{"id":13463,"date":"2014-01-17T12:13:54","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T11:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13463"},"modified":"2014-01-17T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T11:15:57","slug":"do-you-really-want-to-be-happy-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13463","title":{"rendered":"Do you really want to be happy? (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have always been interested in happiness. I think it is &#8216;a good thing&#8217; &#8211; and I would like to see more of it, at both the individual and the societal level. A few years ago, I read a fascinating book on the subject, called simply<em> &#8220;Happiness&#8221;<\/em> [see my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nfbooks.html#Happiness\">here<\/a>], and one of the most popular pieces in the Life Skills section of my web site is entitled boldly <em>&#8220;How To Be Happy&#8221;<\/em> [check it our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Happy.html\">here<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, I attended a packed-out seminar at the London School of Economics&#8221; entitled <em>&#8220;Measuring Happiness?&#8221;<\/em> which was addressed by four experts on this subject.\u00a0The first speaker was Ben Page who is Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI, the pollsters who conduct <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/ons\/rel\/wellbeing\/measuring-national-well-being\/personal-well-being-across-the-uk--2012-13\/index.html\">the personal well beingsurveys<\/a> for the British Government&#8217;s Office of National Statistics (ONS).<\/p>\n<p>In an entertaining 10 minutes with lots of slides, some of the points he made were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The UK and France are now measuring happiness and well being<\/li>\n<li>Not all richer countries are happier<\/li>\n<li>The Danes seem to get happier and happier<\/li>\n<li>Spending more time with your family is the top thing that people say would make them happier<\/li>\n<li>The older you get, the less money matters and the more health matters<\/li>\n<li>Gardening and sports appear to makes you happier<\/li>\n<li>The married and the educated are happier<\/li>\n<li>Those who go to church are happier<\/li>\n<li>The middle-aged are the least happy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So his slightly tongue-in-cheek advice for improving one&#8217;s happiness included such tips as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get married<\/li>\n<li>Be richer than your friends but stay friends with them<\/li>\n<li>Spend less than you earn<\/li>\n<li>Get religion<\/li>\n<li>Stay healthy<\/li>\n<li>Avoid middle age<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have always been interested in happiness. I think it is &#8216;a good thing&#8217; &#8211; and I would like to see more of it, at both the individual and the societal level. A few years ago, I read a fascinating book on the subject, called simply &#8220;Happiness&#8221; [see my review here], and one of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13463"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13477,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463\/revisions\/13477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}