People Who Genuinely Enjoy Their Lives Do This Once They Reach Middle Age, According To A Happiness Researcher
Being happy with your life means being ok with this one particular thing.
fizkes | Shutterstock Getting older can feel quite scary to people who are afraid of losing the passion and agility that they might've had in their youth. After spending most of your life chasing your dreams and making goals for yourself, it can feel frightening to wonder what you're supposed to do now that you've reached an age where all of those things have long been accomplished.
In a TikTok video, author and speaker Evan Carmichael reposted a motivational talk by happiness expert Dr. Arthur Brooks that explained how happiness and success in middle-aged people who genuinely enjoy their lives look very different from what most people would expect.
People who genuinely enjoy their lives want less once they reach middle age.
"What happy, successful people do in the second half of their lives is they go from adding to subtracting," Brooks began in his speech. "Mother Nature tells you that satisfaction comes from having more. More of what? More power, more money, more pleasure, more honor, more everything."
Brooks explained that having more things is not actually the secret to being happy with your life, especially as you get older. Instead, people should be focusing on all the things they have, divided by all the things they want.
Wanting more will leave you endlessly unsatisfied.
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"There's the old inefficient way of have more, have more, have more," he continued. "Or there's the efficient, enduring way of wanting less. Do you have a wants management strategy or just a have more strategy? You need the first. The second isn't good enough."
This is usually important because most successful, happy people figure this out during the second half of their lives, Brooks admitted. But if you don't, it becomes a big problem because you'll never be able to keep up with your wants.
Considering we live in a world where everyone is always trying to get the next best thing, Brooks simply explained that if you're constantly pursuing this "more" mentality, you'll exhaust yourself. If instead you bask in the relationships and love of your nearest and dearest, your life will overflow with joy.
The happiness expert explained that consumerism is a treadmill that only drives you to acquire more.
In a piece for The Atlantic, Brooks explained, "The secret to satisfaction is not to increase our haves — that will never work (or at least, it will never last). That is the treadmill formula, not the satisfaction formula. The secret is to manage our wants. By managing what we want instead of what we have, we give ourselves a chance to lead more satisfied lives."
There's always something nicer to buy, a bigger goal to accomplish, or something that just needs to be fixed. Eventually, you start to realize that true happiness isn't about all of the things that you've accumulated but rather feeling appreciative for the things that you already have.
Rather than measuring your worth based on the things that you can spend your money on, it's better to just start valuing how you feel about your life, minus all of those things.
The happiest middle-aged people are the ones who have found freedom in no longer needing to prove themselves to anyone. They are content with the things that they have, and they no longer try to keep up with the Joneses. They have their family, friends, and most importantly, their health. Those are the most important things anyway. Stuff doesn't sustain joy. Love sustains joy. It's as simple as that.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
