happiness shouldn't cost the earth

I really like this TED talk.

There are many methods that exist today whereby we rely on the old systems which served a great purpose back in the day, but transposed in to the world we live in right now, may not be the most efficient way about it.

Nic Marks asks us to question a country's measure of success, the definition we rely on is a financial one, the GDP. But production doesn't relate to happiness and that is what really matters to people, in fact, as Simon Kuznets said in the 1930's "a nations welfare can scarcely be inferred from their national income" and so based on the scarced resource, the planet, what system is an effective one for measuring people's well-being whilst also considering that production isn't necessarily sustainable?

He believes the Happiness Index.

Asked in order of preference what was most important to a survey of people (importance ratings worldwide):

1. Happiness
2. Love
3. Health
4. Wealth
   

As you can see the first three are very close to one another, wealth on the other hand important, but not ranking so highly. So why is it we hear daily media updates on the stock exchange, the exchange rates, the performance of gold and yet we don't learn of a country's energy use? How close we are to achieving our carbon emission targets? As Marks puts it - our "collective goals"?

Marks also eludes to some truths in terms of what does make people happy:

• Connections - social relationships are the most important cornerstones of your life. Connectivity will also allow us to work together to achieve something good and if something does go wrong (peak oil for example), its these communities that will really make a difference to how we adjust and survive it.
• Be active - do things, go outside, listen to music. Being stagnant doesn't make us happy.
  
• Take notice - mindfulness is very strong for our well-being, cognitive therapy talks to how being in the moment and aware of your surroundings will help you feel good.
  
• Keep learning - being ever curious, always learning throughout your lifetime will keep you happier longer.
  
• Give - altruism and compassion are all hardwired to the reward mechanism in our brains, this something I am very much interested in (Changing the perceptions of giving)
  

And so bringing this to a grassroots level, whilst here we can question a country's measurement of its success (set in a time when production was paramount to the country's development), I feel there is another big question to ask - what is the correct measurement of the success of ourselves?