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60 Minutes recently ran a segment on Denmark, which once again ranked first in the world in terms of the happiness of the population.

Morley Safer interviewed a number of Danes to determine why they thought ranked consistently as the most happiest people in the world, and particularly why they thought it might be that they were happier than Americans. Their answers basically centered upon the idea of having more realistic expectations from life, so that they were less frequently frustrated or disappointed. A piece of advice they proffered up to Americans was not to be so “preoccupied with the American Dream.” They also attributed their happiness to the amount of value they place on friendships, family, and spending time with both.

The role that meaningful relationships with family and friends plays with regard to personal happiness was validated in an interview with Tal Ben-Shahar, a professor at Harvard, who teaches a course on Positive Psychology — basically a primer for his students on how to be happier today.

Tal espouses that as a society too many of us are willing to sacrifice happiness today with the hope that we’ll be happier in the future. We’ll be happier once we get that bigger house, that bigger car, that promotion, etc.

No surprise to us here at Barefoot, but that is simply not true. You need to choose to do what makes you happy today, but importantly, not at the expense of being happy tomorrow. That would not be happiness, that would be hedonism.