Bernard Meyer lives together with his spouse and two daughters in Lithuania.
Bernard Meyer
Bernard Meyer moved to Lithuania from the U.S. simply over a decade in the past — and says he is discovered one key life lesson dwelling within the nation: learn how to have higher work-life stability.
Lithuania, situated in northeastern Europe, was named the world’s happiest nation for younger individuals within the 2024 World Happiness Report, and the nineteenth happiest nation total.
After rising up in Miami and going to varsity in Indiana, Meyer moved completely to Lithuania’s capital metropolis Vilnius in 2012 and nonetheless lives there together with his spouse and two daughters.
The 39-year-old, who’s a senior communications and artistic director at advertising and marketing automation platform Omnisend, mentioned he is observed a profound distinction between work tradition within the U.S. and Lithuania — the place individuals take pleasure in a extra “relaxed” and “slower tempo of life.”
“I believe the work-life stability is one thing that’s controllable inside every particular person,” Meyer advised CNBC Make It in an interview.
“So at 5 or 6 p.m. when individuals flip off, they go away, and so they go chill on the bar in the event that they’re comparatively younger or even when they’ve youngsters, they take the youngsters and so they stroll across the metropolis.”
“There is a sense of really having fun with your life now when you’re nonetheless younger, when you’re nonetheless succesful, I believe that is one thing that they [Americans] can be taught simply to understand,” Meyer added.
‘Learn to have … extra of a life exterior work’
People are identified for being work-obsessed which may end up in a tradition of overwork and burnout. Comparatively, Lithuania ranked because the 11th greatest nation for work-life stability in 2021, in accordance with the OECD.
“Personally, I am not towards 25-year-olds or underneath 30s who’re spending 12 hours a day at work, as a result of it is a interval when you are able to do that. However when you get previous that stage, you need to discover ways to have a bit extra of a life exterior work,” Meyer mentioned.
“When you have household, crucial factor might be your loved ones since you’re working at a spot the place in 5 to 10 years, whenever you’re gone, nobody goes to care that you just had been even there, however your loved ones does,” he added.
Nature — and holidays — are necessary
One cause individuals in Vilnius take pleasure in switching off after work is the abundance of “inexperienced areas” within the metropolis, Meyer famous, and likewise how walkable it’s.
After work, “individuals are relaxed … they’re within the streets just like the Previous City, and so they’re simply strolling, or on the scooters, or simply sitting at a restaurant,” he mentioned.
“Right here, they grew up in an setting the place nature is necessary,” he added. “They grew up appreciating nature in order that they have a metropolis now that may be very nature-focused. Which means they’ve this cultural, important want to be with nature, and so they discover it right here in order that makes them blissful.”
One other key distinction he has observed between Lithuania and the U.S. is how individuals really feel about taking holidays.
“I bear in mind once I was within the U.S., I by no means had a trip and I by no means knew anybody who took trip willingly,” Meyer mentioned.
Nevertheless, he now discourages his workforce at Omnisend from engaged on the weekends or on holidays.
“One factor I inform them, which I believe may be very European, is that we do not work within the emergency division within the hospital. There’s fires however there’s at all times fires, it does not imply it’s important to surrender your trip,” he mentioned.
