Finland’s at the top of the World Happiness Index - again. But it comes from controlling your life, and trusting others, than blithe optimism

Photo by Ugur Arpaci on Unsplash

We’re not amazingly starry-eyed about Nordic and Scandinavian outcomes at the Alternative Global - despite us being inspired by Denmark’s Alternativet party. The “folkshemmet” (or people’s home) of the Scandi-Nordics’ vaunted welfare state has recently declared its limits with migrants, resulting in some of the most draconian policies. Not so egalitarian.

But we liked this piece from Big Think, exploring why Finland has - once again - surmounted the league table of countries in the World Happiness Index [website is here]. This is partly because the author uses the Finnish supremacy as a way to critique the idea of happiness itself, or at least looks into its true sustainability.

Some excerpts below:

While it doesn’t elicit the images of escapism people generally associate with happiness — opulent homes, worry-free lives, and sun-warmed, well, anything — the Finns have worked hard to embrace and institutionalize practices that make day-to-day life more satisfying.

“This Finnish happiness we hear about is not about dancing or smiling or being outwardly happy,” Anu Partanen, author of The Nordic Theory of Everything, told the BBC. “If that’s your idea of happy, then no, they are not the happiest. These studies are about the quality of life … Are you living the best one? Can you control your life? Do you have choices? Can you spend time with your family? Do you feel safe? Can you be productive in society?”

Two Finnish concepts serve as potential drivers of this quality of life: sisu and a sense of communal trust.

Sisu is difficult to pin down, especially in English where it has no good equivalent. Determination, perseverance, and willpower have been used as translations, and while they touch on the concept, they don’t encompass it. Its been described by psychologist and sisu coach Emilia Lahti as a “universal capacity” that contributes to an “action mindset” and allows people “to overcome a mentally or physically challenging situation.”

In other words, sisu is that inner strength that helps a writer plug away at a challenging book or a runner push through the wall to finish a marathon. When aggregated to the national level, it’s the on-tap grit that allows the Finns to get it done. Sisu is often credited as the critical cultural trait that allowed the country to outlast the much stronger Soviet army during the Winter War.

Looking toward their communal mindset, the Finns have worked hard to build trust into their administrative and political models. The results speak volumes. The Finns have some of the highest levels of trust in the world, both in one another and in their government. And as Partanen’s quote suggests, the desire to be a productive member of society is not only strong but has cultivated the country’s powerful social programs. Today, Finland enjoys a low poverty rate, scores high in markers of health, leads the way in gender parity, and has developed a top-ranking education system.

The paradox of happiness: Finland edition

How do sisu and trust translate into the happiest country in the world? Let’s start with trust.

Research by Paul Zak, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, shows that trust prompts people’s brains to release oxytocin, aka the “love hormone.” Not only does a brain awash in oxytocin make us feel better, but it also promotes prosocial behaviors and makes us feel more connected to others.

Here, Finland seems to have tapped into a happiness feedback loop. By seeing trust as a cornerstone of their national identity, they pursue communal accomplishments and social programs. Those prosocial behaviors deepened the pool of community trust, which promotes more prosocial behaviors. The output is happiness or, at least, more contentment in life.

As Minna Tervamäki, voted Finland’s most positive person in 2017, told the BBC: “I have very contradictory feelings about the happiness survey. Finnish people read it and laugh, like, ‘What? Us?’ What comes to my mind is that Finnish people are content more than happy.”

Sisu’s role in Finland’s happiness is more roundabout. That’s because, as positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar explains, people that pursue happiness directly often end up being less happy than those who don’t.

“If I wake up in the morning and say to myself, I want to be happy, I’m going to be happy no matter what, I am directly pursuing happiness,” Ben-Shahar writes in his book Happier, No Matter What. “This deliberate pursuit to be happy reminds me how important happiness is to me — of how much I value it — and therefore hurts more than it helps.”

By making sisu and not happiness their golden standard, the Finns don’t expect to be happy. They expect themselves to work hard to overcome whatever mental and physical challenges they face. And they expect that process to be difficult, open to failure, and a bit of pain now and then.

But in doing so, they turn their attention away from happiness and toward the pursuits that make life more meaningful. That generates more happiness than can be achieved if happiness is the direct goal.

“I don’t think there’s a point before one is unhappy, after which one is happy,” Ben-Shahar told us in an interview. “Rather, happiness resides on a continuum. It’s a life-long journey, and knowing that, we can have realistic rather than unrealistic expectations about what is possible.”

The article makes the obvious point that your metrics of happiness really matter. Finns score well on a ladder of self-reported happiness. But,

As psychologist Frank Martela points out, if the World Happiness Report looked at different metrics, they would receive different results. If they factored in GDP per capita — a flawed metric of happiness, but still — Luxembourg would be higher on their list. Had they weighed expressions of positive emotions more, Paraguay and Costa Rica would cinch it. And if they looked toward mental health, Finland would be paired with the U.S. as both countries have a similar share of the population with depression.

Here’s the lead graph from the report, embedded below: