(Photo Credit: Jean-Baptiste Lopez/UNICEF)
Early on in Looptail, Bruce writes about how inspiring a trip to Bhutan was for his development as a leader.
“I had heard all kinds of crazy things about this country: that they had no concept of mental illness, no sexually transmitted diseases, no problems like peanut allergies, juvenile diabetes, and asthma that are so prevalent nowadays. What I saw fascinated me.”
But Bruce took it one step further.
“…by Western standards of progress and development, these people had so little, yet they were so happy. It just seemed like heaven to me, and I don’t think I can understate the importance of that trip when it came time for us to focus on happiness at G Adventures.
In the office, we started to discuss building our business model around happiness. I had spent a lot of time since my trip to Bhutan learning about their country and their king’s Gross National Happiness model.”
We’ll let you read the book to see what else Bruce has to say about Bhutan and its impact on his business, but if you’re itching to find out more about Bhutan, here is a great article by Annie Kelly for The Guardian called Gross National Happiness in Bhutan: The Big Idea from a Tiny State that Could Change the World.
From the article:
For the past three decades, this belief that wellbeing should take preference over material growth has remained a global oddity. Now, in a world beset by collapsing financial systems, gross inequity and wide-scale environmental destruction, this tiny Buddhist state’s approach is attracting a lot of interest.
