I’ve been running a bit of an experiment recently. Do you want to know what it is?
I’m always interested in experimenting with different environments and different lifestyles to see which has the greatest impact on happiness.
Each day I’ve been writing a quick journal entry focussed on how happy I’ve been throughout the day and what factors I think were effecting the results.
The main things I focus on are my mindset, my thoughts, how much I’ve been working, how much we have been connected to wifi and how much we have been challenging ourself or doing something engaging.
Greece is a great comparison to Norway.
In Norway you have no internet, you’re living with just the bare essentials and your always hiking or doing something outdoors. It’s great, every single day without fail our happiness was high.
The feeling of fulfilment and contentedness you get from being connected to nature living on the essentials without any distractions is pure. It’s a great feeling.
Greece is more “relaxing” and self-indulgent. It’s more about sitting by the pool drinking or relaxing, but there’s also wifi and reception so it depends on how disciplined you are if you stay in the moment or on your phone.
We have another 3 weeks in Greece so I don’t have an answer for you yet.
But I would be putting my money on being happier and more fulfilled in Norway. Treating yourself every day and relaxing is a shallow kind of happy. It’s only usually fulfilling if you have really earned the break doing something, and even then there is a time limit on when it slips from fulfilling and earned to shallow and unsatisfying.
I could talk about this shit all day but I think that’s enough for now. Enjoy this photo we took at then incredibly stunning shipwreck cove in Zakynthos .
