Nadat ik naar de Verenigde Staten was afgereisd hielden Yalou en ik dit interview met Ruut Veenhoven van de Erasmus Universiteit over geluk. Yalou heeft dit interview zelfstandig uitgewerkt en ik wil haar hiervoor danken. Dit is het interview:

Born in 1942, I grew up in the 50’s in for that time a very liberal environment. The 50’s education was okay for me but not as fun as it is these days. When I was a kid, I got educated to be strong. I am a man so I was told to be tuff, no such thing as recognizing feelings. I do have good memories from my school time, one of the best memories was celebrating my birthday’s in school, I would walk around school and treat everyone on sweets. These are moments that I will never forget. When I got older my amount of happiness grew; this was in the time that I went to college. I was a bit of a late bloomer, but I enjoyed living as a student. After university my friend and I bought a farm, this was around the 70’s. My friends and I moved there with our, at that time, girlfriends. We founded a living community, it is like a Fraternity or sorority.

Nowadays I am happier. I have done what I had to do, I have accomplished my goals. But what makes you happy? I guess that depends on the person, one will tell you that it is because he or she lives healthy but my grandpa would have sad that it was the gravy meals he would eat for dinner. You can think that something makes you happy, but it is possible that it isn’t the case.

Happiness Index

The amount of happiness changes as we age, but that is not a significant change. Around the age of fifty, when your mortgage is repaid, and the kids are out of the house, your amount of happiness will increase. It does not mean that marriages with kids are less happier than marriage without kids, they are just as satisfied. The ones who are in expecting of a child are even happier in the beginning. When the child is born, your happiness will decline a bit. The reason for this, is that there is more stress in the relationship and as you have less time for each other so the romance will decline too. But adults have more reasons for a less happier life. These reasons can be changed for an increasing of personal happiness; I worked on a tool that can help you change these reasons that make you unhappy as an adult. I worked on the happiness index, this happiness index has an happiness diary. How it works is that you have to fill out what you did the day before. If you filled out everything, the app will ask you how you felt at those moments. These answers will receive feedback and will be compared to other people their responses.  Now you can see how you score at things and how other people score, maybe some things make you much more unhappy than in comparison with other people their answer. So you realize that if you change something about it, that it will increase your happiness. So if you do this; the happiness diary and you keep it up, and after a period your happiness will increase. This only works if you do something about the things that make you unhappy. Do not make the mistake of changing every unfortunate moment but do it over time and take the average feeling. You may have a bad day but not every day is a bad day.

The happiness of the youth in comparison

There is now a day more individual attention for example: Now a day we have lessons in happiness, so the youth can learn how to recognize their feelings and things like depression or anxieties. So the happiness lessons will teach kids to recognize feelings, and that can help them in the future when they need to reflect on situations. The happiness lessons are one of the reasons for kids to be happier now a day. Dutch youth are raised with a lot of freedom. The schools in Holland are much more hieratic compared to other countries.  Because of the democratic education, youth have more self-respect. Now a day you can see that the youth are happier than in other western countries. There is a faint U curve visible. One of the reasons for the curve is that Dutch students do not feel the pressure of competition. In France, for example, it is much more competitive for the students. Who is the best? You have to be the best because it all depends on selection and top choice. In America, it is also more a competition for students. What also has an effect on the amount of happiness for the Dutch youth is the bicycle. The bicycle has something to do with freedom. Youth in America use the bikes much less than youth from Holland. So these kids who do not use the bikes are depended on their parents, who bring them to school. It is also less common to bike on your own to school in America than it is in Holland. Most kids drive along with their parents until an older age. Dutch kids are used to bike on their own from a young age, so they experience more freedom from a younger age then American kids do.

Make your own choice

When there is no space for freedom in school, the chance is bigger to end up on the wrong path. With no freedom in school, you have less self-responsibility because there is just one way of doing it. This makes it hard to make a choice for yourself if you haven’t learned how to make your own choices. So you are faster inclined to do what your mother or someone else tells you to do, because you can not choose for yourself. This can lead to the wrong path, and that will decline the happiness of an individual. Without self-confidence, you won’t be able to make your own choices, not for future jobs but also not for prospective partners. And especially in a social media environment like now a day. Where people can meet each other on all kinds of dating apps, making a wrong choice is easy.

Dutch people are not the happiest in the world

Dutch people are one of the happiest people in the world, but why are we complaining so much? I think that has something to do with when we complain we see a problem. When we look at a problem, there is a more significant chance of fixing it. This is also visible on a macro level; the papers are more often filled with bad news than with good news.  What follows is that it will be taken care off. So maybe the answer is that we complain to increase our happiness. We do so many things to be happy, but we are not the happiest. There is not an apparent reason for it. What we know is that Finland is number 1 on the list of happiest countries. But it also has the biggest amount of suicides. The many suicides are not the reason for Finland’s first place on the happiness list so it is not because every person who feels unhappy kills itself. It has to do with the freedom. Freedom is a factor for happiness but also a factor to escape happiness. In Finland, it is much more tolerated to use euthanasia, and in Holland it is not a tolerated way to die. So are freedom is more limited in comparison to Finland. We do not tolerate euthanasia, and it is very unusual for us to choose death over life. So Finland even gives their citizens the ability to choose death over life, that kind of freedom is not present in Holland.

 

So happiness is an experience, and it is different for everyone. The only important thing is that you feel happy. So try to check it out by using the happiness index, it really works!