Happiness and How

I am reading and working through The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, by Sonja Lyubomirsky (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008).  This is the one-stop shop for the information and practices in her various articles over the previous ten years.  I checked it out from the Omaha Public Libraries.

I hate to be too familiar with a stranger, but it is quicker to type "Sonja" than "Lyubomirsky."  And it goes easier on my spell-checker.  Sonja and her colleague, Ken Sheldon, have developed an assessment that tries to match personal strengths to happiness building activities.  They call this the "Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic."  That diagnostic and the related scoring procedure are in chapter three of the book.

The quick version of the diagnostic is available online at http://chass.ucr.edu/faculty_book/lyubomirsky/Quiz/fit_diagnostic.html

The full diagnostic is also available online at http://www.edbatista.com/files/2010/09/Person_Activity_Fit_Diagnostic.pdf.

And here's a quick interview with Sonja that describes an overview of her work and theoretical frame of reference: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/living-well/articles/2008/01/18/want-to-be-happier-heres-how

I would encourage you to try it out.  There is some calculating to get to your scores at the end.  If you'd like a spreadsheet that does that work for you, just email me at lrhennigs1@hotmail.com and I'll send you a copy with all zeros in the values.  You can put your own scores into the columns and get your results.

The payoff for this little exercise is identifying those well-being exercises most likely to work best for you according to your strengths.  For me the four best "fits" (according to the Diagnostic) are:

• Nurturing Social Relationships
• Developing Strategies for Coping
• Increasing Flow Experiences
• Committing to Your Goals

I will work at some of the exercises connected with these activity areas and report back on results.  I'd be interested to hear if some of you would do the same.  If you'd like to process these results and your experiences of the activities, email me or comment here.