In two days it will be the international day of happiness. You can start to celebrate by eating a big fat piece of cake; remember to smile and to spread your happiness to everybody.
But what exactly is this day all about? The international day of happiness is not a day that reminds you to smile despite your problems and issues nor one that allows you to eat everything you want without feeling guilty. Instead, it’s a new way to measure the global progress of a country. Yes it's not a cheesy day like everybody was thinking .
On July 2012 the United Nations General Assembly decided to give more importance to happiness when measuring a country's growth. The idea behind it is that a happy country is a healthy country and more likely to grow economically. This underlines how both economic and non-economic aspects in life matter at the same level for a country's development. We cannot base the progress of a country just through economic growth. If people are happy they are more likely to trust in their government and more likely to invest and make the economy spin. Of course we have to understand that happiness itself is not a good indicator, but we have to compare it to the GNP or GDP.
The Bhutanese introduced the "Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product" in 1970s and more countries nowadays are aware of the value of the happiness, which is the main purpose of most of our daily actions.
Think positive! Pass your smile on to another person and share the happiness, and why not a piece of cake as well.
How will you celebrate it?
