How to Measure Your Happiness?

We measure many things in life, such as steps, money, or social media engagement, so why not track our happiness?

Nic Marks , the founder of FridayPulse and one of the UK’s leading experts and statisticians on happiness, says that

if we want to take our happiness seriously, we need to reflect on it and, more importantly, put a number on it.

Here are 5 ideas for measuring and tracking your happiness to create more fulfilment in life.

Idea #1: Understand your overall life satisfaction.

Take a step back and think about your life from a broader perspective. Ed Diener and his colleagues created a life satisfaction scale with the five statements below. For each statement, choose a number from 1 to 7 to create your life satisfaction score. (1 - strongly disagree; 7 -strongly agree)

Reflect on these statements:

- In most ways, my life is close to my ideal.

- I am satisfied with my life.

- The conditions of my life are excellent.

- I have the important things I want in my life.

- If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

Add your ratings to find your life satisfaction score. Think about why you rated some questions the way you did.

Idea #2: Reflect on Your Daily Activities

Think about what makes you happy or unhappy at different times. Answer these questions in the morning or in the evening:

- How happy am I?

- What am I doing?

- Where am I?

This reflection encourages you to assess how happy you are in a particular timeframe – now, today, this week – when engaging in a specific activity so that you can repeat it in the future to build more happiness.

Listen to episode #14 Can we put a number on our happiness with Nic Marks

Idea #3: Assess Your Happiness at Work

Inspired by the recent Lean In Food for Thought event, where I had the pleasure to speak about happiness at work, think about different aspects of your work life identified by researcher Dan Pink and score them from 1 (difficult) to 5 (fantastic):

- Fairness: Do you feel valued and respected at work?

- Autonomy: How much control do you have in your role?

- Mastery: Do you understand your strengths and have opportunities to learn?

- Purpose: Do your tasks contribute to the bigger purpose of your organisation?

- Sense of Belonging: Do you feel connected with your team?

Look at your scores to see what makes you happy and what needs improvement.

Idea # 4: Use Your Envy to Understand Your Motivations

This may sound surprising, but experts suggest that experiencing Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) can help us understand what we might be missing in our lives and motivate us to take positive steps.

Rather than shooting down the envious feelings, write down what you are envious of, and get curious to understand what else you can learn, experience or incorporate to feel happier.

Listen to episode #122 How happy are you? 5 insights to track and measure your happiness

Idea #5. Collect Stories of Your Happiness

Write down and collect happy memories. This is to understand our bigger purpose, what makes us happy overall, what relationships are important to us, and what makes us feel fulfilled.

I hope these ideas help you better understand your happiness.

Thank you again to those who attended my free webinar on building lasting well-being habits.

If you have missed it, you can watch the recording under this link https://youtu.be/UItkAfAr00c

I dare you to be happy!

Klaudia