What if we treated our emotional wellbeing a little more like the weather?
Every morning, millions of us check the forecast.
Sunny? Rainy? Storms coming?
We prepare ourselves for what’s happening outside.
The Happiness Forecast asks what’s happening inside.
The idea began with a simple question:
How are we really doing?
The Happiness Forecast is an independent community project designed to capture snapshots of how participating people across America are feeling.
Through short, anonymous check-ins, we ask people to report four things:
Happiness. Stress. Connection. Hope.
Over time, those individual responses allow us to look at patterns, changes, and the emotional weather being reported by participating communities across the country.
Why I Created It
Hi, I’m Cecile.
I’m a 20-year U.S. military veteran, former public-sector auditor, writer, creator, and someone who has spent a great deal of my life interested in people—their experiences, relationships, struggles, resilience, and the things that connect us.
When I discovered the World Happiness Report, I became fascinated by the idea of measuring wellbeing.
But another question kept occurring to me:
What if we could see how people were feeling right now?
Not just once a year. Not just as a statistic.
What if people could simply check in?
That question became The Happiness Forecast.
What We’re Measuring
Our regular check-in currently focuses on four self-reported measures:
😊 Happiness
How happy do you feel today?
⛈️ Stress
How stressed do you feel today?
❤️ Connection
How connected to other people do you feel today?
☀️ Hope
How hopeful do you feel about the near future?
We also ask participants what’s having the greatest influence on how they’re feeling.
As participation grows, we’ll use those responses to explore trends over time while remembering something important:
Every data point represents a human experience.
What The Happiness Forecast Is — and Isn’t
The Happiness Forecast is an informal, voluntary community survey and storytelling project.
It is not intended to diagnose mental health conditions, provide medical or psychological advice, or replace professional research.
And because participation is voluntary, our results should not be interpreted as representing every resident of a state—or the United States as a whole.
When we say a state reported a particular happiness level, we’re talking about the people from that state who participated in the survey during that reporting period.
Transparency matters to us. As this project develops, we’ll explain how responses are collected, calculated, and reported so you can understand exactly what the numbers mean.
The Bigger Idea
I’d love for The Happiness Forecast to eventually become something people recognize as a regular check-in:
What’s the emotional weather looking like this week?
Where is hope increasing?
Where is stress rising?
Are people feeling more connected—or more isolated?
What seems to be making life better?
And what seems to be weighing us down?
The answers won’t always be simple.
But perhaps asking the question is valuable in itself.
So, How Are You Doing?
Your experience is part of the story.
Take the check-in and add your voice to the next Happiness Forecast.
