Making more of an effort, how am I getting on? I can start seeing some sense in my new vision board, and doing well with my ultimate to do list with now 2 of the 40 items complete - as of last week, our home is now salt free. Only 38 more tasks to go, but I do have several years to do it.
I began to wonder when happiness peaks on ones life and what are the measures of happiness at each stage in your life. As I was considering this, I thought it surely must be post retirement - when life has calmed down, you've learnt from mistakes and your financial burdens are over...
Oh was I wrong. Apparently, you are at the pinnacle of your happiness at the tender age of 34. The reason, its the age you marry, have children, get onto the property ladder, are comfortable meeting monthly repayments and are making decent strides in your career. Yes, I can relate to that, but surely the goal posts for happiness move in different stages of your life? Surely at university, where life was carefree and one big party, that was happy? The flaw with this study is that they asked a bunch of over 40s and when trying to recall the happiest moments of my life, our minds always take us back to times when we were much happier THEN than now. There is a certain degree of reminiscing about the past, and I guess if that's a human tendency - you can't really ask a dead person when they were most happiest.
I looked into more studies, and actually found that there is no magic age of happiness, at different stages of life there are elements of happiness. So goal posts move, and that got me thinking more about my happiness project and the goals I've set - well they can move too surely with time? We change and evolve and its ok to decide that certain tasks are no longer making us happy? So a key aspect of any happiness endeavour is to review and replace, and that's ok because it confirms you are still human and you are moving on.
I began to wonder when happiness peaks on ones life and what are the measures of happiness at each stage in your life. As I was considering this, I thought it surely must be post retirement - when life has calmed down, you've learnt from mistakes and your financial burdens are over...
Oh was I wrong. Apparently, you are at the pinnacle of your happiness at the tender age of 34. The reason, its the age you marry, have children, get onto the property ladder, are comfortable meeting monthly repayments and are making decent strides in your career. Yes, I can relate to that, but surely the goal posts for happiness move in different stages of your life? Surely at university, where life was carefree and one big party, that was happy? The flaw with this study is that they asked a bunch of over 40s and when trying to recall the happiest moments of my life, our minds always take us back to times when we were much happier THEN than now. There is a certain degree of reminiscing about the past, and I guess if that's a human tendency - you can't really ask a dead person when they were most happiest.
I looked into more studies, and actually found that there is no magic age of happiness, at different stages of life there are elements of happiness. So goal posts move, and that got me thinking more about my happiness project and the goals I've set - well they can move too surely with time? We change and evolve and its ok to decide that certain tasks are no longer making us happy? So a key aspect of any happiness endeavour is to review and replace, and that's ok because it confirms you are still human and you are moving on.
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