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Home › Entertainment

Entertainment | 09/28/2009 6:00 am

Take Marcus Buckingham's Strong Life Test and Determine Your Happiness Quotient

Are women sadder and more stressed than ever? Here’s how to find the life role you were born to play …

Marcus Buckingham

Maureen Dowd’s Sunday New York Times column talks about Marcus Buckingham’s new book and the dreary point it illustrates: As women get older, they get sadder (whereas men get happier as they age). Is this true? Marcus — who, incidentally, offers the antidote in his book — found several highly credible and large studies that arrived at the same conclusion! As expected, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently has already ignited a national discussion — and Marcus has invited the wise and witty women at wowOwow to join the conversation.

2009_0923_fysl_largethumb.jpgMarcus will be visiting the website in the next couple of weeks to talk about the controversial studies he mentions in his book — as well as share tips on how to achieve a happy, fulfilled life. To kick this off, we’re encouraging all wOwers (even the most content) to take Marcus’s Strong Life Test here, which is the first time it has been offered online. At the end of the test, it’ll identify your Lead Role — which serves as a compass to guide you toward life’s difficult decisions.

Click "Start" to take the test here:

 

After you take the test, tell us: What was the role you were born to play? Are you acting on it?

 

Read more about: Advice, Books, Find Your Strongest Life, Life, Marcus Buckingham, Quiz

113 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Chris Glass`
My role was that of a motivator. I have taken that lead in many areas of my life.
By Chris Glass` on 09/25/2009 5:30 am
Chrissy Smith

My role was Motivator too and I certainly like to keep a group of people animated.

http://www.chrissysmith.net

By Chrissy Smith on 09/30/2009 5:53 am
Andy C
My lead role was "Influencer" and that does seem to be what I’ve done in my work.
By Andy C on 09/25/2009 5:47 am
Barbara
Interesting.  I’m motivator with supporting role of equalizer.  I lead a very large team of people at work so this must be where this comes from, but it’s not the role I would have instinctively picked.
By Barbara on 09/25/2009 6:53 am
phyllis Doyle Pepe
I stopped taking this test when I came to the attributes you wanted to encourage—I don’t know if that exactly the wording––in your husband––should have said /partner, I think, and there were none of them that fit for me, but I couldn’t go on until I picked one. Then the next question, said, that surely one wouldn’t be enough would it, so I would have had to pick another. Bogus! 
By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 09/25/2009 7:39 am
phyllis Doyle Pepe
P.S. Why not just ask women on this site if they are sadder now that they are older if indeed they are older.  I would think if they have reached a certain age they pretty well know their potential or lack of and damn well know why they are sadder, if indeed they are. 
By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 09/25/2009 7:51 am
Chris Glass`
I am happier as I age because I know what I want out of life. I do not dwell in the past nor do I want to relive my youth. I hope that I speak for many of my generation who would rather be older and wiser than young and ignorant.
By Chris Glass` on 09/25/2009 2:31 pm
C jay
Twice in agreement with you, Phyllis.
By C jay on 09/25/2009 6:10 pm
Suzanne Frazier

At age 62, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.  I lost my beautiful brown hair for "highlights of gray".  I lost my caretaking role, so I have more time to paint and be the artist I have always wanted to be.  I have lost my body-shape, so I don’t have to be so self-conscious.  I have retired (lost my job title) and now I have time for the important things in life.

In all the "losing", I have gained so much! 

By Suzanne Frazier on 09/30/2009 9:21 am
C jay

Suzanne, more than ‘lost,’ we grow - and learn how to let go. ;-))

By C jay on 09/30/2009 10:03 am
Jeannot Kensinger

Morning Phyllis. Sadder with age? No, I am not. I am comfortable in my stretch mark skin.

Sad over circumstances , at time, yes. Otherwise I feel damn lucky. Doctors told me at 36 when I had bad bouts with arthritis that I would be in a wheel chair by age 50.

Lucky that  I did not buy into it and I still walk 2 miles back and forth into town without pain.

By Jeannot Kensinger on 09/29/2009 11:55 am
Eyes Open
Hormones. The root of all evil. Bio identical hormone replacement girls, look into it! You won’t remember why you were sad, tired or just down right angry.
By Eyes Open on 09/30/2009 5:40 pm
S A

I have often wondered about this author’s conclusion and the methodology by which these surveys were extended and taken. Thanks for the opportunity to see for myself what the methodology seems to be. It has worked to further solidify my suspicions that these finding have no scientific base-line, that the conclusion is directed by the author of the survey and there is no control group involved.

Out of the questions given:

- I found none relative to my age group 50-65.

- I found not one with the possible response: ‘None of the above’.

- I found not one regarding my current health or mobility.

- I found not one regarding my social, class status.

- I found not one where I am the CEO or boss of the team.

- I found not one where I am self-employed free-lance female.

- I could go on but why.

I want to know what the base line age is for determining happiness, and that factor is not indicated or given. Is it 15 -22, 23 - 36, 37 -50? If it is at the a lower end of the spectrum, were the exact same questions asked. I wonder because I don’t know many 15 year old girls with a son who is of legal age to drive. So how is that question made to be comparitive? 

In my life the unhappiest time was when I was 38-48. But then, I seriously doubt that anyone would have been happy with the same stressors I was experiencing then: Single mother of 3 teenagers without any emotional or financial support from any one, my father battleing and then dieing of a terminial disease, becoming my mother’s full-time care taker, sustaining a debilitating injury that forced me to change my lifetime career. 

Soon I will be 60 and I judge this to be the happiest time of my life, bar no other period. My children are grown and have families of their own. My mother passed away 2 years ago. My new career is being a self-employeed artist. I have remarried a wonderful man who fully possesses all those traits from which I was to suppose to select one he supposedly lacked. I have learned to live with the disability I have to the degree that I no longer feel disabled.

I don’t think I am a hard sale, but there is just too much information missing along with information that is not relative, for me to take this author’s conclusion as serious.

By S A on 09/25/2009 8:35 am
C jay
Totally agree, SA … another sales pitch, I fear. Worse, "as well as share tips on how to achieve a happy, fulfilled life." This  is a boy, essentially, on the wrong website.
By C jay on 09/25/2009 6:13 pm
Suzanne Frazier

I am always extremely curious about a man who writes a book about women’s motivation.  

Oxymoron? 

By Suzanne Frazier on 09/30/2009 9:24 am
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