Dr. Tho Va Hinh  l  Changing the World With Happiness Leading with Genuine Care

"The fundamental idea of gross national happiness is to say that the center of our attention should be the happiness of all people as well as all life forms."  — Tho Va Hinh
 
This week I speak to a returning guest, Tho Va Hinh, author of The Culture of Happiness and founder of the Eurasia Foundation and the Eurasia Learning Institute for Happiness and Wellbeing. He's designed the Happy Schools curriculum, which started its first program in Vietnam and is now being tried in Switzerland and Germany.  He is also a Buddhist teacher ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh.
 
Tho's early life was shaped by being the child of a Vietnamese diplomat father and a French mother. Though he did not directly witness the Vietnam War growing up, he was impacted by it through extended family. He saw both sides, he explains. While he at first thought he'd study to be a doctor, he chose a less conventional path: he became a performer and dance teacher. The type of dance he did was Eurythmy, a dance form developed by Rudolf Steiner, whose philosophies shape Waldorf schools. 
 
Tho explains his early interest in Eurythmy and his journey as a teacher and a Buddhist have all been driven by a desire to connect inner transformational work with the outer work of social change.He pursued a PhD in psychology and education when he was over 40. He has held leadership roles in schools, including director of Camphill Seminar of Curative Education in Switzerland and director of learning and development for the International Committee of the Red Cross.  While serving in the latter role, he saw firsthand the devastating impact of wars in such places as Palestine and Darfur. He began to seek out ways to change the root of the problems, rather than addressing the consequences of violence. 
 
Tho's interests led him to Bhutan, where the government has implemented an alternative framework to replace the Gross National Product:  Gross National Happiness. He explains how and why this framework is based on the premise that the guiding principle for a society should be on wellbeing for individuals, connection with others, and caring for the planet. The economic system is only one part of this larger framework. However, most societies use the Gross National Product - an economic index - as one of the most important markers of how a society is doing. Tho describes the process of implementing an index to measure Gross National Happiness instead and how this has led to his development of the Happy Schools curriculum. 
 
Tho has also helped implement the principles of Gross National Happiness into business, working with companies in Vietnam, Switzerland and Germany. One first step is to gather information through employee surveys to find out what needs and concerns workers have in order to find ways that the company can help improve their employees' wellbeing. So far, the results have been encouraging, with leaders reporting higher employee engagement and a more positive work culture. \
 
Tho says that schools and businesses that have adopted these principles have proven more resilient through the pandemic and ultimately have come out stronger, and he's eager to see this grow in the future. His latest project hopes to do just that, through the creation of a "Happy Village" in Vietnam.
 
In this episode of Leading with Genuine Care, you’ll also learn:



How Tho's father responded when he told him he was going to study Eurythmy instead of medicine What Tho thinks of the current culture of information and how people need time to integrate all the information they are taking in  His experience of meeting Thich Nhat Hanh for the first time  The definition of dharma and why true Buddhist teachings are about freedom  Why he he started working on Gross National Happiness in Bhutan  What Tho thinks about artificial intelligence  How we need to shift education to respond to our current culture and create a better futur