Happiness Series

Since PBS had a series on The Emotional Life and I am reading the book Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom and the Life Issues by Robert Spitzer, I thought I would have a blog series on happiness to share with you what I am learning.  NPR had a segment about the series which brought this to my attention.

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One finding I found interesting had to do with aging.  According to Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard and author of the book Stumbling on Happiness:

"The fact is that when you measure happiness, if you hold constant physical health, people only get happier over time.  This is very important.  When we think of old people being unhappy, we're almost always thinking of old people whose health is failing.

But it turns out, when your health fails at any age, you're unhappy.  Older people tend to be unhappier than younger people only because they're in poorer health.  As long as they aren't in bad health, they're actually happier."

This research is consistent with sage-ing work, but I would add some qualifiers such as facing one's mortality, embracing aging, focusing on relationships, and legacy work.  These activities, which take time and effort, help us shift the paradigm from aging to sage-ing which is a key to happiness.

What makes you happy? 

Is anyone out there reading?  If so, tell me what you think makes people happy, particular as we gain in years of life experience. 

 

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