The Happiness Curve

Ever felt your life-satisfaction dip as middle-age approaches? It's not just you. It's quite normal. Here's how it works and what we can do about it.

The title and the cover of the book give away the main point. As humans we tend to be less happy in the middle part of adulthood. Even if we're successful we can still get dissatisfied.

Of course this is an average. It is "possible to be satisfied in middle age" - but it is harder.

While genetics, circumstances and voluntary actions are crucial to explaining life satisfaction, there seems to be an aging component also.

It's all relative

This graph from the book shows average happiness (darker points) compared to expected happiness (measured five years earlier).

For instance, the average 22-year-old's happiness is just above 7. But when asked for a prediction as 17-year olds, their average answer was 7.7.

Clearly our expectations are high. Experts call this "optimism bias" and it appears to decrease with age. However, in the meantime, all the accumulated years of lower-than-expected happiness leads us to feeling dissatisfied in our 40s - or even earlier.

From 50-ish the two lines start to merge - largely because our expected happiness decreases - and "things start feeling better" (even if they're not).

Also, with age stress decreases, emotional regulation improves and regret decreases.

A new adolescence?

As we age our values and goals change, so our perception (and happiness) changes as a result.

The author suggests we should look at the second half of our working life as separate stage of life (like adolescence is different from childhood).

"We should not hate ourselves for being awkward and pimply as teens; nor should we berate ourselves for being lost in midlife."

He describes this as "encore adulthood" where our motivations, goals and interests may have changed dramatically since we were 25. He also laments the lack of structure for this at the moment, in terms of counselling, training and "job fairs for grey beards".

Tips for the meantime

If you're in this stage of life (the happiness sag) there are some tips

Normalise it. You're not the only one going through this.
Interrupt your internal critic
Stay present with meditation, yoga or exercise
Share your feelings with other people
Step, don't leap. We get happiness by making increments towards a goal. Achievement of a goal is fleeting.
Wait. It gets better by itself.

My take

It seems that at first the "hedonic treadmill" of work - new projects, promotions, awards and pay rises - keeps us interested. But after while they no longer have the allure that they used to have. We wonder why we're doing this?

Often we've also changed as a person and we're interested in different things (compared to when we were 20). But often we feel it's too late to make a change. We often stay on the path we're on - even if we're not happy with where it's going.

One of the laments of the author is that the "sag in happiness" comes at roughly the same time in life that financial burdens are at their greatest. Obviously this can make it harder for people to do anything about it.

For me this is one of the great benefits of spending less. Accumulated savings and investments give us so many options in our future years - whatever they may hold.

When we reach our "encore adulthood" we can have the ability, and flexibility, to "devote what time I have in life to the people and things that strike me as most worth doing". And we can do it without having to worry about how to pay next week's bills.

But wait... there's less!

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