Life Satisfaction and Age

Why mid-Agers are the least happy group in our population

Good morning everybody and are you between 45 and 55 and in driver seat for a family including school children and elderly parents, a demanding job or business with people reporting to you, several charity or community activities not to speak of friends and other social activities?

Welcome to the club of the age group who are least happy in their lives. But why? We are needed more than ever before in our life. A lot of people depend on us, want us and need our presence and attention. So why doesn’t that make us happy? At least as happy as the twenty somethings or thirty somethings are or the elderly people above sixty?

One reason might be that per of our duties are thankless task and some of our target groups do not appreciate our efforts. However, there must be more behind the lack of joy regarding the „driver seat“ of life. Is it simply too much and are we constantly overstrained, not being able to cope with our challenges or own expectations? Is perfectionism in our way? And if so - how can we uplift our happiness level taking advantage of the richness of our middle-age lives?

One key could be that we treat ourselves as „high-maintenance“ machines, understanding that those who perform at the highest level also need to be nurtured/ nurture themselves consequently. Unfortunately, this is very often the first thing to be canceled when it comes to optimize our time schedule. Self-care and related activities like work-out, inspiration by culture, reading, travel, reflection with friends or self-development with the help of a professional coach are all seen as “luxury” or “things I can do later”. No wonder our happiness radar goes into the red zone. Nothing leads so reliably into depression as self-neglect and long-term disregard of our own needs and requirements.

So, if there is a major insight and take-away of the correlation of the above combined studies it might be that the self-care during these intense times is our most important duty. And that without that self-care all the other duties do suffer as well. Our beloved ones as well as our co-workers equally benefit from our balanced and well-catered self, our joy and resilience that we display and that can be multiplied in our sphere of influence. Happiness is a daily invest and not a by-product - and the good news is - it is fun and beneficial to work on it.