It’s summertime! Are you happy?

According to the World Happiness Report, you probably are if you live in Finland. On the Report’s 0-10 Happiness scale, Finland’s three-year average in 2024 was 7.736. In fact, all the Scandinavian countries score well — Denmark is second at 7.521.

The USA? We don’t score as well; we’re 24th at 6.724. And if you’re wondering how these scores are calculated, I’m not going there in this essay. Everything is explained on the Report’s website, https://data.worldhappiness.report/map.

Anyway, I’m leading up to something — “The Best Advice I’ve Ever Heard on How to be Happy” from The New York Times Magazine by Jancee Dunn: “As a writer for The New York Times’s Well section, I interview experts about health and wellness. Over the years, I’ve found that these conversations often contain useful, surprising kernels of advice about how to be happy.”

So what are these “useful, often surprising kernels”? Ms. Dunn lists eight. For example —

Start a Weird Ritual — This one came from Michael Norton, a behavioral scientist and the author of The Ritual Effect, who said “Small rituals can add levity and meaning to daily life…You can create one around almost anything.”

Hang Out With Younger People — I firmly believe in this, except it originated with Margareta Magnusson, another happy Scandinavian, who is the nonagenarian author of The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly.

Spread “Positive Gossip” — Gossiping about others tends to emphasize the negative. Jamil Zaki, the author of Hope for Cynics and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, thinks we should do the opposite: Spread positive tidbits about someone.

Do a “Mini Version” of Your Favorite Vacation Activity — The accompanying photograph shows a man who has converted the bed of his pickup truck into a swimming pool.

If these pique your curiosity, the other four can be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/28/magazine/how-to-be-happy.html?

Have a happy summer!