With age comes happiness

Every day, older people come to see me in my office saying, "Doc, I don't know why they call this 'The Golden Years' because there is nothing golden about them." And, then, they go into their medical concerns that, hopefully, I can help them out with. But, I do have good news for older Americans because there is new research being released stating that the happiest Americans are the oldest (Associated Press).

A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches and pains and the deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, [researcher] Yang said.

This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."

The rest of this article goes into examples of people and their point of view at the older part of life. The balance between being hard-charging to succeed and being content is something that I struggle with everyday. That stress level really bothers me sometimes. Maybe the lesson from this study is that sometimes (only sometimes) that it's ok to lower expectations and accept achievements. My life would be a a little more content and less stressful.