8 ways to make miserable Hong Kong a happier place in 2018
City Weekend speaks to specialists, politicians and advocates to find out how to help Hongkongers rediscover happiness and make the city a more enjoyable and liveable place in the coming year
Hong Kong ushered in the new year amid reports that it is one of the least happy places in the world, a phenomenon that a psychologist believes is mostly caused by people setting unrealistic goals.
The city is ranked the seventh least happy in the world behind war-torn places such as Iran, Iraq, and Ukraine, according to a survey by US-based research organisation Gallup International.
Fiji is listed as the happiest nation, followed by Colombia and the Philippines.
The survey polled 5.3 million people around the world, including 500 Hongkongers, between last October and December to study if they felt happy in the past year. Their happiness levels were rated based on age, income, lifestyle and education. However, the survey did not explore the reasons behind their emotional state.
Clinical psychologist Rachel Poon Mak Sui-man says the main problem is that most Hongkongers are too single-minded, focusing only on achieving their goals with little attention paid to the process or progress made while working towards their targets.
“In other words, they set goals that are out of their reach and when they are not able to achieve them, they feel discouraged and unhappy,” says Poon, the chairwoman of the Division of Clinical Psychology at the Hong Kong Psychological Society.