Knowledge Of The Art Ltd

Do you know your HQ - Happiness Quotient?

On the 20th of March every year, we celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Whilst everyone needs his/her share of happiness, it is logical to say that happiness is not equally distributed. And, here, it does not serve you much to tell you that Mauritius ranked 52nd out of 146 countries, in the 2022 World Happiness Report, and that Mauritius is first in Africa. Our best rank in the report has been 49th (in 2020) and worst has been 71th (in 2015). The report considers 6 elements to gauge the level of happiness in a country: Gross Domestic Product of the country per person, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perception of corruption. However, happiness is wider, deeper and further than this. It is proprietary to each one of us and is unique for each of us. I am of belief that our REAL HAPPINESS is a function of a mix of the following variables: 

• compatibility of the closest person in our life.
• capability to have our ME time. 
• warmth of our home. 
• status of our health. 
• capacity to manage our available budget.
• level of pollution in our surroundings (noise, air, language, land, thermal, light).
• value-added of our profession.
• quality of our sleep. 
• capacity to use our time diligently.
• capacity to cope with everyday's stress.  
• number and quality of people in our social circle. 
• pro-sociality disposition (making a donation, volunteering and helping a stranger).

The phenomenon in today's society is that there is an increasing tendency to 1) to look happy when in fact we are not and 2) to show to others, via our virtual-reality posts, pictures and videos, that we are happy when actually we are miles away from it. And, COVID19 has been an eye-opener for most of us with regard to the popular perceptions and conceptions of what is important for a happy life. And, on the other hand, social media is contributing more and more towards the build-up of negative emotions of sadness, anxiety, jealousy, pride and anger. Let us, for now, replace all the above with one word ... one that will make the difference in a post-covid environment and one that is here to stay ...  RESILIENCE. Some people are born with a set of genetic variants that make it easier to really feel happy, while others are less fortunate. Let us use the above-mentioned variables, which are most relevant to us, to create our personal equation of resilience.  

Some of us might be eagerly waiting for the 2023 report to come in March, and others might not even care. Our advice: take a blank page, and start filling in about what REALLY makes you happy. And, start working on these, in terms of priority, to make sure that we become happy, remain happy, and spread happiness around us, our family, our friends and our colleagues. And, remember, to be really happy does it mean that you have to be happy 24/7/365.