Unpacking the Happiness Formula with Dr. Alphonsus Obayuwana.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the bestselling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness, wisdom, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode, we will share powerful insight, tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for Happiness together. Welcome to yet another episode of the Happiness Squad Podcast where we share strategies to help make flourishing and happiness your competitive edge. Today we are honored to host Dr. Alphonsus Obojoana, who's the founder and CEO of the Triple H Project, an entity that trains happiness coaches around the world. Dr. Obaouana has dedicated over three decades to researching human hope and happiness and shares his insights in his new book entitled the Happiness Formula. His groundbreaking work, captured in the Triple H equation, which is at the heart of this book, has helped countless individuals and organizations, including Coca Cola and General Motors, harness the power of hope in fostering happiness. In today's episode, Dr. Ubayana unpacks the five sources of human hope as well as the five compelling desires, or hungers as he calls them, that all humans are born with. What's beautiful about his work? He ties them together in a really innovative, simple to use happiness formula that can help anyone calculate not only their own personal happiness index, but specifically identify the actions that they need to take on both sides of the equation, increasing hope and lowering our hungers in order to improve their happiness. Stay tuned for a truly transformative conversation with that bridge the gap between rich scientific research and practical wisdom, offering actionable steps for you to elevate your happiness quotient. My dear friend, it is so lovely to have you on our podcast the week that your book the Happiness Formula launches. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Ashish.

You know we only met two, three weeks ago, but I had the good fortune of traveling with you in the bus to the summit. Yes, so Friends, listeners, I met Alphonsus at the Gross Global Happiness Summit in Costa Rica. It's an amazing summit organized by the University of Peace in collaboration with the World Happiness foundation, where about 150 of the top leaders in this piece of happiness and flourishing got together. And Alphonsis was one of those. And I was really so moved, so inspired by his journey, and I know you will too, because it's just amazing. He's a doctor, you know, he studied happiness in research all the way from his younger years. He'll tell that story and now he's launching this book. We had such amazing conversations on our bus trips. We were sitting together and he's just an amazing, amazing human being. And it's our pleasure to support him in launching his book and all the collaborations that we're going to do together. So my first question for you, Alphonsis, is share with our listeners how you decided, you know, so early in your career to start your research on human hope. You know, that was what really stayed with me, that it was your early. I mean, you were one of the first people to start researching hope in the medical profession and how that eventually led to the development of the happiness formula. So share a little bit of your life journey, your explorations of hope and where we are now.

All right, Please. When I was in medical school in this country, that is in the US in third year, you rotate through different departments.

Yes.

You rotate through pediatrics, through surgery, through psychiatry, physical therapy. And during my psychiatry rotation, I helped to take care of two patients who had just attempted suicide. And that stayed with me. I was deeply moved and just transformed. And I was thinking since the impression, the assumption was that hope is what is missing when people commit, attempt suicide. If we can find a way of measuring hope and see people who have low hope, the then they can be helped very quickly and timely fashion before they start thinking of suicide. And my professors received the desire for me to study hope very, very well. And about a month or two after that, I actually got a national fellowship to study human hope.

How old were you and what year was it?

I think I was probably about because I had been in graduate school. I was not the typical 24, 25 year old starting medical school. So I was about maybe 29, 30. Yeah.

And what year was this?

I was in graduate school also I studied biochemistry. And so I had gotten my master's degree in biochemistry. And so now I was studying medicine and also doing my PhD in biochemistry.

And what year was this, alphonsus?

This was 1977.

1977, right?

Yes, yes.

So imagine that, dear friends. So 1977, there were not many people talking about hope or researching hope. So you've been kind of in this field, right, exploring this for now, almost 50 years. Close to 50 years, definitely. So what were your findings when it came to hope? What did you find? Alphonsis?

What we wanted to do was to have an instrument, a questionnaire for determining a hope score. So the money was given to the dean, and it was, it was a lot of money when you think about it those times. The money was not given to me, but anything I wanted to do, the dean's office in the medical school would allocate the money and channel it. So research was very, very tough because there was very little on it. Even psychologists were not interested in the subject of hope. They were disease focused, anxiety, depression. So the first thing we did was to do a survey, a national survey, asking people, what does hope mean to you? In one or two words only.

Yeah. And remember, friends, this was 20 years before positive psychology was born with Marty Seligman.

Exactly.

So the time that Alphonsus is talking about, psychologists were interested more in studying stress, anxiety, depression, as many are even today, other than the few. Right. Few who are actually looking at positive psychologists. So. Beautiful. So you did a survey on hope.

Yeah.

And what does it mean? And what did you find?

Exactly. That's how we found what hope meant to many, many people. Money, family, children, good job, a good home, a good future and all of that. And we did additional survey to support that. But at the end, we found that there were five sources of human hope. And that is what we then decided to measure. The five sources.

What are those five sources? Yeah, what are those five sources?

Okay. The five sources of human hope are, number one, what we call intrinsic assets. That is your virtuous attributes, your ego strength and signature strengths, things that make you you. That's your intrinsic assets.

I see.

Then human family assets, people that you know, family, friends, colleagues that love you and help you and give you empathy and sympathy and you deal with. Then the third asset was economic assets, which means your sense of material sufficiency, not so much how much you have in the bank, but how material sufficient you are.

Yeah. And your sense of it and your sense of, do you feel you have enough or are you missing it?

Exactly, exactly. Beautiful. Then the third thing was the educational assets. What you know, your curiosity, your intellect, your knowledge about your environment and your personal plight. And then the fifth one was spiritual assets. That is the benefits that you get from your Spiritual orientation in terms of how you feel about your relationship with either God, Allah, Yahweh, or any omnipotent cosmic force or being.

Yeah.

So that is what we measure. And we came up with what we call the Hope Index Scale. And it became very popular with even 4,500 companies like Coca Cola, General Motors, government entities like Veteran Administration, many universities in Europe and inside and outside United States. We are using it. Graduate students were using it for research. And I love this. Very popular.

I love it. And I can see why, you know, there is so little Alphonsus that's possible. Yesterday, you know, we were celebrating Jane Goodall. It was her 90th birthday. And, you know, we were raising a toast together, me and Brad, who was on the board of the Jane Goodall Institute, you know, in her honor and of an amazing life. And she talked so heavily. In fact, she wrote. Her last book was called Hope and how she talked about, you know, how the world is losing hope and how. And I love these five assets that you identified and then you created into an index. Because, you know, when friends. We don't have hope, it is hard to take action without hope. You get into depression without hope. You know, suffering without hope becomes depression, which then can lead to suicide.

Yes.

But if we are suffering, but we have hope that we can. Things can get better, we can move towards action. And I love these five. Right. I love these.

Right on the head. That is what it is. Yeah.

I love these intrinsic assets. Do you know your strengths, who you are? It's about knowing and can you use those strengths even in the hardest times? What strength do you have that you can use? Family. I love that. Like who in your family? Extended family relationships. And I even expanded to the community.

Who are the connections?

Right. Who is in your life? Relational assets. Right. That can actually help you and you can cultivate it. Economic. Right. I love what you just said. It's not just how much you have in the bank. It's about how do you want what you have versus having something else.

Sense of material sufficiency.

Exactly. Do you feel what you have is enough? The fourth, I love education, curiosity and intellect. Again, you can turn it into. Can you build it if you don't have it? And the last is spiritual, which is, you know, belief in a higher purpose, higher being, a fundamental source of connection. It doesn't matter what you call it.

Exactly. In fact, there are some people who are spiritual, but not religious.

Yes.

It has to do with your sense of right and wrong, life and death, evil, good and evil. Man and God, your feelings about those, that makes up your spirituality and the benefits you get from that kind of orientation, those are your spiritual assets.

I love it. By the way, I don't know if you've read this, Alphonsus, and for our listeners, if you haven't, get a copy of this book because there's so many, I think, especially the younger generation who say they don't want anything to do with spirituality and you know, Darwin's theory of how life emerged and et cetera, et cetera. There's a book called the Awakened Brain. It's actually a book written by a neuroscientist and a researcher who actually looked at how the awakened brain, you know, those who practice spirituality have higher buffers against depression, higher buffers, and they actually enjoy a higher quality of life because the brain structures change.

Beautiful.

So it's really, really powerful.

Beautiful.

But let's go from the Hope Index to the personal Happiness index and your work now, Alphonsis, around the happiness formula. So one, first describe what is the happiness formula?

The Happiness formula is the title of the book. And I wrote the book for four reasons. Number one was to share my child's discovery of a very simple equation that makes it possible to determine happiness and quantify it. Determine it subjectively and quantitatively, also assess it. Number two was to introduce the Edo Questionnaire, a five minute tour with 12 items that can differentiate and identify languishing individuals, flourishing individuals, very happy individuals, happy individuals, very unhappy individuals and unhappy individuals. The whole spectrum of the languishing at one end of the scale and flourishing at one end of the scale.

Got it.

So we can find your personal happiness index by you answering just 12 items in the questionnaire. And that is what this is about. So you know where you are in the spectrum and it goes from 0.125 to 8.0. A lot of areas around there.

Alphonsus, can we do this together, you and I? And maybe as you ask the questions, we can have the listeners do it too and calculate their own score.

Definitely. It's all in the book. And I can give you some samples of it. I could give it to you and you can give it to your audience. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, I mean, maybe we just do the 12 questions together. You can ask me the 12 questions and I'll answer me. Answer my score and you can score it and then you can tell me.

All right, do you want to do that now? Is that what you want to do?

Let's do it. If you're up for It. Let's do it. Nothing like some spontaneous fun.

All right, very good.

So we're going to do the 12 question, Alphonsus's happiness index to calculate my index. And I invite you to follow along, dear friends, and answer these questions for yourself too.

Exactly.

Now.

So we're going to read each question of the 12 statements. This is the actual question. Generally speaking, I am an optimist and.

I should answer on a scale from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.

Or what's 1 to 8?

1 to 8. Eight is very, very true. One is not true.

If it's not true at all, you can put 1 or 2.

Okay.

If it is somewhat true, you can put 3 or 4.

Okay.

If it is true. 5 or 6.

Okay.

If it's very true. 7 or 8.

Perfect.

Generally speaking, I am an optimist.

8.

Whatever the answer you want to put there, I do believe I have something to offer to others in this life.

8.

The third one is in the case of an emergency, I have someone I can count on.

8.

And the fourth one is when I need answers, I'm usually successful finding them.

8.

Considering the resources available to me, I am more fortunate than many.

8.

And the sixth one is when I think about my relationship with God, I feel reassured and less afraid.

8.

So you add all your points together and it can go from anywhere from 6 to 48. Yep.

So I'm at 48 on this now.

Doing the same thing for the next six questions, which means one or two if not true at all and seven or eight if it's very true.

Sounds good.

Statement. 7. I'm currently on a lot of stress. If it's somewhat then three. Four if it's true. Five. Six if it's very true. Seven. Eight. If not true at all, one or two. Three. Number eight. The next question is, I do not get the respect that I deserve.

I do not get. 1.

I do not get the respect that I deserve.

I get a lot of respect. More respect than I deserve.

I have no trusted or intimate companion. That's the next question.

1. I'm blessed.

Lack of enough money is a constant worry of mine.

1.

The next one is I have so many unanswered questions.

I have so many unanswered questions.

Unanswered questions. If it's somewhat true, three or four True. Five or six very true. Seven or eight, not true at all. One or two.

This would be a four.

Then the last question is, I am worried about my future.

1.

And you add up all question, that becomes 11. 11. So if you bring out your calculator. Yep. And divide 48 over 11 and make it all decimal places.

4.363.

4.636.

No. 4.363.

4.363. And Ashish, I want to congratulate you. You are flourishing. You are in the flourishing range. Your score is definitely higher than mine. My score is 2.923.

Wow.

I'm in zone eight like you are. But you are in the flourishing range.

Beautiful. I love the questions. I love how you know, I thank you for sharing those with me because I love how holistic they are around the different aspects.

They are applicable anywhere to a millionaire living in the city of London or a fisherman living in a village in Kenya. Is applicable because we are measuring your hopes and your hungers.

Yeah.

And the ratio is your personal happiness index. So your personal happiness index, Ashish, is 4.363. And test retest reliability is 0.95.

Wow.

The alpha value for internal consistency of this questionnaire is 0.88. And the AVC, the CV arrow, the coordinate validity ratio is 0.85. Which means the instrument is doing what it's supposed to do. Right. Measuring happiness. No question about it.

We hope you're enjoying this episode. If you'd like to start building habits and integrating the hardwired for happiness practices into your life, come check out Rewire our program on the happiness Squad website. Rewired contains 35 minute micro practices that can help you truly build habits for a happier, healthier life. Filled with more love and meaning. The program uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to support you in moving from knowing to doing to being. Now back to the episode. I love it. And I love also that it's 12 questions. So it's very easily taken by everyone. It is, you know, in very simple language. Let's explore. We talked a little bit about hope and you highlighted those five drivers, those assets that drive hope. Talk to us a little bit about hunger. Alphonsus and I still remember our conversation on the bus. So share your perspectives on hungers, what they are, what are the basic hungers and how they contribute to unhappiness.

All right, I'll be glad to. First of all, hunger, as we define it, is a compelling desire. Not just hunger for food. Compelling desire.

Hunger is compelling desire. Okay.

Yes, that's it. Okay. And there are five inborn hungers that we are born with. They are not learned. They are congenital.

Okay.

And we found this out by studying babies right from the moment they come out. Of the womb in the delivery room. And we follow them through the nursery. One year old, two year old, three years old. Involving grandparents and parents, older siblings and nannies, babysitters, grandparents, pediatricians and nurses. And we found out that there are five inborn human hungers.

And what are they?

They are the following. First is the hunger for inclusion and acknowledgement.

Hunger for inclusion and acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement, that's number one. Number two is a hunger for intimacy and trusted companionship. Trusted companion. Intimacy and trusted companion. The third one is hunger for food and comfort. And the fourth is hunger for information and answers. And the fifth one is hunger for continuity, uncertainty. Let me tell you how we found this out, why we call this inborn, because they are found in children and they are not taught. For example, the hunger for inclusion and acknowledgment. If you have been with kids, they want to be a part of it.

Yes.

All right. Mommy, Mommy. They will not play with me, Daddy. They will not let me join. It's always. And the worst punishment is in kindergarten is time out.

Yes.

When you put them out to sit out away from everybody else. Okay. It's not learned. It is congenital and we have it all through our life. Even the worst punishment for prisoners is a solitary confinement.

Yes.

Okay, so it's all true now. The hunger for intimacy and trusted companion. Even right from six months old of age, a baby would have a preferred companion, usually the mother or an older sibling or a nanny or a grandparent. And if the baby is crying and is passed from hand to hand until he gets to the person that the baby really wants to be with and he stops crying, then. And this is documented by pediatrician, by parents, you know, and you don't have to show children, you don't have to teach them how to clasp their hands around you for intimacy. All right, then. The hunger for food and comfort. That's the first demand, the first request babies make in the delivery room. All babies are born unhappy. They are crying, they are kicking, they are screaming because they have just been removed from the womb where they were surrounded by warm water. Food was flowing through the umbilical cord non stop and does not require any effort. And everything is quiet and soothing. And all of a sudden, without any notice, the baby is evicted from the uterus.

Yeah.

Okay. And how do we make them stop crying? We wipe them dry, cover them with a warm blanket and give them milk, food and comfort. And when they get to the nursery, if there are seven babies in the nursery, baby number four is crying. It's one of two things. Either is hungry or wet.

Yes.

Okay, so food and comfort. Then when you come to information and answers, you know how many questions children ask, what is this, Grandma? Why? Who is that? And information and answers. They are inborn hunger for information and answers. And so the fifth one is continuity and certainty. Babies, children, they love anchor. Let's do it again, Daddy. Tell me another story, Grandma. It's on and on. And stories that end with everybody being happy forever after is what they love. Continuity. And if you make promises to children and you don't keep them, they can be very, very unforgiving. Granddaddy. But you promised they would say. And so these are the five inborn human hungers that children display. And they stay with us forever. And everything we do in life is in response to these five hungers. Nothing that we do that is not in response.

I really love these. And you know what I love is how you've expanded hunger that is just associated with physical hunger that we know has lots of effects right. On our development. But I love these other five hundreds. In fact, I'm sure you're familiar, Alphonsis, with this recent research that came out of Harvard which looked at neglect in childhood, which talks to your hunger of intimacy and trusted companionship.

Yes.

And how it actually, just like food and nutrients affect our physical development, this hunger neglect affects our brain development in a very, very profound way. So, you know, it's not just enough to actually get the comfort and nutrition, but this hunger for companionship of the hunger for being in relation with the other. It was fascinating. It's really, really amazing. I love how when you step back and you look at these, you know, you can see it how they are present from an early age. Right. All the way from when they're born. And how so much of even what I see in organizations, you know, one of the top drivers for employee attrition is they feel that they are not valued hunger for acknowledgement. And they don't feel included belonging.

Exactly, exactly.

And acknowledgement shows up one of the biggest drivers of attrition.

Yes.

Trusted trust is, you know, we address this in our model on Pearl on psychological safety and trust. If you don't feel you have the trust, you don't get the best outcomes, you don't flourish as an organization.

Exactly.

You know, food and comfort. I'll tie it to this notion of, you know, many companies don't actually poll this for their employees. And I think we're moving more and more towards polling it, which is to say, are your people facing any Financial hardships that are going to get in the way of food and comfort. If they are, unless you move to alleviate and support, you're not going to get the best because they are fundamentally, you know, they're struggling. Same as for information. Are you helping them learning, grow and develop another key attribute in work well being that shows up. If people aren't growing and developing and atrophying, that hunger is going to make them leave because they look for that somewhere else.

Ashish, you have this grasped to the fullest.

I love these. I mean they show up organizationally and I am amazed at how you tie that to vram. These are from the point we are born.

And you know that when I was doing this, I wasn't trying to find a way to measure happiness at all. I was not finding a way to measure. I was just fascinated by my five sources of human hope and the five human inborn human hungers. When Seligman, when I was doing this, Seligman was studying something called learned helplessness. Yes, that's what he was learning. That's what he was researching. Learned helplessness. If you read his story, you will see. Yep, around this time that's what he was doing. Okay. Now after he became the president of American Psychological Society, then his theme was positive psychology.

Yes.

And this they then moved. Of course, people worked on this before him. The behaviorist Kai Yong and BS Skinner, they expanded the role of psychologists just outside of the disease realm. And then existentialists like Kierkegaard and Paul Dale Sotron, they worked on it too. Then came the grandfather of them all who did the hierarchy of needs.

Maslow.

Maslow. Abraham Maslow. Okay. In fact, in the hierarchy of need, food and comfort is the primary thing, as you remember.

Yes.

Okay. So. And that's what the keys the babies actually ask for first. Yeah, that's. That's the first episode of human happiness that we have for food and comfort. Yeah.

So then we look for more as we go up.

Yeah. So the point, Ashiz, was that as I saw that happiness became the big deal and I'm saying, wait a minute. Hope is what makes. Lack of hope is what makes people commit suicide. So how is hope related to happiness?

Yes.

If Aristotle said that happiness is what life is all about. So I decided now to find out whether hope is the same thing as happiness or are they different? Can you have?

Yeah. And what did you find?

So I went back, I did a survey, international survey, asking people, what is it that makes you happy? Give me event, situation or an occurrence in your Life that made you real happy. I just asked for three from as many people. This was done in Africa, in Nigeria, Ghana, particularly in the Caribbean, in North America, Canada and the US and Jamaica and some in Kenya. When I put all of this together, there came to be five triggers of happiness. Five triggers of happiness.

I love the coming fives. Five triggers of happiness.

And this was just all coincidental. Five. And they are these achievements and accomplishments. That was one. One category advancement in human connection and connectedness. Whether you reconcile with an estranged brother or sister or you remarry, or you get an engagement ring or make up with your friend or find an old friend that you lost several times several years ago. Any advancement in human connection and connectedness or you have a new grandchild or a new baby. Yeah. Okay. Then the third one was increase in income and personal comfort, possession, material possession. And yes, that gives you happiness.

Yeah.

If you get a pay raise, it gives you happiness. Right. Then the fourth was new knowledge and skill. I mean, you look at a baby, a four year old, three and a half or four year old who conquered that two wheel vehicle called a bicycle and now can ride without the training wheels, or the high school kid who got his license, or a very well known man by the name Ashish who led to fly a plane. These are new knowledge. Even when you find a new word, a meaning of a new word, new knowledge and new skill gives you happiness.

Yeah.

When you pass an exam, you have a perfect score in sat. All right, and then what's the fifth?

Yeah.

And the fifth is a pleasant spiritual experience. Either a baptism confirmation for those who are Catholics, first communion, or for those who are Muslim. If you go to become an Allah and you go to Haj. I had a nurse that I worked with, her name was Virginia. One year she went to Israel with 25 friends of ours and the pastor that went with them baptized all of them in River Jordan. And when she came back, she was like a different person. She felt that her salvation is certain after being baptized in the biblical water.

So, Alphonsus, just keeping an eye on time, Right. You know, as we wrap up, what would be three or four tips that you would offer to our listeners on actions that they can take?

All right.

From your book. And obviously, you know, we'll have details on your book on our podcast and when we publish it so that people know how to get ahold of it. But what are some three to four tips from you that anybody can take wherever they are to be happier?

Okay, let me just go ahead and tell you that because when I put these three together, the five sources of human hope, the five inborn human hungers, and the five triggers of happiness, the relationship was so striking. How the five sources of human hope were directly related to the five triggers of happiness. And just the opposite happened with the inborn hungers. The five inborn hungers were just the opposite.

Yes.

And the five inborn hungers were like the other side of the coin for the five sources. So in trying to explain all of this, I could only find a good explanation for it in a simple mathematical equation of hope over hunger equals happiness. And that's what you just calculated. Yep. We calculated your hope, and we divide it by your hunger, and we find your happiness index. So for anybody trying to go ahead, when I teach coaches happiness coaches, what you have to do is increasing the hope of your client and decreasing the hunger to get the happiness. That is the simple. I wasn't in here looking for a way to measure happiness. I was just doing research. But the equation came to me. The equation found me. Okay, so this is it. And going to the literature, it was corroborated by every article I could find.

Well, I think what I love is it's, you know, I've extensively. I'm friends on my 6 75th book at this point in the last seven years. And this shows up. These show up in all the positive psychology research. It shows up in neuroscience. This shows up in philosophy. Right. This shows up in spiritual traditions. But I love what you've just created, Alphonsis. Right. Just to kind of articulate. So simple work. One, I'll tell you three things that strike me. One, you're focusing on both sides of the coin. You're not just focusing on how to be more hopeful. We have to address hungers too. Right. It's both sides of the coin, heads and tails, and I love it. What you're saying is, look, if you want to be happier, connect to your strengths and use them more. So increase your intrinsic assets, build relationships in community. You know, want what you have rather than, you know, go after. I need more. More and more. Invest in curiosity and education and cultivate spiritual practices as a way to increase hope while at the same time focusing on addressing your hungers. And if we do that, you know, find which of those are absent in our lives, and we focus on that together, they will help us be happier.

And do you know, the last thing that I really want to say is this. We all want to be happier. We all want to be happier. And countries now are trying to use as A barometer for a country, how happy the citizens are. Yes, but there is no, until this book, there is no way to measure happiness. This is the first time you can quantify happiness backed by the literature. The World Happiness Report is just released now. The one for 2024, March 20, it was just released as you know. Okay, the same thing they are doing, they put Finland as number one, Denmark number two, Iceland number three, Israel number four and Netherlands number five. And on and on and on. But you know how they are finding out? They just ask a thousand people in each country, how satisfied with your life are you from 0 to 10. And some we put 7, some we put 3, some we put. And when you look at it, what they are doing is so simplistic.

Well, I think they look at too right, Alphonsus? They look at how satisfied are you today and do you hope that where will you be on that ladder in the future?

They don't ask that. They don't ask that, they just ask how satisfied are you. They want you to imagine what the best possible life is and the worst possible life is. And then you can choose anywhere from zero to. And it's called the Country Ladder. The Country Ladder. Okay, so the lowest rung of the ladder will be zero, the top rung of the ladder will be 10. But you know, it's very seriously flawed because some people with eastern culture, it is ingrained in them that when you are self assessing yourself, be modest. So their answer is going to be five or six. In the west it's not unusual for people to be boastful when they are self assessing themselves and they can use 9, 10. And there are people, citizens who see this as a patriotic question and to favor their country, to show love for their country, they put a 9 or 10. And there are some who will see it as a chance to make a political statement about their bad government and then they will put a three or four. So they are not measuring happiness, they are measuring how people feel about their country. Happiness is an individual thing, what you face every day. So your positive emotions and your negative emotion. The ratio when we did your hope score, we are measuring the sources of your positive emotions and your hunger is the sources of your negative emotion. So your 48 over 11. We were finding the ratio between your positive emotions and your negative emotions and it is 4.363. That's what this is about.

I love it. Well, this was such a pleasure to have you Alphonsis with us. Thank you for the beautiful work you are continuing to do. We need a lot more happiness coaches who are helping others one become aware of where they are. Second, implement and support people in living their best lives happier lives, increasing hope in the world and helping them solve for their hungers. Thank you my dear friend. It was lovely to have you and I'm so wishing you the best for the launch of your book and the amazing work you're doing.

Thank you so very much.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.