in Mental Health

Five Ways You Can Get Happier, More Successful As You Age

by 247Health Desk May 29, 2022, 1:22 pm 23 Comments

Talk about credentials. Arthur C. Brooks certainly has them

He’s one of America’s leading social scientists. He’s the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. And he’s Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. He’s also written 11 books,

Money and wealth are not inextricably linked to happiness and success. You can have the latter without much of the former.

Brooks gives us five key additional insights from his new book, ‘From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.‘

#1 – HAPPINESS IS BASED ON LOVE
“Love is the nuclear fuel of happiness, and if you don’t have a lot of love in your life, you can’t get happier as you get older. And that means you need to work on the love in your life,” Brooks writes. Cultivate relationships with family, friends, spouse – improve those relationships – and you will get happier as you get older.

#2 – HAPPINESS IS NOT JUST UP TO CHANCE
Happiness is made up of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. We can control all those things a lot more than we typically think.

#3 – THE STRIVER’S CURSE
The false assumption that the people who tend to get unhappier as they age, tend to be the ones who experienced a lot more success earlier in their lives.

#4 – OUR NATURAL STRENGTHS CHANGE, AND WE NEED TO GET FROM ONE SUCCESS CURVE TO THE SECOND
Learn to go from innovator to instructor.

#5 – DON’T ADD WITHOUT SUBTRACTING.
Eliminate or minimize mentally or emotionally taxing areas of your life a best you can. Enrich your life by reducing stress. Also known as “addition by subtraction.”

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash