Carol Vorderman's secret trick for a happy life revealed – and anyone can do it

An icon since her days on Countdown, Carol Vorderman is a woman who embraces life and shows no signs of slowing down.

As woman&home’s cover star this month, Carol opens up like never before on the health scare that changed her life, and why she refuses to take anything for granted.

Part of her amazing mindset can be attributed to the numbers game she came up with, where you give something - anything - marks out of 10. But there's a caveat to really getting the most out of it, and it's what Carol claims makes her feel better every time.

Explaining how it all works on Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast, Carol told Fearne, "So I have this system called marks out of 10."

She explained, "You can do it about a day, you can do it about this podcast, you can do it about a meal that you might have. You can do it about a week, a month, your health, whatever. It's a way of self monitoring.

"But you can only play the game if you accept that seven out of 10 is a win. That's the key to it. So seven plus we're winning. You've won".

This refreshing idea that not everything needs to be a 10/10 to feel like a win is Carol's secret to "stop perfectionism in its tracks".

"So you go, oh yeah, I'm going Christmas shopping… You can make a shopping trip really miserable. Or you can go ‘Hang on. How many presents were on your shopping list? 12. How many did you get? 10. Not bad, is it?'"

So she’d say that was two marks so far, before adding, "Were they playing nice music? Yeah, we'll have another two there."

Keep doing that - actively looking for the positives and giving marks - and you’ll realise you can get up to a seven quite quickly, and completely shift your mindset.

Carol, revealing she used to do this often with her kids and friends, said, "You just feel better about it. And you really can do it about everything. And sometimes you don't get to seven and that's okay.

"Last year, I was really poorly. Really poorly. And health wise, I was one out of 10 for a long time.

But then it started to get better. I got onto the right medications. Got to a two. That's better than it was. A four. That's better than it was. Then when it got to seven with health, I prefer to be a nine but you know at seven, okay, this is now acceptable."

Fearne was a fan of Carol’s simple yet game-changing trick, telling her it was a brilliant idea and that she was going to start using it. And we imagine she’s not the only one.