In 1972, the fourth king of Bhutan was asked if he was concerned about his country’s Gross National Product. “No,” said the King, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” That was nearly half a century ago and those words has since rippled across the world. In 2007 Bhutan became a democratic constitutional monarchy. This meant the constitution of the world’s youngest democracy included Gross National Happiness as its objective. In 2011, Bhutan led the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution declaring happiness to be a fundamental human goal. The next year saw an international meeting convened by Bhutan and the UN on Wellbeing and Happiness—Defining a New Economic Paradigm, which issued the first World Happiness Report, now an annual publication. Though Bhutan is not some kind of Himalayan paradise, it’s still pursuing Gross National Happiness. The current director of the Gross National Happiness Center in Thimphu, Julia Kim, started out as a Canadian medical doctor. This Green Interview discusses the evolution of Gross National Happiness, and about what Kim calls “overdevelopment” and the continuing process of embedding Gross National Happiness into the fabric of daily life to shift the world’s consciousness. Her world travels had Kim asking many questions: what happens to a community as it develops? Why do we use the power and status of a country as the main success objectives? What are our intentions as we move forward?