Surely all of us regard life’s fundamental goal as overall happiness.

Stress can prevent, or at least negatively impact that.

It’s no secret that it’s bad for your head and/or your overall health. It can be an individual thing due to personal circumstances, or a national phenomenon due to dysfunction in nations, such as we see in parts of the Middle East or South and Central America. If hunger or danger are a daily reality, you’re not having much fun.

Stress is not always a negative. It can provide the motivation needed for performing your best, or meeting a deadline (in my industry), for instance. But prolonged stress can negatively affect the body. For some, stress is physically obvious and manifests in chest discomfort. For others, it may produce a skin rash—but for most it remains hidden with unseen symptoms.

The “Live a Little Longer” site advises that, “people who encounter stress are generally unaware what they are doing to their bodies. Symptoms can be quite radical leading to mental and physical health problems apart from damaging the overall mood.” The common culprit apparently is the modern life that we are pursuing. At its worst, extreme stress can eventually kill you.

Iceland is apparently the least-stressed nation on the planet while Nigeria is the most stressed, according to the latest survey conducted by Bloomberg.

The second least-stressed nation is Denmark, followed by New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Finland—then Canada, followed by Sweden
and Belgium.

So how do we in these four eastern provinces rank on the international stress scale? Pretty damn good, apparently.

A Canadian Community Health Survey released by Statistics Canada asked Canadians aged 12 and above if they felt that most days of their lives were “quite a bit or extremely stressful.” More than 20 per cent of Canadians reported that they felt stressed out.

The survey ranks Canadian provinces, showing Quebecers to be the most stressed people in the country with Ontario a close second and—wait for it—the Atlantic provinces the least stressed. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut also had stress levels below the national average.

These are places where people habitually greet each other warmly and courteously as a matter of habit—and that habit soothes. We do it to perfect strangers, in elevators, store lineups and so on. Stress is nowhere to be seen. Try that in New York City.

Consider the generally-agreed principals that are the components necessary for overall happiness. Wealth is not among them. They are: family, community, adequate food and shelter, health and ready access to recreation.

That is why some of the happiest, least stressed, people around can be found in small, even remote, communities within Atlantic Canada. There are still people in Newfoundland and Labrador, for instance, who’ve never or only rarely ventured outside their local communities—yet enjoy a relaxed, high quality of life.

The happiest kids I’ve ever seen have been in such places—“free range” kids with almost total freedom to enjoy each day according to their own agendas. They are the antithesis of the children of “helicopter” parents whose daily schedules are driven by well-meaning folks, but heavily structured.

A few years ago we sat in a tiny four-table open air section of a tiny restaurant in a tiny community on a Bahamian island and watched the activities of four boys around seven or eight years of age, two feral dogs and one unconfined rooster as they interacted. The youngsters and the dogs chased a ball while the rooster seemed to get caught up in the excitement.

All seven were clearly enjoying what children and critters value most—total freedom. The stress level in this little community appeared to be zero.

We’ve witnessed the same reality at work in tiny (formerly isolated) Newfoundland outports where kids face almost no risks from traffic, drugs, perverts, gangs and other nasty urban realities. They go out and enjoy each day on their own terms and unworried mothers know they’ll show up when they’re hungry again.

No stress. This is how life was meant to be.