Happiness is ... not being 45
Written by Michelle Albert
Turns out that those middle years of life tend to be the ones when we are most unhappy. A recent study of happiness across different countries showed that most people follow a “U-shaped” happiness curve. That dip in the middle of the "U" corresponds to midlife. One of the researchers, Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, says:
"Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period. But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old. Perhaps realising that such feelings are completely normal in mid-life might even help individuals survive this phase better."
But, it’s not all bad news. A 2003 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that by increasing your feelings and thoughts of gratitude, you can increase your happiness by around 25 percent. PsyBlog explains the study. The researchers studied different groups of people. One group noted the hassles in their lives, another recorded things they were grateful for, and the control group listed events that happen to them. The researchers found that:
People who were in the gratitude condition felt fully 25% happier - they were more optimistic about the future, they felt better about their lives and they even did almost 1.5 hours more exercise a week than those in the hassles or events condition.
The Blue Zones lesson here? Remember to focus on the things that you are grateful for, and you may find your overall feelings of happiness responding accordingly. If you are in midlife, let us know if you feel happier than you did when you were younger ... and why that's the case.
For more detailed reading: Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2003, vol. 84, no. 2).
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