Five apps for helping happiness

Are you a worrier by nature? Or are you too busy to slow down and focus on yourself? If your own happiness is always at the bottom of your to-do list, these apps provide helpful stepping stones to contentment 

SuperBetter

This app aims to help you build grit and resilience, and develop the ability to stay strong, persistent, and positive whatever curve balls might suddenly be thrown at you. You’ll be provided with daily activities that you can track until you reach your goal, gaining points for every step you complete – these might include taking a walk or drinking a glass of water. What’s great about this app is that you’re made to feel a bit like a superhero, collecting power-ups and winning against bad guys while getting help from friends and allies.

Track Your Happiness

Invented by Matt Killingsworth during his doctoral research at Harvard University, this app helps to identify the age-old question: ‘What makes people happy?’ Killingsworth believes that the true meaning of happiness is different for everyone and the factors affecting happiness varies for each person, something this app sets out to discover. Every day, you’ll be sent a set of questions about what you are doing and feeling at that moment. For every 50 responses, you’ll get a happiness report so you can recognise exactly what makes you feel the happiest. Plus, you will know when and where you are feeling your best.

Worry Watch

If you’re one of life’s worriers, this is the app for you. Worry Watch can help you track and overcome your anxiety for a happier life. The app’s five-step process helps you record your anxieties, reflect on what the actual outcome was, analyse your thought patterns, realise (based on your previous records) that your worry is mostly unfounded, and then challenge your anxieties the next time they come up. It’s like your fairy godmother, helping you see that the worst case scenario rarely happens.

Daylio

Emoji lovers will adore this simple and quick mood tracking app that monitors your happy triggers using, yep you guessed it, emojis. Every day you input the icons that represent your mood and activities at that time and it then provides a calendar along with statistics that help you better understand your habits. If you sometimes fancy inputting more than just an emoji, there’s also an ‘old-school diary’ function too.

Simple Habit

Let’s face it, many of us lead busy lives and don’t always have enough time to squeeze in mood quizzes and tracking reports. If that’s you, then this app might be the one. Simple Habit offers audio meditations as short as five minutes, perfect for the time-poor who want a good quality guided meditation that reduces stress and calms the mind. Users are asked to choose topics that interest them and there really is something for everyone – from meditations that will help you find your feet after a break up, to post-argument relaxation, stress-free commutes and pre-date mindfulness to help you get into the zone.