Don’t worry, be happy! (Part Three)

Like we’ve seen it for the entire world, we’ll try today to apply that same "macro" lens to the "micro" level of our 50 United States. In fact, organizations like Gallup and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network do this yearly. When we break down the US using those same six pillars—Wealth, Support, Health, Freedom, Generosity, and Trust—the "United" States starts to look like a collection of very different countries. 

Here is how that extrapolation would look across the US. First, there’s the "Healthy Life Expectancy" divide in which the Mountain West (Utah, Colorado) and New England (Vermont, Massachusetts) would consistently take the top spots. This comes from the "Active" Effect: High-altitude states with strong outdoor cultures (like those with major ski industries) show significantly higher healthy life expectancy. 

These regions benefit from a "virtuous cycle" where climate and environment encourages physical activity, which in turn boosts mental well-being. In contrast, the "Stroke Belt" (so-called because of its higher stroke mortality rates) in the Southeast often scores lower on this pillar, not just due to healthcare access, but because of systemic dietary and lifestyle factors. 

Then there’s the social support region where "Community wins over Anonymity", where the Midwest and the Intermountain West (Nevada, Utah, and Idaho) often outshine the coastal powerhouses. States with high civic engagement and religious or community-based networks (think Utah, Minnesota, or Nebraska) score remarkably high on "having someone to count on." 

On the other side, high-GDP states like New York or California often suffer from "social fragmentation." People move there for work, leaving their support networks behind, which lowers their overall "Happiness Score" despite higher salaries. Another regional trait is driven by freedom to make life choices. In the American context, this pillar is often a battle between Economic Freedom and Personal Freedom. 

We’re currently seeing a massive internal migration driven by this pillar. Some move to states like Texas or Florida for "Economic Freedom" (lower taxes, fewer regulations), while others move to states like Oregon or Washington for "Personal/Social Freedom" (environmental policies, social liberties). This is where the rankings become most "arbitrary." 

If the "Happiness Index" weights "Low Taxes" heavily, Texas wins. If it weighs "Public Services" heavily, Vermont wins. Now, there are the outliers. If we follow the World Population Review's metric for generosity (charitable giving and volunteering), the "Hit Parade" looks very different from the "Wealth" list. Wealthiest states (Connecticut, Maryland) are not always the most generous. Utah consistently ranks #1 in the US for both volunteering and charitable giving as a percentage of income.

This metric is highly meaningful because it measures "Social Cohesion." A state where people give their time and money to neighbors is generally more resilient to economic shocks. Finally, there is the perception of Corruption (Are we trusting our institutions?) This is perhaps the most "meaningless" pillar at the state level because it is so heavily influenced by the news cycle. 

States with long-standing political "machines" (like Illinois or New Jersey) often score low on trust. On the opposite side, there’s the "Small State" advantage in smaller, more homogeneous states (like New Hampshire or Wyoming), they tend to have higher trust scores because the government feels "closer" to the people. When I review this, I realize that Utah isn’t so bad! 

Tomorrow, we’ll explore France, just like we just did for the US...

Don’t worry, be happy! (Part Two)

After introducing the concept of happiness as presented by the World Population Review, here is the report. A pragmatic person could see it as a good indicator if looking for a better spot in which to spend the rest of their life. 

If we want the best, we need to look at Northern European countries that dominate the top of this 2025 happiness rankings, reflecting strong social support systems and high standards of living. Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world in 2024, with Denmark and Iceland following closely behind.

The least happy country in the world for 2024 was Afghanistan, whose 143rd and last place ranking can be attributed in part to a low life expectancy rate, low gross domestic product rates per capita, and perhaps most importantly, the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Rounding out the bottom five are Lebanon, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo. 

If you live in another country, like me in the US, we can see how happy our countrymen are and how much room is left for progress! Happiness rankings are determined by analyzing comprehensive Gallup polling data from close to 150 countries in six particular categories: gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make one’s own life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels. 

I don’t recommend going to Afghanistan, but Finland is okay. How’s your Finnish and have you packed up your suitcases yet?

Don’t worry, be happy! (Part One)

You certainly remember the song and you’ll agree with me that happiness is a very important yardstick in measuring our human condition. Organizations like the world population review try to establish a yearly hit parade. Is its definition of happiness valid and is it something meaningful or arbitrary? 

The World Population Review typically aggregates data from the World Happiness Report (published by the UN). While these rankings are statistically rigorous, whether they are "valid" depends entirely on how we define happiness. To a philosopher, they might seem arbitrary; to an economist, they are a vital metric of societal health. Here is the breakdown of the "validity" of the hit parade.

This type of study is more "Evaluative" than it is "Affective". It doesn’t measure how much people smile or laugh, instead it uses the Cantril Ladder. It works like this by asking a question, "On a ladder (or scale) from 0 to 10, where 10 is the best possible life for you and 0 is the worst, where do you stand?" It’s evaluative (Life Satisfaction), and measures how happy one is about their life upon reflection. 

Conversely, it often ignores Affective Happiness (Day-to-day Joy). You could have a "10" on the ladder because you are wealthy, safe, and healthy, yet still feel bored or lonely on a Tuesday afternoon. Still the report is highly meaningful because it identifies the six pillars that correlate with a stable, thriving society: 

• GDP per capita (Financial security) Social support (Having someone to count on) 
• Healthy life expectancy 
• Freedom to make life choices 
• Generosity (Donating to charity/volunteering) 
• Perceptions of corruption 

For governments, it’s a "valid" dashboard. It tells them that if trust in institutions (corruption) drops, the citizens' sense of well-being will plummet, even if the economy is booming. This is why the Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark) consistently win: they have "high-floor" societies where the fear of falling into poverty or illness is almost non-existent. 

The next question is whether such a report is arbitrary (based on cultural bias). From a Western culture viewpoint, the metrics prioritize our values like individual "freedom of choice" and "wealth. On the other hand, many Eastern or indigenous cultures define happiness as equanimity, harmony, or the absence of conflict, rather than the "pursuit" of a high-rung life. 

A person in a communal culture might feel "happy" through duty and sacrifice—things the Cantril Ladder isn't designed to capture. Then there’s what’s called the "U-Curve" of Age. For instance, at 78 and 74, me and my wife are statistically in the "happiness peak." 

Research shows that happiness tends to follow a U-curve: it’s high in youth, hits a rock-bottom "mid-life crisis" in the 40s, and then climbs steadily after 60 as we shed the stress of "becoming" and embrace the peace of "being." As a result, this is valid as a measure of "Human Flourishing," but it is arbitrary as a measure of "Human Emotion." If you look at the top of the list, you find the most secure countries. 

If you looked for the most passionate or joyful countries, you might see Latin American or African nations jump to the top, despite their lower GDP or higher corruption. Tomorrow, we’ll go over the real numbers... 

Skiing north of Hell…

In the past couple of days, I made a distinct effort to go skiing to really see how the conditions were like at Park City Mountain. On Sunday, I skied the Park City side and had some good runs around the Thaynes chairlift, and on Monday decided to check out the Canyons side and was disappointed when I realized that Ninety-nine-90 had just been shut down for avalanche danger. 

Disappointed I returned home, skiing to some of the worst slush snow ever experienced. This was almost hell, that’s why I called this episode “Slightly north of hell!” Frankly, I feel terrible for our visitors that had to ski in such terrible conditions. I looked at the Ski Utah calendar and saw that Park City was still planning to stay open for skiing until April 20, just to beat its Deer Valley neighbor by one day (it plans to shut down on April 19).

The best I can guess is that skiing will be on virtual snow (at least in Park City, that spreads the artificial white stuff as thin as it can to save money!) I also noticed that Snowbasin, out of respect for its ski patrons, already closed on April 22. 

On my last chair ride that day, I chatted with an older Indian gentleman who, based on the current conditions, thought that he wasn’t seeing much more than 5 more years of skiing in Park City, adding that “When the earth will be doomed, there will be voices saying that it took only 2,000 years for the human specie to destroy the planet… What a shame!”

Seizing on intuition… (Part Three)

Keeping track of intuition through a log is perhaps the best tool there is to train our perceptual system. This is not about journaling our life. It’s about training, developing and using that perceptual faculty. So, each time we feel a strong intuition, write one sentence, like “I have a feeling X will happen.” Then add the bodily sensation, the emotional tone, the context and forget about it. 

Later, when the outcome becomes clear, return to the log and mark either correct or incorrect, partially correct or undetermined. This will build a feedback loop, just like the athletes among us refine our muscle memory! If we are persistent, we’ll begin to see patterns, like which sensations correlate with accuracy, which emotions distort intuition, which contexts sharpen or blur our perception. This is how intuition becomes a trainable skill rather than a lucky guess. Finally, before we close this discussion, let’s see how to tell "Intuition" from "Anxiety". This is perhaps the most critical skill. Real intuition and fear feel very similar, but they have different "flavors". The table below shows these differences:

Finally, while it’s fun to celebrate our successes, it will be even more helpful to study our misses When an intuition proves right, it’s tempting to just enjoy the confirmation, but the real growth comes from asking, first when it worked perfectly: What did it feel like? What was the first moment I sensed it? What was the “signal” beneath the noise? 

And when an intuition is wrong, let’s ask what emotion was masquerading as intuition? What bodily cue misled us? What did I want to be true? This is best way to train our intuition into a more precise indicator. This is both a complicated and elusive matter, so don’t be surprised if I find more effective or useful tools in the near future. 

In the meantime, we’ve got enough to get to work, so for those of you interested, let’s try to compare our respective progress, say in a year from now. Good luck !

Seizing on intuition… (Part Two)

Having some intuition is one thing, using it effectively is quite another. So, how can we make it useful to us? Specialists say that everything starts with a rich "Database", something that could also be called a form of input. In fact, intuition is only as good as the data it’s built on. Chess masters have "perfect" intuition about a board because they have seen thousands of patterns. Conversely, a novice has "little or bad" intuition because their database is empty. 

We must go beyond experiencing the moment and instead draw the teachings of every breathing moment in our lives. Let's not just work; let's analyze. If we are a manager, let's not be content with running a meeting, instead, always ask: "What were the three subtle cues I missed?" This feeds the subconscious better data. In addition, we must read case studies or "After Action Reviews." Our brain can always "claim" the experiences of others and add them to our intuitive library. In addition, before making a decision, picture the project failing 6 months from now. 

Let’s ask our gut: "What went wrong?" This forces our intuition to scan for subtle red flags we’ve been ignoring. The next stage is to work on the "Receiver" and make it more sensitive. Scientists call the ability, should I say this talent, to feel your own internal signals “Intreroception.” People with high interoceptive awareness (the ability to accurately feel their own heartbeat or "butterflies") consistently make better intuitive decisions. 

We can get better at this by practicing body scans, in which we practice a 2-minute "check-in" during low-stress moments. What does our chest feel like? Our stomach? our jaw? Then there’s the "Flash Decision" exercise in which when faced with a trivial choice (like picking a restaurant), we give ourselves exactly 3 seconds to choose. We observe the physical sensation of that "instant" choice. Does it feel "heavy" or "light"? Over time, we should learn to recognize the physical "signature" of a correct hunch. 

This leaves us with calibrating the "Feedback Loop", and within it, the biggest enemy of intuition is hindsight bias (the "I knew it all along" feeling that is often a lie). To improve, we must prove ourselves wrong by keeping an "Intuition Journal" in which we write down a hunch when we have it, including how it felt physically. For instance, "Met the new contractor today. 

My stomach felt tight, even though his resume is perfect. I’m going to hire him but watch the budget closely." From there, we need to review the outcomes by going back to that journal every 3 months. Was our stomach right, or was it just anxiety? This "tunes" our brain to distinguish between real intuition and emotional noise. Tomorrow, we’ll see how we can keep track of our various intuitions and measure them…

Seizing on intuition… (Part One)

Recently, I got a flagrant proof that a strong intuition I recently felt intensely, proved to be right. It was about a recommendation for a periodontist by my treating dentist. My negative feelings about that specialist were confirmed and made me realize that listening to our instincts is important, but can we really rely on them and how do we know for sure that they are valid premonitions or not?

Today, intuition is taken more seriously and is no longer considered "mystical." In cognitive science, it’s recognized as Rapid Pattern Recognition (RAP). Our brain is essentially a high-speed prediction machine that constantly compares our current situation to a massive internal library of past experiences, delivering a "verdict" before our conscious mind even finishes processing the data. 

This is all well and good, but how do we improve this "muscle?" Well, specialists say that we must focus on three areas: The Database (our experience), The Receiver (our body), and The Filter (our logic). Tomorrow we’ll explore each one of these elements in order to better harness the power of intuition, so please, stay tuned!