Ep 145: Finding More Meaning at Mid Life: 5 Lessons from The World's Longest Research Study on Happiness

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week . Today I want to talk about happiness , and you know that is something we all want , right , and I thought this was really relevant for two reasons really .

Number one there is , they say , a U-shaped curve on happiness in the average person's life and we hit our lowest point go figure , at midlife . So I mean , in like the early 40s , through , you know , the 50s-ish , we are at the lowest point and our happiness which you know , I probably , being in midlife , is no big surprise .

You know there's a lot of changes that happen with our health , sometimes with our children , if we have them growing older and leaving them home .

I just feel like it's a time when we're kind of in transition from who we've always been , I guess , who we decided to be early on , who we became , and then it's a natural time to look forward to the rest of it and say , well , what do I want that to be about , right ?

So it's kind of a time of transition and probably a time where we spend a little less time maybe being present and more reflecting on either the past or what the future is going to be . At least that has been my experience and the experience that I have observed with many of my clients .

So it may be different for you , but numerous studies have pointed to that there is a U-shaped curve on happiness . We come out of our thirties usually fairly strong that's a time of actualization and fulfillment into our early forties .

Midlife begins at 39 , right , and we end up kind of in this bottom part of being the least happy in our forties , early fifties , and then it starts climbing again and keeps climbing well into our seventies . So if you're in a down period right now , I just want to tell you that's perfectly normal and you know it's going to get better . Science shows that .

You know , we don't always stay in this period of adjustment , turmoil , whatever you want to call midlife . It's kind of a reassessment period , I think , for many people , and that you're going to , you know , start to figure it out , redefine kind of what you want for the rest of it and you'll start climbing again in your feelings of happiness and fulfillment .

But I also wanted to talk about this today not only because it's relevant and this podcast deals mostly with career and life at midlife and reinvention and figuring out or refiguring out who you want to be for the rest of it . I want to talk about it because earlier this year there was a book that came out .

It's called the Good Life and it's lessons learned from the world's longest longitudinal study on happiness .

It was done by Harvard and it started in the 1930s and I'm going to share with you five of the insights coming out of that study that help to point to if you're not happy or if you're not 100% satisfied with your feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction and happiness right now .

Here are some tips on how to do that and there's one big thread that runs through all of it , so we'll get there in a minute . I want to tell you just a little bit about the study . I've only just started to read the book , but I've read a lot about the book which caused me to buy it , and I know kind of what the big themes are in it .

So I wanted to share that with you because I thought it might inspire you to also buy the book and it seems like a good one .

But anyway , when they say launch student study , what it means is that it started in the 1930s with a specific set of people and it followed them through their life and I think it's also now their descendants , so the people , their children , their partners , their children's children , like it's looking at all of these people through their life .

Now I think it was a specific area of Harvard , so it's the Harvard study of adult development is what the study is called and I think you know , like most things back then , it started in a very specific it's probably too narrow of a study .

I'm guessing it was all in the Boston area , so it was in geographically diverse and it was all men , so it wasn't gender diverse and I think it was all white , so it wasn't , you know , ethnicity diverse . But I'm told they have corrected for those things . So it's now much more reflective of geodeversity , ethnic diversity , gender diversity .

So it probably got gradually smarter as it went along . But really what they're saying is that didn't necessarily change anything .

So we may all be diverse and very different and have different strengths and weaknesses and life experiences and things that work for us and against us , but the same general rules apply and when I tell you some of the stuff , you'll probably see what I mean .

It's stuff that I think , intuitively , we already know , but it's stuff that I think is easy to forget as we get into our life , and I know I have on a lot of the stuff , if I'm being very honest with you . So let's go ahead and dive into what the big takeaway here is .

And no big surprise , the one big theme coming out of this is that , contrary to what we believe , that long , healthy , happy life is about , it's not necessarily true . Like a lot of us will look to things like how well we take care of ourselves , like financially , or our physical bodies , like exercise or healthy diet .

I have certainly over-indexed on career achievement right . I've lived in how many cities ? Like 14 cities , so we'll talk about the impact of that too . As we go through , you may or may not be like me . You may or may not have moved away from your family and your close knit friends .

I have I've not only done that once , I've done it many times , all in service of the things I was interested in doing and seeing what was possible for myself , and I don't regret any of it . But it has had an impact on myself , and one that I'm very proactively trying to course correct on now .

So we'll talk about that , because it dovetails with this theme and it may or may not ring true for you . I think we all have different life experiences , and so yours may be very different from mine , but I thought it would still be interesting to share .

So the key to the whole thing isn't just about the little boxes of success taking care of your body , taking care of your wallet , taking care of your work life , taking care of your family . It isn't just that , it's about relationships .

That is the one common denominator and the one glaring thing coming out of the study that the people running the study say is critical that people who are more connected to their families , their friends and their communities can be a combination of those three things are happier and physically healthier than people who are less well connected .

Obviously , there can be exceptions to that , but by looking at all these people over the course of 80 years , that is the one thing that has come true is that our connections to people matter , and I think it is both good and bad news . Now , the good news is that it's something that we can .

If we have that , we can do more of that , prioritize and value those relationships more even than we do today . So that's the good news is that it's kind of in our control . And the good news is that if you've lost some of those connections , you can either rekindle those or you can develop new ones right .

So that's the good news is that to some extent , if we know that it's about relationships , relationships is something we can prioritize . The bad news is that I do feel like , as we get into our life I know this has been the case for me nurturing our relationships , it's easy to not do it .

And I think it's easy to not do it no matter how your life plays out . So , like mine played out more in the career realm wasn't really where I thought I would be . You know , just kind of through the circumstances and events and also coupled with the choices that I made and some of the circumstances , life served to me .

You know , I thought I would have a couple of kids . I didn't because I was at an age when my relationship was ending . That was kind of at the end of my opportunity to have kids .

So it just didn't happen for me and that was one of the big reasons I delayed getting divorced because I just I thought I went to have kids and I thought I can't have kids in this relationship .

So it was just sort of , you know , it just is what it is and I've long since accepted it and I've got , you know , seven nieces and nephews and all that kind of stuff . So it's , you know , I've got , I've got things that make up for it . But you know , that wasn't present in my life . I also was born with a lot of desire to achieve .

That may or may not be true for you . I think all of us have a different meter on that . Mine was always off the charts , right . I always kind of wanted to see what I could go do and I have a lot of interests even now in different businesses .

I kind of want to start and it's just part of sort of who I am and who I came into this world as right and because of my circumstances I've kind of become more of that right and all of that I'm sharing , just because whenever you overindex on anything in life .

It means you're giving other things up and I think , in pursuit of some of my own aspirations , I have given up or de-prioritized at times the relationships . Not that I've not necessarily lost track of everyone , because I haven't I still I have friends .

Now it's actually opened up my world in a way , because I lived in 14 cities and so I have sprinklings of people all over the place , right Interesting people , people I never would have met . So you know it's not a regret , but what I don't have especially like I've been in Dallas for several years . I don't have a close community of those people here .

They're not here . So I have to travel and you know some cities you find your vibe with more than others . Dallas for me has not been a city where I vibe . It's fine , it's got so much to offer in terms of the quality of life here , but every city has its thing and I don't know this city's not my thing unnecessarily .

So it's like when I look at my long , long term , I'm here right now . I'm loving my corporate job it's in the entertainment industry , it's incredibly fun and all of that but long term probably won't be the place that I stay in the city when I'm done with my corporate life .

So I share all of that because , you know , a lot of this study reflected for me and it might for you too Like , even if your life was completely different than mine , it wasn't really based on achievement and all of that .

If you had a different life , if you got married and stayed married , and even if you didn't stay married but you had children and you stayed sort of in the geographic area where you grew up and so you've got those close connections that are longer term and stuff .

Even if you did that , I do think it's really easy to overindex on the family unit and to let some of the closer ties to friends or even extended family weaken , right ? So it's just something that happens as we go through life and check the boxes of life and all that kind of stuff . And you know , I think this

what I'm about to share .

These five things coming out of the study are a good reminder that it's good to kind of check in with yourself and how you're spending your time and reflecting on , like , the level of happiness you feel every day and trying to look at the composition of your day and your week and your month and asking yourself are you giving your time to the things that are

important to you , to the people that are important to you ? You know , I will say and I haven't talked about it here for a while , but several episodes back I was sharing just some things going on in my life and over the past 16 months I lost both of my parents and they had a wonderful life . They were older my mom was 87 . And my dad was 90 .

And they had a very healthy kind of right up until the end . So we were blessed in that way . It wasn't a lot of suffering and all of that . But it was a year of difficulty for our family and my siblings and I took turns taking care of them and that was tough to do because they're not here . They were across the country .

They were back in St Louis and I'm in Dallas and I just started a new job . I shared several podcasts on this , if you're interested , but earlier this year in the spring , I had some podcasts on it .

But I share this only because I was thinking about this the other day and I still , you know , miss my parents and I'm still , in many ways , very much coming out of my grieving period for that , and I want to say though that , as odd as this will sound , because it was probably the most difficult year of my life just adjusting to a new industry and a new

job and a very fast-paced job , but like a week after I took that job , which is not a fully remote job , so it requires me , you know , to be in the office three days a week and running this business , this growing business .

Now I needed to be in St Louis for a week every month , and some months more than that , depending on what my siblings we had sometimes had to shift weeks and because of last summer , the way flights were , I couldn't fly because we were on a very specific schedule and we were all taking time out of our lives and we all had to get back to our lives on

schedule and I couldn't . I don't know if you remember last summer , but they were canceling flights like all the time and I thought , well , I can't , I can't schedule this and say I'm going to get there , and then , instead of getting there at 2 pm on a Saturday , I get there at 10 pm , like that's a , that's too much , I can't do it .

So that meant I had to drive . So it was . I say all of this because it was .

It was a very difficult , very stressful year , but I look back on that year and even how I felt in the year , those weeks where I was there with my parents and I am incredibly grateful that I did that , that I figured out a way to make that work that was one of the more , one of the most meaningful time periods of my life that I was able to be there

for my parents , to care for them , to spend the time , the quiet time . I don't know , I will always look at that period as as one of the most difficult years , but it was one of my very best years in a very odd way .

Those weeks when I was there , even though I was there for difficult stuff , I was very happy and content to be there with them , doing those daily things of taking care of them in a way that they probably took care of me , like when I was a child , like it was . That it was reversed and it was incredibly , incredibly meaningful to me .

So as I talk you through these five lessons , I'd love to invite you to look at your own life and think about the decisions you're making and the ways you're spending your time and asking yourself , like , how you feel every day in your life and just looking at your life as kind of a a pie with slices of the pie being how you divide up your time and are

you spending that time in the most meaningful way for you ? That is the question I want to ask , as I share these five things . I'd love for you to reflect on that . So the first thing they're saying obviously the headline is it's about better relationships and that doesn't have to just be with your family , your direct family .

It is at home , at work , in our communities , with friends . Like , how are your relationships across your life , not just your social friends , but like all in your neighbors , your church family if you go to church . Your work family if you still work .

Your clients if you have a business of your own like , how is all of that and how are those relationships feeding you and contributing to your day ? So not just your social network . Think of it much more broadly .

The first thing they say that is important here is to take stock by kind of reflecting on all of those relationships and one of the exercises they suggest which I think sounds amazing haven't done it yet but just make a list all in across your life , at your relationships so not just your social friends that you hang out with and go to dinner with and have

cocktails with , and not just your family , but like your work friends , your client friends , your neighbors , people in your community groups , and list out the individuals that are part of those groups , the people that you maybe gravitate to and spend time with , and just list out like who's in your life , and for each one of those names that you write down , talk

to how they're meaningful to you .

Right , and these could probably not even be people like if you're like me and you've moved a lot like who are the people who you've collected over time that may be in your life more at the periphery , but not as part of your everyday , and ask yourself , like who are those people and in what way is each of those people meaningful to you ?

What do they contribute to you ? When you do spend time with them , or when you think about the time that you spent together and how you felt when you're with them .

That is an interesting thing because , as you look at that , what you'll find is that some of the people in your life bring you greater joy , greater fulfillment , greater lessons , greater learning than others , and you might wanna adjust where you spend your time and how you divide up that pie we were talking about , and if you have people like me across your life

over the last 10 , 20 , 30 years , that might live elsewhere , but you look back on and you think about the time you spent with them and it was very meaningful to you and you're spending less time now . How do you rekindle that right ? And is there an opportunity to do that ? Might be something . How do you spend more time with them ? That kind of thing .

So take stock of your relationships past and present and ask yourself who are those people and what did they bring to you and are you spending enough time with them ? And , if not , how do you make adjustments right ? So that's one thing with relationships that came out of the study .

Number two is consider your changing needs at different phases of your life . Like I do think everything in life has seasons and I look at myself in my 20s you probably do the same or early 30s .

That's a very different set of friends in a very different way that I filled my time than I might have filled it in my 30s and early 40s , which is also very different than how I spend my time now . Right , and I haven't . You know , as I look forward , I imagine that keeps shifting .

So , as that happens , how are the people in your life , or the relationships in your life , keeping pace with that ? You know , I think when you're younger and you're out and about and doing all the things , it's easier to travel in packs , right .

You've got all these people and not all of them are all the way in your inner circle , but you know they're kind of like super fun people to spend a lot of time with , having cocktails and running around and doing the things you do in your youth . But when you get , I think , older , maybe that shifts right for some of us and it's about fewer , deeper ties .

I don't know .

I think it changes for all of us and it probably differs with what the composition of our family unit looks like or even how that changes , like how that the answer to that question , like your changing needs at life , might look different when you've got all the children in the home versus when they start to head off to college and you've maybe suddenly got time

on your hands that you haven't had in 18 years , you know . So it changes , you know , and one of my friends is going through that .

So what does that look like and your changing needs at life and how do you adjust for that with making time for other people , other relationships in your life , and I think you know , kind of part two of that is part of your changing needs at different phases of your life is kind of what you want your life to be about too .

It's like , you know , I really do feel like when I've talked about this before , but we're in the first 39 years of our life .

That's our like societal checklist of all the things that society tells us to go do , to get educated , to learn all the things , to choose our partner , to have children or not , to , you know , get the career and start climbing the ladder , and like buy the house and like pick the geography , and like it's all the stuff , the trappings of our life that we spend

our time on , usually in those first 39 years . But like , once we've finished checking all those boxes , it's like now what ? And one of the things coming out of the study is that they said you know you're changing needs at different phases of your life when you get into midlife , and I think this is what changes for so many people on the achievement ladder .

It's like you might have a career , that you're doing all the things you always said you wanted to do . You've been promoted , you're making a ton of money like life should be great , but you have this niggling feeling that it isn't quite right anymore , that like somehow along the way your cheese has moved a bit and now you're like well , I should be happy .

Why am I not happy ? Right , and I think it's because as we're climbing that societal ladder think about it for a minute like all of that focus is on ourself and our life and our family unit .

That's traveling with us , right , but when we get beyond that and children start to leave the home if you have them , or even you've been in your career at that point for like 20 to 25 years , your late 40s you start to kind of say is this it ? Is this really it ?

And I think one of the reasons we ask ourselves that question is because it feels like everything is about us . You know and I had one of my good friends one time told me when she was about to realize her dream of adopting we were in our it's a little bit of a way .

At that point I guess we were in our late 30s and she told me I'm just over myself . You know , I'm ready for my life to be about something other than me . And what do I need and what am I doing ? And I get it right .

And you know , this study says that the happiest people , as they go on in their life , start to look beyond themselves into how they can contribute to others . Right , and whatever way is meaningful to you , I know for me , that is what this business is about . Like , I love my clients , I love helping them .

I love helping them with their career and their life and I love this podcast for that reason . Like , I love sharing thoughts and ideas with you guys that help you reflect on how you're feeling every day and , if it isn't everything you want it to be , starting to make some of those adjustments .

And that's one of my ways to make my life be about more than me . And it's something that I always thought I would do . I always thought when I was younger , in my corporate life , I thought , oh , I'll go back and get my grad degree and then , probably when I'm in my 50s , is what I thought I would become an adjunct professor at a college .

Well , that's not exactly what I'm doing . I am teaching , I am educating , I'm helping , but it isn't in the academia world , it is in the real world with my own business . So it just manifested it in a slightly different way . But it is about contributing . Beyond just thinking about me .

I want to think about other people , and how can I take things that I've learned and give back to those earlier on in their career ? Or how can I just share a thought leadership that I come across , like I'm doing in this episode ?

So if you're not feeling your life is everything you want it to be , you might do some reflection on how much of your time is spent in service of yourself versus how much is spent in service of your broader world , whatever that might be for you , and I do think it looks different for all of us Volunteering a business of some sort like there's a million ways

to do it . So think about that . Number three is to prioritize relationships and be present , and that sounds super simple , but I don't think it is .

I think we're all incredibly busy these days in our own ways , and it's really easy to get sucked up in the tyranny of the urgent as it relates to our everyday lives , just taking care of ourselves and our family units and just doing well in how we earn our living , and all of that can take up all of our time and energy and we can tell ourselves that

there's no time left for anything else . But I'm here to tell you , for most of us that is not true , and I would challenge you to really take a look at how are you spending your time . How much time do you zone out watching TV ? How much time do you zone out surfing the internet ?

How much time do you zone out on social media , just trying to kind of come down from the tension or the busyness of your day ?

All of that is time that you could be spending with people in some way right Socially , giving back things that might bring you more joy than the latest Instagram post is just a thought , and I'm not saying that from a place of judgment .

I find myself all the time wasting time like a different way to say it , not making the best use of my time in a way that would make me the happiest . Right Like zoning out on social media . It can be fun and entertaining at times , but it's not a great way to add real quality to your life . That's the way I look at it .

I think it's fun for certain things at certain times , but don't like if you find yourself spending too much time there , I can promise you , and you're not feeling your best . That's one of the reasons why those aren't necessarily real connections . They can certainly be a source of enrichment .

You know thought leaders getting their thoughts , even some of the entertaining little things that come through , or for me , like I love discovering little boutique shops .

I have bought so much little fashion jewelry in the past month or two and had I discovered a couple of fun little brands on Instagram , and so you know that's fun for me , I like it , and I like it better than wandering around from store to store in real life .

So it certainly is a source of enjoyment , but not deep satisfaction , and so I'm trying to structure my time online in a more defined way so that I'm only doing it in these periods and I'm not like succumbing to losing hours of a day doing stuff that doesn't make me happy . I've already kind of given up a lot of the TV life .

I don't really do a lot of that anymore , but I would challenge you to look at your time and how are you spending it , because I do feel like the modern world and all of the distractions of the modern world can be what we use to tell ourselves we're too busy .

And I would challenge you to look at that time and say but are you busy doing things that matter to you really that add to your happiness really is the question to ask there .

Number four when difficulties present themselves , be reflective , not reflexive , meaning relationships aren't perfect , people aren't perfect and there can be seasons in relationships that are more difficult in our immediate family or in any relationship we have anywhere in life .

And it's best to , I think , take a longer view of relationships versus just severing ties that we might regret later , right ? So if you're going through a tough patch with one or more of your relationships , I would challenge you on that before you just decide .

You know what in this exercise , you're looking at it and you're saying that relationship doesn't bring me joy . Look at it and just see what has that relationship been over your life and really spend time thinking about it before you make a decision that you might regret .

So all I'm saying here is that there's gonna be ups and downs in every relationship with your significant other , with your best friend , with some of your other close social friends , with work people and I would say , just look at those relationships all in and give people a little grace to not be perfect and to maybe fall down on the job occasionally and to

realize that every relationship you have is gonna go through some great times and some challenging times , and that's okay . Like don't just cut people off because maybe they did something to upset you or whatever .

Like that's the lesson there is be more reflective over the long term and what the potential of that relationship can be in the future and what it has been in the past , and just realize maybe we've just been in a period where we haven't been in touch , but you could certainly rekindle the relationship or you could certainly , even if you need a break from the

person , invite them back into your life in the near term . So don't just cut people off because you're experiencing a little challenge right now with them . So that's that .

And then the fifth one is to be grateful and to let people know how much they matter to you , either by expressing that to them , but it can also be about just really realizing it yourself . I think taking a moment to be grateful is a lot of where happiness and fulfillment comes from .

Is that , those moments in life and allowing us to see that and really to connect into what matters to us . And I really did that in that year with my parents and it is what kept me going and I think it's why , when I lost them , I immediately I was grieving , of course , and still think things like oh gosh , I haven't talked to mom in a while .

I need to call mom right . And then I realized , oh , I can't . I think that's just something we all experience when we lose someone . But I really switched right into gratitude and I was in deep gratitude those weeks when I was driving there and coming back and doing all the hard stuff I had to do while I was there .

There wasn't one part of me that ever considered canceling or that ever thought about . This is really too hard . I mean , there were times when I guess I thought this is really hard .

I don't know how I can keep doing this , but I immediately , when I looked more broadly , beyond the pain of that moment or how tired I was in that moment , I looked at really what was happening and how I was spending my time and I was able to just really center in gratitude and that kept me going . And I still look back on that year .

I think for the rest of my life I will think back on that year at how grateful I was , that , honestly , that we didn't lose them suddenly , that it wasn't like a heart attack or something where I just one day they were here and then they were gone . I got a long goodbye and they didn't suffer and I will just always be grateful for that .

So try to stay in the moment with your relationships with people in your life and when you get the opportunity to spend time with them , really be there with them and realize how happy that makes you and just enjoy it .

When you get to spend the time together , be there with them , let them know how much they matter to you and let yourself see how much they matter to you , acknowledge the importance of those relationships . So those are the five things .

And if you find yourself being in a place you're at mid-career , mid-life , and you just feel like you're kind of going through the motions and you want to feel happy I have a lot of my clients say that to me I just want to feel happy , and we all think that happiness . Well , I used to think that happiness lied in the new job or the new title .

It doesn't . Happiness does not live there . Happiness can live right where you are . Happiness doesn't necessarily lie in the new boyfriend or girlfriend or the new spouse that's set in your mind's eye .

More perfect Happiness starts inside of you and it starts with , I think , what the study says how do you spend your time and how do you fill your time with relationships that are meaningful to you across the board and every part of your life ? So , if you're not there right now , know that it's . You're not alone . It's very common .

There's a U-shaped curve , they say , on happiness , and midlife , I think , is just a time where we're in transition from who we've always been and to who we will become because of who we've always been right . You're allowed to change your mind on everything at midlife . That is why I started this business . You don't have to keep climbing vertically .

You can start a business . You can pick up and move across the country . If you've across the country , you can pick up and move back home . You can do anything with your life going forward .

But the most important thing I want you to know on this episode is that the relationship threads that run through your life are important , and I think wisdom , achievement , wisdom would tell us . It's about the next thing it's about making more money , it's about being more successful in the business , it's about the big vacations .

It's about the big car , the big house , the big and listen , I've fallen into all of those traps .

So I'm just telling you it's okay if you have , but now is the time to start rebalancing and to really ask yourself a different set of questions , and I think this episode and the five lessons coming out of this longitudinal study from Harvard are a really great place to start .

It's kind of back to the basics , like if you find yourself in that place where you're just not feeling it every day , go all the way in .

Before you change spouses , before you change jobs , before you change anything else , take a look first at how you're feeling your time when it comes to relationships and giving back to other people besides just yourself and your own ambitions , and start making your adjustments there , because that means you can really start today on the path to a more fulfilled and a

happier life , and that is what I wish for each of you

. So if you're a reader or an audiobook person , do what I did Go pick up the Good Life at Amazon and give it a read and see what lessons it has to teach you . Until next time , make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach .

I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of .

We'll see you there .