{"id":5363,"date":"2025-07-11T10:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T17:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/?p=5363"},"modified":"2025-07-11T13:40:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:40:28","slug":"denmark-is-not-the-worlds-happiest-because-of-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/2025\/07\/11\/denmark-is-not-the-worlds-happiest-because-of-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark is not the world’s happiest because of hobbies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I tried Denmark’s No. 1 secret to happiness for a year\u2014it made me happier and more confident<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

While there, I discovered what many had learned before me: Hobbies are integral to life in Denmark<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From cycling to sewing, I watched Danes find joy in the everyday<\/a> outside of work. When I returned to the U.S., I thought hobbies could be the answer to help me take a break from my Type-A brain. Last year, I decided to put that theory to the test.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, this professor<\/a> never bothered to research how the ranking was established – it has NOTHING to do with hobbies. See: Denmark Fairy Tales: Is Denmark the happiest country because of this? No. \u2013 Social Panic<\/a> – there is an entire series of posts there that take a close look at Denmark – and the bogus happiness rankings<\/em>. (They do not measure happiness<\/em>, and the title was chosen because the authors wrote books about their work – and their publisher suggested “happiness” would help sales…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are multiple “happiness” indices – and on most Denmark is not ranked highly. However, the media story tellers now do annual stories on this topic, always citing the same discredited “happiness index”, which always selects a Scandinavian country as the “happiest”. (When you define a set of metrics that defines happiness as, basically, lives in a Scandinavian country, surprise, every year, you’ll select a Scandinavian country!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She concludes that what was true for her is obviously why Denmark is “happy” (it has the 2nd highest use of antidepressants in the world, until recently one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the highest rate of sexual, physical or psychological violence against women in the EU) – she concludes “Getting into a hobby is the No. 1 secret to happiness and balance”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a shame there is no fact checking nor logic in international and travel abroad stories like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof claims “hobbies” are why Denmark is ranked as a happiest country. But this metric is not used in any “happiness index”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-media","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}