What Can We Learn From The Happiest Country In The World?
When you decide to do “official” awards from your organization, it’s a process. In the Society’s case, we started taking nominations in May. These Smile Starter Award winners are for the people, places and groups that start thousands or millions of smiles. There are always obvious awardees and then there are those who get nominated by our members and newsletter subscribers.
We are so excited to announce the 2019 Smile Starter Awardees.
Each day during Happiness Happens Month and the foreseeable future, we’ll share about our 2019 Smile Starters here and on social media.
We are kicking off our Smile Starter Awardees with an obvious choice—the country that’s been identified by The World Happiness Report as the happiest nation for the past two years: Finland.
So, how do you give a country an award? Since I couldn’t really go to Finland, I thought the next best thing was to send the award to their embassy. When I called their communications office, it worked out for me to visit and present the award in person.
Although Kirsti Kauppi, the US Ambassador, was back in Finland on holiday, I got to meet with Helena Liikanen, the Press Counselor, and Veera Tuupanen, an intern.
This was my first visit to any embassy, so I was excited and yet also a little nervous. I’d hoped to get the Smile Starter Award Certificate translated to Finnish. However, was advised the language was difficult so I needed to make sure I could trust the translator and since I didn’t know anyone from Finland I’d settled for keeping their certificate in English.
One of my friends and local, DC area Society member, William Monif, joined me to present the award. I did need help with some pics 
After arriving in the very large working home, we walked through a huge open space with lots of windows looking out at lush, green trees. Helena explained that this view was typical of homes in Finland. We passed a large sign: “100 Fun Facts on Finland,” and the sign was simply fun.
We were led to the back deck and sat outside under the shade of the big trees, where we enjoyed some treats — including Finnish bread that was delightful — and a nice conversation about happiness. In hindsight, it’s a conversation that I wish I’d recorded, but it has given me a new idea for Smile Starters Share — so stay tuned.
If you’d like to get your Smile Starter Award graphics in Finnish, just click below…
Help Us Recognize 1 Million Smile Starters 🙂
Helena immediately explained that in Finland, happiness isn’t about smiling big all of the time. Instead, it’s more about feeling content. When she said that, my heart skipped a beat and smiled big, because the Society has had content as one of our 31 Types of Happiness since we started identifying types of happiness.
We often get a little flack about content being a type of happiness. Some have even told me that being content isn’t being happy, but that instead, it’s being complacent.
Since it’s still on the Types of Happiness list, I disagreed. I’ve always thought of contentment as a higher form of happiness. Now, I’m feeling a little vindicated since the country that’s ranked as the happiest one for two years in a row validates contentment.
But don’t let the contentment type of happiness fool you. The Finns also like to have fun too — they host the Wife Carrying Championship, have 187K+ lakes, kids love to ride stick ponies and they have more heavy metal bands per capita than any other country. And did I mention they like saunas? Here are 25 Fun Facts if you want to learn a little more.
But back to the more practical reasons they are a happy country. William and I learned that the Finnish culture and lifestyle allows their citizens to feel safe, secure and equal. Their social safety net programs, such as healthcare, quality education through university degrees, new mom gift baskets (with practically everything they need for their baby for a year), and others allow things allow their citizens equal opportunity to discover careers, for example, that contribute to their happiness. This is easier in Finland, because they have the freedom to fail without losing everything they need to survive or maintain a dignified quality of life.
Helena, whose husband is from France, also recognized that happiness is personal too—and possibly connected to what you are familiar with. She said for her she finds wooded or forest areas are places that makes her feel happier, whereas her husband prefers the beach and sand. She believes that’s in part due to where they each grew up.
In short, Helena, believes that what makes one country or culture happy might not make another happy, but that Finland has obviously figured out what works for the majority of their citizens.
She also pointed out that they have over three million saunas for their 5.5 million residents, so everyone can sauna at the same time! If you’re wondering, they also have a sauna at the embassy — but sadly, we weren’t invited to sauna.
Although we didn’t get to sauna, they agreed to translate our Smile Starter Award to Finnish. It seems fitting that the award is in the language of the happiest country — I suspect there are some happy people in Finland who would like to be Smile Starter Award Presenters and help us recognize One Million Smile Starters.
As I presented her with the Smile Starter Award, I kept pondering a Society of Happy People office in Finland… Well, I think I should at least go visit the happiest-country-two-years-in-the-running even if I’m not looking for office space.
If you’d like to get your Smile Starter Award graphics in Finnish, just click below…
Help Us Recognize 1 Million Smile Starters 🙂
Written by Pamela Gail
Pamela Gail Johnson founded the Society of Happy People in 1998.
The Society is grounded on Pamela’s four key Practical Happiness Principles:
Pamela identified 31 Types of Happiness that are on the SOHP App Happiness Counter to make it easier to recognize moments of happiness.
Pamela also plans and organizes the Society of Happy People's annual happiness celebrations:
She's also a speaker, trainer, and author.
A few of her personal smile starters include her monthly book club, yoga, traveling and meeting new happy people.
Happiness consists of feeling wanted loved embraced bye those who surround you but also an inner feeling of accomplishment based on your innate talents and you’re development in becoming a more evolved human being