Benefits of happiness tracking

Happiness comes from curveballs. They can come so unexpectedly and as strong as feelings of joy can be; they are also extremely fragile. Imagine sitting on the couch during the weekends watching a new movie you have looked forward to for weeks. A nice glass of wine right beside you of your favorite brand of sauvignon blanc or Chianti Classico. You start to realise you have just experienced the absolute perfect week. Nothing to complain about and all your chores are behind you. Perfect isn’t it? But then a curveball comes in; your work calls and they unfortunately have to downscale. They regret to inform you they have to let you go.

This fictional situation is suddenly a situation you do not wish to be in. However it could've just as easily been the other way around. Happiness comes in curveballs. By keeping a happiness tracker we can track these little dips and highs as they come and go. That’s just one of the major benefits to keeping a mood tracker. Let’s go through some more.

1. Trends analysis

Happiness comes and goes as does sadness. However below all these highs and lows there’s a much more interesting statistic: the average. This is the trend line. A self acclaimed happy person might experience the average day as a 8 out of 10. Your neighbor however can just as easily be a 6.5 out of 10. You may think buying that new house will really make you happy; but does it really? Keeping track of happiness ratings is an extremely powerful way to discover your personal average happiness scores over time. It also allows you to see if your actions and practice means you are rally feeling happier than you did before.

2. Day-feel relationship

A feature complete mood tracking tool often comes with a journal attached. A place where you can share how your day went. Now imagine you have just experienced the best possible day but at the end of it you notice you aren’t really feeling all that happy. Or perhaps your day didn’t go exactly as planned but wow your gut feeling is cheering you on all the way. This day / feel relationship is a really strong reflective tool. It can confirm you are on the right track. In apps like Luci these trends can be analyzed even years after your entry was created.

3. Season influences

By entering a journal entry each and every day you are basically leaving a trail behind, which you can backtrack mentally at any given moment of time. This becomes apparent when, for example, you compare your feelings across all seasons of the year. Are you really more stressed in the winter organizing the holidays and seeing all these happy couples in the movies. Knowing how you feel during the year can help you understand why you are feeling negative. Any negative feelings could be more season related rather than just that cat from the downstairs neighbor that keeps climbing your balcony.

4. Place to share

How often does someone ask you “how are you”? Odds are this question is fired at you more often than any other question. But tell yourself; how truthfully do you answer these questions? Isn’t how you really feel non of their business. Or perhaps you are afraid to tell your partner that you are really not okay. Keeping a happiness tracker gives you a private platform to share these feelings.. with yourself. No need to explain yourself if you don’t want to. No reason to fear that saying the words are enough to get you into trouble. Keeping track of emotions is a really important tool to self reflect. At the end of the day sharing is always important, even if there’s nobody listening but yourself.

5. Practice minor adjustments

A life changing catastrophic event. Doesn’t sound very appealing does it? When you can quantify your overall happiness, you can improve it. A great technique to improve your actions is by applying minor adjustments. Go for a slightly longer walk to feel fit. Spent five minutes extra to practice the guitar. There are many more examples to be made. In the end every minor adjustment can help you gain that larger goal. Just take it a day at a time and work towards it. Earlier we explained how measuring your happiness trends is a benefit to mood tracking. See if making these adjustments do come with an overall increase of happiness.

These are five from many benefits to keeping a happiness or mood tracker. We are constantly improving Luci to add more functionality and add more advanced automatic analysis of trends and ratings. Whatever tools you use we strongly advise to keeping track of your emotions.