My quest for happiness in Denmark #5
Leaving my comfort zone
If you want to start something new, change your current situation, then how do you do it?
In November last year, at the beginning of a long, dark winter in Denmark, I started my project to be “happier in the happiest country in the world”. I tried to somehow improve my situation.
What I did was to start reading books which might be helpful to begin all over in a new place, in my 40s. Some people may just jump into job searching, but in my case, I wanted to take this opportunity to really think about what made me happy in the long run. I wanted to think without any pressure, any assumptions.
However, this approach was not so smart. Although reading books itself was helpful, I stayed at home all day long, so my husband was still the only grown-up I spoke to for an entire day. Also, it was difficult to see if I was making any progress.
And…I could not help but noticing the mess at home. Even though I wanted to start something new, I was still in reality a housewife, and it made me a bit guilty to leave the house messy and just disappear into my "self-searching”.
So…I started to clean up. When I got peckish, I would have some cookies at the kitchen, and then oh I had to go shopping for dinner, and…the time was already 3:30 p.m. In Denmark, everybody goes home from work quite early, so they pick their kids up at 3:30pm. I now had to head to the kindergarten.
“I did not make any progress. AGAIN…”, I sighed. My days looked like this for a while.
Do not rely on your will. Change your habit
When you try to make a change, it often fails if you rely purely on your will power. Instead, it is more likely to succeed by introducing a new habit.
I realized that the root of the problem is to stay home all day, so I decided to leave my home every day, no matter what.
I leave home in the morning, like everybody else. No matter how messy the home is. Even in the cold. Even in the snow!
When I think about it, I actually do not know any friends in Copenhagen who stay home all day unless they are on maternity leave or retired. Danish society is designed for working parents. If everybody else can do it, my husband and I should be able to finish our housekeeping work even if I leave home during the day.
So, where am I going, then?
When I studied Danish, I often went to a cafe to study. But the weakness of studying at a cafe is that I cannot stay that long. Moreover, the prices are high in Denmark, so even the simplest lunch and a cup of coffee usually exceeds 100kr ($15). Some may use libraries, but unfortunately, there is no good library that has easy access from my home.
I was wondering if there was any good place to go, when I noticed that a brand new office had opened right in my neighborhood. I thought it was a new office for some fancy company, but one day when I passed by, I realized that it was actually a new “co-working space”.
Maybe it is perfect for a person like me?, I thought. This office just opened and anyone could try it for free for a day.
Sure, why not test it?
Starting to check out co-working spaces
The co-working space in my neighborhood was spacious, and filled with good taste, sophisticated furniture (maybe all Danish Design). Everything seemed brand new. There were many different types of desks; big open tables, or small desks for one person. There were also more private desks surrounded by walls.
It was certainly a beautiful space for working, but I felt a bit restless. Maybe because there were only a few people other than myself? Another issue was the price. It was 1780kr ($270) per month for use on weekdays. For a housewife who wanted to start something new, but had not achieved anything yet, this would add unnecessary pressure.
Honestly, I did not know anything about co-working spaces. But after this experience, I started to look for other options, and I found out that there were many other co-working spaces in Copenhagen. They had been on the streets where I walked every day without knowing. It was a nice discovery.
Moreover, it might not be such a bad idea to pay a certain amount of money. Once you pay, you have the impetus to get out of the house.
After trying the fancy co-working space, I tried another service called “Sp8ces”. Here, I could use affiliated cafes and hotels as my “office”, and sometimes I could have a cup of coffee for free. This one was 119kr ($18) per month, less than 1/10th of the first place. It was also possible to bring lunch. Very affordable, so students might be their target audience.
I tried one of their partnering cafes. Here, they offered the corner area of the cafe as a “working space” and separated from the area where customers had breakfast. It was a huge cafe, so it made sense to utilize the space effectively by offering unused space for Sp8ces. The next day, I went to one of the affiliated hotels. It was attractive that I could use this service 24–7, but it was a bit difficult to concentrate while hotel guests came and went around me.
Niels Meibom, CEO of Sp8ces, explained that he started this business in 2017 and today there are already around 600 members, and the business has expanded to Norway as well. Unlike common co-working spaces, this business model does not require its own real estate, which is why he could keep the fee so low. “Many restaurants and hotels seek a way to attract more people than their normal customers”, said Niels. Good point. Smart.
With this service, I do not have to feel uncomfortable about staying for a long time at a cafe, and also the price is attractive. Not bad.
The reason why I chose “Republikken”
However, the place I chose in the end was the one I visited next. It is called “Republikken”.
Their office space seemed casual and looked like half-cafe and half-office. Staff called users by their names as if they knew each other. Since people would leave computers at their desks without hesitation, they seemed to trust each other. Coffee was free, and people could bring their own lunch. Monthly fee was 850kr ($130), which is about the half of the first one.
The decisive factor, however, was that I came up with the idea of this series of articles on the first day I visited. The moment I opened my MacBook, I started to focus, and ideas started to flow! I personally believe that it is so important, especially for those who engage in creative work, to believe that you and your place to work are a “good fit” so that good ideas can come to you.
Later, I learned that Republikken opened in 2005, which made them the oldest co-working space in Copenhagen.
When the financial crisis hit Europe in 2008, companies in the same building left one after another. But Republikken, on the other hand, expanded its space gradually by taking vacant offices.
It started from 800 square meters with 20 members, and now it has 3000 square meters spread across 3 floors, with 170 members. Besides regular members, there are people who just stop by on a daily basis, and also non-members who only use the meeting rooms. So all in all, there are actually 500–600 people using Republikken each month. Many work at creative businesses, such as app developers, graphic designers, or architects.
As the number of freelancers and small businesses has increased significantly world-wide, co-working spaces are becoming more and more popular. According to deskmag, which specifies the trend of co-working spaces, the total number of co-working spaces in the world appeared to reach over 19,000 by the end of 2018, and in total, as much as 1.7 million people work in these places.
In Copenhagen, there are new co-working spaces almost every month, but Emil Steglich-Petersen, CEO of Republikken, has an optimistic outlook.
“There are two types of co-working spaces. One is property business which basically tries to increase the rent by slicing large rentals into small ones. Another is community type, like us”
“Our main value is the ability to connect people. You can copy furniture, internet, e.t.c., but personal relationship is something really hard to copy. If you can maintain the network without the space, it is a good co-working space”
Speaking at a community event
Soon after I started to go to Republikken every morning, my days began to have a rhythm, and became more structured. And just watching the same faces every day and saying hello while making coffee improved my mood significantly.
Teresa, a member from Spain specializing in digital marketing, sits across the table almost every day. She is a lot younger than me, but we have a little chat, and eat lunch together. She studied social media at school, and she gave me a lot of good advice when I (finally, in 2019) joined Twitter. Using one's expertise to help each other is common here, and makes me feel like I am in the right place.
One of the events that Republikken values is a community breakfast every Thursday morning. One of the members makes a presentation of his/her background and business, and exchange thoughts with the other members. When I heard what people at Republikken were actually doing, there was always something to learn, and it was also inspiring to know the path they were taken.
And in the middle of January, I became the one to give the presentation at the community breakfast.
When I was first asked if I could to do it, I hesitated. I am not an entrepreneur, nor do I have a cool creative business ideas. Who would be interested in the story of a Japanese journalist? What if nobody showed up..?
But then, I remembered Harvard’s class on happiness, which I wrote about in the story #4. If you want to change, it is inevitable to leave a cozy “comfort zone” and move into a bit risky “stretch zone”.
The point is, you start to see yourself as somebody who takes a risk by moving into the “stretch zone”. It does not matter whether your challenge will succeed or fail. In the class, this mechanism was called “coping” and coping was an important way to increase your base level of happiness.
Maybe it is a bit dramatic to apply coping theory to a 5-minutes speech, but it is anyways a small first step in my "professional life" in Denmark.
I started to prepare the speech 3 days in advance, practiced in front of my husband, and prepared a memo in case I panicked during the speech.
On the day of my speech, people actually showed up. And perhaps because I was a bit unique, I could tell that they really paid attention. They even laughed at my jokes, and gave me a warm applause at the end.
After this speech, there were more and more people who spoked to me, and I learned who they were and what they were doing. Many of them had international backgrounds, and even though our career paths were quite different, we still faced many of the same issues as newcomers. It started to make me feel like I really belonged there.
And the good effect did not stay only at Republikken. Rasmus, whose daughter went to the same kindergarten as my daughter, said to me “you made a speech at Republikken, right?” He followed the Republikken’s Facebook page and that was why he found out.
Looking back, I was probably getting sick of myself remaining at home, or in my “comfort zone”, and did not dare to put myself into a new challenge. Now I go to the co-working space every day, and broaden my network through writing and other projects.
This is not so bad.
(This series of articles “My quest for happiness in Denmark” is my translation of articles written for the Japanese magazine, Courrier Japon)
