¿What’s the secret to the happiness that exists in these countries? What do they have in common? What can we learn from the Danish, Swiss or Icelandic to improve our own happiness?

The reality is that there is no magic solution. It’s more about a mental attitude, the activities that we carry out daily and how we approach them through the habits that are developed to define a lifestyle that leads to happiness. We would like to highlight four of these that can be taken from the “happiest citizens in the world”:

• Their focus is on remaining active, but this is not only related to exercise: You can move around most the cities in Denmark and Switzerland on foot or by bicycle. For example, in Copenhagen, half of the population uses a bicycle as a daily means of transport. For them, this isn’t doing exercise. They go to the market, to work or they use the bike to meet with friends. It’s great if you join a gym if you really like that, or if you do sport on a regular basis, however, by simply increasing your movement on a daily basis, you can increase your feeling of happiness.
• They appreciate the beauty of nature:  Nature and happiness are closely related to each other. It has been proven that walking in natural areas reduces anxiety and general worries whilst at the same time driving cognitive capabilities. This doesn’t mean long trips or extensive routes in the countryside, but more like simply incorporating into your daily habits small trips to the park that is near your house or to let yourself go and enjoy the ever changing beauty of nature.
• They promote relationships with friends and family: The Danish have a specific word for the time that they spend with the loved ones “hygge”, that basically means being with Friends and family in a casual and comfortable way. Instead of organising and planning “meet-ups” or encounters, it means trying to incorporate small details into your daily life that make this socialising a natural part of the day, such as a telephone call (instead of connecting via Facebook), to stop for a moment to have a coffee, to speak for while with your friends or to stop for a moment to speak when you see your neighbor.
• They turn off the television: Inversely proportional to the three previous habits, some research has discovered that the happiest people only watch an average of 45 minutes of television a day; this is because they spend their time better by contacting friends and family, going for a bike ride or having lunch in the park.