Tools & Tips
Another Happiness Test

Because happiness, joy, and the quest to live the best life possible is my thing, you can understand my excitement over a new branch of psychology that focuses on positive emotions, understanding how they work, and how to re-create them. It's called positive psychology (and is a marked departure from traditional psychology's focus on the negative aspects of human consciousness, such as phobias and disorders.)

Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA is the first educational institution to offer a PhD in positive psychology. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) heads the program, which stresses serious research and development of methods that institutions can use to enrich the lives of patients and individuals. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi says the program is aimed at collecting data and conceptualizing new ideas that will add meaning, excitement and enthusiasm to the human experience.

One of my colleagues, an executive coach and consultant here in Los Angeles, Libby Gill, was able to speak to Dr. Csikszentmihalyi and get a do-it-yourself version of one of his research techniques used to measure the level of happiness or life satisfaction in subjects.

Try this simplified self-test to see how your pursuit of happiness is going:

1. Randomly pick three different times of day over the course of a week that will serve as your times to check in on your own emotional experience. Make sure the 21 times are varied and reflect different settings and activities in your life. Write those times down in a journal.

2. Next, decide on a method of check-in. Set an alarm on your cell phone, write the times down in your calender or in Outlook, or ask someone to call you at the times you chose. (Gotta get a system!)

3. At each designated check-in, write down the time, where you are, what you're doing and with whom you're doing it. For example, "It's 3pm on Wednesday and I'm in the office working on a report with my colleague, Sam." Or, "It's 7:15am on Monday and I'm home getting the kids ready for school."

4. Ask yourself the following questions and note the responses in your journal:
How am I feeling?
Am I living up to my own and other's expectations?
Is there something I'd rather be doing?
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on how happy you feel, with 1 being the least and 10 being the most.

5. At the end of the week, read through your journal. Look for connections - or lack thereof - between what your experiencing and what you're feeling. Can you find the link between feeling happy and what you're doing? Conversely, do you think specific people, places and/or projects are contributing to your feeling unhappy?

This is a great way to evaluate your level of happiness as it relates to your environment at any given moment, which is a great way to identify a starting point for improving your life.