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A review by cookiecalder
The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World's Happiest People by Dan Buettner
3.0
Alright alright alright it’s REVIEW time…
Blue Zones of Happiness here we come. As mentioned in my other review of non-fiction this will be more a review of things that I want to remember rather than a typical this is why I liked this book…
For those that don’t know the “Blue Zones” project originally started looking for places in the world were people lived the longest live, in order to find the causes for that. Since then the “Blue Zones” has been expanded to Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living like the World’s Healthiest People and many more. It’s quite the franchise.
The Blue Zones of Happiness as the title might suggest is what the Blue Zones can teach us about living a happier life. The unique contribution of this book it to look at the issue not just from an individual level but also a social and community level. This is done through the concept of life radius which starts with Communities, then workplaces, social networks, home, wellbeing and finally inner life. A useful concept when working with someone to identify possible individual intervention strategies, as well as informing societal social work strategies.
So what does it say? Well the book can be summed in words 3:
PURPOSE
PLEASURE
PRIDE
Mix these 3 ingredient together in an individual and enable their pursuit in a society and vola! Happiness. The book summaries further though into the POWER of 9!
1. Love Someone – Commit to someone compatible with you, your interests, values and company you enjoy.
2. Inner Circle – Create a circle of a least 3 friends with whom you can have meaningful conversation, can call after a bad day for help and are generally happy (for every new happy friend that enters your social network, your own happiness increases by about 15 per cent).
3. Engage - Get out of the house! Engage with a group of people around your interests
4. Learn Likeability – Learn to be likeable to others, give genuine compliments, be a good friend, be happy yourself.
5. Move Naturally – get at least 30 min exercise per day
6. Look Forward – Focus on meaningful things, set goals, monitor progress. This will help you get more of what you want out of life.
7. Sleep Seven Plus – GET SOME SLEEP! Establish sleep routine (use sleep hygiene)
8. Shape Surroundings – Look at shaping your different life radiuses to favour happy decisions. Eg. don’t keep junk food in the fridge
9. Right Community – Live in a community which fosters wellbeing. Example: Immigrants moving from less happy countries to happier places such as Canada adopt the happiness levels of their new country within a year!
The rest of the book was good but to be honest lacked a lot of meat and seemed to be more interested in anecdotal evidence rather than real science. While I’m not a fan of just page after page of statistics I felt like this book erred on the side of not having enough weight behind some of it’s statements (Hence the low rating) it did however provide some useful stories and a good frame work when working with people.
Blue Zones of Happiness here we come. As mentioned in my other review of non-fiction this will be more a review of things that I want to remember rather than a typical this is why I liked this book…
For those that don’t know the “Blue Zones” project originally started looking for places in the world were people lived the longest live, in order to find the causes for that. Since then the “Blue Zones” has been expanded to Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living like the World’s Healthiest People and many more. It’s quite the franchise.
The Blue Zones of Happiness as the title might suggest is what the Blue Zones can teach us about living a happier life. The unique contribution of this book it to look at the issue not just from an individual level but also a social and community level. This is done through the concept of life radius which starts with Communities, then workplaces, social networks, home, wellbeing and finally inner life. A useful concept when working with someone to identify possible individual intervention strategies, as well as informing societal social work strategies.
So what does it say? Well the book can be summed in words 3:
PURPOSE
PLEASURE
PRIDE
Mix these 3 ingredient together in an individual and enable their pursuit in a society and vola! Happiness. The book summaries further though into the POWER of 9!
1. Love Someone – Commit to someone compatible with you, your interests, values and company you enjoy.
2. Inner Circle – Create a circle of a least 3 friends with whom you can have meaningful conversation, can call after a bad day for help and are generally happy (for every new happy friend that enters your social network, your own happiness increases by about 15 per cent).
3. Engage - Get out of the house! Engage with a group of people around your interests
4. Learn Likeability – Learn to be likeable to others, give genuine compliments, be a good friend, be happy yourself.
5. Move Naturally – get at least 30 min exercise per day
6. Look Forward – Focus on meaningful things, set goals, monitor progress. This will help you get more of what you want out of life.
7. Sleep Seven Plus – GET SOME SLEEP! Establish sleep routine (use sleep hygiene)
8. Shape Surroundings – Look at shaping your different life radiuses to favour happy decisions. Eg. don’t keep junk food in the fridge
9. Right Community – Live in a community which fosters wellbeing. Example: Immigrants moving from less happy countries to happier places such as Canada adopt the happiness levels of their new country within a year!
The rest of the book was good but to be honest lacked a lot of meat and seemed to be more interested in anecdotal evidence rather than real science. While I’m not a fan of just page after page of statistics I felt like this book erred on the side of not having enough weight behind some of it’s statements (Hence the low rating) it did however provide some useful stories and a good frame work when working with people.