Quantifying Your Emotions
While emotions are hard to quantify, it can sometimes be helpful to try. In other words, being scientific about your emotions can’t tell you everything you need to know about how to be happier, but it can be a very useful tool. If you’re trying to find greater happiness and wellbeing, it’s important to figure out where you’re starting from.
To help you get a better understanding of yourself and your emotional state, I created a simple online questionnaire. Importantly, this is not just some Buzzfeed quiz I made up. This questionnaire is a research tool that has been validated in numerous scientific studies. To capture a broad picture of your overall wellbeing, it has been designed to help give you a quick snapshot of your levels of depression, anxiety and stress. Not surprisingly it’s called the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). It has just 21 questions and takes about 3 minutes: https://alexkorbphd.com/dass-21/
Try it out, and see if your levels of depression, anxiety, and stress are in the normal range or perhaps more extreme. It’s useful as a snapshot, or to track your levels over time. For example, if you’re making a concerted effort to change your life for the better, you can see what effect those changes have on your wellbeing.
