How’s Your Vitality and Happiness?  Not sure?  Test it!

You may already be familiar with Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow, explorer, educator, and author of a very popular book on longevity entitled “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,”  He’s the guy who assembled a group of demographers and sent them all over the globe to find the areas of the world where people lived the longest.  Then he tossed their findings to a group of statisticians for analysis and correlation.

Five areas on the globe emerged as unique relative to global averages of length-of-life and late-life vitality: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; Lodi, California.

The findings of this extensive effort are widely recognized and quoted.  Buettner has become a prominent name in the growing campaign against our western lifestyle as it pertains to our overall health and longevity.

It’s a worthy read, if for no other reason than to learn what the common factors were across these five Blue Zones that contributed to the extraordinary longevity and amazing late-life health.  I’ll just leave you a hint since I’m sure you will rush to buy the book based on my recommendation (inserting winking emoji!)

Yep, diet, exercise, sleep, low stress and social engagement pretty well sum it up.  There you have the cliff notes on the cliff notes.

With this article, however, I want to call your attention to a fun little tool that Buettner has put out there to test your “true vitality” and “true happiness”. I guess “fun” may not be the best description depending on what your test results are.   But if your results come back “un-fun”, at least the test includes suggestions that will get it closer to fun.

Two tests, eight minutes

Go to this site for the True Vitality Test.  This 3-minute test “calculates your life expectancy and how long you’ll stay healthy” and will “send you personalized recommendations for getting the most good years out of life.”  It’s all kept private.

Then you can go to the True Happiness Test  and do a second test (five minutes) “based on the leading scientific research into well-being” that will “help you improve your environment to maximize your happiness.”  Same deal – a personalized report with recommendations.

OK, it’s all free and it’s designed to lead you to purchase a course that goes deeper in each area.  You know the game by now if you spend any time in the online world.  I’m a thief, out and out.  I steal everything free that I can and never (well, almost never) bite for the “special offer” that follows.

But, I like these two tests and feel they had some substance.  I admit I may have been a bit swayed because I liked the results.  To wit:

• On 2/9/18, I took the Vitality Test the first time and it predicted my life expectancy to be 92.6 against the average of 76 (which is where I am – whew!).  Since I’m committed to living beyond 100, this test result bothered me.  I looked at the recommendations that accompanied the test.  I found, and added, a couple that I wasn’t doing that made sense.  So when I took the test again on 7/7/18, my life expectancy prospects had improved to 96.9.   Good – getting closer. Note to self:  continue to work on the recommendations.
• On the same day – 7/7/18 – I took the True Happiness Test and it came back A+, the top possible bracket. It says I scored high in
  • PURPOSE: Your passion, drive, and sense of meaning and connection.
  • PLEASURE: Your everyday positive emotions and experiences.
  • PRIDE: Your sense of satisfaction in the major areas of your life.

Aren’t I wonderful?

I shared the results with my wife.  She gave me the same eye-roll on the age thing that I suspect you may have done.  And on the happiness things, she simply said: “When are you going to tell your face?”

Some work to be done there. I’m just not that exciting to be around and not an exuder.  I guess the internal peace and happiness I feel still has difficulty peeking out.

I suspect that you are highly skeptical about the validity of these tests since they’re free.  I get it.  You get what you pay for, right?  Free always has a hook.

You can easily ignore or spit out the hook on this one.  And you might just gain something.

Look at it this way.  How many eight-minute chunks do you waste every day doing something stupid, mindless or unproductive? Some days, my chunks seem to be legion.  So if I pull one little “pearl of applicable knowledge” out of that eight minutes, I’ve got an ROI.

That’s what I felt I got.  A simple activity that added “1%” to my personal growth.  Do something like that every day and I’ve improved my life 365%.  My life has space for all of that improvement!

How about yours?

If you try it, let me know what you think. Scroll down and leave a comment.