By Jonathan Chevreau

Happiness, longevity, health and money are all (as you might expect) intertwined. In his book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think (also reviewed here at the Hub), Wes Moss focuses on the five money secrets of the happiest retirees.

One of the books he mentions is Dan Buettner’s The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. We will review that book, first published in 2008, in due course.

In the meantime, we’re going to look at Buettner’s followup book on happiness: Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, originally published by National Geographic in 2010.

To research the book, Buettner travelled to four of the world’s allegedly happiest countries, two of which I’ve visited myself: Denmark and Mexico, and two I haven’t: Singapore and San Luis Obisco (in California). In each locale he contacts local elders known for their wisdom about happiness and how the city or country built its infrastructure to maximize it.

He then wraps it all up by summing up what these nations have in common with a chapter entitled Lessons in Thriving.

He concludes there are six “life domains” that can be shaped to boost one’s chances for happiness. These six “thrive centers” are: Continue Reading…