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ok, so i couldn't think of a very creative title for a blog post about tests, but numbers work, right?

i am so very excited to post the unexpected results of my Happiness and Optimism tests! via a link from "The Happiness Project" blog, i found myself whiling away this terribly boring monday morning on the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center's website, taking these fascinating tests to gauge your general happiness, overall happiness, and optimism.

here's how i did:

Authentic Happiness measures overall happiness. i scored a 2.92 out of 5. not awesome, but i tried to be honest. which is hard for me, because today i feel pretty good, but of course it asks you to think of 'general' feelings and dispositions, so by the time i add in the bleak and the bleh, i knock my scores down a peg or 3.

Average Happiness measures my perceived level of happiness and the percentage of time i feel that level of happiness, less than that level, or feel neutral. on this, i manage to score a 7 out of 10. this is particularly interesting, because i feel like it's asking ME what I consider to be 'happy' and then how often i feel that way.... a fascinating twist on happy measurements....

General Happiness measures enduring happiness. i get a 3.75 out of 7. this means that i scored as high or higher than only about 30% of my peer group. a bit distressing, but not surprising considering that the whole point of the optimism experiment and my BELIEVE mantras is to try to improve happiness, optimism, peace, contentment, and the steadiness of my faith no matter the circumstances...

which brings me to my somewhat shocking scores in optimism. the optimism test was longer and somewhat trickier than the 4-10 question happiness tests. like anyone who has ever taken a personality test or other emotional inventory, i am worried a bit that i may have answered the way i WISH i believed. sometimes i pondered the question for a good long time, sometimes i went with my gut. but these, my friends, are the surprising findings:

Hopefulness
Whether or not we have hope depends on the two dimensions of Permanence and Pervasiveness taken together. Finding permanent and universal causes of good events along with temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope.
If your score is 10 to 16, you are extrarordinarily hopeful; 6 to 9, moderately hopeful; from 1 to 5, average, from minus 5 to 0, moderately hopeless; and below minus 5, severely hopeless.

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Optimism Test - Hopefulness
6 (on a scale of -16 to +16) - i am moderately hopeful! which may not seem like much, but consider my peer group. according to this study, my score of 6 makes me as hopeful or more hopeful than:

83 % of web users
83 % of my gender
85 % of my age group
82 % of my occupation
78 % of people with my level of education
86 % of my zip code
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Optimism Test - Permanent - Good Events
People who believe good events have a permanent cause are more optimistic than those who believe they have temporary causes. If your score is 7 or 8, you are very optimistic about the likelihood of good events continuing; 6, moderately optimistic; 4 or 5, average; 3, moderately pessimistic; and 0, 1, or 2, very pessimistic...

my score, someone shockingly, is 7 out of 8!
which is 95-97% as high or higher than each of my peer group categories.

i would stop right here and utterly discount the possibility that this could be accurate for me on any planet. but then i reconsider the questions, and i reconsider some of this slogging path of LONGING for hope and optimism over the last several months, and i begin to see that maybe just maybe this IS accurate for me at this particular scenic overlook of my life.

for example, the questions basically ask you to determine whether you believe a specific example of a success (winning an award) or a failure (spending all day in the kitchen making a dinner that no one will eat) are the result of something intrinsic (permanent) like "i am hard working and dedicated" vs. something fleeting "i am lucky". same with failures: "i am a terrible cook" vs. "i didn't have as much time as i needed to do that correctly". i'd say that the questions about relationships were the hardest for me to answer with optimism. but even those "because i am a lovely charming person" vs. "i looked really put together that night" have started to come into clearer focus. i actually have noticed that i have an easier time squishing the "he isn't interested because you look like a "before" picture in a diet magazine" self-hate talk out of my brain more easily. so maybe my brain really is starting to come around.

i took a look at my notecard on my mirror this weekend:
BELIEVE Jesus is enough.
BELIEVE you are beautiful
BELIEVE its gonna be good

and i added some magazine cut-out pictures around it recently: a picture of a woman doing yoga, a picture of a 3-toed sloth with the words "be less slothful" printed at the top, a tasteful nude photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like me, if just a tiny bit fitter, and a colorful little rectangle with the words "I CAN".

maybe, just maybe, my brain is being slowly re-trained. maybe i can be an optimist afterall. maybe i can be hopeful, and happy, even in the winter. even with mom dying, even with the constant nag of money mismanagement. even with the long twisted path of who knows what in front of me. and hey! it even took me 4 whole sentences to even think of "even if i am single". that's gotta be an improvement, right??