How to Be Happy and Healthy: Study Confirms Life Does Begin After 40; Why We Are Happier When We're Older
You might want to learn to stop holding your youth up on a pedestal as life apparently does begin at 40.
A new study from California suggests that human beings actually become happier as they get older. Their overall mental health, sense of well-being and ability to handle stress just gets better with age.
What the study was about
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The study surveyed more than 1,500 residents from San Diego, California, ages 21 to 99, from 2010 to 2016. The study found that older adults are less likely to feel angry and anxious during their daily routines or when asked to do a stressful task, and are well in touch with their negative emotions. They are also the most content, even towards the end of their lives.
Ageing was also linked to a constant state of improvement of a person's mental health, happiness and contentment, according to Dr. Dilip Jeste, the study's lead author.
This is an important study as people's notions about aging have been associated with physical and cognitive decline. With this new finding, however, the study disproves the assumption that mental health goes into a similar dip with age.
Young adults are worse off, study found
In stark contrast, people in their 20s and 30s were found to be the most stressed-out, depressed, and anxious - a far cry from the "fountain of youth" that the age period represents.
According to Jeste, this strange new level of stress and anxiety can be attributed to pressures that young adults are encountering for the first time in their lives such as choosing a life path, making careers, love lives and handling finances.
The paradox of aging
Jeste emphasized the striking consistency of such improved well-being across age. Older adults, he said, learn not to "sweat out the little things" while the gained wisdom over age allows them to make more complex emotional decisions and retain less negative memories.
Other expert psychologists, such as Laura Carstensen from the Stanford Center of Longevity, said that the "paradox of aging" was actually a well-documented body of research that proved the upsides of getting older.
She said that she, herself, found evidence that older people become that way as they begin to embrace their finite life. This allows them to shift their goals, expand their horizons to have a deeper appreciation of meaningful memories such as families, relationships, friendships, and the like.
Focusing on these, she said, makes for less negative emotions and a better life.
