As part of my intake process with my Life Coaching clients, we do an overview of their lives and all the sectors of them. Creating a tapestry of their lives, a beautiful picture, and a whole life, not having 1 or 2 sectors overly dominating their lives putting them out of whack and out of balance is an essential part of the personal coaching process. Hence my reading and review The Secret Joy of Hygge.
Short little sort of diary scale book to communicate a Danish philosophy and approach to life. It’s a 138 pages, but only because the pages themselves are quite small. Irena Freitas illustrates the pages to bring a light-heartedness to communicating the Danish lifestyle which permeates their culture.
Apparently Hygge and Swedish Lagom approaches to living have become recently popular. The author, while America, is qualified to write about Hygge because of her time abroad to Denmark back in High School. You have but to do a search over at Amazon to find a ton of other books addressing the topics.
I found her appreciation of the philosophy admirable, but I felt a bit of her method of communicating it to be a little trite, including her glossary which I felt trivialized the Danish mode of being. Still, it’s a good little book.
The LOOK INSIDE feature was not yet activated when I contributed my review, so I’m including the TOC Table of Contents here to assist you in your selection to purchase it on pre-order.
Introduction viii
Chapter One: Defining Hygge 1
Chapter Two: Self 21
Chapter Three: Home 51
Chapter Four: Family & Community 81
Chapter Five: Work & Career 109
Resources 139
Index 146
Having read the book, I may still not quite grasp the concept, but I have been acquainted with a few Scandinavians over the years, so I suspect may have a niblet of understanding of the approach. I’m using the word “Philosophy” to describe it, but I think the idea that this is a thread of a Mindset and Approach to living which is woven throughout the fabric of all elements to Danish living, like a glistening golden or silver metallic thread, giving off that Candle Light shimmer that apparently is quite quintessentially Hygge.
Amarotico’s approach to attempting to convey an essence of foreign culture to Americans is from having done so herself as a foreigner, an American, visiting Danish culture. She interweaves both her experience and recent articles from the Washington Post and The Harvard Gazette, incorporating the personal with bibliographic material. It helps to hear about the truth behind what social psychologists have studied in us that makes us truly happy.
Each of the segments of the books she attempts to give practical applications of Hygge to our American lives. In a manner, Hygge is a bit Zen. It’s an experience and approach to living. I particularly like the part about Dressing for the Weather which has been touched upon already foundationally in other books in print about Hygge. The Danish maxim, “there is no such thing s bad weather, only bad clothes” interestingly enough is a mindset to which I could readily relate.
I grew up in the NE when even though there was a snow storm and wind outside, you still drove to church on Sunday and attended classes. This is why God invented snow blowers and shovels. There might be a delay, but you still go about daily living, put on long johns, gloves, ear muffs, and boots.
Here is SoCal, we do actually enjoy – you have to live through years of water rationing and drought to truly ENJOY rainy days – a few days of heavy rain fall each year. I’m one of the weird ones showing I’m not originally from here in that I’ll still take walks then. Just put on sneakers for good treads and carry an umbrella. Who cares if you get a little wet. I’m not afraid of it like the Wicked Witch of the West. I’ll dry off. This is why we are blessed with hot tea – to warm up from the inside out, and doing both of those is very Hygge.
On the Subject of Candles: apparently the use of candles is both very Danish and Hygge. I read in another Hygge book’s reviews an American somehow criticizing this as a safety hazard. Please, let us not be so literal as not to enjoy the flickering romantic and shimmering incandescence of candle light. If having light flames is a safety concern for you with drafts in your home, pets, or small children, embrace the concept without making it too literal a suggestion. Transpose the philosophy to your American lifestyle and use flameless candles (you can find many options here at Amazon) or fairy lights to soften the light while still enjoying an experience which is candle-like. On p. 60 Amarotico suggests some of this, too.
I did enjoy the concepts Amarotico conveys. I’m really only just starting to grasp them from her light and enjoyable little personal-scale book. But from what I understand is meant to be a slow down, savor life, and connect more with others and the experiences you’re in approach to life, I found too many of Amarotico’s tips for implementing Hygge into our lives to be bizarrely consuming focused.
She gave tips about buying prepackaged meal preparation box services rather than practicing meal preparation at a homeless shelter, volunteer venue, or simple co-chopping with friends to prepare a meal. Even her variation of the last was to trade doing so with a friend rather than just coming alongside a true friend and enjoying doing so at whatever “skill” level you each have.
It’s not about the skill. It’s about The Doing and The Sharing. To learn to meditate or to do so more, she suggests buying a book or purchasing a class, again, consuming the experiences, when there are tons of free access information online, in faith communities, and simple at many of our public parks early morning if you but go. If she mentioned paid service experiences of consuming entertainment Netflix one more time, I’d spit. Better to host a few play readings in you hygge-centered home and foster connected relationships while turning off the consuming of information from our digital devices.
Alternatively, you could attend public performances or festivals with friends and family and do the additional layer of connecting with community which I grasped from my own experience of the Danish approach is another essential layer. In reading her book, I felt her approach is still terribly transactional as evidenced in her very word choice of “spending” time.
I’m terribly American, too, so I’m not sure I could immediately come up with an alternate word choice, but I suspect “spending time” is more American in concept than Danish and Hygge. Of course, I could be wrong.
And while Freitas’ illustrations are quite nice, as Amarotico slight compares Hygge to Feng Shui which has been popularized into Western American culture now for year to help us picture and grasp the concepts, I felt that photos to demonstrate Alexandra’s thoughts might have better communicated it to us than the illustrations. I know that seeing stock photos in Feng Shui books has really helped me to grasp the concepts even when I couldn’t always grasp every nuance. Photos can often help to give us a visual short hand. I might not be able to articulate it, but I can point to an image to summarize it.
All in all, I enjoyed her book and think it’s a helpful introduction for American to this marvelous Danish mindset. Apparently there are many other books out there on Hygge already. Since I haven’t read any of those, I’m not qualified to speak on those to compare hers with the others. Perhaps some other Amazon readers will be able to do so.
Even with the foible I felt were there, I would recommend The Secret Joy of Hygge to any American wanting to pick up a quick and manageable introduction to Hygge. It’s like Hygge for Americans. A good start into the exploration of this Danish mindset which has piqued my interest to discover more in the future. For the quantity of what is delivered, I would have expected the price point to be closer to under $10 and not just under $16. The Kindle version is likely a super fantastic deal at $0.99!
If you found my review helpful for your choosing to purchase this book, I’d appreciate it if you click on the HELPFUL button to cast your vote. Happy Reading!
I received a copy of the book from the publisher for an honest review.