new year diagnostics

In an attempt to figure out how I can improve my life, I've been looking back at the Rate My Life quiz, to see what specific things I could do to score better.

One area where I think my life is just fine is spirituality, but in order to get a perfect 10, apparently I would have to believe that everything happens for a reason and commune with nature (among other things). It seems a bit unreasonable to expect someone who chooses "atheist" as religion to believe everything happens for a reason, though. Although, would following the laws of physics etc count as a reason? And while communing with nature would be nice and might be good for my mental health, I don't think it has a spiritual element for me. I already thought agreeing with there being more good than bad was perhaps overly optimistic, so I don't think I can do anything about that, but now that I think about it, blogging can count as taking time to unclutter my mind, so maybe I'll upgrade my score already.

Financial is the other relatively easy area, I think. I'd need to be financially independent and own a house with no mortgage to get close to a perfect score there, so I'm not even going to bother worrying. I can do better at remembering to pay bills on time, though.

Body I can definitely improve. I need to eat more fruits and vegetables, eat less junk food, start exercising and get more sleep. Simple...

To improve my mind score, I would need to be far more confident, optimistic and able to focus. Also, less lonely. I definitely need to work on those things, but I'm not entirely sure how to approach them. I think they're related to the social category, anyway.

The love category is kind of interesting to play with. Keeping the same answer for "my love life is great", but changing from "single" to "engaged" results in a gain of several points, even if I disagree with that statement. Surely it's better to be alone than to be heading into a marriage that doesn't look good?
This is definitely the category I have the least idea of how to change, and it's also the scariest, because I have no clue whatsoever. The test didn't really help there, because the only questions that were related seemed to be about existing relationship status and satisfaction and whether there are "one or more people who currently find you romantically desirable", rather than anything more incremental and potentially doable like "commune with nature", so that didn't provide any ideas for how anything could improve. The only option that did seem to be something under my control was the choice between searching or not, but that makes no difference in the score. Plus, actively doing anything in this area seems way too advanced for me. I think the best I can do is work on social stuff more generally, and if someone I like happens to find me romantically desirable, I can try not to freak out. Although, if experience is anything to go by, neither being aware of someone liking me nor avoiding freaking out are exactly likely, regardless of the odds that such a person exists to begin with, so I'm not sure I'd get any points anyway.

Friends/family is the one I really need and probably can work on, but again the test didn't really offer any helpful steps I could take. If I were very close to my grandmother, had an amazing best friend, weren't lonely, could depend on my family and had more than 10 close friends I would still only get a 6.2, anyway. Being married with kids would get me up to 7.9, but I'm guessing I'd need more living grandparents and siblings to get any higher, which seems a little unfair. Yep, four very close grandparents and more than five each of kids and siblings puts me up to 9.4.

I went through the happiness test more generally to try to pick out the things it was trying to measure. It seems like the areas I need to improve are focus, optimism, purpose, self-esteem, closeness to other people and enthusiasm. That seems pretty similar to the mind section of the first test. I'm definitely feeling more optimistic and I'm hoping that will help me be more productive, which will help with focus and purpose and enthusiasm. Self-esteem and closeness to other people seem harder to know how to change, but would definitely make me happier if I could improve them. One of the points in The Now Habit was that self-esteem shouldn't be based on performance, but I still have no idea what it should be based on. I can't even imagine what it would take for me to actually like myself. I do have a cognitive-behavioural therapy workbook on Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, but I could never bring myself to do any of the exercises, because I don't have enough self-esteem to even feel like I deserve to have more. If you have any advice, I'd be glad to hear it.

So gaming the tests was a fun exercise, but I definitely like Katie's Plan better as a way of setting out goals that are important to me and figuring out what steps to take, so I'm going to copy, but that will have to wait for tomorrow, because part of it involves going to sleep earlier and I'd like to start now.