Table of Contents
A new book details a simple test that can tell anyone whether they are happy, very happy or flourishing and help identify sources of unhappiness.
The test uses a mathematical formula formed by a person’s feelings of hope and their “hunger” (either for relationships or success).
Its creator, Dr Alphonsus Obayuwana, told DailyMail.com: “The formula is that hope over hunger equals happiness.”
He developed a tool for measuring human happiness while a medical student in 1979, which was adopted by Fortune 500 companies, including Coca Cola.
The test provides people with a personal happiness index that can be measured to three decimal places.
To take the test, scroll to the end of this article:
The tool measures happiness and works for everyone (Shutterstock)
If your personal happiness index is greater than one, you are considered happy, and if it is less than one, you are considered unhappy.
Dr. Obayuwana said: Actually, this is a discovery. This equation found me. Now everyone can have a happiness index.
Dr. Alfonso Obayuwana
“It can be used in any country to find happy people, very unhappy people, flourishing people and languishing people in any country.”
He stated that current methods for measuring happiness (including those used in Gallup polls to measure global happiness) are flawed and do not take into account important details.
He pointed out, for example, results such as Finland regularly topping the charts, despite also having a high suicide rate.
“The problem with current questionnaires is that they are very simplistic, uninformative and rudimentary for something as important as happiness,” said Dr. Obayuwana, noting that GDP is often used to measure happiness.
He also pointed out the rudimentary way the questions are posed. ‘In these surveys they say that imagining the worst possible life is zero and the best possible life is 10
“The problem is that people tend to see the question as political or answer it differently depending on whether they are in Asian countries or the West.”
Dr. Alphonsus Obayuwana is the author of the new book The Happiness Formula: A Scientific and Innovative Approach to Happiness and Personal Fulfillment.
He added: ‘I have discovered a very simple equation that makes it possible for the first time to assign a numerical happiness score to people. The formula is that hope, more than hunger, is equal to happiness.”
The test lasts just five minutes and measures people’s feelings of hope as well as their hunger for five compelling human desires: intimacy, trust, food and comfort, information and continuity.
The book offers case studies and examples of how people have made themselves happier by using hope and dealing with their hunger.
An example of this is Patty Stonesifer, who rose through the ranks of the technology industry and was named by Time magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential people in America in 1996.
Stonesifer left to become director of Martha’s Table, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that serves and feeds the poor, after feeling the “emptiness” of her previous life.
The Happiness Formula: A Scientific and Innovative Approach to Happiness and Personal Fulfillment is published March 12, published by Simon and Schuster.