Find Finnish happiness online

The free online course consists of video lessons from five coaches on four core themes that seek to make it easy to start a happy lifestyle à la the world’s happiest nation. The lessons all have hands-on tasks that help the participants to test the insights in their own life and develop concrete happiness skills.

One of the coaches is author April Rinne. She has set out to help the participants to tackle the pertinent question of how to find balance and wellbeing in a world that is constantly changing.

“Managing your happiness has a lot to do with developing resilience that helps you live with uncertainty and thrive even when the world is in constant flux. A lot of people these days live in societies that revolve around always trying to gain more, achieve more, be more. Finnish culture is built more around the concept of ‘enough’ – knowing what is enough for you and embracing that,” she noted.

The online course is built on the global public and media interest received by its in-person counterpart earlier this year. Held at Kuru Resort in Finnish Lakeland in June, the in-person course generated more than 1 000 media hits and received more than 150 000 applicants from around the world.

Heli Jimenez, senior director of marketing and public relations at Business Finland, reminded that happiness is not an innate ability but rather an approach to life that can be modified to suit anyone.

“The key is that [happiness] is not just some mystical ability you are born with; it’s an approach to life that can be learned. At the same time, there’s no one-size-fits-all path to it: we believe you can find your inner Finn through the themes of this masterclass,” she said.

Earlier this year Finland racked up its sixth consecutive top spot in the World Happiness Report, a subjective measurement of wellbeing based on three indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions and negative emotions.