El Reporte Global de la Felicidad ha sido publicado, Finlandia otra vez está en primer lugar, pero ¿Por qué la Felicidad es muy cara?
¿Tu también has visto el aumento exponencial de cursos, entrenadores (Coach), talleres, retiros, etc. de bienestar y felicidad?
El COVID-19 nos está obligando a replantearnos nuestro bienestar, sin embargo, nos hemos estrellado contra la pared: La felicidad es muy cara, este es el caso de Europa, y el concepto occidental de la Felicidad.
Para algunos de nosotros que vivimos en el occidente del mundo, encontramos el concepto de felicidad como una mercancía, a veces subjetiva, comercial y compleja, más relacionado con el mundo industrializado que un valor universal. Ahora, todos quieren acceder a la felicidad, pero ninguno se atreve a desafiar el status quo de una sociedad basada en la acumulación ansiosa por el consumismo:
A veces parece que la felicidad es como hacer ejercicio todos las mañanas para bajar peso, pero comemos pizza todas las noches para calmar la ansiedad.
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Pagamos más por felicidad que por vivienda.
Un estudio publicado por Mckinsey, nos da luz sobre lo cara que es la Felicidad en Europa: El impacto negativo de la pandemia en el bienestar en 2020 fue hasta 3,5 veces las pérdidas experimentadas en el PIB; Es decir, por cada euro perdido por la carga económica, se perdieron 3 euros por insatisfacción con la vida. 1
Por ejemplo, si tu ganas un salario de €2.700 euros al mes, el colapso económico por el COVID-19 arrasó de media con €540 euros de ese salario, pero tu insatisfacción con la vida arrasó con €1,620 euros, transformando tu salario real en €1,080 euros por mes o un recorte del 60% de tu salario! 1
Siguiendo con el caso Europeo, La felicidad es muy cara y cada vez se volverá más cara. Si incrustas esto, en la huella ecológica de cada país europeo, consumiendo 3 hasta 9 veces sus recursos naturales disponibles, o per cápita: 2,8 planetas para satisfacer al consumidor europeo 2, resulta que la felicidad europea es cara, lujosa, exclusiva e insostenible. Cerca de 10 veces más caro que cualquier otro ser humano en el mundo (excepto los Estadounidenses).
Además, si consideras la alta adicción al alcohol y las drogas, un 200% más alta que en los países del sur global 3, comienzas a dibujar una mejor imagen del problema:
Nuestra instatisfacción con nuestra vida es muy cara, destructiva e insostenible para con nosotros mismos y el planeta.
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¿Y el Reporte de Felicidad Mundial de la ONU?
Incluso el World Happiness Report WHP, donde Europa ocupa el primer lugar, reconoce esto: las sociedades industrializadas dependen principalmente del PIB y los ingresos para su satisfacción con la vida, reduciendo la felicidad a una simple mercancía.
A diferencia del Happy Planet Index, ubicando nuestra huella ecológica y el bienestar personal como los componentes clave de la satisfacción con la vida, los primeros lugares de éste ranking lo ocupan los países cercanos a la linea del Ecuador, lo cual confirma que su clima y abundante naturaleza es fundamental para la satisfacción.
Una clasificación más interesante es la Felicidad Nacional Bruta de Buthan. Puedes leer más aquí sobre este increíble concepto que se basa en bienestar personal y espiritual, en un artículo publicado por mi amigo Jurgen Nagler, director del PNUD en Buthan.
Gross National Happiness. La idea de felicidad de Buthan.
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¿Estamos listos para un cambio en estos rankings?
Las comunidades de todo el mundo están rogando a los países ricos que reduzcan el consumo y aprendan a vivir de manera más feliz, sostenible, y alineada con la limitadas capacidades de nuestro planeta, como la campaña del Instituto de Ciencias Humanas de los Himalayas #ILiveSimply, donde las personas más afectadas por el cambio climático se unen para hacer un llamado urgente al mundo:
«Por favor, vive de manera más simple, para que otros puedan simplemente vivir¨
Ahora vemos investigaciones financiadas, capacitaciones, certificaciones, talleres, etc. Un ejército de personas está tratando de incorporar el bienestar a su vida cotidiana, pero al mismo tiempo, se encuentran atrapadas en un sistema complejo basado en un alto consumo alimentado por una ansiosa economía.
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Quiero creer que todo este movimiento de bienestar, bienestar y felicidad en Europa y los países industriales del norte global se basa en una transformación de adentro hacia afuera para el bien de nuestra relación con nosotros mismos y con nuestro planeta, pero las estadísticas basadas en emisiones y salud mental a veces dicen lo contrario, es difícil vivir simple y satisfecho.
En solo unas pocas semanas de poco o nulo ejercicio físico, estrés, ansiedad, y acceso limitado atención de salud mental que provocó la pandemia, todos los residentes europeos han tenido un impacto negativo en sus salarios debido a la infelicidad, lo que eventualmente se convertirá en un problema de salud pública y una prioridad para los líderes y tomadores de decisiones en Europa.
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¿Cómo los diseñadores de políticas públicas pueden incorporar nuevas formas de felicidad y bienestar sostenible?
¿Cómo pueden los gobiernos pensar más allá del PIB, pero también en actividades, incentivos y métricas para una sociedad mentalmente saludable? ¿Es posible una política europea para vivir feliz con menos? Hoy por hoy la felicidad es muy cara y se está saliendo de control.
Un reto mayor es, ¿cómo puede Europa pensar en el desarrollo holístico y el bienestar personal sostenible en medio de una guerra?
Es un territorio desconocido donde no hay ningún libro o manual escrito, donde finalmente es hora de abrir nuestra mente a un enfoque más holístico sobre el desarrollo, más humano y menos económico, sobre cómo otras culturas viven más prósperas con menos impacto en su salud mental y la salud del planeta.
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Una nueva formula para la Felicidad:
Después de más de 10 años de trabajar en más de 20 países en 4 continentes, y de tener una comprensión de otros modelos de felicidad, creo que es posible tomar lo que otras naciones han hecho exitosamente.
Los resumí en 3 objetivos fáciles: Los Objetivos de Desarrollo de la Humanidad (HDGs), una invitación para repensar el desarrollo de una manera holística en lugar de una sola intervención pública. Los HDGs complementan a los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS).
Este marco, junto con nuestra metodología de Liderazgo Holístico, es la razón por la cual The Global School for Social Leaders ha sido premiada y reconocida, por un enfoque holístico, global, amigable y realista para el desarrollo sostenible para todos: Si, economía es importante, pero más importante es sentirnos satisfechos con nuestras vidas manteniendo una respetuosa interacción con nuestro planeta.
1. Mckinsey Group. Report: Well-being in Europe: Addressing the high cost of COVID-19 on life satisfaction: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/europe/well-being-in-europe-addressing-the-high-cost-of-covid-19-on-life-satisfaction
2. Footprint Network Report 2019.
3. Our World in Data. https://www.footprintnetwork.org/content/uploads/2019/05/WWF_GFN_EU_Overshoot_Day_report.pdf
This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you. Lessons from Indigenous to resist the crisis.
If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. Take care of your homes, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual House.
When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.
There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand — the two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning.
You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.
This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you cross this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties.
This is what is asked of you: Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision-seeking rituals.
What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do, serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day. Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.
Learn about the resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time. You do not help at all being sad and without energy.
You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world. You need to be well and strong.
And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation.
White Eagle, Hopi indigenous: Lessons from Indigenous to resist the crisis
White Eagle is the name given to the wise teacher and philosopher who guided the
formation of the White Eagle Lodge. The name White Eagle in the Native American
tradition is symbolic and means a spiritual teacher.
The white eagle soars far into the heavens above the emotions and turmoils of the earth and sees things from a different perspective.
No true spiritual teacher ever makes claims about themselves – they come in simplicity and humility.
The discipline of systems thinking is more than just a collection of tools and methods – it’s also an underlying philosophy.
Many beginners are attracted to the tools, such as causal loop diagrams and management flight simulators, in hopes that these tools will help them deal with persistent business problems. But systems thinking is also a sensitivity to the circular nature of the world we live in; an awareness of the role of structure in creating the conditions we face; a recognition that there are powerful laws of systems operating that we are unaware of; a realization that there are consequences to our actions that we are oblivious to.
In general, the systems thinking perspective requires curiosity, clarity, compassion, choice, and courage. This approach includes the willingness to see a situation more fully, to recognize that we are interrelated.
Ask yourself, how can I analyze the situation all of us are facing in order to have a better impact in my society? Here we compile 10 recommendations by Dr Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Founder of Climate Interactive.
1. Multisolving.
Do not sub-estimate any effort, any donation, claim, or a petition signed is important now more than ever:
How can my one action accomplish multiple goals? Micro: a donation to the local food pantry helps feed my community now and strengths our civic infrastructure for the future. Macro: a green stimulus could fight inequity, climate change & economic shocks.
2. Repurposing.
How can the structures we’ve built contribute to well-being now, under changed circumstances?
While students are at home, the school bus delivers lunch to the school bus stops throughout town. Unemployment system reshaped to also include freelancers. Also: Hotels used quarantine centers. Production lines retooled to make ventilators. Distilleries making hand sanitizer.
We are witnessing now collective efforts that confirm the power of our human creativity.
3. Visioning.
What do I really want to see in my life, my town, the world?
Daring to picture that in vivid detail even while having no idea how to get there. Without these visions, what are you multisolving or repurposing for?
Envisioning a renewed life fitting into a new world is key to guide your efforts.
4. Orienting by ethics.
The practice of navigating by a moral compass. Ethics are ‘rules for what works’ in complex systems. You are unique and precious and so is every other being. No one is safe until everyone is safe. Equity is not optional.
In this time of uncertainty and systems change, guide your decisions by my human values.
5. Balancing.
Keeping steady. Self-regulation at all scales. Am I tired, hungry, afraid, been online too long? Is my community over-focused on the short-term?
Attending to any parameter (number of laid off workers comes to mind or annual GHG emissions) blasting out of control.
6. Growing.
Tapping the power of reinforcing feedback. Taking ideas and innovations to scale. Stories, possibilities and examples (and also warnings and lessons learned) spreading, by word of mouth, at the speed of zoom.
7. Action-learning.
Up against problems that are also growing exponentially, delay is the enemy. Acting, even if you don’t know everything (or even very much) is preferable to paralysis or ‘wait and see’. But act humbly, knowing that you don’t know nearly everything, and embracing and sharing your mistakes. Design the learning loop (the after action review) into everything.
8. Truth-telling.
You can’t navigate one crisis, let alone multiple intersecting ones with a distorted information stream. Accurate timely data (both numerical and qualitative) are needed more than ever. And pay attention to who tells the stories and what (and who) they include. These times call for deep reflection and honest sharing and allegiance to leaders who do the same, and who thus will not look certain, or ‘strong’ by the standards of the recent past.
9. Cultivating coherence.
the property where across scales and domains the same set of organizing principles are applied. This allows for improvisation and spreading of innovation. And those shared organizing principles come from #3 and #4 vision and ethics.
10. Connecting.
Tapping the power of emergence, where new connections lead to the emergence of new patterns of behavior in systems. A super-power on this list because it amplifies all the others.
It goes without saying that the mess our world is in right now is one of our own making. We all knew this would happen one day and there have been a plethora of data-backed warning interventions, like the oneBill Gates brilliantly pitched in at TED in 2015. Yet, with very few exceptions, near to zero effort has been made globally to effectively mitigate this risk. What. A. Shame!
Although I am a Medical Doctor, I am not one of the millions of self-proclaimed internet virology experts, or other COVID-19 nut-cases — I’d like to focus on verified, available evidence, and try to figure out some lessons we can all learn in the face of this global uncertainty. If air travel has become this safe today, it is mainly due to the fact the industry has effectively implemented the lessons learned from blackboxes and crash investigations.
I’m henceforth leaving a blackbox here, so maybe one day, our kids will avoid making the same mistakes. So far, in this current saga, only very few nations like Singapore and Hong Kong have effectively implemented their lessons-learned from the previous SARS wave that hit them. But as the global health system has crashed on us everywhere else today, I would like to offer five elements of reflection and a question for discussion and future reference:
A- Five Lessons:
Lesson #1: Despite the distances separating countries and continents, we remain heavily interdependent. However, the balance between the individualism of certain nations and common international good is increasingly tipping toward the former. As Prakash Sethi put it so beautifully in his 2003 book: ‘The economic and sociopolitical problems of the twenty-first century will be largely connected with the interdependent nature of the world and its people, a world in which individual goodwill is not possible without thought for the common good’.
Lesson #2: The Public Health interests of Nations are NOT mutually exclusive. In fact, in the face of public health threats, the health interests of one nation shall be aligned with that of all other nations. By effectively mitigating these risks for their populations, Nations are by default protecting one-another too. The WHO guidelines in this regard have always been quite comprehensive and clear. A few nations implemented them. Many ignored them. Some are still pointing fingers.
Lesson #3:In the case of an epidemic, our whole human race is as protected as our dumbest proxy (including so-called ‘political leaders’). Therefore, the consumption of medical information should be factual, not emotional: stick to verified health experts’ facts, not politicians’ blabber or your next of kin’s stupid post. In times of a public healthcare crisis, only read and listen to the official experts recommendations through their official channels. Learning this lesson or not is a matter of life and death.
As the internet has unfortunately become a garbage bin of ignorant content, the sources replicating that garbage have become contaminated. For the record: social media are not official sources of information until you check on the authenticity of the real source of publication. Unfortunately, through these channels, ignorance is spreading as fast at the virus itself, and you don’t want to take any advice based on ignorant people’s opinions either, because it makes you ignorant yourself.
There’s a reason why medicine is a science where uninformed individual opinions have no place. If you struggle to get access to reliable evidence-based sources of information, I’m suggesting some for you at the end of this article.
Lesson #4:The tax imposed on the global economic activities by a globally very poor health disaster preparedness is quite high. As we can observe, the wealth of nations is linear to the health of their populations. Adding insult to injury, the next silent healthcare killer wave is already hitting the shores via obesity and smoking and there’s a very little window to act. Back in 2015, I have publisheda paper on this topicurging responsible governments for action.
If we ignore this crucial relationship between population health and economy, and do not urgently capitalise on the visit our microscopic ‘Corona’ Nemesis to drive sweeping societal changes, then why bother about the climate altogether?
Lesson #5:Short-termism kills: A message to all apprentice politicians out there: long-term planning means a plan that spans longer than one electoral cycle, and in public healthcare, these plans are altruistic by nature. Both concepts of altruism and long-termism are something most politicians are paid to not understand.
Also, unlike building new hospitals for the communities, preventive medicine policies are not as sexy because laymen are unable to appreciate them at face value. But now, look back! If they were implemented, don’t you think those policies might have saved more lives and economies than all hospital beds and medical resources the world is unable to mobilise right now?
B- The Big Question:
In the past 2 weeks I have been approached by at least three instances to help put together an effective track-and-trace software solution to tackle the current pandemic problem in a more timely fashion. The common denominator of these solutions is a question to all of us: How much private information are we individually willing to make public, for the sake of enhancing public health and safety?
All your contact details, your last location and related time stamp, the identity of people you had physical contact with in that particular location, etc. — There’s no silver-lining, and there lies the whole complexity of public healthcare and safety.
Finally, as promised, here are some free evidence-based and regularly updated scientific resources on COVID-19:
These are THE references and fact-checkpoints for 99% of the stuff you read out there on COVID-19. If the information you read or heard is not in one of these links, then it’s likely to be fake and it’s your responsibility to help redress it.
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