Something doesn’t add up. We live better than ever – and still, many of us don’t feel truly happy. This podcast is a search for what we might have missed. Conversations with people who feel the same. Looking for new ways to find modern happiness, and how we might break the paradox.
The search begins at the Atlantic coast of Portugal. In the first two episodes I talk to yoga teacher Bianca and the two medical doctors Niki and Eva.
This project begins with a paradox of our time. Never before have so many people lived longer, under better material conditions — and yet stress, anxiety, and inner fragmentation continue to rise. Even in Denmark, repeatedly ranked among the happiest countries in the world.
I was personally confronted with what I can only describe as seven years of misfortune, culminating in cardiac arrest. You can read that story in Behind the Smile.
In the aftermath, I designed my own path of reconstruction. Along the way, I found myself moving between Western science and Eastern contemplative traditions. Between psychological insight and lived experience. Between intellectual understanding and embodied awareness.
I began to see my modern life — and the idea of happiness itself — through entirely new eyes. And I began to wonder:
If even a fraction of what I experienced in these environments could be integrated into ordinary life, could it then help us address this paradox more deeply?
This question became the foundation of my new life project. Not as theory. But through direct encounters, conversations, and lived exploration. You can read more about the foundation of the project here: Paradox of Modern Happiness.
The project develops through five parallel paths:
The project continues to unfold through travels, conversations, and collaborations across cultures and disciplines.
It is not built on certainty, but on curiosity. Not on authority, but on attention.
I am developing the project slowly and independently over the coming years, allowing its direction to emerge through experience.
If you wish to follow the journey, you are welcome to join my newsletter. You will only hear from me when there is something real to share, or an invitation to participate
This essay was originally inspired by Denmark — a country often ranked among the happiest in the world. But the same questions now echo across Europe and beyond: How well are we really doing? And what have we forgotten about being human? Here are 5 ideas to break the cycle. The essay is rooted in the book The Power of The Smile – 7 Guidelines for a better Worklife and was first published in POV International. The essay and the book are a part of the foundation behind my new two-year lifeproject: New Ways to break the Paradox of Modern Happiness.
A Ukrainian mother laughed softly as she walked off to collect bottles in central Copenhagen late one Saturday night. She had fled Kyiv with her two small sons when the war began.
“You can’t be serious, Søren,” she said, smiling. “You Danes can’t really be unhappy at work. Look at you — celebrating, drinking, dancing in the streets! Shouldn’t you write about something more fun?”
Six months later, a monk in bright orange robes sat down beside me in a small café near the Dalai Lama’s temple in the Indian Himalayas. He wore white sneakers, checked his iPhone, and smiled just as broadly when he heard about my book project.
He didn’t know much about Denmark, but he did know one name: Hans Christian Andersen.
“Your famous writer once told the story The Emperor’s New Clothes,” he said. “Isn’t your country living the opposite tale? You have everything — wealth, comfort, opportunities. You wear fine clothes. But have you forgotten something inside? Are you naked within?”
That question stayed with me.
It is a mystery. Denmark — and many other countries in Europe — ranks among the most prosperous and supposedly happiest places on earth. People around the world envy our welfare, safety, and freedom.
But the reality is more complicated.
Stress, disengagement and mental fatigue are rising everywhere. Eighty-six percent of Danish employees doubt they can stay healthy through a full working life. Similar concerns are now seen across the continent.
So what is happening to us?
Are we losing touch with some old, simple human truths — about kindness, joy, and community — in our obsession with productivity, cleverness and speed?
Some years ago, I began my own search for the good working life. After more than 25 years as a communications leader in the Danish public sector, I was exhausted. Too few smiles. Too much pressure.
So I stopped.
I trained as a master coach.
I travelled — to the world’s largest personal development event in Florida, and to the Dalai Lama’s home region in India.
I worked with Ukrainian refugees in Copenhagen and coached more than 150 leaders and employees in Denmark.
And I read. Hundreds of studies, books, and scientific papers — and yet I kept returning to something far simpler: what happens between people in everyday moments.
That insight became my book The Power of the Smile – 7 Principles for a Better Work Life (2024). It’s not an academic manual. It’s a deeply human — and personal — book. A call to remember that change doesn’t always begin with systems or strategy, but with the way we think, speak and look at one another.
We’ve spent decades and millions on wellbeing programmes and reforms. Still, the trends keep worsening.
Maybe it’s time to ask: What if we’ve been looking in the wrong direction?
Here are five ideas to begin with:
In Denmark, one of the major pension companies now asks people whether they can “endure a whole working life.” What a tragic question.
What if we instead asked: How can we build a working life we actually love? How can we cultivate joy, meaning and a sense of contribution — not just survival?
Only one in five employees feels truly engaged at work. Yet engagement correlates directly with sleep quality, physical and mental health, and lower absence.
The words we use shape what we see. So perhaps we should talk less about preventing burnout — and more about nurturing energy and joy.
Years ago, I helped design a national stress campaign in Denmark. The key question was: Who is responsible? Employers? Employees? Society?
At the time, we avoided focusing on the individual — fearing it would sound like “blaming the victim.”
But today, as stress and illness rise, perhaps it’s time for a new balance.
When I personally hit the wall, I realised something simple and brutal: in the end, when you can’t sleep at night and everyone else is at work, there is only one person who can take care of you — you.
We all carry responsibility — together and individually.
We love complex leadership models and feedback systems. But sometimes the simplest truths are the ones we’ve quietly abandoned.
When I worked as a press officer in the Ministry of Environment, a senior colleague once told me:
“If you don’t hear anything, it means it went well.”
That was meant as praise. But think about it. We often forget to express gratitude or appreciation.
We talk endlessly about mistakes, rarely about successes. We hide behind irony, afraid to show warmth.
Yet a single smile, a sincere “thank you”, can change the atmosphere instantly. We know this — and still, we forget.
I once ran a coaching programme for 110 care workers. At the end, 88% said they now believed they could improve their work life — with just a few simple tools.
That number amazed me. It shows that solutions don’t have to be grand or complicated. Albert Einstein put it like this: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it.”
Technology, digitalisation, and endless documentation are reshaping how we work and communicate. We spend more time behind screens, less time face to face. We risk forgetting the simple human art of looking each other in the eye.
Let’s help people right where they are — not with another system, but with presence and support.
In the public sector, I spent years watching local managers lose autonomy. Budgets tightened. Decisions moved upward. Yet these are the very people who know what their teams need.
What if we trusted them more — and gave them flexible resources to act, coach, and develop their people?
Studies show that up to 60% of employees feel no one at work supports their personal growth. Imagine the potential if that changed. Support people in their development.
Trust leaders to lead.
We smile too little — at work, on the street, even at ourselves. And it costs us more than we think.
Science shows that smiling reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, increases endorphins, and can even lower blood pressure.
The world’s longest-running happiness study confirms this as well: even small, positive interactions with strangers make us happier and more resilient.
Philosophies and spiritual traditions say the same in their own language:
The kinder we are — toward ourselves and toward each other — the better we thrive as human beings.
The genuine smile never lies. You can always feel it.
We once knew this.
Even Danish businesses knew it — remember the legendary Irma stores and their motto built on the smile? Perhaps it’s time to open the museum cases and bring that spirit back to the future.
As the American writer Les Giblin said back in 1968:
“If you don’t use your smile, you’re like a person with a million dollars in the bank and no cheque book.”
So, how’s your own account today — your work-life bank account? Are you investing in smiles, kindness and connection?
Maybe that-s the most human place to start.
—
This article is rooted in the book The Power of the Smile – 7 Guidelines for a Better Work Life by Søren Jensen (2024).
You can read an English summary of the book here.
This is more than just words. A story, an invitation to you, written from a long retreat. Exactly one year ago, my heart stopped. Today, I’m sitting in Portugal, writing – about life, trust, and Eastern wisdom. When death knocked on my door, everything changed. It sounds so banal. But it’s not.
How can every single moment in life hold such life and magic? How much of it I’ve rushed past. I’ve lived so much in thoughts. About back and forth. About yesterday and tomorrow. Thoughts that are nothing but… thoughts. They are not – and have never been – reality.
I will never again live or work as before. We live as if tomorrow will come, but how can we know that? I will always strive to look back over my shoulder. In every single moment. With a smile.
Life is so beautiful. I’ve done the best I could. And I’ll keep doing that – with different choices. In my personal story Behind the Smile, I’ve written a bit more.
Looking back, it strikes me: Through all my schooling, leadership training, development projects, performance reviews and career – I never learned much about my body, my mind, or my psychology.
There is only one reason why I’m mentally and humanly back in life today: My yoga practice – and my journey into Eastern wisdom through body, mind, and soul. Combined with my education and experience as a master coach, it has made all the difference.
My journey now continues here by the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal. And that’s why my upcoming workshop “Dear Brain – What Can Yoga Really Do for You?” is, to me, far more than just another workshop.
It marks my first small and humble step into my new life project – unfolding so beautifully, slowly, and vividly in its own “time-atypical” rhythm.
I want to share some of what has brought me back to life. In different ways. Including the newest things I’m experiencing and realizing here in Portugal. Because I know it works.
And I truly believe that many of us, in this changing, confusing, and information-polluted time, need to take much better care of our brains and our mental health.
Both in life and in work – because you know what – you don’t actually have a life and a work life.
It’s the same life. You only have one.
What happened when simple human principles met real care work. In 2023, I stepped into two Danish care homes for elderly residents with no clear idea of what awaited me.
I knew the elderly care sector was under pressure. Staff shortages, sickness absence, stress and burnout were part of everyday reality. And care workers carried some of society’s heaviest emotional responsibilities — often with very little recognition.
What I did not know was how much simple human principles, applied with care and respect, could shift something in everyday working life.
Across the two care homes, I conducted coaching-based development programmes with 110 care workers. After observations, conversations, workshops, exercises and reflection days, the programme ended with a simple question:
Do you believe you can create a better and more joyful working life using the principles in this book?
88% answered yes. The programme was rated 7 out of 10 on average — a result that genuinely surprised me. Skepticism is natural when someone enters a workplace from the outside, offering reflections on behaviour, communication and mindset.
And yet, something resonated. I followed shifts from early morning to late evening. I witnessed the pace, the unpredictability and the emotional labour. This was not romantic work. It was demanding, intimate and often invisible. And too often, the people doing it felt unseen.
One of the strongest insights from the programmes was not about productivity or performance metrics. It was about meaning. Through simple coaching exercises, staff were invited to speak more openly with each other about the small, moving moments in their daily work — moments that usually disappear in the rush.
As one participant told me: “It was good to talk about the touching moments we experience with residents and their families We forget to talk about that.”
That, to me, is where simplicity works. Not as a slogan. Not as a quick fix. Not as another model imposed from above. But when simple ideas are translated into real situations, real conversations and real human contact.
My own search for a good working life has taken me from Western psychology and leadership thinking to Eastern wisdom traditions. But what surprised me most was this: Ideas only truly come alive when they meet everyday reality. That is where work becomes life.
The project with 110 care workers became part of the professional foundation for my 2024 book Power of Smile.