How Happy Are You?

So, how happy are you? Can you guess which of these people are the happiest? I got it right (one of them only), let's try it yourself.

The information and image below are taken from www.oprah.com.

Peggy is a 44-year-old married mother of two teenage boys who works as the bookkeeper of the family business. Last year, both her father and her sister died, and her mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Noreen is a 52-year-old divorced mother of two college kids. She's an avid swimmer and works in the operations department of a major airline.

Lachelle is 27 years old, married and has no children. She works two jobs and has two dogs. Last year, four of her friends and two of her family members died within six months of each other.

David is 53 years old, and he's been a funeral director for 30 years. He is married and has two sons.

Lorrie has been married for 15 years and has six children. She works in retail and also serves as the vice president of her PTA (Parent-Teacher Association).

So, have you made your pick? Which one did you guess? But first of all, what kind of benchmark are they using in finding out who's the happiest? You can take the test too and I'm going to lay all the questions here. (Also courtesy of www.oprah.com)

Satisfaction with Life Scale
How satisfied are you? To find out, read the following five statements. Then, use the 1–7 scale to rate your level of agreement and add your answers together.

1 = Not at all true
4 = Moderately True
7 = Absolutely True

1. In most ways, my life is close to ideal.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


3. I am satisfied with my life.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So, what did you get? Mine was 26. (Yeah, honest). How about the people we were supposed to guess earlier on? Who do you think get the highest score? My guess was #4 - David (the funeral director), because I thought by seeing dead people everyday, he definitely must have captured the meaning of life well and he must have lived his life to the best. And I was right. But there are 2 other souls that are happy with their lives too and they are #1 - Peggy and #3 - Lachelle. Why? Check the next one out.

Peggy, David and Lachelle scored the highest on the satisfaction scale, while Noreen and Lorrie scored the lowest.

Satisfaction for Peggy is achieved by surrounding herself with happiness. The most important thing? Her husband. "He is there for me. He doesn't only love me, he appreciates me and makes me feel good," Peggy says. Happiness doesn't depend on money, she says. It's about enjoying the simple things. "Every morning I have a ritual. After the boys have left, [my husband and I] get in the hot tub, and it's our time. We talk about what is going on for the rest of the day. It is just our quality time just to stay connected."

David, the funeral director, says he's developed phrases that help him keep a positive outlook. "I will say, 'It's a marvelous Monday. It's a terrific Tuesday,'" he says. Although he deals with death daily, David says his job is anything but depressing. "Most people look upon funeral service as a sad profession. I look upon it as a profession where I'm helping people at a very difficult time in their lives," he says. "Being successful in life is not what really matters. Being significant in life is really the core root of what matters."

Lachelle says she lives by the philosophy, "Negative out, positive in." She says she believes happiness is a conscious effort. "It's about claiming what's yours. If you want a positive life, you need to think positively and act positively," she says. "I do my best not to compare myself with others. I've always felt that what one person has may not be destined for me." - Courtesy of www.oprah.com

If you pay attention to the stories above, happiness is not something external. It's not about what you do, what you have, who you are with, etc. It's about a choice and something internal. You can have thousands of bad day and still be happy with your life or you can have everything in this world and yet depressed over what you've not accomplished. It's a choice. Heck what others say, heck what others do, ultimately, happiness is for you to uncover and let it blossom.

To sum it, I'll let the expert on the subject of happiness to wrap up this segment.

Dr. Holden says the key to being happy is overcoming "destination addiction," which he defines as "living in the not-now." "It's always about tomorrow, so you're chasing 'more,' 'next' and 'there,'" he says. "You promise yourself that when you get there, you'll be happy. And I promise you, you won't, because you'll always set another destination to go for."

Instead, Dr. Holden says if you are unhappy with your life or looking to improve your score on the satisfaction test, there are two things you can do. "We have to learn to let go of our past, we have to give up all hopes for a perfect past. Let the past go, it's gone." After that, he says, "Take a vow of kindness. Be kinder to yourself and to others. "It's never too late to be happy," he says.

Image and text source: www.oprah.com