Business expert finds a formula for happiness

William Montgomery, CEO of TEN, the international leadership consultancy, believes he has found the formula for happiness. Members of his new concept 10+ can now measure their happiness across ten categories, namely, career, community, education, family, friends, health, home, leisure, money and partner.

We all want to be happy but the problem has always been that you can’t measure happiness, or can we?

Social scientists measure happiness simply by asking people how happy they are. It is argued that what a person says about their own happiness tends to tally with what friends or even strangers might say about them if asked the same question. Most people say they are fairly happy.

William Montgomery says the science of happiness is based on one straightforward idea: “It may sound silly but we ask people ‘How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? And the interesting thing is that it produces real answers that are valid, they’re not perfect but they’re valid and they predict all sorts of real things in their lives.”

Happiness seems to have almost magical properties. We have not got proof, but the science suggests it leads to long life, health, resilience and good performance.

According to William Montgomery, the evidence suggests that happy people live longer than depressed people. “In one study, the difference was nine years between the happiest group and the unhappiest group, so that’s a huge effect. Cigarette smoking can knock a few years off your life, three years, if you really smoke a lot, six years. So nine years for happiness is a huge effect.”

Happiness researchers have been monitoring people’s life satisfaction for decades. Yet despite all the massive increase in our wealth in the last 50 years our levels of happiness have not increased. “Standard of living has increased dramatically and happiness has increased not at all,” says William Montgomery. “There is a lot of evidence that being richer isn’t making us happier.”

According to William Montgomery, there is no one key to happiness but a set of ingredients that are vital. First, family and friends are crucial – the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the better. Marriage is also important. According to research the effect of marriage adds an average of seven years to the life of a man and something like four for a woman.

The second vital ingredient is having meaning in life, a belief in something bigger than yourself – from religion, spirituality or community. The third element is having goals embedded in your long-term values that you’re working for, but also find enjoyable. William Montgomery argues that we need to find fulfilment through having goals that are interesting to work on and which use our strengths and abilities.

The UK government recently announced a plan to measure people’s happiness. After becoming Conservative leaders in 2005, David Cameron said that gauging people’s wellbeing was one of the “central political issues of our time.” He said, “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing.

Members of 10+ can now measure their happiness across ten categories, namely, career, community, education, family, friends, health, home, leisure, money and partner. TEN has created 10/10, an online system that guides members towards the identification, prioritisation and completion of ten goals in ten months. As William Montgomery advocates, “There is only one true measurement of happiness, the realisation of worthwhile goals.”

For more information visit askten.co.uk, email mail@askten.co.uk or call +44 333 666 1010. For an interview with William Montgomery please contact Melissa Neill at HYPR on +44 845 347 0027 or email her at melissa@hy-pr.co.uk.