Seeing the Sunny Side of the Street: Getting Happier With Age
By: Carole Fleck Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: March 2006
Good news: Turns out that we're not destined to become grumpy and disheartened as we grow older. In fact, we may even get happier with each passing birthday.
"We used to think that the older you got the more depressed you got," says Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center and author of more than a dozen books on happiness, optimism and positive thinking. "But research in the past decade or two has painted a very different picture."
A recent study of 500 adults ages 60 to 98, for example, found that optimism and effective coping styles were the most important factors in aging successfully—not health.
Some people have an easier time feeling upbeat. Seligman, 63, isn't among them. He describes himself as a "depressive" and a "pessimist," even after two decades of research into happiness and depression.
So, for those like him, Seligman, whose latest book is Authentic Happiness, created "interventions" to help people feel happier. Among them: a "three blessings" exercise that gets people to appreciate experiences they might otherwise have overlooked.
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