Are you time poor and in your 40s? Mortgage burden, job or career concerns,growing and demanding young family are draining your fount of well-being?
A recent Warwick University research report finds evidence to show that a typical individual’s well-being reaches its lowest ebb in middle age.From age 45 years,though,you should,all things being equal,expect to become happier as the years go by.The evidence shows this to apply to both males and females, and to populations on both sides of the Atlantic.How so?
An explanation it seems is that as we grow older our life experience tells us to count our blessings. When others of our peers are beginning to fail,ail or even die this intensifies a need to make the most of our remaining years.This is my interpretation of the view of Professor Andrew Oswald who was one of the leaders of the Warwick University research project. The research also found that older people sleep longer at night which may give them the edge over younger people who survive on less regular rest.
Christine Webber ,author of Too Young To Grow Old,found through a survey of 45 to 65 year olds that most respondents who felt happier now than when they were young claimed increasing age had given them a growing confidence.There are also clearly things we can do to help raise our happiness levels.
This time last year
We quoted from a report from the Kansas City Star:
‘Apparently, men do not get meaner, irritable and more sarcastic as they get older. In fact, among the men participating in the Study of Adult Development — the longest longitudinal study of adult life ever conducted — men seem to get happier as they get older.The study has followed two groups of men for 68 years: 268 men who graduated from Harvard University and 456 men who grew up in the urban neighborhoods of Boston.
‘Depression in men, characterized by irritability and anger (and sarcasm is a form of anger) did not increase with age, according to the study ‘,carried out at the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard’s medical school.’
Reverting to the Warwick project, evidence is revealed of well-being following a U-shaped curve through the life cycle, the upward end of the happiness curve picking-up from around age 45 years.
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