The Results Are In and The Happiest People on the Planet Have Been Found

How do you compare?

Photo by Michael Dum on Unsplash

In 2020, for the fifth year in a row, Canada was the #1 country in the world for Quality of Life. I hope our status will remain in 2021.

Canada also ranked as the fifth-best country in the world for women, third in business, and second in terms of citizenship. I wasn’t surprised to read this. As a Canadian, I consider myself very fortunate.

This leads me to ask — who are the happiest people in Canada?

We happen to know. Léger, the largest Canadian-owned survey and research company, has been tracking happiness in Canada since 2006, and they publish an annual index of happiness.

The Léger Happiness Index (LHI) is a qualitative and quantitative assessment of Canadians’ general state of mind. The index measures a person’s happiness based on values, thoughts, and feelings. It evaluates the perceptions people have of their own state of happiness and compares them to others.

Léger considers job satisfaction, work/life balance, compensation, fulfillment, love, recognition, civility, and a host of other factors.

Here are the results

For their latest results, Léger polled 14,300 people in Canada and found that dentists are the happiest. It is hard for me to believe that the person I most hate spending time with is the happiest. But dentists are way happier than the average Canadian. It might have to do with flossing? Maybe the lifetime supply of toothbrushes?

Real estate agents came in second — not surprising in our current housing market. Hairdressers third and freelancers fourth — woo-hoo, that’s me!

Doctors, nurses, teachers, waiters, lawyers, police, and journalists were way down the list. Not surprisingly, doctors were in second place in 2019 but have fallen to 20th place. Nurses have gone from 49th to 59th.

Who are the top 10?

1. Dentists

2. Real Estate Agents

3. Hairdressers

4. Freelancers

5. Coaching Professionals

6. Trainers and Conference Speakers — those motivational speakers had to be somewhere at the top

7. Directors

8. Pharmacists

9. Architects

10. Accountants
    
    

Calculate your own score

You can calculate how happy you are and also how good your mood is. You can even calculate your workplace happiness. See how you fare in comparison to Canadians.

Feel free to compare yourself to me and my happiness index. I am slightly above the Canadian average and right in line with all the happy freelancers. I am a little surprised at my results and will continue working on becoming more blissful. And I will definitely be discussing it with my dentist the next time I see her.

Image by author

I will not be posting the results of how my mood is today. One of the factors measured is the news and whether you found it discouraging or not. Let’s just say, I am pretty sure reading today’s newspaper stories about all the anti-vaxxers brought down my overall score. Significantly. Darn.

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