The World Happiness Report - 7/29/14

I know I want to live in New Orleans. I know I was happier there than anywhere else I've ever been. The people are cheerful and helpful and the atmosphere is as if you were in a foreign, exotic country. People are proud of their heritage and their city and they welcome you, they send full smiles your way, they are always ready to talk or listen, and they generally make you feel like you've found your way home.

I visited the city (actually Metairie) in 1983, when my friend was trying to show me that the world did not revolve around my cheatin' man. After two weeks, I went back to Dallas and packed up for good (2001). I had fallen in love with life! New Orleans makes you appreciate getting up in the morning (or staying up till morning) and shows you just how many amazing opportunities there are to do something great with your day.

But anyway, I can't go there right now. I plan a visit in August, but if I want to work on my new life, I have to be alone, without distractions, and I know way too many people there now. I will go back there to stay in 2015, after I've spent my year building a better version of me.

So I started searching for other happy places and I came across The World Happiness Report. I've always believed that happiness is important and that happy people help to change the world and make it a better place, but I was very surprised to see the United Nations talking about this exact sort of thing.

These reports, from 2012 and 2013, are in-depth looks at the subject of happiness. They discuss why we need to be happy, and they use multiple resources to measure happiness around the world.

World Happiness Report - 170 pages

Table of Contents:

From the introduction:

...the world’s economic superpower, the United States, has achieved striking economic and technological progress over the past half century without gains in the self-reported happiness of the citizenry. Instead, uncertainties and anxieties are high, social and economic inequalities have widened considerably, social trust is in decline, and confidence in government is at an all-time low. Perhaps for these reasons, life satisfaction has remained nearly constant during decades of rising Gross National Product (GNP) per capita.

The realities of poverty, anxiety, environmental degradation, and unhappiness in the midst of great plenty should not be regarded as mere curiosities. They require our urgent attention, and especially so at this juncture in human history.

World Happiness Report 2013 - 156 pages

Table of Contents:

From the introduction:

...there is now a rising worldwide demand that policy be more closely aligned with what really matters to people as they themselves characterize their lives.
...We offer the 2013 World Happiness Report in support of these efforts to bring the study of happiness into public awareness and public policy. This report offers rich evidence that the systematic measurement and analysis of happiness can teach us much about ways to improve the world’s well-being and sustainable development.