250-How Health Affects Happiness: Our 6 Factor Series Part 1 of 6

Welcome to our 6-part series on the 6 categories that affect happiness the most.  Today we dive into Health, so let’s go. 

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and it’s our 250th episode and we’re starting a week-long series on what categories affect our happiness the most. 

 

The Happiness Research Institute in Denmark has developed factors they think affect someone's happiness. They have 6 factors that they group together, they are: health, relationships, freedom, trust, kindness and money.  Fascinating they said money and if you’ve been with me for a while, you know we don’t think we can buy happiness, but this is a different take.  They freely admit that money is really complex and has a lot of nuance, but money does matter in their findings, so we’ll get into the money discussion in a later episode. 

 

So today we are talking about health and the research indicates that health matters for happiness.  If you are sick, you are less happy.  If we are caring for a loved one that is sick, we are less happy -- we all know that, right?  There is an argument that the Danish rank so high on the happiness scale because they have a lot of physical activity.  In fact, 75% of Danish citizens cycle to work all year long.  There are 5x more bikes in Copenhagen than cars.  

 

The Happiness Research Institute says in their Happiness Course, that “Just 15 minutes of light exercise (even walking to work) in the morning will put your brain in a much happier place. Make a small habit of daily exercise and it will pay dividends in the long-run.”  

 

So there you have it.  Even a brisk walk can increase your happiness.  

 

This episode was inspired by The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark and their happiness course, The Happy Course.  

 

 

 

Get Everyday Happiness delivered to your inbox by subscribing at: https://www.katiejefcoat.com/happiness

 

And, let’s connect on social at @everydayhappinesswithkatie  and join the community on the hashtags #IntentionalMargins and #everydayhappinesswithkatie on Instagram

 

Links:  https://onamission.bio/everydayhappiness/