Introducing … ASSESSMENTS!

If you decide that you’re going to
* get more organized in order to have more peace of mind
* spend more time with your family and friends in order to be more relaxed
* stress less
* increase your happiness…
how will you know once you’re succeeding in these resolves?

There’s a simple idea in Positive Psychology that you should be able to measure how you are progressing in terms of increasing your happiness, well-being, life satisfaction. One large way that these items are measured is through self-reporting.

This means that if you were to start working with a Positive Psychology coach to improve your enjoyment of life, work-life balance, or productivity at work, that pretty early on the coach would ask you, “Would you like to get some baseline measurements at the start?” And it makes sense to. I recommend it. This way, you have a sense of how you acted and reacted before you started actively increasing your life happiness or life satisfaction. In a way, it’s like measuring your weight before going on an exercise-and-moderated-eating plan. (BTW, you’ll notice that these assessments are not usually called quizzes or tests because that would imply that there is a ‘best way’ to be or a ‘best score’ to get.)

My favorite thing about these particular assessments is that they describe you. After taking them, I’ve often been able to crystalize into words some things that I may never have thought of before about myself, and I hear this comment frequently from other people that have taken assessments too.

And, finally, if you still need a boost as to why you should go to this page and take them … THEY’RE FUN! :)

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing up more about what they mean and what info from the assessments you can really use productively. Here is the great site where you can find assessments for yourself and your friends: the Authentic Happiness site.

Here are the assessments I most recommend (you’ll need to create a login at that site):
* VIA Signature Strengths Survey – this shows you your main character strengths – VERY INTERESTING; assessment by Peterson and Seligman (takes 20 minutes to complete).
* Optimism Scale – This shows you how you interpret good and bad events, reference: Learned Optimism; assessment by Seligman (32 questions, takes a few minutes).
* Satisfaction with Life Scale – Simple assessment of subjective well-being. Here is an article that highlights Ed Diener, the lead author of this assessment scale (5 questions).
* General Happiness Questionnaire – This is actually my favorite one of all of them, Lyubomirsky’s and Lepper’s assessment (4 questions). I’d love to know what you guys get on this little survey!

Enjoy! And I’ll write more about these later.