The first country to adopt happiness as an official goal of public policy is the tiny little country of Bhutan in Asia near China and India.
Bharat for Bhutan and Bhutan for Bharat. The colour of our passports may be different but our thinking is the same. India stands committed to Bhutan's happiness and progress.
The moment you enter Bhutan, you notice that there are no traffic lights. It is almost like you've stepped into a Shangri-La or a vortex of time 200 years ago. Those kinds of experiences are very much of the countryside of Bhutan, where people are truly happy in the sense of not creating and wanting more.
World talks GDP but in Bhutan its about National Happiness. Am sure having India as a neighbour would be 1 of the reasons for the happiness.
I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.
Seven years is a short time in the history of a country's democracy. But in this short time, people of Bhutan have developed faith in the institutions of democracy.
In the year that I take off, I don't have any goals. I just surrender to experiences like traveling or learning yoga and meditation or just living in a completely random place like Mongolia or Portugal or Bhutan. Then when I come back, I am much more intuitive, creative, right-brained. That kind of system has been working very well for me.
