Gaining Perspective on the Cantril Ladder

We’re driving through rural China, my head pressed against the tinted windows of a charter bus, trying to take in what feels like our first authentic view of the country in the eight days we’ve been here.

We move slowly along a two-lane road through what appears to be a small town. Small piles of snow and ice dot the landscape, people burn trash in barrels for warmth. The buildings look dystopian, modern in design but crumbling, as if they’ve been there for hundreds of years. Curious faces look up as we pass. Some wave and smile. Some just stare.

Turning right onto a gravel road, we leave the old-futuristic town behind and arrive at our destination, a dairy farm we’re told is one of the largest and most technologically advanced in eastern China.

As we disembark, we’re greeted not by the baying of cows, but by the laughter of children and the slap of bare feet on concrete. We stand there, stunned, as a small group of barefoot, dirt-smeared children run up to us, grab a few of our hands, and begin our tour without waiting for any adult-sized guides.

Not long after, two worried mother figures step out of a nearby building and chastise them in Mandarin. It doesn’t seem serious. The children are allowed to stay with our group and resume their game of tag as soon as the mothers turn their backs.

We spend half the day at the dairy farm, and as we leave, not one person in our group of seventy is thinking about cows. Instead, we’re all reflecting in awe at how joyful the people of the farm seem to be, despite what appears, from the outside, to be a destitute situation.

If you’ve ever spent time in a low-income community, you’ve likely had a similar experience and probably walked away asking some version of the same question, “How could someone with so little be so happy?”

That question is exactly the kind of reflection psychologist Henry Cantril tried to make sense of when he introduced what’s now called the Cantril Ladder.

Cantril’s Ladder is the most widely used global tool for measuring individual well-being. It helps people put their lives into perspective by clarifying where they are now and where they believe they’re headed.

Here’s how it works.

Evaluate

Imagine a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 represents your worst possible life and 10 represents your best possible life. Write down where you believe you are today, then write down where you think you’ll be five years from now.

Define Your 10

Describe your best possible life. What actually matters to you? What does your ideal life include, and just as importantly, what does it not?

Next Step

What caused your most recent move up the ladder?

What is one thing you could do today to move up half a rung?

You’ll notice there’s no mention of anyone else’s ladder in this process.

During my visit to the dairy farm, I started off assuming I was standing several rungs above the children I met. What I didn’t realize at the time was that they were standing on ladders of their own.

This isn’t about climbing past people. It’s about climbing your own ladder.

When we measure our lives against our own ideals instead of other people’s positions, our sense of well-being often increases, not because our circumstances change, but because our perspective does.

Fact

Long-term studies using the Cantril Ladder show that people’s life satisfaction is more strongly associated with perceived life trajectory (where they think they’re headed) than with their current circumstances alone.

Action

Name one area of your life where you’ve already moved up a rung, even if you didn’t notice it at the time.

Question

How does the rung you believe you’re standing on shape the way you think, act, and plan each day?

Quote

“People are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” - Abraham Lincoln