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Live Happy review

Mark Mackay

We review Live Happy, an iPhone application that helps on the road to dealing with the blues thrown at you by everyday life

Live Happy aims to give you a positive attitude

Published on Mar 2, 2010

Life is pretty complicated these days and, sometimes, everything can pile up and really get on top of you.

Thankfully though, the limitless goodies in the App Store never cease to diversify and you can download apps that will help you on the road to more positive thinking.

Live Happy is brought to you by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness.

The opening screen provides a shot of Lyubomirsky and a small TV icon which plays a short introductory movie. This reel tells you a bit about the developers that she works with to make the app, Signal Patters that specialise in psychology-based applications to improve wellbeing.

The idea behind the app is to take advantage of scientific studies in the area of positive psychology that suggest a few simple things can increase happiness levels.

These activities are things like savoring a moment and taking a picture, keeping a gratitude journal of all the things that you’re grateful for and setting positive goals and making notes of the ‘baby steps’ that might lead you to achieving them.

There are eight activities in total and a survey at the beginning will help decipher which ones are most suited to you.

When you start browsing around the app, you realise that it’s got a lot of content for your cash. There are lots of videos that explain all parts of the app in detail and also footage of Lyubomirsky appearing on TV shows such as Good Morning America.

Everything is very well put together to and it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into the interface. However, because everything is broken down into more manageable steps to make thing easier to follow, it can sometimes get a bit confusing until you’ve learned your way around.

The usefulness of an app such as this really comes down to the individual. The fact is that it’s been put together by trained professionals in the area of positive psychology and so the techniques are there.

However, you will need to take the initiative and actually invest time in using the features, which involves a good measure of inputting text. From an objective standpoint, it’s generally a well-made app with lots of content for the price and tried and tested scientific methodology at its foundation.