveys: How satisfied are you with your life all in all? Or how happy are you on a scale from 0 to 10? Take a step back and evaluate your life. Think of the best possible life you could lead and the worst possible: Where do you feel you stand right now? This is where Denmark scores the highest in the world.
Second, we look at the affective or hedonic dimension. What kind of emotions do people experience on an everyday basis? If you look at yesterday, did you feel angry, sad, lonely? Did you laugh? Did you feel happy? Did you feel loved?
The third dimension is called the eudaemonic dimension. That is named after the ancient Greek word eudaimonia for “happiness.” And it is based on Aristotle’s perception of happiness. To him, the good life was a meaningful life. So do people experience a sense of purpose?
Ideally, what we do is follow ten thousand or more people—in a scientific manner, not like a stalker—over, say, ten years. Because, over the next decade, some of us are going to get a promotion, some of us are going to lose our job, and some of us are going to get married. The question is: How do those changes in life circumstances impact the different dimensions of happiness?
So how happy are you all in all? How satisfied are you with your life? These questions have been asked and answered millions of times across the world, so now we can look for patterns in the data. What do happy people have in common, whether you are from Denmark, the UK, the US, China, or India? What is the average effect on happiness from, say, doubling your income or getting married? What are the common denominators of happiness?
We have been doing this for years when it comes to health, for example, looking into the common denominators of people who live to be a hundred years old. And because of those studies, we know that alcohol, tobacco, exercise, and our diet have an effect on our life expectancy. We use the same methods to understand what matters for happiness.
So you might say, “Well, happiness is very subjective.” Yes, of course it is, and it should be. What I care about is how you feel about your life. I think you are the best judge of whether you are happy or not. Yes, working with subjective measures is difficult, but it is not impossible. We do it all the time when it comes to stress, anxiety, and depression, which are also in some senses subjective phenomena. At the end of the day, it is all about how we as individuals perceive our lives. I have yet to hear a convincing argument why happiness should be the one thing in the world we cannot study in a scientific manner. Why should we not try to understand the thing that perhaps matters the most?
So we try to understand what drives life satisfaction, affective or hedonic happiness, and eudaemonia. The different dimensions are linked, of course. If you have a day-to-day life that is filled with positive emotions, you are likely to report higher levels of life satisfaction. But the second dimension is much more volatile. We can detect a weekend effect here. People report more positive emotions during weekends than on weekdays. This would come as no surprise to most people, as we are more likely to engage in activities that bring out positive emotions during the weekend. Furthermore, the different dimensions of happiness are linked biologically. For instance, hedonic and eudaemonic well-being are correlated, and many of the brain mechanisms involved in the hedonic experience of sensory pleasure are also active in the more eudaemonic experience.
Coming back to hygge and happiness, I think that one of the most interestin
g findings in recent years is that the experience of positive emotions matters more to our overall well-being, measured in terms of life satisfaction, than the absence of negative emotions (although both are important, according to the World Happiness Report).
Researching and writing this book, I have come to realize that hygge may function as a driver for happiness on an everyday basis. Hygge gives us the language, the objective, and the methods for planning and preserving happiness—and for getting a little bit of it every day. Hygge may be the closest we come to happiness when we arrive home after a long day’s work on a cold, rainy day in January.
And let’s face it, this is where most of our lives will play out. Not on cold, January days, but every day. Once a year—or more, if we are lucky—we may find ourselves on a beach in some exotic country and we may find both hygge and happiness on these distant shores. But hygge is about making the most of what we have in abundance: the everyday. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best: “Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”
Now, I am off to see my dad and his wife. I think I will take cake.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the researchers at the Happiness Research Institute—Johan, Felicia, Michael, and Kjartan—for their help with this book. Without them, work would not be half as hyggeligt.
La Glace, June 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MEIK WIKING is CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, research associate for Denmark at the World Database of Happiness, and founding member of the Latin American Network for Wellbeing and Quality of Life Policies. He and his research have been featured in more than five hundred media outlets, including The Washington Post, BBC, Huffington Post, the Times (London), The Guardian, CBS, Monocle, the Atlantic, and PBS News Hour. He has spoken at TEDx, and his books have been translated into more than fifteen languages. He lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
COPYRIGHT
THE LITTLE BOOK OF HYGGE. Copyright © 2017 by Meik Wiking. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Penguin Random House UK.
Lyrics from “The Happy Day of Svante” by Benny Andersen are from Hojskolesangbogen, translated by Kurt Hansen
ISBN 9780062658807
EPub Edition January 2017 ISBN 9780062658814
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
* Use sourdough for maximum hygge, but any bread that works as a good sauce mop will do.
* Don’t go for the cheapest ones, but there is no need to spend all your savings for mulled wine either.
* This soft ð is one of the most difficult Danish sounds. The closest it comes to English is th, but with your tongue extended a little further.
