Measure Your Gross National Happiness
A more meaningful metric.
Ever since friend of The Verse Suneel Gupta taught us about Gross National Happiness (GNH)—a metric the Kingdom of Bhutan has used since 1979 to calculate its people’s wellbeing—we’ve been pretty sure we’re measuring the wrong thing. As an emissary between Bhutan and the United States, Gupta and others have worked to broaden the aperture of our gross national product to consider communal health as a metric with greater meaning for our communities.
Who you gonna call?
One of the more compelling questions that inform GNH: How many people could you call in a bind—like illness, financial trouble or if you had to attend an important personal event? And further, for how many others do you yourself count as one of those lifelines? The takeaway: In a world with too many loose connections, it is important to take stock of your ride-or-dies—and make sure you are reciprocating.
Stress test.
The GNH questionnaire asks respondents to list their sources of stress. Fairly obvious? Perhaps—but how often do we take the time to sit down and really put a name to what we are worried about, instead of letting a nebulous, gray cloud of anxiety follow us around? By looking at our own lists (we suggest getting very specific), we found ourselves better able to target action toward alleviating our pinpointed worries.
Shared values?
Another ask: respondents rank the level of importance of various, (mostly) intangible priorities such as family life, friendship, generosity, spiritual faith, compassion, self-development, reciprocity, responsibility, freedom, material wealth, career success and leisure. They’re then asked how important they think each of these areas is to their fellow citizens. It couldn’t hurt to take a page from this playbook for our next verse, checking in on our own priorities and whether our SO, family or friends are singing from a similar songbook. We may even want to check that our workplaces are still striking notes in harmony with ours.
