Alejandro Senserado of the Happiness Institute in Copenhagen says that “being happy means asking yourself if you want today to happen again tomorrow.”

Being happy can be considered one of the main life goals of all people and at all times, but what is happiness Is it easy to achieve? Some spend years searching, for others it is a fact and everyone finds it in their own way: in love, in friends, at work or even in a cup of coffee. The truth is that There is no one rule, but it can be helped to achieve it. The question is how?

Alejandro Senserado, a Spaniard, data analyst, head of the Copenaghe Happiness Institute and author of the book “In Defense of Unhappiness”, comments in A wellness event organized by LA NACION, It is “something measurable”. His experience on this path began at the age of 18, when he began to measure his own happiness. “I wasn’t happy, even though I had everything that was considered: a healthy family and a group of friends. But it wasn’t enough for me. There was a lot of conflict around me, my parents were fighting with each other and I did it with my girlfriend,” he said.

Faced with this situation and amidst so many twists and turns, he decides to write down whatever makes him happy, regardless of what makes others happy. The plan was simple: “Every night I asked myself the same question: Do I want today to repeat itself tomorrow? There was a scale of zero to 10, if the answer was above five, it was considered that he wanted to repeat it, if it was below, no,” he admitted. This habit is still repeated daily.

And it’s that, based on his own experience of being constantly questioned about whether he was truly happy during the day, he argues that there are many factors that play a role in making the final verdict. Among them he pointed out to work and if we have quarreled with our partner, as the points that affect the most. “Knowing for sure how happy someone feels and the reasons for that helps us draw conclusions to later make a change in our companies and countries,” said the specialist.

There is another aspect to Senserado that is not only related to personal happiness, but also to that of societies. In this sense, he emphasized that his dissatisfaction is due to the fact that “We’ve focused too much on turning progress into something economic, focusing on gross domestic product, unemployment and productivity.” Thus, He emphasized that these points have always been related to well-being because “when a country is poor, the best thing it can do to increase its happiness is to increase its wealth,” he said.

However, in developed countries it happens that this situation has ceased to have a direct relationship. According to the expert, these are nations where the growth of wealth does not coincide with that of happiness, and he gave the USA as an example. “Over a decade, gross domestic product has gone up a lot, but people are less happy, so it shows that we should not focus only on the material aspect”, he added.

As a result of this idea, he dissected another series of characteristics that affect the happiness of nations, and among them he emphasized the concepts inequality and trust. “If there’s one thing we’ve seen, it’s that it’s useless for a country to get richer and richer if that wealth only goes to a few. And that’s what we believe is happening in the United States, for example,” he admitted. Another case he brought to the table was that of Finland and analyzed that it is a less wealthy country than the United States, but where people say they feel much happier, because “the have-nots get the most from the haves through taxes, so the gap narrows,” he said.

Regarding trust, he admitted that even if it appears to be a lie, it is very important to trust strangers claiming that you cannot live in a bubble separated from others. In this regard, he mentioned Argentina and Spain as two of the nations with the highest rates of mistrust among themselves and, above all, towards their governments.

On another level, he speaks in favor of moments of unhappiness to appreciate the present and all that you have, and so, inevitably, I will be happy again. He compared this fact to when the Covid pandemic had just started and the forties reverberated through all populations. “With this virus, we realized that going outside to have a drink or hug our loved ones is enough to make us happy,” he said.

According to Senserado, this opposition of happiness versus unhappiness partly originates from social networks, where people are led to believe that being happy depends on themselves and where unhappiness is associated with the idea of ​​being a loser. To show this, he compares it to a work situation: “If you’re unhappy at work because your boss treats you badly, you don’t have to change, but he does, then what we’re trying to expand on from the Institute fortunately, in order for people to be happy, we need to create social conditions that allow them to be well,” he said.

In a world that is constantly changing and full of ups and downs, finding happiness can be an odyssey, which is why Cencerrado ends by returning to the idea from the beginning: “For me, being happy means asking myself every night if I want today to happen again tomorrow,” he concludes, insisting that happiness doesn’t come from money or having a big house. Rather, “it’s about the people around me, about feeling loved and attached,” he concludes.