Can happiness exist without hope? That question ultimately led Dr. Alphonsus Obayuwana – a physician-scientist and happiness coach – to the discovery of his groundbreaking Triple-H Equation — a valid, universally applicable five-minute tool for measuring happiness using hope and hunger as indicators.
Triple-H method outlines the interconnectedness between hope, hunger and happiness, and introduces a universal unit of measure called the “Personal Happiness Index” or PHI — the operative word being “personal.”
But, why measure happiness? Because it could be a game-changer for employers and employees, happiness coaches and their clients, and even parents and teens, says Dr. Obayuwana, who shares his methodology in his new book, The Happiness Formula: A Scientific, Groundbreaking Approach to Happiness and Personal Fulfillment.
“Everybody has different issues, different hungers, different hopes, different assets, different aspirations,” Dr. Obayuwana said in a recent interview. “Yours are plugged into the equation, and we get your happiness index.”
This PHI, according to Dr. Obayuwana, makes it possible, for the first time ever, to calculate and assign numerical happiness scores to human individuals by plugging their unique hopes, hungers, assets, and aspirations into an equation.
But Dr. Obayuwana is quick to point out that The Happiness Formula is much more than a mathematical equation for measuring happiness.
“It is a book about life, the relationship between human hope and hunger, and one’s overall feeling of personal satisfaction and subjective well-being,” Dr. Obayuwana explained.
The Happiness Formula challenges the findings published in the World Happiness Report, debunks three major happiness myths, and then introduces the Triple-H Equation — the simple but profound formula about what makes life worth living.
Dr. Obayuwana’s discovery offers individuals a simple but scientific way to self-assess their levels of fulfillment; provides happiness seekers with a proven routine for achieving and sustaining a flourishing life; and offers a strong theoretical basis and a firm practical structure for happiness coaches.
In 1979, Dr. Obayuwana (then a medical student) was awarded a national research grant and Smith-Kline Medical Perspective Fellowship to develop an instrument for measuring human hope, with the purpose of detecting hopelessness in time to prevent suicide. The result was the widely used and often cited Hope Index Scale (HIS). This progressed into decades of research that ultimately resulted in The Happiness Formula.
“For full disclosure, my own PHI is 2.923, and that means I am a ‘very happy’ person but not yet ‘flourishing’ by definition,” Dr. Obayuwana added. “Like everybody else, I could be happier, and with the formula revealed in this book, I now know where I am compared to anyone else in the world — who also knows his or her PHI.”
ABOUT
Alphonsus Obayuwana, MD, Ph.D., CPC, is a physician-scientist, a happiness coach, and the founder and CEO of Triple-H Project LLC, an entity that trains and certifies happiness coaches. He is a Literary Titan Gold Award–winning author who has published several peer-reviewed articles in the national medical journals about human hope and happiness. His other works include How to Live a Life of Hope (2022), The Five Sources of Human Hope (2012), Hope and Pregnancy Outcome (1984) and Hope Index Scale (1980). After 30 years of relentless research on human hope and happiness, he successfully derived the Triple-H Equation that is at the core of his newest book, The Happiness Formula.
Throughout his faculty tenures at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the University of Toledo, he has taught and mentored medical students, resident physicians, nurses, and fellows in the art and science of caring and promoting happiness for themselves and their patients. Dr. Obayuwana is also a retired major in the United States Air Force (Reserve). He is married to Ann Louis, his wife of 47 years. Together, they have two sons and three granddaughters. For recreation, he loves walking, reading, listening to music, and playing on his drum set.