The World Happiness Report unveils a surprising portrait of global resilience. Unravel the unexpected findings, as nations worldwide demonstrate their capacity to adapt and thrive amidst adversity. Discover how happiness is measured and what it reveals about our collective strength.
The 2021 World Happiness Report found that, amid global hardship, self-reported life satisfaction across 95 countries on average remained steady in 2020 from the previous year
despite societal tumult that yielded a national drop in positive emotions and a rise in negative ones.
- The data suggests that “people have not thrown up their hands about their lives.”
- People have adapted to their new situations in ways that might have roughly evened out their well-being.
Positive Appreciation
Humans are meaning-making machines, and finding personally relevant positive meaning in trying experiences can broaden and boost your outlook.
- Reflecting on an experience can reveal growth or benefits the person hadn’t considered, even if it “doesn’t change its negative reality.”
- A new appraisal is a step toward tweaking your broader narrative.
When the rover Perseverance touched down on Mars
Ethan Kross, a professor and director of the Emotion and Self-Control Lab at the University of Michigan, felt something powerful: awe.
- What science has shown is that when you experience awe, that leads to a’shrinking of the self,’ ” so our own problems feel smaller by comparison.”
- Helping others can take you outside of yourself and help you, too: The global “happiness effects” of generosity increased last year, the report found, and making a donation correlated with higher life satisfaction and positive affect.
Psychological distancing refers to “kind of a perspective broadening”
After gaining some distance from a stressor, he said, we are often better equipped to reengage
- One version is linguistic distancing
- Analyzing your situation from a third-person perspective, like a close friend would
- Activating self-compassion
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