Are you happy? Do you know the twelve signs? Can you parry and thrust while beating to your own drummer, find the silver lining and cash it in to break the bank at Monte Carlo? Do you like baseball?

Now there is no doubt. Just take the happiness test and you’ll know. This simple test is all you need to take your happiness temperature. No more second-guessing, long expensive shrink sessions or psychotropic drugs. This is the real deal and I’m giving it to you for free in this stylish blog piece. You’ve stumbled onto gold my friend. Nothing you ever do will be as important as this test. Here it is. Sharpen your pencils and no cheating.

1)Are you happy?

a) Yes

b) No

c) Maybe

d)None of the above

Scoring
If you answered ‘Yes’, congratulations. You get 100 points. Unless you’re lying. Are you lying? Are you sure you know what happiness is? Perhaps more likely you are delusional, stumbled onto a bit of luck by winning a car on So You Think You Can Dance, have just dropped acid or other drug that emulates happiness, defensive because you actually aren’t very happy and you wish you were, so in the name of not stewing in your own sorrow you’ve decided to be brave, to take action against the pain, to start a chain reaction of good to counteract all the bad that comes flying at you like a shit storm out of hell every day. Good for you. I wouldn’t call that happiness exactly, but I’d definitely pick you to help dig the latrines.

If you answered ‘No’, you have a problem, but at least you know what it is. You’re negative. You have no faith. Everyone has a heart of happiness, it’s just that some people have decided that happiness is unstylish, for losers, and too hard to maintain. So they claim to be not on speaking terms with their heart of happiness. They have decided that unhappiness and negativity serves them. Plus, they think they see everyone around them being negative and so due to the Facebook effect, they decide to ‘like’ negativity too. You get one point for your answer but 99 points because you need the results of this test to lead you towards positivity. So there you go, you did it, 100 points. 

If you answered ‘Maybe’, you’re open to the possibilities. You follow the one rule (create value) and you’re not afraid of the obstacles life throws at you. Congrats. You also understand the being human part of life. No one is a perfect happy machine every day. But it is the ability to win over our too human daily circumstances that makes us happy. Every day. Even the bad days. Even the days when you KNOW your fundamental darkness is playing tricks on you.

‘Maybe’ is a good place to start the day because it means that today, right now, we can build on ‘maybe’ and meet the universe on our terms to get what we want and turn today’s answer to ‘Yes’. Every day. (Except maybe the days you wake up having dreamt you had sex with Penelope Cruz. Those days pretty much take care of themselves.) Stick with ‘maybe’ and start to work. The harder you work, the more wonderful the world is.

Though ‘ yes’ is a great goal, ‘maybe ‘is a bit more in tune with the human condition, and ‘no’ is only useful as a deterrent.

Turn enough ‘noes’ to ‘maybes’ and ‘maybes’  to ‘yeses’, day after day, year after year and you’ll grow confidence in your ability to do that, and the more you do this the happier you’ll be because you have the confidence that you can meet life’s challenges, no matter what it throws you. Now you’ve passed the real happiness test.