The day I arrived in Finland to learn how to be happy, I thought about the ladder. Humans have many ways to assess their own happiness, but the Cantril Ladder may be the most influential, even if you’ve never heard of it. It goes like this:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

This single, carefully calibrated inquiry is how the World Happiness Report—the annual, much-covered study run by academics at Oxford University, among others—ranks every country in the world on professed happiness. Around 1,000 people from each coun

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