Well-being is far from universal. Here are four models to help you understand the world—and your own mind.幸福远非普遍。 这里有四个模型可以帮助您了解世界和您自己的思想。
Everyone knows where the happiest people in the world live—the United Nations tells us every single year. For the past several years, Finland has been ranked No. 1, sitting atop the pack of Nordic countries, which are all considered very happy. And since they’ve cracked the happiness code, as my colleague Joe Pinsker wrote recently, many of the rest of us are tempted to mimic Nordic habits. Live like a Finn—take a short walk in the forest, go ice swimming—and all will be well, right?每个人都知道世界上最幸福的人住在哪里——联合国每年都会告诉我们。 在过去的几年里，芬兰一直排名第一，在北欧国家中名列前茅，这些国家都被认为是非常幸福的。 正如我的同事乔·平斯克 (Joe Pinsker) 最近所写的那样，由于他们破解了幸福密码，我们中的许多人都想模仿北欧的习惯。 像芬兰人一样生活——在森林里散散步，去冰上游泳——一切都会好起来的，对吧？
Not so fast. In order for the World Happiness Report and other international happiness indexes to compare self-reports of happiness, they have to assume that people around the world define happiness and answer happiness surveys in roughly the same way. If this assumption does not hold, then happiness indexes are about as reliable as a ranking of music quality based on how much residents of each country say they like their local songs. This would indicate something about each country’s enthusiasm for their musical styles, but would provide little information about what music is objectively “best,” given differences in people’s traditions and tastes.没那么快。 为了让世界幸福报告和其他国际幸福指数比较幸福的自我报告，他们必须假设世界各地的人们以大致相同的方式定义幸福并回答幸福调查。 如果这个假设不成立，那么幸福指数就与根据每个国家的居民说他们喜欢当地歌曲的程度对音乐质量进行排名一样可靠。 这将表明每个国家对其音乐风格的热情，但鉴于人们传统和品味的差异，几乎无法提供客观上“最佳”音乐的信息。
The research on how people around the world conceive of well-being, in fact, reveals some major differences among nations. Understanding these differences gives us a much richer picture of global happiness than any index can depict. But more important, it provides a suite of models for well-being that each of us can follow.事实上，关于世界各地人们如何看待幸福的研究揭示了国家之间的一些主要差异。 了解这些差异可以让我们对全球幸福感有更丰富的了解，这比任何指数都可以描绘的更丰富。 但更重要的是，它提供了一套我们每个人都可以遵循的幸福模型。
n first pass, the ways people around the world say they experience happiness have some obvious commonalities. One 2016 study of 2,799 adults in 12 countries found that in all the nations studied, psychological definitions of happiness—“an inner state, feeling or attitude”—dominated all others. In particular, people worldwide said they found happiness in achieving “inner harmony.”首先，世界各地的人们说他们体验幸福的方式有一些明显的共性。 2016 年对 12 个国家的 2,799 名成年人进行的一项研究发现，在所有研究的国家中，幸福的心理定义——“内在状态、感觉或态度”——主导了所有其他国家。 特别是，世界各地的人们表示，他们在实现“内在和谐”中找到了幸福。
Inner harmony might sound universal, but it can mean very different things in different places. For example, while shooting a documentary film in Denmark on the pursuit of happiness two years ago, I found that the Danes often described inner harmony in terms of hygge, which is something like coziness and comfortable conviviality. Meanwhile, I have found that Americans tend to define it in terms of their skills meeting their passions, usually in the context of work.内在和谐听起来可能很普遍，但在不同的地方可能意味着非常不同的事情。 比如两年前在丹麦拍摄一部关于追求幸福的纪录片时，我发现丹麦人经常用hygge来形容内心的和谐，比如舒适和惬意的欢乐。 同时，我发现美国人倾向于根据他们的技能满足他们的热情来定义它，通常是在工作的背景下。
