Summary: Have a think about the following question for a moment. “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time, assuming that the higher the step the better you feel about your life, and the lower the step the worse you feel about it? Which step comes closest to the way you feel?” This question is asked once per year by Gallup, the famous poll company. They ask a thousand people in each of around 150 countries from around the world to work out how happy each country is on average. Gallup don’t just ask this one question though, there are many more. They ask about their relationship status, how many children they have, how many friends they have. They find out how much time people spend driving to work and whether or not they mow their own lawn or get the kid down the road to do it for a fiver. There are many other organisations that undertake similar research and if you take all of the data from all of these different sources and stick them into a computer you can look for correlations, so we can see what influences us for the better and what influences us for the worse. It makes some very interesting reading and some of it genuinely surprising.
