Before the weekend arrives, before you hit a restaurant with friends or sit down at barbecue with your family and forget the last five days, you might want to give a check up...on your feelings. How good--or bad--did you really feel this week?

It's a more crucial question than you might think. Barbara Fredrickson, a researcher at the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has found that for people to really flourish in life, they need to experience three positive emotions for every negative one.

Fredrickson has developed an online quiz that takes about five minutes to complete which calculates your positive-to- negative ratio. Mine was 1:1.7, placing me solidly with the 80% of the population that live below the ideal 3:1 score.

Drat!

Wait, I take that back. Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

Wait, I take that back too. Fredrickson points out that phony positive emotions don't count and, in fact, may be detrimental to your spirits. My last and final feeling:  Drat (!) about the quiz Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! about Friday nights and the tropical sorbet martinis that I will be soon be drinking in the backyard.

Read More:
How to unhook yourself from negativity.
Optimism Works. Smart ways to try it (even if you're a pessimist)!