In his new book Your Best Life At Any Age, author and therapist ANDREW FULLER shares his wisdom in finding happiness throughout each stage of our lives.
Happiness can be a fickle friend. It shows up at the oddest moments and, just when you are lured into relying on it, it vanishes. Whenever some of our demands are satisfied, we immediately start wishing for more.
Achieving happiness is difficult, partly because the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. The world does not provide happiness. Happiness is created by people, and those people are us. Now, what makes it so shifty and elusive is the fact that what makes us happy changes as we go through life.
Your Best Life At Any Age, is based on 500,000 people’s lives, which can teach us a lot about how to live happy and less stressed lives at different ages. Essentially, life is most easily considered in seven-year cycles. About every seven years, we get an opportunity to reconsider and re-orient our lives.
AGE 22 – 28 : ASPIRING ADULTHOOD
This time of life is adulthood on training wheels. Theoretically, it should be a ‘try-on’ time of life – trying on different jobs, relationships, and ways of living. The reality is a bit different, with many 20-somethings being anxious about their life direction.
Older people who grew up in more prosperous times often dismiss the fears of this age group as trivial.
Find your happiness
During this stage of life, learning to trust yourself; discovering your strengths and passions are the keys to happiness.
DO:
- Extend friendships with both men and women;
- Try to travel and have adventures (where possible!);
- Begin the process of understanding – talk to people.
AVOID:
- Being tamed too early;
- Allowing your romances to cause you to neglect your friendships;
- Letting your fears back you into a corner in life. If a course, job, or relationship is not suitable for you, be prepared to change.
AGE 29 – 35 : THE NAPOLEON YEARS
This is the stage in life when people usually develop a plan to get ahead in a job, finish a course, find a partner or have children. While this resolves the anxieties of the previous stage of life, the problem with having one plan is, of course, that plans don’t always work out.
Find your happiness
Happiness comes from not pinning all your identity onto one mission in life. Commitment is well and good, but some diversity also works well.
DO:
- Become a leader of your own life: don’t wait for others to create it for you;
- Stand out by gaining a reputation as a collaborator;
- Maximize your ability to love well.
AVOID:
- Giving up your wild ways too early;
- Comparing yourself with others. Envy, jealousy, and fear of failure can stifle people;
- Thinking that what is right for you is also right for other people.
AGE 36 – 42 : CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE
This is the stage of life when you look pretty good. Biologically, most parts look like they just left the shot. Internally however, things aren’t quite so settled. Plan A has often been superseded by Plans B, C, D, and E. This is a stage of striving. People become obsessed with careers, children, relationships, home design, or renovations. Friendship groups become narrower and time to be free becomes scarcer.
Find your happiness
Happiness requires keeping a range of friends and broadening your interests in life where possible.
DO:
- Find missions, causes, jobs, and a life you can give yourself wholeheartedly to;
- Take mini-breaks and retreats;
- Appreciate the richness of your relationship: they are your true wealth.
Avoid:
- Exhaustion and depletion;
- Waiting for other people to change so you can. Go first!
AGE 43 – 49 : HOLDING THE TIGER BY THE TAIL
If things were busy in the last stage, they really hit fever pitch in this stage of life. A lot of people celebrate the end of this stage by either looking in the mirror and deciding something has to change or entering therapy.
My people in this stage are simply exhausted. Tending to careers, raising children, and caring for older family members all compress this age group into a time-poor lifestyle.
It’s a bit like you’ve grabbed on to a tiger’s tail, but you know if you loosen your grip, the tiger is going to bite you big time.
Despite the hectic pace of life, people grow and develop rapidly during this stage. Generally, women grow faster in this time of life than men, which can create tensions in relationships.
Find your happiness
Happiness requires, after years of looking after everyone else, taking some time to care for yourself.
DO:
- Know what you want. Take time to think and plan;
- Most people spend these years reacting to events and changing circumstances. Think about the outcomes you want and write them down somewhere private;
- Be simple-minded: think about the impact you want to make and do it.
AVOID:
- Telling others how good you are. Let your actions speak for you.
AGE 49 – 56 : THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
This is the time when the angels and the demons both come out to play. It can be a time of dreadful emptiness and bewilderment followed by delight. This is a rite of passage where people face a time of confusion before reinventing their life.
People who were damaged by awful childhoods often get a chance to review and renew at this time. A classic error of this stage is to feel confused and to blame that on someone close to you. The way out is in. Rather than finding out who might be to blame for you feeling badly at this time, look inwards and see what parts of yourself are yet to be unpacked. This is critical.
Find your happiness
Take time to look inwards and address issues that you may have carried with you until now.
DO:
- Practice self-reflection;
- Change and deepen your sense of who you are;
- Realize that you will need to invent new ways of doing things.
AVOID:
- Blaming others;
- Discarding people, including partners and friends;
- If you experience depression, get it treated so you can move more powerfully into life.
AGE 57 – 63 : RE-GENERATION OR DE-GENERATION
This is a time when some people decide to get old, and others choose to get younger. The decisive factor is creativity. Throwing open the doors and windows of your life and allowing fresh ideas, new pursuits, and different adventures helps you to re-generate yourself.
Find your happiness
Happiness at this stage is all about the creative spirit.
DO:
- Take new adventures;
- Try creative and bold undertakings;
- Keep your brain and body active. Learn new skills, make new friends, and travel if you can.
AVOID:
- Slipping into set patterns and routines;
- Bitterness;
- Hardening of the categories – doing the same things in the same ways.
AGE 64 – 70 : INTIMACY OR INVISIBILITY
People are often drawn towards other people who have come alive and who are filled with creativity. If you have managed that in the previous stage, your social world will have enlarged.
Some people practice invisibility during these years, staying indoors, hiding away, and hoping that old age doesn’t find them. In the process, they start acting older than they need to. Others deepen their connection and experience true intimacy in their lives. Deep, enduring friendships are a treasure at this time.
Find your happiness
Happiness at this age comes mainly through connection.
DO:
- Maintain vitality and muscle strength;
- Join clubs, get involved. Volunteer;
- Harvest the fruits of your labors.
AVOID:
- Feeling too old to be involved;
- Feelings of dispensability;
- Delegating major decisions.
AGE 71+ : DIGNITY
People at this age are more often strong than feeble. They have seen enough of life’s absurdities to know that taking everything or anyone too seriously is not helpful. They know that happiness can be fleeting and so are wise enough to make the most of what is on offer.
Find Your Happiness
Happiness at this stage involves creating a legacy.
DO:
- Deepen friendships and companionships;
- Create rituals of connection and pleasure;
- Develop awareness and wonderment;
- Utilize your resources;
- Think about your personal legacy: how can you act in a way that shows the world how to live?
Avoid:
- Aloneness;
- Letting other people boss you around or treat you as older than you really are.
It is important to note that life is rarely, if ever, predictable. Being happy and living life well is an improvisational art form. What works to create happiness in one stage is less than satisfying in another. Hopefully, this glimpse into how 500,000 people have experienced this strange thing called life and tried to work out to make the best of it, will be helpful for you. As my father often said, ‘never lose sight of your dreams.’